P.T. Mistlberger
Books

A Natural Awakening

Cover of A Natural Awakening: Realizing the True Self in Everyday Life by P.T. Mistlberger

Realizing the True Self in Everyday Life

A Natural Awakening: Realizing the True Self in Everyday Life, was my first book, published in 2005. It is currently out of print, but a PDF of it is available for $10 USD. Contact me if interested.

This book was not easy for me to write. I began writing it around 1996 and labored on it on and off for about seven years (in contrast, I wrote The Three Dangerous Magi in five months, even though it is more than twice as long). Around 2001 I became fed up with my inability to finish it and tossed the manuscript aside for a year, without even glancing at it. In early 2002, shortly after closing the doors of Shamballa Trainings, the large (and intense) personal growth school I’d run for seven years, I underwent some significant deepenings in my Understanding (to echo David Carse’s capitalization of the word) and realized that much of what I’d written up to that point was inadequate, as it reflected a viewpoint that was too linear and artificially progressive (see Ken Wilber’s work for a linear viewpoint that is properly comprehensive). I set about re-rewriting significant portions of the book, and finally finished it by 2003. But that wasn’t the end. I couldn’t find a publisher, and so decided to self-publish (this remains my only self-published book). It took me two further years to marshal the resources to do so. So the entire book was 9 years in the making.

In the years since I published it, I believe I have further refined some of my understandings (realization must never remain static, except in the very rare case of one who is totally ‘cooked’), and some of these refinements are presented in my work Rude Awakening (released in May, 2012). That said, I still believe that A Natural Awakening is a worthwhile read, and in some respects presents a more straightforward approach to ultimate matters.

ISBN 0-9733419-0-4
Copyright © 2005 by P.T. Mistlberger
Published by Tigerfyre Publishing, Vancouver, BC, Canada
All Rights Reserved
Cover photograph, “Blue Forest”, by Thomas M. DeVange © 2004

Contents

  • Foreword (by Brian Haley)
  • Preface
  • Introduction

Chapter 1: The Essence of Spiritual Enlightenment

  • Seeking for Enlightenment in All the Wrong Places
  • Consciousness and External Reality
  • What is Enlightenment?
  • Unobstructed Consciousness (the Natural State) and Separate Identity (the ego)
  • The True Self and No-self

Chapter 2: The Problem

  • The Cause of all Suffering
  • Loss and the Certainty of Change

Chapter 3: Thought

  • The Source of Thoughts
  • The Difference Between Thought and Consciousness
  • The Purpose of Thought

Chapter 4: Feeling and Emotion

  • The Emotional Body
  • The Lightening, Thunder and Rain of our Inner Landscape
  • The Failure of Drama and Repression
  • The Negative Emotions: Anger, Jealousy, Grief, Fear
  • The Inner Blocks
  • The Source of Happiness
  • Guilt and Innocence

Chapter 5: Identification

  • The Basics of Identification
  • The “I”
  • The Process of Identification
  • The Ego’s Cultivated Identity
  • The Myth of Narcissus
  • Nirvana, Emptiness, and the Fear of Death
  • Eliminating Who I am Not, reveals Who I am

Chapter 6: Projection and the Self-Image

  • Projection and Separation
  • Awareness of Projections
  • Judgment and Perception
  • The Natural State and the Original Separation
  • The Root of the Ego: The Self-Image

Chapter 7: Relationships

  • Relationship with the Whole
  • Heartbreaking Honesty
  • Attraction and Repulsion
  • The Edge of Desire
  • The Joyful Delusion of Romantic Love
  • Unattainable Love and the Anxiety of Rejection
  • Triangulation
  • The Lucifer Syndrome
  • Abandoning Hope and the End of Possession
  • Being Here, Being There For
  • Sharing the Self-Image
  • The Function of Boundaries
  • The Willingness to Be Wrong
  • A Spiritual Practice and Autonomous Fulfillment
  • No Ego-Back Guarantee
  • The True Meaning of Being Alone

Chapter 8: Sex, the Body, and Male-Female Gender Issues

  • Ordinary Sex and Conscious Sex
  • The Deeper Bodies and Pure Energy
  • The Alchemy of Sex
  • Denial of the Body: The Dark Side of Religion
  • Scapegoats and Why Bad Guys are Popular
  • Male-Female Gender Issues
  • Gender Ego Impediments to Awakening
  • Not Good, Not Bad, Just Is

Chapter 9: Myths and Misconceptions

  • Spiritual Growth: Is There Such a Thing?
  • Do we really Create our Reality?
  • Old and Useless Paradigms
  • Phony Holy and the Denial of the Dark Side
  • What is the Higher Self higher than?
  • Who Reincarnates?
  • Gurus, Followers, and Guru Bashers
  • Psychic Powers and the Paranormal
  • Soul Mates
  • Enlightenment Myths: Is There a Self to Work On?

Chapter 10: Roadblocks to Enlightenment

  • Religious, Political, and Social Conditioning
  • All in the Family: Psychological Conditioning
  • Unclear Motivation
  • Insincerity and Lack of Effort
  • Unresolved Authority Issues
  • Excessive Intellectualizing

Chapter 11: Spiritual Practice (I): The Enlightenment Process

  • The Pathless Path
  • The Enlightenment Process
  • Awareness of the Present Moment (Realization of the Natural State)
  • Connecting and Letting Go (The Spontaneous Functions of the Natural State)
  • Moving Energy and Staying Alive (The Spontaneous Expression of the Natural State)
  • Communing with the Heart (Abiding in the Natural State)

Chapter 12: Spiritual Practice (II): Different Roads to Rome

  • Inquiry, Devotion, or Service? Meditation, Relationship, or Action?
  • The Value and Limitations of Group Transformational Therapy
  • Relationship Work: The Realization of the One “I”
  • Wilhelm Reich and the Modern Body Therapies
  • Kundalini and Spiritual Ambition
  • Personality and True Individuality

Chapter 13: Spiritual Practice (III): Usefully Useless Methods

  • Making Enlightenment the Number One Priority in Life
  • Useful Uselessness: Spiritual Methods for Clarifying our Intent to Wake Up

Chapter 14: Work and Action

  • Personal Will and True Will
  • The Difference Between Desire and Passion
  • Success, Fear, and the Unknown
  • The Art of Extending and the Golden Rule
  • The Realization of Impermanence and True Success
  • Responsible Action

Chapter 15: Spiritual Teachers, Teachings, and Satsang

  • The Meaning of Satsang
  • The Function of Satsang
  • Quirks and Qualities of Spiritual Teachers
  • Masters, Mystics, and the Deluded
  • Modern Versions of Timeless Teachings
  • Fundamentalism, Materialism, and the Third Principle
  • Spiritual Corruption and Clarity of Intent

Chapter 16: Spiritual Illusions

  • The Dreaded Boredom Monster
  • The Myth of the Inner and the Outer
  • There is No Such Thing as a Gradual Awakening
  • Spiritual Enlightenment is Just an Idea
  • The Bogus Seeker
  • Who You Really Are is Neither Male nor Female
  • Belief vs. Direct Experience
  • Walking the Talk
  • Seeing, Sensing, and Knowing the Universal Energy Field
  • Personality and True Individuality

Chapter 17: Space, Time, and Creation

  • Creation and the Origin of Space and Time
  • The Wisdom of Unknowing
  • Non-Duality and the Bigger View
  • Life After Death and Higher Dimensions
  • Modern Physics and Enlightenment
  • The Meaning of Creation

Chapter 18: Enlightenment: Being Home

  • You Cannot attain to God
  • Enlightenment does not Destroy the Mind
  • The “Stages” of Enlightenment
  • Enlightenment with Others, or Enlightenment Alone
  • Love and Compassion
  • Being Home
  • The Final Truth

Glossary of Terms

About the Author

Praise for A Natural Awakening

Many students of Advaita think that to become enlightened is to attain a permanent state of peace and happiness. It seems that many teachers attempt to subvert the traditional teachings by diluting them with ideas from western psychology in order that they may satisfy this need. If they can make the person feel good (instead of undermining their idea that there actually is a person), they claim to have succeeded. This completely misses the point and invariably the student ends up confused and dissatisfied. The reason that this can happen is that the teacher is usually poorly trained in psychology and has not correctly understood the philosophy himself (irrespective of whether or not he is himself ‘enlightened’).

In order to address the perceived needs of these western students, what seems to be needed is a teacher who fully understands both. He will then be able to address the psychological issues authoritatively in their own context whilst at the same time expanding the students’ awareness into being able to see the truth behind their seeming problems.

In my own studies and research, I have read many books on Advaita from all traditions and I have never encountered anyone with the ability to teach in this way – until now. I invariably pencil in notes in the margins of books whenever I encounter particularly useful explanations or helpful metaphors so that a very good indicator of the value of a book can be gained by the number of such annotations. Based upon this, I can state categorically that this is a very good book indeed!

P.T.Mistlberger succeeds in explaining the psychological background to our misunderstandings and mistaken view of reality and provides practical exercises to help in this regard (another rarity in spiritual, as opposed to self-help books). Yet, at the same time, the clear aim of all his teaching is unambiguously to steer readers towards realization of their identity as non-dual Consciousness.

This book takes the essence of the wisdom of what is essentially an eastern philosophy, often difficult to appreciate by a mind cultivated in western society, and presents it in a style that will be readily appreciated by the intelligent reader. It explores the way life seems to be, with its apparent difficulties in terms of such things as self-image and relationships and clearly explains how Advaita cuts through all of this to remove the ignorance and delusion and show us the already existing reality of our true nature.

— Dennis Waite, author of The Book of One, and Back to the Truth: 5000 Years of Advaita.