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from Natural Life magazine, July/August 2008
NL: One of the seminars you present is called an Enlightenment Intensive. What does enlightenment actually mean to you? Russell: There are many labels for the word “enlightenment.” In the East, it is called “enlightenment,” in Zen “satori,” in Hinduism “anubhava,” in Western mystical tradition “illumination” and in psychology “the Unitive experience” as per Abraham Maslow. Many people have different definitions of the experience so it is important on just a conceptual level to define it even though it is not a concept. Enlightenment is the direct realization of one’s true nature where one’s consciousness comes into union with the actuality of Self, Life or Another. By “direct” I mean “through no process” such as reason, logic, affirmation, faith, believing, etc. It’s a sudden awakening to the simple truth of one’s spiritual nature much deeper than just an insight because it involves the totality of one’s being. NL: One of the things I’ve observed over the years is that people often adopt a “guru” or author and are able to repeat the teachings in great detail but seem unable to practice what is preached. Or perhaps they are intellectualizing the teachings but somehow not internalizing them. Is that a danger when you’re doing this sort of work? Russell: Yes it is. There is an immense difference between intellectual understanding and knowingness. It is the difference between the menu and the meal and between reading about love and being in love. Many people are trapped into thinking that if they understand a belief system and get into the calm state of the “guru” that they are enlightened. I have worked with people who have spent months in an ashram only to realize that they have just taken on someone else’s beliefs. In the process, they have felt some shift in consciousness but, in reality, the change they have experienced is just the exchange of one belief system in the mind for another. It doesn’t go deeply into “knowingness.” Even if a belief closely approximates the Truth, it is still a belief, a description of reality (the menu), not the reality (the meal) itself. Individuals who live from a conceptualization cannot live a deeper life. I think in the West we are coming to the point of being suspicious of and no longer needing “belief gurus.” We need teachers who shun the co-dependent guru-follower relationship and who simply teach techniques that get seekers to experience the truth for themselves. These teachers are really guides, who have been there, teach a method (not a set of beliefs) and inspire people to go on so that the seeker can awaken to the same awareness the teacher had. Then they can begin to live it naturally, because they are it. NL: What are the people who take your seminars and intensives typically looking for? Does their desire for “enlightenment” translate into a problem they want to solve or are they looking for a set of beliefs, a way to explain our existence? Russell: People come for many individual reasons, from wanting personal healing from past experiences, to seeking a sense of meaning and purpose in life. But, generally, the people who attend the workshops feel that the way we have been living in our culture fundamentally is not fulfilling. It’s a “have-do-be” culture, where we are taught that the answer to our lives is to “have” first, then “do” the work to pay off the bills and then if we are lucky by the end of our life we will “be” happy. In the endless daily cycle, we “have-do-be” somebody else other than who we are in order to fit in. Many people who attend feel a vague or even palpable sense of loss of Self and they wonder, “Is there something more than this?” They question the answers. They ask the age-old ultimate questions like “Who am I?” or “What is the purpose of Life?” but they aren’t interested in following a religious or spiritual dogma where they get more superficial second-hand belief. They want the real thing. They want their own spiritual experience and that is definitely available in the workshops I do. NL: Was there an experience that turned you in this direction, that encouraged you to pursue spiritual advancement, to train as a therapist, to offer seminars? Russell: When I was a teenager in Thunder Bay, Ontario, I was walking in the bush and came across a promontory overlooking a landform in the bay called the Sleeping Giant. While I was enjoying the scenery for brief moment of time, I felt my sense of self merge into the landscape. It was as if my self was the Self of all. It was profound. I didn’t know what had happened to me. It didn’t know what to do with it. The experience eventually faded but that was it for me. After that, I knew there was something more than just the physical life. In some ways, the experience alienated me from the hippie culture at the time because I could never get into the peer pressure of experimentation with drugs and alcohol because I knew all that stuff produced artificial spiritual experience and I thought it was dangerous. (Turned out it was.) I was drawn more into studying Western mysticism, psychology and Eastern religions but eventually became disillusioned with it all because I realized I just replaced Christian beliefs with Eastern beliefs; it was all intellectual. That was a personal existential crisis. NL: What sorts of things did you study? Russell: God, what didn’t I study! For a period of about 10 years after this, I threw myself into a personal research of many different spiritual and psychological techniques in a very experiential way: psycho-dynamic psychotherapy, gestalt, psychodrama, meditation, mind clearing, breath therapy, inner child work, family systems, polarity therapy, native culture...you name it. It became almost an addiction. (In fact, I did study addiction work.) I did hundreds of hours of psychotherapy because I realized that if I wanted to help people I needed to be clear of my own neurosis but I also wanted to find out what techniques were the most effective and I could only do that in a hands-on experiential way, not intellectually. So I’ve been through the ringer (and I still have a few wrinkles). In 1979, I came across a workshop called the Enlightenment Intensive that was originated by a man named Charles Berner in California. It was a unique process that combined silent inquiry into questions such as “Who am I?” with communication and with no belief system taught. The early enlightenment experience came back and I stabilized it. I took more intensives and I was blessed with more and deeper spiritual awakenings. The method was so simple, brilliant and effective and produced real self-realization. And I went on to do some rigorous training to eventually facilitate the workshop. NL: So what are the benefits of becoming enlightened…how will the results manifest in a person’s day-to-day life? Russell: The major benefit is greater fulfillment where “Fulfillment” means filling your life with the fullness of your self. Anything in life is more satisfying when we are fully present in whatever experience we are having. Happiness is already present within ourselves and we need only the conscious connection with Self to be happy. It’s so simple and obvious that we miss it. But as a result, the compulsion to try to find satisfaction outside fades and we become less addicted to the consumer culture where the underlying message in advertising is that if we buy more and more we will be happy. Unfortunately, there is no permanent fulfillment there because the “zoom- zoom” car breaks down, “the real thing” gets imbibed and the “I AM Canadian” gets drunk. Even jobs, friendships and relationships change. It’s the “being” one’s true self in the “having” and “doing” that is the spiritual pay-off. You see this connection in young children. They don’t need all the stuff to be happy. As we grew up and were taught that it’s not okay to be ourselves, we lost this. We can get it back again. It’s as if we have all been convinced that we have a disease called “empty-itis” and advertising has the antidote…more and more stuff to fill us. The bad news is that the antidote doesn’t work. But the good news is there was no disease to begin with. But there’s more…the benefit of enlightenment is not only individual, it’s cultural and environmental. The underpinning of the consumer society is all about getting caught up in trying to satisfy our wants (not our real needs) that are constantly stimulated by the advertising industry. And when they don’t get satisfied we throw the products away in a cycle of acquisition and waste and this has tremendous environmental costs. It’s a mass addiction where the solutions we seek on the outside to our inner unhappiness end up creating more problems. In addition, if we can experience that, in fact, each one of us, in our true essence, is one with creation, then we naturally begin to want to treat others and the planet better. Albert Einstein said, “We cannot solve our problems by using the same level of consciousness and the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” This new spiritual awareness combined with appropriate action is what is required to solve our environmental problems. NL: What are the barriers to this sort of spiritual advancement? Russell: There are many barriers but the main ones are pre-conceived ideas. We read the book, listen to the teacher, take on the belief system because it offers ready-made explanations and alleviates the inner tension of uncertainty, but then these are only concepts not the real experience of our divinity. Even more so: Out of our beliefs we can actually create a reality that doesn’t even exist. For instance, I can believe that my right hand is holy. If I keep affirming that over and over again, I will experience this as being real. Then, if actual spiritual experience comes along, I will reject it because it doesn’t fit with my mental construct. This is simple cognitive psychology that the self-help movement is built on (for example, The Secret) and it’s true. We are trapped in this on a personal level but it is much bigger than we think. It’s on a planetary level. For instance, what terrible destruction has the thought “There are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq” caused? The solution is to be willing to embrace the “not-knowing,” the unknown, ignore the first explanation, the second even the hundredth and persist long and hard enough until self-realization comes. It takes a lot of guts and Buddha showed us this. In Zen, they call this “beginner’s mind.” NL: Can enlightenment really happen in four days, which is the length of your Intensives? Russell: Yes it absolutely can! Just as technology has advanced, so have self- realization techniques! We just need to let go of our belief that it can’t happen so quickly! NL: I’ve always seen it as a process rather than a destination. Russell: There is nothing that can produce enlightenment, yet it can happen without prediction in an instant. It is unlike anything that we know in life, because most things in life are processes. There’s a beginning, a middle and an end like logic or affirmation, and so on. It’s not subject to a process but there is a process of becoming open to awakening, that varies with each spiritual path... meditation, chanting, dance, inquiry, etc. The more open that you are – that is, embracing the unknown – the more likely enlightenment will occur. But openness does not produce the experience; it only increases the likelihood that it will happen. NL: But people study Zen Buddhism, for instance, for a lifetime…. Russell: The Enlightenment Intensive is unique in that it uses Eastern and Western techniques. It takes the Zen tradition of inquiry into a question (called a “koan” in Zen) such as “Who am I?” and places it into the western psychological structure of a “dyad,” which is one person sitting across from another with one person listening and one person speaking. The speaker inquires into the question “Who am I?” and instead of letting the thoughts circulate in the mind he or she communicates them to the partner. Add to this the intention to go beyond just ideas, beliefs and philosophy to a direct experience of the Self. Then add to this openness and supportive contact from the listening person. Each person takes about three to five minutes to complete his or her contemplation and it goes back and forth for 40 minutes. Walking periods and meals are interspersed. This combination empties the mind much more quickly than normal meditation, increasing openness, providing optimal opportunity for awakening to happen. Because of this combination, awakening that normally takes years to happen in traditional systems can happen in four days. I’ve been involved in many forms of spiritual practice and psychotherapy and this technique is phenomenal. I have never come across anything that matches this. I’ve been involved in over 50 E.I.s and this is the real deal. NL: How do your Enlightenment Intensives differ from, say,
therapy or the study of a specific religion? It is not psychotherapy but it has psychotherapeutic benefits and it goes deeper than psychotherapy. Psychotherapy deals a lot with defenses, the personality and ego structure – all those aspects that developed out of trying to manage our relations with parents, peers, etc., in other words, our social façade. Enlightenment relates to real identity – the one that you have always been, the one that was born even before personal history and the personality came to be. When you realize who you are, you get that you have a mind and a personality just like you have a body, a car , a pet, etc. but you are no longer identified with those things. So it is tremendously liberating to suddenly come home to yourself. It’s like being reborn only you are reborn as yourself. The gift of a lifetime is being…who you actually are. NL: One of my concerns with organized religion – and perhaps even new age spirituality – is that it seems to encourage dependence on someone else or on a prescription of beliefs, rather than independent thought. So it sounds like enlightenment has something to do with self-reliance. Russell: Real awakening brings people back into the world, not to transcending it as some new age religions preach…to recognizing that there is no other place to go other than here and now and that one’s life is where the wisdom is found, that the holy book is within one’s self and the spiritual path is one’s life. Spiritual texts then become not something to follow but something that just confirms what we have experienced for ourselves. Therefore, enlightenment leads to greater self-reliance, inner strength, inner acceptance, greater psychological health…all those qualities that make any sort of fundamentalism unattractive. NL: You also present what might seem to be totally unrelated seminars on sustainable living topics. Is there a connection? What is your interest in these topics and how did you become involved with them? Russell: It’s simple! I organize courses on these topics because it’s no use awakening if we don’t have a planet to live on. But it’s deeper; when you open up to the fact that we are all one and realize as Thomas Berry once said, “We are the means by which the universe comes to know itself,” then you can no longer treat the planet harmfully without harming yourself. Spirituality and ecology are intimately combined. The green wave is here and, mark my words, right behind it is the path of Awakening. It’s all connected. NL: What is most important thing you’ve learned in life? Russell: Life is about becoming more able and more conscious. Everything in life will do this, even the tough stuff. As one person said at one of my workshops, “Life is like school only you get the test first then the lesson.” So we need to embrace and love it all, as it is perfectly set up for our unfoldment. Often the things that are most wounded need the most love to grow: others’ brokenness, our pain and the suffering of Mother Earth. NL: Do you have some kind of creed or mission statement that you live by? Russell: Gandhi once said, “Life is my experiment with Truth.” That’s mine. This man faced and persisted through insurmountable barriers. He had nothing and out of nothing he brought forth a method of peace-making unknown before that has uplifted life. He never asked, “What do I want?” He asked, “What does the world need from me?” He experimented with that question and that question drew out of him the greatness and radiance of his true nature. I know that each one of us yearns to find that magnificence inside and live from it. I endeavor to serve others from the highest truth of myself, just like he did. Learn More True Source Seminars - Russell Scott Email Russell for a free copy of articles he has written: “Headless in a Headstrong World or Finding Fulfillment in Life” and “Blueprint for Green Living.” |
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Russell Scott is the creator and owner of True Source
seminars. He is a facilitator with extensive experience in many personal
development modalities and spiritual paths and has maintained a personal
counseling practice for over 15 years. For 11 years, he was the owner and
director of the Ecology Retreat Centre, developing it into one of the most
highly successful and respected retreat centers in Ontario. Over the past nine
years, he has also organized numerous courses in natural and sustainable living,
such as strawbale construction, off-grid living and Permaculture design. He
lives with his wife Linda and children near Orangeville, Ontario. 
