Awakened Intimacy-Awakening through Intimacy - Thomas Huebl

Awakened Intimacy-Awakening through Intimacy Speaker Thomas Huebl Audio: AwakenedIntimacy-AwakeningThroughIntimacy TRT: 1: 04: 00

Steven: Welcome everyone to a very special online event today called Awakening through Intimacy with Thomas Huebl. My name is Steven Dinan. I'm the founder and CEO of The Shift Network and I'm truly delighted to be your host for this call because I have just become a huge fan in the last year of Thomas Huebl. He's rapidly shot into the stratosphere of international spiritual teachers in the last year because he's really offering very unique perspective on the path of awakening and embodying that in the modern world in a way that's really illuminating key distinctions and opening new horizons for people around the world. Really it's about a deeper dimension of self-awareness and individual responsibility and relatedness which is particularly the focus for today's call. What I can assure you is that Thomas really speaks from his own authentic depths of awakening and practice and shares this wisdom in a way that is truly unique. You're in for a treat here today. Welcome and thanks for being with us, Thomas. Thomas: Oh, thank you, Steven. I'm happy to be with you. Steven:Good. Well, we only have an hour with you so we're going to get as much as we can about Awakening through Intimacy in this time. I'm also really pleased that we have an opportunity to go much, much deeper into this material with Thomas in a course that's going to start in just a few weeks called Awakened Intimacy: Bringing Higher Awareness into the Heart of Your Relationships. It's going to be a really profound offering to go into the depths of this work and really transform our whole relationship with intimacy and relationship. I can't imagine anyone more perfect for this because Thomas as I said really bridges the world of deep awakening and spiritual practice with a whole new perspective on how to engage people in worldly life in a way that really makes that awakening real. You're in the right place here if you're intrigued with taking your spiritual work to another level of applying that in relationships and making them more soulful, more awake and really a crucible for the transformation process. We've got lots of people signed up for this call around the world and I want to thank all of you for joining us and really invite you Thomas now to come forward and perhaps begin the call by sharing about what is it about the relational dance that has drawn you as arena for spiritual practice, an arena for awakening. Thomas: I mean the main thing is that I had a very strong retreat time deep [0:02:42] in my own process of awakening and when I came back in a way to the marketplace to culture and I started teaching, I saw that culture is basically only a net of relationships and that when we humans really want to practice our spiritual awakening in the culture and we are not removing ourselves in going to retreat or to monastery so then relational fields are actually what we have to practice and to fill them with presents, to fill them with clarity, to express our highest potential within a relational context and for many people also within intimate relational containers is key, is very crucial because this is where we often fall back into

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sleepiness, into behavioral patterns, into our personality and we are totally clouded. So how can we live a spiritual path that supports my competency in relating because this is what culture is about. Otherwise I need to go to a monastery but if I don't do that, I think I have actually a responsibility to learn and practice relational spaces. Steven: Well, I know you're in a partnership yourself and you have a young child and I wonder if you could share just a little bit as a gateway of how that's been an arena for your own awakened embodiment in practice. Thomas: I think that's definitely been a very strong impact on my own let's say, groundedness in life. So both of the relations to my daughter and to my partner and it's been a wonderful support, not always an easy support but definitely very, very helpful for me also to ground my own awakening in day to day life and I simply benefit to the lot of it, out of it and I got [0:04:55] with end [0:04:56] at the same time I can see the benefit of my relationship to my daughter and to my partner in my work. So it's definitely contributed a lot to become a father, for example, in the power of healing and transmission that flows into a very, very strong container, a grounded container. So for me it has been a strong teaching for myself and I think that's also what I'm able to pass on. Definitely a strong contribution. Steven: I love for you to just maybe start with some of the foundations of what does it really mean to approach intimacy as an awakening practice? Thomas: Yeah. First of all this course, I'm offering this course because I'm very passionate about one thing and this is to make awakening our first priority. So this course is not primarily a course how to improve our relationship. It's primarily a course how to place our intimate relationships and our sexuality in the container of awakening, into the container of awakening. So we are sitting in the bus of awakening and the seat in the bus is our relationship which becomes a tool to awaken our own consciousness to higher or more profound places and if we decipher this together in a relational container with our partner and or within our family, so then our family life, our relationship, our sexuality, is actually a tool where the higher awakening is taking place. That's very different and just to improve my relationship because actually the first priority is God, is the divine, is the awakened state and this is what I am practicing through my relationship. So my relationship actually happens already in a much wider context and because with the closest people around us, so that we live our life with many days in a year and many hours a day often, it's very easy to fall asleep with them in consciousness-wise, that we are actually falling back into unconscious patterns and that even we incorporate our partners as new habits in our own consciousness. So it's a very, very demanding practice to stay awake with the people that we spend the most time with. Therefore I think we need a much stronger priority that pulls our relationship into a new dimension. I think that's what this course is about. Steven: Beautiful. What are some of the key components of that shift because part of what Im hearing is that there's that shift from making intimacy the focus to making awakening the focus and then intimacy as the vehicle. How does that shift how we engage intimacy in the first place? Thomas: The first thing is that if I decided that awakening is my priority so then every moment of my life is a precious moment and it doesn't matter if it's an easy moment or a difficult moment because I know what's my priority. My priority is to awaken through the course of my life and if I have a lovely moment and then ecstatic moment with my intimate

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partner, that's perfect. If I have a conflict with my intimate partner, that's also perfect because both are a tool for me to wake up to a higher possibility of myself for a more profound level within myself and also within my relational context. Whatever I will encounter in my relationship will be welcomed because I know this is my path to awaken to a deeper dimension of life. And then I will be much more open to welcome the easy times of our relationships and the difficult times of our relationships because I will give them more tools and in the course we will give them more and more tools how to deepen our joy, our pleasure, our capacity to love but also how not to resist the difficulties that we face and if we are really honest, most of the people will face difficulties in their intimate relationships. But they are part of our evolution and if I can see it like that, even with all my shadows and with all the shadows of partner and all the projections and all the early relationship imprints that I bring into my relationship, actually, that's my calling. That's my mission. That's part of my mission. And then I think this alone changes the game, how I look at my life. So then I don't have bad moments and this shouldn't be because only the good moments will enlighten my soul. But that's not true. The easy moment and the difficult moments are actually both very precious. And then I see my intimate relationship as a tool to awaken and I will use the tools that we also learned in this course and that we deepened in this course and I will put them into practice and I will see that my energy will start flowing more and more and more which means that my reality will start flowing more and more and more. Steven: I think you're bringing up such an important point. If we are attaching to only the good experiences and avoiding the bad, then our energy is going to be suppressed because we're not living our fullness and that [0:10:53] just chasing after those good experiences which is really how 99% of relationships are run. I think that's such a key point. One of the things, I know you've also teach a lot around this area is the importance of transparent communication. I wonder if you can share a bit more about the role of transparent communication in that. Thomas: Transparent communication is a tool that we develop in the last ten years and it's a way where we say listen, communication is such an inherent part of our reality in culture. So if I'm not sitting in a cave in the Himalayas, most of us are communicating many hours a day. So why not to take communication and make it our spiritual practice because if people have time to sit in a monastery or in a cave for many hours a day and do their spiritual practice, we also do it here in the marketplace and we use relational spaces and communication and bring contemplation, meditation, clarity, compassion, love, presence, into the way how we communicate and suddenly, we will -- a whole new dimension of information that is running between human beings, that is flowing between human beings, that is actually composing our reality will be apparent to us. In the moment we enter into the depths of communication, we leave actually what we call in the mystical tradition, the theatre, because the theatre is the story that we experience. But everybody who truly wants to awaken knows that we need to deepen our awareness in the more fundamental levels of consciousness where the saints and the sages were deeply diving in and then we actually experience a whole new dimension that composes reality and transparent communication is a tool that we refine and develop and through many exercises and practices we deepen our awareness into the process of communication, into the patterns that are playing in communication and in behavior and we are deepening them through into the let's say, more fundamental layers of our consciousness is actually being born. I know that's a big jump but as I said, if awakening is my priority, so I definitely want to awaken to the most fundamental levels of reality and I start with my day to day

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communication because often, we contract, we resist and we lose so to speak a lot of energy that's often in the evening we are tired and we are not tired because we are biologically tired because we worked a lot. Often we are tired because we ran into a lot of uncomfortable situations that we didn't know how to solve and we're actually more tired of the communication than when we entered the dialogue. That's actually something that is not supposed to happen because in this moment I am not awake. I'm unconscious in the dynamics that I am in. That's not the way of serving [0:14:35] -Steven: That point is one of the things that I've really taken from our previous calls and discussions is it's not just the situation that drains us. It's our lack of presence in that situation that drains us and so when we lean in, there's actually -- we restore the flow of energy and presence and awareness even in situations where we're engaging somebody who's "unconscious." I think that's such a key point. Thomas: Yes, because for someone who is conscious, if the other person is conscious or not is not really -- it doesn't really matter. What really matters is where do I pull myself out of the relation, where do I avoid uncomfortable feelings, where do I avoid even intensity and comfortable pleasure, comfortable feeling and where do I not really participate with my highest clarity, did I can access today. And so we are all has a calling and many difficulties or conflicts in intimate relationships actually happen in the unconscious patterns that we are playing with each other and as long as I buy into the contract, the unconscious contract that I had with my intimate partner and then I even blame my intimate partner for not allowing me to evolve and not allowing my freedom or not allowing intimacy or sexuality or whatever. So there is a lot of unconscious agreement that we are not aware of sometimes and then we feel like as if they are threats, we lose our freedom, we are not able to fully love or commit or whatever. But actually we are not seeing how we are doing this, how we are participating in it and I think therefore a radical presence, clarity, ability to communicate and reveal these unconscious patterns is a very important part, how to refresh and awaken our intimate relationships, moment to moment to moment to moment again and how to see our partners moment to moment to moment to moment again. That's a pretty strong spiritual practice. I think everyone who has been or is currently in an intimate relation knows what I'm talking about. It sounds very simple but it's actually a very demanding spiritual practice, not to create a habit out of our intimate partners. Steven: I love for you to take the next step when we bring awareness to these unconscious patterns. That's the first state of surfacing and then there's the level of actually clearing them or dissolving some of the past patterning so that we can come fresh more from the beginning. I wonder if you can share a little bit about dissolving those unconscious patterns and barriers. Thomas: First it's always to become aware of the patterns and the second thing is whenever we created strong patterns or even covered some traumatic experiences that we had in our early development. The patterns have been created out of non-appropriate connection or not appropriate contact to the main relation figures in our lives, mostly our parents. So when we reproduce some of these patterns, then the healing comes from a deeper relatedness within the difficulty to relate. This is something once a couple or once people in general also in a spiritual community become aware of that is the result of this is that we suddenly create much more healing spaces because if I am open to receive you and see you into difficulty to create intimacy with me, if I see you in the difficulty to express emotions, to express clarity or even aggression, then if I can receive you I can -- there is a feedback to you that actually even

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aggression, emotional spaces, deep emotional spaces and what we call weaknesses will be totally different -- there's a total different value that we create around this parts of ourselves and this allows us to release the contraction and to actually shift gear and relate through them in a very different way with the world. The early imprints that we have often so deeply buried [0:19:49] in our personality that we often consciously need to shed a lot of light, like we need to put a spotlight on them in order to reveal them because for us they are so deeply me, this is so deeply myself that I often don't even know what other people are talking about as long as it's an unconscious process but if we shed a light on them so we suddenly see, "Oh wow. This is not me. This is something that I have learned. This is something that I have learned to cover. This is something that I have learned to protect," and we as human beings we can create very healing spaces around these patterns and around these contractions and then we will not get entangled in them so much but we will release them into a very different level of relational ability. That's very powerful but that's often also deeply painful and for some people it's not something that they can do later in their relationship but the relationship can be informed around this and then we can go to professional support if it's needed, if it's around very traumatic areas but it will help us to create a much higher awareness where we sometimes gets stuck in our day to day life and as often the stuckness that we encounter is just a symptom of something much deeper and we need to learn to shift our awareness from the symptoms , so to speak, from the smoke and find the fire. And then life gets really interesting. That's very intense. Steven: Beautiful. And it also speaks to one of the core things that you're going to be teaching in your upcoming course has to do with how to navigate these relational shadows. So much of our personal and collective shadow material gets inactive in relationship and I wonder if you can share a bit more about how to navigate that. Thomas: Right. First of all, as I've said, we need to be informed about it. The second thing is we need to create an awareness when we are running into this recurrent, cyclic patterns. And then, we need to see if this is something that we can sow within our relationship or if it creates too much stress because some people actually, when they are on a spiritual path, they think their relationship is actually a kind of a private therapy. But sometimes or often, people when they do that, they create so many entanglements that their relationship is breaking apart. So therefore we need to know, "Okay. What do we need to embrace in our partner, in our self and what is the level of shadows or the level of trauma that our partner and our intimate relationship cannot handle and therefore I have the responsibility of awakening as my first priority to look for someone that is professional enough to give me the support that I can open myself, my trauma, my deep developmental patterns and then I can come back with this strengthening into my relationship. And my relationship doesn't need to become a therapy room." This is also very important discernments. So what is actually able, what am I able to heal within my relationship and when do I put too much stress on my relationship, also too much projection energy that actually supposed to go to my therapist and not to my partner. I think just to reach this level of discernment is already very big. And then of course, the more skilled we are, the more ability we have to not get entangled in the patterns but actually to stay present when they are happening and by that to transcend them. So that's something that we will learn how to do.

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Steven: I would just connect with you. You speak a lot about subtle energetic confidence. I think that discernment around when the relationship can be strengthened by continuing to work with a deeper pattern versus it's better to work in an outside container and then bring some clarity back. And sort of how does this connect to you, the subtle energetic confidence of tracking and working with energy within the relationship? Thomas: The more levels of consciousness that the mystical knowledge refers to, one is the gross reality which is the world that we know. This is the door that when you hit it, it hurts on your head or in your physical body. Then there is this subtle realm which is more the energetic realm and the realm of information. I believe and this is also what I work with that every human being is actually radiating the whole information to his or her life, every moment into the space that here she is leading in. If I'm skilled enough and if I really listen in the strength and this capacity, this sense that I have and that everybody have, and if you train it and if you practice it, it simply just grows like a muscle and if combined with my intuition and it's combined with my more finer abilities to perceive, then I will suddenly hear, see, feel much more subtle information that we communicate all the time besides the words that we are saying and I will suddenly hear a lot of synchronicity or disynchronicity in people's expression. That's very important especially for professional people that work with people but also for everybody because in the moment I hear that, I'm not so much entangled anymore in the symptom that people communicate but I will learn to deepen my own awareness beyond the symptomatic levels and therefore I can relate to people beyond the symptomatic levels. Actually this is what I believe is the next champing [0:26:12] collective in the human collective consciousness which is a potential-oriented culture that is not so much entangled into stories but is actually much more profound and it's relating to the essential let's say intelligence that people bring into this lifetime. If I listen to your potential and I can listen through the symptoms to your potential and you can do the same with me, we will actually not get so much entangled in personality patterns of Steven and Thomas but we actually will support much more the deeper potential or the deeper intelligence. Once this intelligence is expressed, we would say, "Wow. I am really living my life. I am really living the life that I'm supposed to be living," versus "I wake up in the morning and I'm not really sure if the life that I'm living is the life that I want to live." People who express most of their potential and the potential is synchronized with their life, they wake up in the morning and they know, "Wow. I'm on my place. I'm living the life that my soul was meant to live." I think our intimate relationships because for many people the intimate relationship also takes up a lot of energy in their experience, well one thing to find an intimate relationship takes up a lot of energy, that to deeply understand and listen to the potential of our partner and to support this light in each other can be an amazing breakthrough. Steven: That's just so beautifully and poetically shared. Thank you, Thomas. I want to make sure we cover a good spectrum of your insights here in this one hour. I'd love for you to share a bit about masculine and feminine from an awakened perspective since that's part of the whole tension between masculine and feminine, the dances that creating polarity and sexual eros. I'd love for you to share your angle on the play of masculine and feminine. Thomas: The first thing is that we are not speaking about men and women here because this often gets mixed up, masculine is men and feminine is women. We are not talking about it like that. What I'm saying is that the masculine quality, masculine energy is a kind of a cosmic quality that we find in the cosmic creation in the deep mystical principles. We find it in our own personality and we find it in our relationships. The feminine quality is the same.

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It's a cosmic principle that expresses itself through men and through women with a certain kind of polarity. But all of us carry both qualities inside and the dance, as you said, and let's say the percentage of which quality will be strongest. So some men are very masculine and some women are very masculine and vice versa. So we are transcending stereotyped role models in society and images and pictures that we have of what a man is supposed to be and what's a woman supposed to be and we are really connecting to the individual set up that is close to my soul in this lifetime. I think if I find out what that is, then I can release myself from the tension to the images that I hold so how I should behave as a man or as a woman and I can really drop in to the authenticity of me being the man that I am or the woman that I am and express that as authentically as possible. I think this already relieves many people from a kind of stress or a gap between their behavior and their original energy. And then we can see that we can support some of these, like one or the other polarity in ourselves if it's contracted, if it's traumatized, if it didn't get the support that it needed in our family of origin and our social structures and also play more with the intensity of eros that is actually the electricity between the masculine and the feminine in myself and in myself related to my partner. So we can actually increase the fire of eros if we play and strengthen the polarities in each other or in one's self and in each other and that's actually beautiful because then what happens to long term relationships is often that the fire of eros is going down and there are some practices and that there are some understanding around this and if I want to refresh and keep it alive, then the strengthening of the masculine and the feminine and the ability to play more fluidly with them is actually keeping our long term relationships also exciting. And then we don't need to jump from one relationship to another sometimes just to get satisfied but we know how to work with the energy in order to keep a committed relationship also satisfying. And if this is the path of my soul so I can really work with this. Steven: I wonder if you could share a specific practice or set of practices that do that, that tend the sacred fire of eros and really allow this polarity to strengthen overtime in a committed relationship. Thomas: Right. I mean, first of all, it's very important in a committed relationship that we know that every dishonesty, every retraction, every holding back, every scar in the relational space that hasn't been taken cared of will actually lower the life energy. So the more I retract into my space and she or he retracts into his or her space, so we, that the fire of eros is going down. And the more I really take care that the relational space is actually sacred and I need every unclarity, every feeling of retraction or contraction is actually counterproductive to the intimacy, to the lust, to the clarity that's present [0:33:02] and also to the sexual fire. Once we enter a relationship we also have a responsibility to take care -- it's like a living room and if the living room is clean, and if the living room is bright because the windows are open and it's clean, so we really love to be in this room. But if there is a lot of garbage, it's stinky and it's dusty and there's not so much light, we don't want to be in this room. We want to be outside of our [0:33:30]. So we have that kind of a subtle energy responsibility to take care and to be sensitive and to be also clear when we feel that we are not really meeting each other. That's one of the most important practices because this happens very often. The second thing is also that we create habit from each other. So I incorporate my partner because I'm spending a lot of time with my partner so I'm not seeing my partner often every moment again and again but I see the

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image that I hold of my partner. Even if my partner does the same, we're actually not meeting in the presence of this moment but we are meeting our images that we hold about each other and that's actually not helpful for eros because then my partner is my habit and I my partner's habit and that sounds actually very boring. But if I relate to the energy that's emerging in my partner right now and vice versa, so life energy is much more exciting. It keeps it interesting. The other thing is if I transform some of the shadows into a aliveness and intelligence and then I can play and go into the masculine energy and even strengthen it more and play with it more and go into the feminine and to [0:34:51] the same, so I'm actually in a way -- opening my limits and sometimes to stretch my limits and my borders can strengthen the sexual fire as well. So there are many things that we can do in order to take care of our relational space and to keep it alive. Steven: That's a fascinating perspective. I really appreciate your angle on this. I'd love for you to share a little bit more just about the deeper levels of commitment and marriage too from a spiritual perspective and how that can be -- those commitments can actually be a vehicle for our freedom. Thomas: Yes, so there are two things. For some people it might be beneficial at times in their life or for a full lifetime that their soul needs multiple relationships. For others, their soul needs committed relationships. So we need first to find out what's actually their authenticity of my life right now. And then of course, their pathology. Some people think they want to live more open relationships but what they are doing, they are constantly avoiding commitments. Some other people are totally stuck ing commitments but they lose more aliveness and they are more and more contracted in their current long term relationship and it's absolutely unhealthy. So there are two. We need to see what is actually a result of our patterns and what is actually a result of spiritual concept and what is a result of my authentic intelligence or soul's path. If I am resting more in that, then the mystical principle, for example, if I find out that I'm drawn to a committed relationship, then the mystical aspect of what marriage truly was and I think a lot of the energetics has been lost sometimes in the ritual of marriage but actually what marriage says is that marriage is to create a mutual, that solo container for the light to manifest itself through our relation. So that if I commit to my partner, our energy fields will actually merge into a relational field and if we know that our highest priority is the divine light, so then the marriage is a tool to download this divine light through our relation and if so, also through our father and motherhood into the world. So on one hand, it's meant to be a strong container for our children but if we don't have children it's also a strong container for our spiritual life to manifest through our relationship because what we are saying in marriages, we both put awakening as our first priority and the highest light will manifest through our relation in the world. This includes, when we do it really in a correct way, this includes a lot of energy work in the process of a marriage. So there's a very beautiful, mystical process behind it. It's clearing a lot of karmic structures in the relational fields of both partners and it's fusing the energy fields into a mutual container. So the principle of marriage is actually a very beautiful mystical principle that just aligns our relationship with the higher flow in a conscious, deliberate way. Steven: How important is it that both people are equally committed to all the dimensions of that process? Because when we were talking earlier, you mentioned that you can do this, that

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you can approach intimacy as an awakening practice even if the other person is less conscious. What we've seen is a lot of times in partnerships or marriages, there's often one partner that's more committed to this awakening journey than the other. And then that can often be a breakdown. How do you hold that since you're talking about really the creation of a merged field or a unified field that works through both people? Thomas: So one thing is that ,evolution, we all need to see that I think or we don't need to forget that we are all movement. We are not static particles. We are moving intelligences that move in different speeds and we are moving with each other and for some time in a relationship one partner will evolve more for maybe then [0:40:05] will evolve more and in between these partners, you can see like a rubber band. So if one partner is really committed to evolution and inner development and presence and awakening and the other partner is not at a certain time, it might be fine. Until this rubber band gets stretched too much. And so when we say relationship is also a mutual commitment to awakening, it means that we have the responsibility to awaken. So when one partner really develops quite quickly and the other partner doesn't, for some time, the development of one partner is the evolutionary push for the other partner. It might create tensions. It might create frictions. But actually for some time, that's really healthy because it keeps us going. But if this rubber band gets stretched too much then it might be destructive. So we need to be -- I think we need to be very awake to see that not staying in our relationship no matter what it takes is always the right thing to do. Some people constantly try to fix their relationship but actually the energy is not there anymore. We need to be really awake. How long is this still a creative push or friction that happens between two partners because of one partner developing quite quickly and when is it actually becoming a drain and that we are losing a lot of life energy which means that we are not anymore committing to the first priority which is awakening. And then I think sometimes it might be also healthy to end the relationship at a certain time and say, "Listen, from now on it's becoming destructive and it's not anymore good for both of us." And the science of this developmental process is important. It's like as if there are two trains and they are moving into the same direction but with a different speed. For a certain time, you still see the train through your window, the other train. But if one is getting really fast and the other one stays at the same speed, so then you lose the other train. Because we are both movements, we will here and there create evolutionary pressures and tensions for each other which is healthy because it keeps us evolving but as I've said, in a certain time, it might be also destructive and we need to be awake to these dynamics. Steven: I think it's a really wise and balanced perspective. I really just love everything you're sharing, Thomas. It's so clear that you are operating from such a clear vision and experience of the potential within relationships to really be a catalyst and a vehicle for awakening. Let's just share a little bit about the course now which is coming up because what we really found overtime is that these introductory calls are so valuable in giving a glimpse. We can get a taste of potential, some key insights that to really transform overtime, it requires a container to work through this. It's very much in the line of what you're saying is that we create a relational context to a set of teachings and practices and consciousness in order to really shift. And so that's why we're really excited that you're going to be offering Awakened Intimacy as a course for people. As we talked about it with you, we really decided that 12 weeks would

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be an optimum amount of time, three months to go deep with a community of deep spiritual practitioners from around the world and the teachings that you're giving a taste of here today. So I want to invite you to share a bit about this. First of all, if you're listening, you can follow along and see the course at www.awakenedintimacycourse.com, awakenedintimacycourse.com, and again it's going to be 12 weeks beginning in just a few weeks. What I'd love for you to maybe share first, Thomas, about this course is what is it that you're most wanting people to get as a result of going through for 12 weeks? What are they really going to discover shift in themselves? Thomas: I mean first of all, all my courses are meant to be like a field of transmission first of all. So this course is not just for people who are in relationship at the moment but also people who are longing to be in a relationship, for everyone who feels that the relationship can or is already or can become a container for awakening and that we are not primarily fixing our relationship but we are really, we are awakening through our relationship, to deeper places of consciousness and life and mystical principles and that the transmission of this course is a kind of an energetic transmission that will over this I don't know, 12 weeks, awaken the relational intelligence and the intimate relation energy in all of us to a deeper level. And so the transmission is the first thing. The second thing is that we will be committed to a deeper place in life that can embrace comfortable and uncomfortable situations and we'll learn from both of them. I think this is a very deep loving capacity that I know I'm here to live my life in the highest intensity present awareness that I can and all my lovely moments and all my difficult moments are part of this and I know I'm committed to 100% of life and not just to 50%. I think if you get this, so we are also getting that the shadow areas, the places where I want to hide away from life, where I want to run away, where I'm so clouded by my own stuff that I cannot see my partner anymore, that this is actually where life needs me the most and we will look and give tools and practices and especially the mutual encouragement that intimate relationship can be of fundamental and very, very amazing place to awaken deeper in life and that we are going and we are the experiment of how awakening can take place in the postmodern society through people that want to stay in the marketplace, in culture, in society and they don't want to go into retreat in a monastery or in a cave. So we are the experiment of life to find out how it works. I think that's the most important thing. It's a creative process that happens through all of us and we are finding out together how to do it and I think that's exciting because that's a pioneering work. Steven: That's very exciting. Just to give people a little more context, it's a 12-week journey. There's 90-minute class sessions every week with Thomas as you can tell from today's call, there's just tremendous amount of value and part of what we do is we do recordings so you can download that at anytime even if you can't make the live calls as well as transcribe every session. So it allows you to really speak [0:48:14] into every nugget that he's sharing as well as we'll have 30-minute small group practice sessions and this is really key since Thomas offers a lot of practices that allow us to apply this in our lives, in our intimate connections and then come back and share that not only in the small group practice sessions but also in the online learning community which will be active and available throughout the entire 12 weeks. So it's a really full journey that people will be going on. Thomas, I'd love for you to maybe just share. It's 12 weeks. Each week really builds upon the next in a very cohesive way which

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I think is quite beautiful, the way you've designed it here. So maybe share a little bit about the arc of the 12 weeks and some of the subjects many of which we have touched on in today's call. Thomas: Yeah, I think we've touched on many already and I think the most important is that we will build every module and we will give tools and practices and also a high level of encouragement that what we do in this course is actually valued [0:49:25] the most if I really practice it in my day to day life and I come back to the course with the insights and the difficulties and it's really an alive process, as if I'm studying something. And so we go from putting our relationship into the container of awakening as a first priority. We start with the context and then we go through transparent communication. We go through the early imprints of our relationship patterns that we have from our early development and we look at how to integrate shadows, how to work with shadows and where are the borders that my relationship shouldn't become a therapy session. So we will look at how to be in it in the most responsible way and then we go through the masculine-feminine dynamics and we look at the fire of our sexual drive and how to use our sexual energy to become -- and our sexual interactions to awaken the energy more and more and to deepen our presence and to really meet in the most intimate way, in the most tantric way, so to speak, when tantra is like the practice of staying connected to the highest dimension and embodied in the deepest life intensity. We will also look at marriage as a mystical container for it and the mystical principles that are present in it and how we can evolve together and learn to stay connected in the most intense, pleasurable and the most difficult moments of our relationship, how we can stay connected and vulnerable, open, loving, present with our partners. Through this radical openness, really transform the contraction of our separate being and merge more and more into life which of course is a practice in my relation but it's also a practice for life in general. So that's I think the overview. Steven: One thing it's really clear also you mentioned earlier is that the insights and the core practices are really applicable regardless of whether we're in an intimate relationship at the moment. It can be preparing ourselves so that the next one that we enter really has this depths, dimension really as the foundation. It also can be something that really applies in how we engage our friendships and our other connections outside. I mean, there, it's less about the sexual connection and the polarity but the same principles of transparent communication and the awakened depths and really putting awakening as the foundation. It allows, and I've seen this again and again, that it allows people to blossom into a whole different caliber of connection between two beings. I think the foundation of your work is really about this shift, from seeing our spiritual practices something that we do an hour or two a day perhaps as something a more solo practice to really something that we're doing for at least the 16 hours of our waking life if not even our dreaming life as well. So that everything is part of this symphony of awakening, everything is part of the journey of bringing more love into the world and relationship, because we spend most of our day in different levels of relationship with people, communicating at work, drawing from our friendships, relationship is really the foundation for how we run our consciousness. So this is really about shifting the whole ground of our life, really. Thomas: Right. And it's also that through the course, this part of our being will get activated. So it doesn't mean to really if we are currently in a committed or intimate relationship or if we are not, but this line of our intelligence will get activated through the course as I said throughout these three months. We are opening in a way a very transformational energy that

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will flow through all of us and will activate the parts that need to be activated more and so there's also an energetic component to the course, to the whole course that will be very beneficial and will activate whatever we need right now. The practices will just build an edge [0:54:24] to this. Steven: I feel really blessed that we're going to be able to offer to the network. For myself and Devaa, our sacred union has really been the foundation out of which all of the rest of what we've created has grown. And so, I find that the way you illuminate the deeper, potential relationship is so enriching not only for us but also for the larger network. So I really give our [0:54:53] gratitude to you. I also wanted to make sure that people are aware -- a few more things about the course. It starts on September 24th. Most of the classes are Tuesdays at 5:00 PM with a one Wednesday and one Thursday. However, we want to make sure that you know that people get tremendous value even if they can't participate at the live time. Even if you can't make the live time, do sign up. We've kept the price very low for this to make it widely available. It's only $497 for the full three months. You can also split that up into three payments at a somewhat higher rate to spread out the payments. There's also some remarkable bonuses. I want to share a little about those right now. The first bonus that you get when you sign up for Awakened Intimacy is with Ken Wilber, the renowned integral philosopher and real paradigm shifter for the 21st century. It's called Integral Awakening: A Holistic Vision for Your Spiritual Awakening in the Modern World. This is an audio training with Thomas and Ken and really just absolutely scintillating insights are sure to be on that training. We also have a dialogue with Diane Hamilton who's also a renowned teacher in the integral movement. It's called Adult Relationship in Creative Dialogue. It's come straight from Thomas' recent festival in Germany which was extraordinarily well-attended and people just rave reports about it. Diane has been talking with Thomas on what it means to be emotionally mature and encompass other perspectives without contracting even when they contradict our own. That's also a really extraordinary bonus that is yours when you sign up for authentic awakening. Finally, we have a special bonus for anyone who signs up today which is something we do to both for planning purposes as well as to help activate the course well in advance for you. There's a power in the transmission that Thomas really delivers and when you sign up for the course, you're activating the field of connection between you and so it begins to cook you if you will and begins to create this community fabric that will allow the course to go so much deeper. We've got really one of our best bonuses ever for this. It's called the Inner Science of Awakening. It's a three-part mini course. It has a 60-minute teaching session called the Choice of Awakening which goes into spiritual competency, becoming aware of ever present space, freedom from your story [0:57:33], a variety of really important subjects in the inner science of awakening. There's also the Transparence e-book where Thomas guides you though insights and practices into the nature of consciousness, perception and transparent bodies and Aligned with the Truth which is two powerful meditations, guided audio meditations, one focused on the ocean of healing and the other on the deeper alignment with life. So it's a very robust package that when you sign up today, by midnight Pacific Time, you get that extra incentive and if you really just tune in to your heart, if you just tune in to your heart and feel, "Does this call you? Does what Thomas has shared today really speak to you? Is there a need for you to

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understand intimacy and awakening in a whole different level?" and you get a yes, I really encourage you to sign up today because you'll get that special early registration bonus as an extra incentive and you also get to activate the journey that much more quickly. If you feel in your heart you're called to this work, we could guarantee, you're going to have a beautiful journey with Thomas. So Thomas, maybe as we coming to the close of our hour together, I'd love for you to just share a bit about your -- more crystallizing your vision of what's that higher octave for Awakening through Intimacy and this course. So you're kind of offering the invitation to a vision to those who are joining us here today. Thomas: First of all, what I shared already before that every moment is precious. There is no moment that has no value so every moment is a precious part of our experience. Everything fits perfectly together in our life and if I walk my path, if I also relate to my partner and in every moment with this knowing that this moment is sacred and that this moment needs to be explored into its depths and there are different levels that are simultaneously active and that I can stay my whole life into theater play which means this is happening to me and this is happening to me and I'm living this and the mystics were always interested in deepening and deepening and deepening and digging into the depths of life and then they revealed and they are still revealing the most precious truth [1:00:15] of the mystical insights. I think because we're living in culture and culture means relational spaces and cultural change if you're really interested in a cultural change, in a developmental change or in a culture that is sustainable and sustainable means that it's developing voluntarily because development feels good, development feels like one of the inherent functions of life. If you want to have a cultural change, so we need to have two functions, to be able to live culture which means to be competent in relating and to develop the competency of change which means to transform my own self into higher and higher versions of itself. If I commit to those two practices that development is an ability and relating is an ability, I have actually I think the two most important functions of life covered in my spiritual practice because I will constantly update -become a living update of myself and I will constantly deepen my ability to relate to all life and I think if I bring this, put this into practice in my intimate relationship where many people spend a lot of time with, I think it's transforming my life into a radical awakened life and if more and more people do that, so we actually transform culture and life together. Steven: Well Thomas, thank you so much for the depths of your commitment to the journey of awakening, for really telling the truth about all aspects of the process, the journey, the relationship. Thank you. You have a remarkable wisdom and breath of understanding that is so relevant to modern seekers and so important for all of us to engage. Thank you for the beauty of your teaching and really the beauty of your presence that shows up on this call and with all of those that you teach and share. You're really a gift to all of us. I really appreciate the depths of your service to the awakening of our planet and healing of our world. Thank you. Thomas: Thank you, Steven, the same because I think our collaboration is growing and deepening and I see the deep value of whatever you created to support such courses and I think together, there is a very powerful impact. Thank you as well. Steven: Beautiful. So as we wrap up here today, I want o remind you to go to awakenedintimacycourse.com if you feel called to join this next stage of the journey with

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Thomas. You get the extra special incentive of the inner science of awakening three-part mini course when you do, when you register by midnight tonight Pacific Time. It's really quite an extraordinary package that allows us to deepen, awaken and really activate the higher potential of relationships to transform us and transform the world. It's a beautiful offering from Thomas and I can assure you, the journey is going to be amazing. Awakenedintimacycourse.com, thank you all so much for joining and have a beautiful day.

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