10 Reasons Why Waking Down Works So Well
for people who want to Awaken whole-bodily and live an authentic conscious life

1. Waking Down "greenlights" every part of who you have been, are, and are becoming.
The whole spirit of the Waking Down work continually says "YES!" to your whole being. It welcomes you to be here, become whole, and fulfill your optimal potential. No part of you is fundamentally wrong or bad. There is no call to fundamentally reject, resist, fear or despise even your most cut-off parts or anti-social or self-destructive tendencies.

And, your most sublime potential self-awareness and expression is in many ways more shy, vulnerable, and tender than even those anti-social, cut-off qualities of self. Here all of your parts get greenlighted. Paradoxically, that deep acceptance leads not only to recognition and release, but also, over time, to conscious reconfiguration and regeneration.

2. Waking Down is democratic, warmly humane, pragmatic, experiential, and "sticky."
There is no pecking order in terms of personal worthiness or having your voice heard. Disrespect of others is not welcome but those who might display it get treated warmly and welcomed in humane ways to recognize and correct their course. Teachers and other leaders do not deliberately embarrass anyone. They don't preach at or disparage people and they are accountable for their speech and actions as is everyone else. They know how to apologize and they don't put themselves on pedestals or allow others to do that to them. When any of us make mistakes, we work things out with one another. We really do love each other a lot. And we show it.

Because each one's uniqueness is so highly valued, everyone's approach to finding their own distinctive path is cherished. And the work is quite pragmatic. It's both experiential and experimental. Because they are not being required to conform themselves to outward ideals, people find that the insights, transformations, and awakenings they undergo are "sticky." They tend to last.

3. Waking Down is ego-friendly and ego-transcending.
Yes, that's right: both, or "both/and." Your fundamental, individual sense of "I" or "me" gets included in this approach. You don't have to fight to overcome it. It doesn't get bashed or humiliated or subjected to "crazy wisdom" by teachers who assume it's the enemy of your growth and transformation. You don't have to "get over your (ego's) story." Instead, we welcome your story and all your egoic "stuff."

You may have been fighting a war against obvious limits of your seemingly false self in order to attain the limitlessness of a true Self beyond ego. As that war comes to an end, you in effect sign a peace treaty with all your parts in your heart, soul, and whole body. This includes even your most cut-off shadow material, your "broken zones" or disowned voices of self. The energy, attention, and awareness that get liberated for your further integration and your whole-being Awakeness "with your ego intact but, gratefully, no longer separate from your impersonal, transcendent yet all-inclusive essence" will be a wonderful discovery.

4. Waking Down is generated from the very root-source of your life and awareness.
In this work, you soon recognize that the state-of-the-art evolutionary force of transformation you're plugged into is self-activating from your own source. The living Spirit-fire of Being is like a pilot light at the heart-core of your bodily and spiritual existence. It's as if the gas mysteriously gets turned up at that pilot light. The "Sun" of awareness at your core starts rising, becoming increasingly self-aware.

The juice of the process comes from beyond your thinking mind or your will to practice effectively. It feels greater than you and yet deeply intimate to you. You then cooperate with this core-generated power that's changing you from within. It's much more like flowing downstream in a river than like a climber heroically ascending the vertical face of a high mountain peak.

5. Waking Down is transmission-activated.
Most spiritual practices rely heavily on your capacity to practice primarily by dint of intention and will even if the goal is surrender to some form of grace. This work relies most in the early phases on your receiving and metabolizing the transmission of the Awakened condition, principally from awakened Waking Down teachers.

Their very presence tends to "turn up the gas at the pilot light" in your own essential core. You may also find this activating transmission in various teachers' writings, audio recordings, and videos. More and more, it's coming alive in and among community members, especially when they gather, even virtually, to explore and celebrate this Way of living.

6. Waking Down is NOT cookie-cutter, regimented, hierarchical, or dissociative.
Linda likes to say, "This is not a cookie-cutter process!" It's not one-size-fits-all, so that everyone does the same practices. It's uniquely tailored to each individual. The teachers are happy to advise but they will not tell you what to do. There are no strict regimens, dress codes, dietary restrictions, required disciplines, required ways of speaking and acting, and so on.

While the functional advancement of teachers and others is recognized and put to use, there is no assumption of anyone's existential, hierarchical superiority. Dissociation and alienation are generally viewed as symptoms of spiritual bypassing. But people are not made wrong for manifesting such symptoms. They're greenlighted, held, supported, and helped to feel deeper and open into real mutual respect.

7. Waking Down is Matter-positive, body-positive, and Earthly life-positive as well as Spirit-positive.
We see Matter as being equally real, divine, and important as Spirit. Waking "Down" involves coming into a fusion of Spirit and Matter, and of instinct and intelligence. It also involves a quality of embodiment that, so many of us have discovered, you have to experience to really appreciate. It's just so deep and unexpected, it can't really be described.

For thousands of years much advanced spirituality has been built upon and perpetuates a Spirit/Matter split or chasm in human consciousness and character. Even today, if you listen closely to their teachings, many of the most awakened and life-positive spiritual leaders are still trying to negotiate an uneasy truce with Matter from the Spirit side of that split. Waking Down is radically Matter-positive. It greenlights our animal nature as much as our spiritual refinement. It's body-positive and profoundly positive about Earth, the biosphere, and our earthly lives.

8. Waking Down is a welcoming melting pot from the Global Living Lineage of spirituality where something new is always cooking!
People have come into Waking Down, and continue to, from many different schools, traditions, lineages and teachings. Practitioners are encouraged to love and respect the real gifts they've received in the past ' and those from whom they have received them. We honor the traditions and teachers that have preceded us and made our Way possible. We also honor that we are the beneficiaries of sacrifices that millions of dedicated people worldwide have made for the sake of wisdom and the betterment of all.

Still, we are not constrained by being beholden to any tradition other than that of truth, love, and service to all. Our Way diverges from its predecessors in ways we're pointing to here. As one great scientist said of his own innovations several hundred years ago, if we see far, it's because we're standing on the shoulders of giants. As inheritors of the Global Living Lineage, our emergent tradition is also a kind of melting pot. And we feel we honor our predecessors best by letting whatever we are, transform or cook into whatever it can best become.

9. Waking Down is you-centric and us-centric, not tradition-centric, doctrine-centric, or teacher-centric.
Part of the newness of the tradition we are establishing is a different centeredness. So many of the old ways teach people to cherish elements of tradition, doctrines, shrines, special objects and artifacts, or living and dead teachers much more than themselves and one another.

Waking Down is aspirant-centric. It invites you to hold yourself as the most precious dimension of the whole Way, for you. And it invites you also to hold as precious the "We" space you have with all of us as your fellow practitioners, teachers, and leaders. It doesn't make a fetish of any teacher, any sacred object or text, any special place or teaching, but only values all of these as servants of the real human beings who together comprise this wonderful emerging community.

10. Waking Down is an unstoppable, bio-spiritually natural evolutionary event.
Once the Sun in your heart is activated, not even your most broken zones can prevent it from rising. They cannot prevent your full, bio-spiritual, awakened wholeness and unique purpose from coming front and center in your life.

You may have thought or been trained to think of yourself as a small, somewhat miserable, spiritually impoverished ego struggling to climb the great Mountain to spiritual awakening and freedom. In Waking Down, you begin to realize that this is a terribly inaccurate view. The process itself changes your mind about you and about everyone. You realize that you are part of a great Event in nature ~ that the Sun in your heart-core is truly rising and nothing can stop it ~ that you are that Sun, you are that Event and that we are all here for a grand, cooperative evolutionary transformation in service to all Life.

on behalf of the Waking Down Teachers Association