Our Natural State of Open Awareness with Amoda Maa

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As a child throughout her 20s and mid-30s, Amoda Maa suffered from chronic depression. She then traveled to India and her life shifted in unexpected ways. She says it was like dropping a rock into a pool. “Something fundamentally changed… My whole relationship to life and to the way of seeing completely changed. It had nothing to do with an intellectual understanding or even a spiritual understanding. It was like the veils of perception came undone. The scaffolding of the separate self, the me, came undone. And that was the beginning.” She encourages us to loosen our grip and soften the way that we respond to life. She shares how the fundamental nature of reality and of who we are is open awareness. It is nondual, without beginning, without ending. It’s timeless, eternal, everywhere and nowhere.” She also speaks of the paradox of duality and nonduality, the ups and downs of life, the loss and gain of life. “Duality exists within nonduality.” She speaks about ending our argument with reality and meeting it with kindness, tenderness, and openness. “That is the beginning of transformation.” (hosted by Justine Willis Toms) 

Bio 

Amoda Maa is a spiritual teacher who, after immersion in psychospiritual practices, and experiencing her own dark night of the soul, offers meetings and retreats with seekers of peace and true fulfillment. Her teachings don’t belong to any tradition or lineage although they do tap into the wisdom of many esteemed wisdom philosophies. 

Amoda Maa is the author of: 

• How to Find God in Everything: An Invitation to Awaken to Your True Nature and Transform Your World (Watkins 2008)
• Change Your Life Change Your World (Watkins 2012
• Radical Awakening: Discovering the Radiance of Being in the Midst of Everyday Life (Watkins 2016)
• Embodied Enlightenment: Living Your Awakening in Every Moment (New Sarum Press 2022)
• Falling Open in a World Falling Apart (Larson Publications 2020 

To learn more about the work of Amoda Maa Go to www.amodamaa.com

Topics explored in this dialogue include:

• How chronic depression was a major part Amoda Maa ’s early life
• The paradox of the nature of life is both dual and nondual
• What does falling apart, in a spiritual sense, mean
• How falling apart is loosening the grip and softening the way that we respond to life
• How the chaos of India can be a wrathful teacher in demanding a surrender to the flow
• How tenderness can soften our self-righteous conditioning and be an aid in right action
• How our unexamined, inherited inner beliefs can be an inner patriarchal authority in our life
• How our matrix of beliefs, when unexamined, can be a prison of suffering
• How our true and trustworthy authority is our innate intelligence and can be accessed in the silence of open awareness
• What is her advice regarding falling into openness
• Instead of being a closed knot of identity self we can tenderly fall into openness
• How resistance occurs when we are arguing with reality and we can end that conversation with tenderness toward what we are experiencing 

Host: Justine Willis Toms   Interview Date: 3/30/2023   Program Number:3788

Music Playlist

From Album: Himalayan Nights
Artist: Agni & Howard (Ferraro & Howard)
1997 Clarity Sound & Light #CSL 02

Opening Essay: Track 01 Dhalaghiri
Music Break 1: Track 02 Annapurna
Music Break 2: Track 03 Kangchenjunga
Music Break 3: Track 05 Lhotse