The Living Method: Levels Of Awakening 1

In this Audio, Fred introduces the Four Levels of Awakening according to The Living Method. The focus of this track is on Recognition - the first and perhaps the trickiest phase of awakening, as it requires a sudden insight into the absence of a separate self. This realization can be both surprising and transformative, leading to a shift in one's perception of reality.
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Transcript

Hello everybody, Good to be with you as always. Today I want to talk to you about the full spectrum of awakening. When I say the full spectrum of awakening, I'm really talking about four levels. And I don't mean like it's, Oh, You got, We get to this level and then we're going to get together and we're going to work real hard and achieve the next one and all that. It's not an achievement. There's nobody who's going to achieve anything. The full spectrum of awakening, It comes in, It's four levels. The first one is recognition. The second one is acceptance. The third is clearing, What I call clearing, What everybody else calls it. They don't call it anything because most of them don't talk about it. And the fourth one is abidance. So recognition is simply, You can't make recognition happen. Recognition is coming to see, Oh, There's no threat, You know, Or, Oh, I'm it. I'm the thing, The very thing that I've been seeking. And it sounds real easy, But once you wake up, What you would do actually wake up, Then the first thing you notice is, Oh man, This is nothing like I had in mind. And I don't know anybody who ever said anything other than that when I woke up. I mean, It's just, You can't, You can't guess it. You can't figure it out and you can't guess it. You can't get ahead of it. So recognition is the trickiest part probably. Well, You know, It's all tricky, But it's not, You know, But it's not hard. So don't get yourself all worked up. I'm going to get through this if it kills me. That was my attitude. And as long as it was my attitude, I didn't get through it. And one time when I had just kind of worked myself through to exhaustion with this back in 1992 and an awakening occurred and I experienced it. I know, You know, I knew it was the real McCoy. I knew exactly what had happened. I just didn't understand who it had happened to because that awakening was not a Fred Davis awakening. There was no Fred Davis here, But we can get into that later. At least no Fred Davis woke up that day. This unit did not wake up this day. This unit does not have the capability of waking up. This unit is an animated cadaver. Under its own steam, It is insentient. When the consciousness is inhabiting this unit, It's sentient, Right? And then we have a, This consciousness that we're talking about there, We had two levels of that. There's conscious awareness, And then there's unconscious awareness. Most everybody in the world is unconsciously awake. You can't not be awake. I mean, If you listen to it, Because I usually call it a whiteness and I call it a whiteness because that's a real pointer, Hopefully, That a whiteness, I mean, Where would you, A whiteness, That title doesn't allow for sleep. So we use these terms, But they're misinterpreted. There's no, There is no one who could sleep. A whiteness itself is always here and it's always clear. But the thing that it's coming through isn't always, You know, It's here while it's here, But it's never clear. It is clearer and less clear. It's more clear, Less clear, But it's never going to be as long as there's a body on the planet. It's not going to be perfectly clear. It's recognition. Is that simple? It's so simple. And it's when you wake up, The first thing you go is, Oh, How could I have missed this? I mean, This is most people's experience. It may not be yours, But it's probably is going to be, Or probably already has been, Because you may have already had an awakening experience. You don't really see it. You can only be it. Because to see it, I'd have to see it over there. And how's oneness going to do that when there's no over there, Over there? And there's nothing other than oneness. So when there's nothing other than oneness, What do you think it is that experiences awakening? If there's oneness, There's no room for a Fred or a Betsy. There's no room for other of any type, No other. So when oneness has, When there's an awakening, It's oneness is awakening. And that's the surprise. Because you can think that I just told you something, And now you'll be able to make sense of it. It will help. It will help. I promise you that. Because I didn't have a teacher. I didn't have a living teacher at the time that I woke up. I read a lot of books. I don't even know that I had to. So this pop, This is what I've, This is what I have learned. I'm just being as candid as I possibly can be. And I learned this way back when. And I didn't really learn it. It was just a gift. I mean, It just came. It actually, And when it came, I didn't recognize it had come until people started waking up. That's how I found out that I was supposed to wake people up, Was that people started waking up. And I was reluctant to that. I didn't want to be a teacher for some time. And, But I mean, I had secretly wanted to be a teacher forever. But that was for my ego's sake. I wanted to be a teacher so that you could, Would be impressed with me and think more highly of me. And that, You know, That's probably going to work out pretty good with Fred, You know, Surely girls will be impressed with one thing. And it's just idiocy. It's just idiocy. And I, You know, I'm ashamed to admit it, But, But I shouldn't be ashamed because it's just human. And there's still a human over here. There's not just a way that this, This thing is not just a whiteness. It is a whiteness. But when I say just a whiteness, I mean, There's no, There's not an experience of the absolute and no experience of the relative. And just like there's really very few people have a life that's completely lived in relativity. Some of it, Most people are going to get a pop. And when I say a pop or a glimpse or something like that, I mean that the truth will make itself known to you. And most of us will never recognize that it's, That it's available, That it's made itself available. And when I say available, It's, God, It sounds like it's, Like it's not always already here, But it is always already here, But you just can't see it because we're so involved with these, Right? So the breakthrough, Because what we think, This will tell you something. What we think, I mean, Everybody that comes to me, People that come to me, Their experience is inevitably going to be that, I mean, Unless they're already awake and people that were already awake do come to me. But if they're not already awake when they get here, Then their belief will be, Well, The same as mine was, Which is that I understand all this intellectually. It's just not my experience. Doesn't that feel very familiar to you? Is that I understand all this intellectually. It's just not my experience. And that's the way I felt. And that's the way pretty much everybody feels that is getting close to awakening, Right? And when I say close, I mean, They're just not living strictly in, They are aware they're studying non-duality or they're, They're doing something, You know, Betsy was a woodworker back in the day. And, You know, She, When she would get in that zone and you would call it, You know, The Zen zone or whatever, And she would do it like if she was shaving down wood or whatever, And there would be nothing else, Right? So you don't have to study non-duality to get a glimpse. But you probably are not going to recognize what has happened, Even if you have studied non-duality, But you will certainly not, If you don't, Because I've had so many people, You know, Who've come to me and they were living a normal life and they were walking down the street or they were sitting in their home office or they were cooking, Whatever, Just going about their business, You know, Just woke up from sleep and there's something, Something happened. And it doesn't mean that there was boom, Boom, Boom and rainbows and, You know, And fireworks and all that. It doesn't, Doesn't have to be that. It can be that, But it doesn't have to be. And I don't wish that yours will be, Because if it is, And you don't have a living teacher working with you, Then you're going to be confused for the next three to five years at least. So I woke up on my own. I tried to clear up on my own and I could not. So recognition is just this pop. And it's just, It's just like, It can be, It doesn't even have to be, Won't even, Doesn't have to feel like a big spiritual pop. It can feel like just a regular insight because that's what it really is. It's an insight into truth and this insight, You know, Depending on where you are psychologically, It may show up as a circus and it may show up as, You know, As an infant, Just silent and still, But you know, You know, And you know, You know, And, But that's just for the sake of the recognition. I go on and on about this, Because this is what you're spending all your time trying to get, Unless you've already gotten that, You've noticed that it, That it wasn't permanent. And so now you're trying to get that thing back. And this time you do want it permanently. I want it by awakening. I want it permanently, Right? The, I will not do an awakening session from anybody who thinks they're going to get a, They're going to get a permanent awakening. There isn't such a thing. There can be an ongoing awakening experience and the, We can have that ongoing and it can be, Appear to be intermittent. That'll be the experience to the human is that it'll be intermittent, Here for a while, Gone for a long while, Usually, And then back for a while. That can happen over a period of months or weeks or can happen quite rapidly. But if it's happening quite rapidly, I mean, You're, You're pretty much there, You know, The, It won't go on rapidly for too long. But the thing is what you're spending all your time trying to achieve, And which many of you, Again, Have just achieved is just the word that you have already achieved, Is just, Is not what you're really after. Recognition is a great thing, But, You know, I mean, I had recognition, I don't know how many times, In other words, I had glimpses, That's what we call them in non-duality, Usually, Is glimpses. I had glimpses, You know, Where I had insights, You know, There would be another word for it, But it's just, Your truth makes itself apparent to you. But the first step is recognition, And the second step is acceptance, And that's where everybody drops the ball. Virtually everyone will drop the ball in between one and two, Between recognition and acceptance. Thank you very much for being here. I hope you found that helpful.