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Learning Awareness
Finding Connection

 
Healing & Empowering Us
Our Horses & Our World

Step One ~ The Kjrsos Wakening Practice To Begin

  • Content Type: Book Chapter
Continuing from: Chapter Three — Your Journey, Our Journey

Step One ~ The Kjrsos Wakening Practice

To Begin


So what follows is a condensed introduction to The Wakening Practice so that we can get you started on the book So That We Can See. We will go deeper later for those who want to experience the full power of The Wakening Practice.

Okay, so let's begin with the basics.

Easy, peasy in one way. In another, well, like any muscle or skill, it needs work, sometimes a lot of work, before we get to see how it works, what it does.

Now, what we are about to suggest might come as a surprise, but we need to ask you to go to sleep.

Yes. Sleep.

We told you this was going to be easy.

Step 1. Get ready to snuggle under your bed covers and read a chapter, maybe two, as you drift off to sleep. Not saying you can't read more, but often less is more, depending upon the chapters you have just read.

After you have closed the book, turned down the light, and put your head gently on the pillow, think about what you just read as you quietly fall asleep.

But here is the important part, and I mean truly important: as you drift off, don't just think about what you read. Be there. See it in your mind's eye. The lift of a mane in the breeze, the sweep of a tail as it briskly swipes away the flies. Turn the words into a world. Make it you to whom all of this happened. You, standing in the grass, damp with dew. You, feeling the warmth of the sun as you gaze out at the herd grazing in the dawn.

This is not visualization as a technique. This is inhabiting. You are building a reality within yourself in which these experiences become yours. Where the wonder and the confusion and the surprises belong to you.

There is a difference between attention and focus that I want you to understand, because it is one of the most important things in this entire practice. Focus narrows. It excludes. Attention is different. Attention is open. It receives. It reaches toward rather than closing down. What we are learning here is attention, not focus. And the reason that matters is that connection requires openness.

Don't think of yourself as analyzing; just let your thoughts run where they will. It doesn't matter that your thoughts wander. It really doesn't. Actually, it is a good sign.

A moment to sit with

Tonight, as you fall asleep, which moment from what you have read will you let yourself step into and inhabit?

There is no rush. Come back when you are ready — tomorrow is a good word for it.

A young foal looking up

Chapter Fourteen ~ The Kjrsos Wakening Practice - Beginning the Experience

  • Content Type: Book Chapter
Continuing from: Chapter Thirteen — The Other Voice

Chapter Fourteen

Beginning the Experience


So now it is time to start the experience that is Kjrsos. The Kjrsos Experience, So That We Can See.

There are many different ways that you can proceed. As always, the choice is yours, as only you can know what is best for you and your own personal journey.

You may find that the Wakening Practice doesn't seem to be doing what it can for others yet, and that is fine. It isn't an easy gift to find, and you may need more time or assistance than we have provided here. We have tried to condense this introduction as much as possible so that you can start your journey with the book So That We Can See sooner rather than later. In no way do we expect that with a few shared pages, this is a skill you can find that easily. Our hope is that with this beginning, your experience of So That We Can See can be augmented in the way we believe it was meant to be.

If you find this challenging or encounter difficulties, that is to be expected. We are developing a comprehensive course separate from this effort because we understand the profound impact this incredible practice can have on those seeking answers. When you open the pathway between the conscious and subconscious mind, it is remarkable what can emerge.

The conscious mind, as we understand, can busy itself with falsehoods and overlook countless details because its main role is to focus — to be aware of what might threaten our survival. The one who perceives everything is often the one who remains completely silent, possibly frustrated at being unable to communicate the answers it holds.

A moment to sit with

What do you hope to find on the other side of this practice? Not what you think you should hope for — what you actually, genuinely hope for.

There is no rush. Come back when you are ready — tomorrow is a good word for it.

A young foal looking up

Chapter Thirteen ~ The Kjrsos Wakening Practice - The Other Voice

  • Content Type: Book Chapter
Continuing from: Chapter Twelve — Beginning to Ask

Chapter Thirteen

The Other Voice


For some, it will help to realize — or think about, rather — that rather than trying to find what the subconscious mind thinks, we might need to look for guidance from another who can speak to us when we are here. Where we look up in our mind's eye, asking a guiding spirit for wisdom when we don't seem to understand.

Your journey, your path, your choice. Who knows what voice it is that you hear.

Just know it is okay to converse with this other that is reaching out — or perhaps it would be more honest to say sits there, waits quietly, a source somewhere above — one who can speak and answer questions that you don't know the answer to yet.

That may not be here at the start. But it is a possibility for those who have the really hard questions, who are trying to bring something new into existence. Don't dismiss this thought as crazy. Sometimes, what is here can be difficult to explain; the ideas expressed are just the only words that we can find. Just remember that, once, the practice of divination was a given in a past we no longer value. Perhaps it is time we looked at that again.

A moment to sit with

Have you ever felt guided by something beyond your own thinking — a presence, a direction, a knowing that seemed to come from outside you? What did that feel like?

There is no rush. Come back when you are ready — tomorrow is a good word for it.

A young foal looking up

Chapter Twelve ~ The Kjrsos Wakening Practice Beginning to Ask

  • Content Type: Book Chapter
Continuing from: Step Eight — Surfing the Edges

Chapter Twelve

Beginning to Ask


By now you have been learning to drift. To let the mind wander where it will, without agenda, without destination. And that is still what we are doing here. Only now, quietly, gently, without tightening your grip on it — you may begin to bring something with you into that drifting place.

A question.

Not a demand. Not a problem to be solved. Just something you are genuinely curious about, held loosely, the way you might hold a feather in an open palm. Can you help me with this? And then — this is important — you let it go again. You don't chase it. You don't stare at it. You let the mind wander back into its dreaming, and trust that the question has been heard.

This is the beginning of asking.

What you are asking, of course, is entirely yours. It can be something that has puzzled you for years, or something that arrived just yesterday. It can be a creative problem, a personal one, a question without a name yet. What matters is that it comes from a real place in you. The practice knows the difference between a genuine question and a performance of one.

And here is something important to hold alongside this: keep your mind free. Because sometimes what is waiting to come through has nothing to do with what you asked. If nothing seems to be arriving around your question, it may not mean the practice isn't working. Something completely unrelated may be the thing that needs to come through. And it may be that the question you brought with you simply isn't what this particular morning holds. The practice isn't broken. You aren't doing it wrong. It may simply mean the universe is quietly saying, that is not what is actually here. Open up. Hear what is waiting for you.

So ask. And then let go. And listen for whatever comes — whether it answers you or takes you somewhere else entirely.

A moment to sit with

What is the question you would most like to bring into that quiet morning space? You don't need to answer it. Just name it.

There is no rush. Come back when you are ready — tomorrow is a good word for it.

A young foal looking up

Step Eight ~ The Kjrsos Wakening Practice Surfing the Edges

  • Content Type: Book Chapter
Continuing from: Step Seven — The Collapse

Step Eight ~ The Kjrsos Wakening Practice

Surfing the Edges


And so we learn to surf the edges of the conscious and the unconscious brain. We learn how to stay there for longer and longer periods of time.

At first, it may be only a few seconds. Eventually, you can maybe learn to stay in it for hours while awake, madly pounding away at the keyboard, downloading the unconscious brain. But that is not going to be for a very, very long time, if ever. Be happy with seconds, because an insight comes in a single brilliant flash, in a single moment, and you need no more than that to be blessed by this experience.

A moment to sit with

Where are the edges in your own life that might be worth learning to surf — rather than rushing past or pulling back from?

There is no rush. Come back when you are ready — tomorrow is a good word for it.

A young foal looking up

Step Seven ~ The Kjrsos Wakening Practice The Collapse

  • Content Type: Book Chapter
Continuing from: Step Six — Letting Insights Drift

Step Seven ~ The Kjrsos Wakening Practice

The Collapse


These last few chapters, you may have noticed, are exceedingly short. Short by intention, strangely hoping to encourage you not to rush. Hopefully encouraging you to work one step at a time to develop what is possible when you learn a new way to process.

This next step is when you've reached a point where certain thoughts or words seem important — thoughts you want to capture. I find it best to quickly jot down only one or two, never more than three. I have no idea why that is the magic number. But it is, it seems, at least for me. Try to go for more than three, and something is always lost.

Hopefully, by now, you have learned how to return to the state where you are half asleep. Hopefully, you will have reached a time when this won't wake you up entirely. But don't be surprised when it does.

Just know that for some, once we reach for the insight found — once we see what is there — this reality becomes the only one, and any other thoughts, any other revelations, any other answers just drift away. And often never return. Which is so incredibly frustrating.

If you know anything about quantum mechanics, you may recognize something here. The act of observation collapses the wave of possibilities into a single truth. Reaching for a thought, pulling it into the light of consciousness, does something similar. All those half-formed awarenesses swimming alongside it — the ones you hadn't quite grasped yet — they vanish the moment you collapse this reality.

Reaching too quickly for one of these insightful thoughts can pull us out of this half-conscious state and make it harder, if not impossible, to return there. And so we have to wait until another day to slowly drift out of sleep.

A moment to sit with

Has an insight ever vanished the moment you tried to hold it? What does that tell you about how some things need to be received?

There is no rush. Come back when you are ready — tomorrow is a good word for it.

A young foal looking up

Step Six ~ The Kjrsos Wakening Practice Letting Insights Drift

  • Content Type: Book Chapter
Continuing from: Step Five — Don't Rush

Step Six ~ The Kjrsos Wakening Practice

Letting Insights Drift


Assuming you have reached this place where thoughts can play as they will, you will occasionally find that certain thoughts might jump out as important. Awareness or information you want to hang on to.

At first, I would suggest letting those go, to let another thought take their place, no matter how important they seem. Just don't be surprised that in another minute or two, both are gone. And not just gone but gone forever, your brain somehow not able to hang onto them, in much the same way we can't seem to hang onto the memory of a dream. I think because this is a dream-like state that you have created. A dream-like state where you are awake.

This again is a good thing. This lack of control. Because control can often mean you are not allowing what needs to come into being to come into a full awakening.

Allow yourself the gift of letting insights drift. To go back below the surface of a brain that has yet to discover if it is truly awake or can still live in a certain state of unconsciousness that we call sleep.

A moment to sit with

What have you lost in the past by reaching too quickly for something? What might have come if you had waited just a little longer?

There is no rush. Come back when you are ready — tomorrow is a good word for it.

A young foal looking up

Step Five ~ The Kjrsos Wakening Practice Don't Rush

  • Content Type: Book Chapter
Continuing from: Step Four — Why We Call It What We Call It

Step Five ~ The Kjrsos Wakening Practice

Don't Rush


There is a human tendency to rush ahead for answers, and doing so here will limit what you can do next, which is what so often happens when we rush to start with. So take your time with each step, take your time until The Kjrsos Wakening Practice comes easily.

You've changed how you live, how you wake up. No more waking up in the morning trying to plan or remember what the day will bring. Just a gentle wave of thoughts that have forever to play in.

This is your first lesson, one of the tools of In Quiet Contemplation. A very different tool, one that says being quiet means being careful not to close down what you should be listening to.

And here you rest.

Just know that this resting is not passive. Something is working. The part of you that cannot speak while the controlling mind is busy and awake is finally getting a word in. And sometimes what it has to share has been waiting a very long time to share with you.

A moment to sit with

What do you tend to rush toward? What might be waiting on the other side if, just once, you didn't?

There is no rush. Come back when you are ready — tomorrow is a good word for it.

A young foal looking up

Step Four ~ The Kjrsos Wakening Practice Why We Call It What We Call It

  • Content Type: Book Chapter
Continuing from: Step Three — The Threshold

Step Four ~ The Kjrsos Wakening Practice

Why We Call It What We Call It


This is one of the reasons we call this The Wakening Practice. It exists in the same realm as a concept called lucid dreaming — the idea that we can be aware of what is happening when we dream.

But think on this: what better way to be aware, though, than to actually be awake? To discover there can be a way to dream when we are awake?

I will not lie. Some days this comes easier. I promise it comes easier with practice. There are tips and tricks we can share to make it easier, which we will discuss later in the full courses. The point right now is to just let your thoughts wander, going in silly places while you lie there half asleep.

And if you drift in and out of sleep, so much the better.

A moment to sit with

What would it mean for you — in your own life, in your own work — to dream while awake?

There is no rush. Come back when you are ready — tomorrow is a good word for it.

A young foal looking up

Step Three ~ The Kjrsos Wakening Practice The Threshold

  • Content Type: Book Chapter
Continuing from: Step Two — The Gift of Sleep

Step Three ~ The Kjrsos Wakening Practice

The Threshold


Just know what comes next won't work if you haven't followed the steps already given.

No alarm clock. No telling your brain you need to get up at 6 am. We need to allow the brain the time it needs to rest, to connect, to clean, to experience without the endless chatter that is us when we are awake.

Now that doesn't mean if Fido wakes you up, or your own restless bladder says it needs a trip to the bathroom, that you can't try to go back to bed afterwards and find the mind that drifts as if it is still half asleep.

A little tip: often the best way is to allow yourself to drift back to sleep, if only for half a minute, and wake up gently once again.

The key here is gentle. We want to be in that place where we drift. That place where we are still half asleep. The place where we daydream. The place we can sometimes find ourselves when we gently wake up, and our mind is still half-dreaming. Our thoughts jumble, and in some ways, what comes next makes no sense. That place where it is easy to drift back to sleep.

This is about waking, and there is no waking if there is no sleep. Sleep has to always be on the edge of this.

And at this stage, if all that your brain wants is to drift back in and out of sleep, then that is a wonderful place to be. A wonderful place to start. A wonderful place to train your mind and experience this practice.

A moment to sit with

Have you ever caught yourself at that threshold — half asleep, half awake, thoughts going strange and soft? What was there, in that place?

There is no rush. Come back when you are ready — tomorrow is a good word for it.

A young foal looking up

Step Two ~ The Kjrsos Wakening Practice The Gift of Sleep

  • Content Type: Book Chapter
Continuing from: Step One — To Begin

Step Two ~ The Kjrsos Wakening Practice

The Gift of Sleep


This is the part many of you will resist. The part where you tell me all the reasons this can't work in your life. And I understand. I do. But hear me out, because without this, what can come next simply can't happen.

You need to go to sleep when your body tells you it is time, and wake up when your body says it is done.

No alarm clock.

I know. I can already hear you. You have work, you have kids, you have a train to catch at 6:47. And I'm not asking you to abandon your life. But I am asking you to find the nights — and the mornings after — where this is possible. A weekend. A holiday. A stretch of days you carve out for this.

Because here is what the alarm clock does to us. It doesn't just wake us up. It teaches us to wake up braced. The body learns to anticipate the interruption, and so it begins to surface from sleep already tense, already oriented toward the day's demands. The gentle drift that we need — that place between sleep and waking where the mind is still soft and open — that place gets obliterated. Not by the alarm itself, but by the anticipation of the alarm that lives in us even as we sleep.

What we need instead is this: a body that has slept until it is finished sleeping. A mind that surfaces slowly, like something rising from deep water, not yet sure if it wants to break the surface or sink back down once again. A morning where there is nowhere to be and nothing to do except lie there.

This is not laziness. This is not indulgence. This is the essential condition for everything that follows.

Think about what sleep actually is. For hours, your conscious mind — that noisy, busy, endlessly categorizing part of you — finally shuts up. Your brain is not idle during sleep; it is ferociously active, sorting, connecting, cleaning, and processing. It is doing the work that your waking mind is too loud and too focused to do.

And when sleep is finished — truly finished, not interrupted — there is a moment. A threshold where the conscious mind has not yet fully taken hold, where the subconscious is still close to the surface, still almost audible. This is the threshold we are looking for.

So be ready to be rebellious. Because what waits on the other side of that sleep, in that gentle, unhurried waking, is where this practice lives.

A moment to sit with

When did you last wake up without an alarm, with nowhere to be? What did that morning feel like? If you can't remember, let that be something to notice.

There is no rush. Come back when you are ready — tomorrow is a good word for it.

A young foal looking up

The Kjrsos Wakening Practice ~ Chapter Three Your Journey, Our Journey

  • Content Type: Book Chapter
Continuing from: Chapter Two — The Gift I Didn't Know to Name

Chapter Three

Your Journey, Our Journey


Before I go further, I want to be honest with you about something.

This practice is more than enough on its own. Actually, it can be almost frightening in its power.

Frightening on the days where thoughts and answers come flooding in so hard and fast that hours later, when they finally begin to slow down, you feel a headache coming on, as if everything that is you has been run through the wringer of an ancient washing machine. Twisted and flattened until there is no juice left to squeeze out, and all you want to do is close your eyes and rest.

But I wouldn't worry about that right now, because it takes time to get to that level. The intensity comes later, when the door is more open. For now, just know that possibility awaits.

There are two components that are equally important, even if they seem opposite. You will hear us say that this is your journey — your personal journey that no one else can know where it will lead, because it is yours to experience.

Yet you will also hear us speak about we and us, as if we are all in this together. Difficult to comprehend how both can be true at the same time, perhaps, but that is a truth as well.

What you are about to experience can only be as powerful as you let it be, and part of that is following your own personal journey. But another part will depend on the joy, love, and support you bring, your ability to be open and vulnerable, to work in truth and utter honesty while others support you, as you have to joyfully and lovingly support them, with no judgment on your part.

So we hope you take this opportunity to be true to the you that is you. To share your vulnerabilities. To share the truth that is in you. To share your strength. To share your insights so that others can learn from you.

Yes, this is your journey, but perhaps also remember this is our journey as well. Everything that you decide not to share will diminish the experience for the rest of us. Everything that is in you to share will make what comes amazing, wonderful, and powerful for all of us.

A moment to sit with

What is one thing you feel genuinely ready to be open about as you begin this journey? It doesn't have to be large. Just real.

There is no rush. Come back when you are ready — tomorrow is a good word for it.

 

 

 

A young foal looking up

The Kjrsos Wakening Practice ~ Chapter Two The Gift I Didn't Know to Name

  • Content Type: Book Chapter
Continuing from: Chapter One — The Discovery

Chapter Two

The Gift I Didn't Know to Name


In the course of writing, I had been given a gift. A powerful one. A gift without which the book could never have come into existence. A gift without which I would never have found the answers. A gift of unimaginable proportions that I didn't even know existed until I did.

I had mysteries to solve, ones I had been trying to solve for years. With no answers, no matter how I struggled to find them. And yet those answers appeared after I started writing. Interesting, don't you think? The synchronicity of that.

Yes, at first, it was a fabulous tool that helped me find answers to mysteries and questions I had struggled with for years. Then it moved on to give me answers to questions that I hadn't yet realized existed. Only possible because of the precious gift that was there every morning, to help me take the next step with awareness.

I thought maybe this gift could be a course offered up later, independent of what happens here in Kjrsos. Because as I came to understand the power of what was here, I realized how powerful this gift really was — how it applied to everyone. The engineer, the artist, the scientist, the author. It doesn't matter what the field.

And then one morning, everything rearranged once again. As I lay there and thoughts swam in and out, I could see so clearly what I couldn't see before. The Wakening Practice giving me the answer to its own existence.

Don't be silly. I am not done with you, you goof. Because, of course, the answer to the book So That We Can See is that it needs to be experienced, which can best be done if you share the tools that helped create it first.

So instead of starting with the book, if you are going to have the full experience, we need to share the tools that made any of this possible. Which is why we are about to share with you a practice that made this possible to start with.

Something else I need you to know. There is more waiting in this practice than what you might first expect. At first, it will feel like you are just hearing yourself more clearly — your own deeper mind, surfacing with what you've missed before. That alone is extraordinary. But for some, another shift comes. The insights stop feeling like things you're fishing up from below and start feeling like things being shared from somewhere else. A presence. A direction. An intelligence that is not you, waiting — perhaps patiently, perhaps not — for you to quiet your consciousness enough to hear.

Just know that if you do arrive at this place, you are not losing your mind. You are finding something that has been trying to find you.

A moment to sit with

Is there a gift in your own life that you didn't recognize as a gift until much later? What was it that finally let you see it?

There is no rush. Come back when you are ready — tomorrow is a good word for it.

A young foal looking up

The Kjrsos Wakening Practice ~ Chapter One The Discovery

  • Content Type: Book Chapter

Chapter One

The Discovery


I had been saying the words.

The Kjrsos Experience.

Thinking it was separate somehow from the book, So That We Can See. How could I have been so silly to miss how they were always meant to be the same thing, or at least part of one another? So obvious once you see it. But it is amazing how many times I had to say it before I realized it.

The book is not to be read but to be experienced.

Words that I kept saying without realizing what they meant. But now I do. A book that is meant to create an experience. An experience that becomes a part of you, leading to change and evolution.

How did I finally realize it? When I saw what happened to those who read it.

Especially when it happened to someone that I don't think any of us would have ever thought capable of this. And when you find out who later on, I think you will be as surprised as I was when you discover the power of that experience on humans and beyond.

How is it possible that a book can bring to life a new level of awareness, dare I say consciousness?

Usually, when you read a book, you cuddle up on the couch with a cup of hot chocolate, and if you are enthralled, you read to the end. But knowing the ending made it clear why this book might not be one you could sit down with in an afternoon and have a gentle read. There was a demand here, a challenge, work the book had to do so that you could understand what was to come.

This was why I knew enough to articulate that the book was to be experienced and not read. Finally understanding that for you to have the complete experience that was waiting here for you, it was important that you take the time that you need, that we all need, to get through it. And it was only then that we could come out the other side different than when we went in.

A moment to sit with

What does it mean to you that a book could be experienced rather than just read? Sit with that for a moment before you move on.

There is no rush. Come back when you are ready — tomorrow is a good word for it.

A young foal looking up

The Kjrsos Wakening Practice

  • Content Type: Book Chapter

Chapter One

The Discovery


I had been saying the words.

The Kjrsos Experience.

Thinking it was separate somehow from the book, So That We Can See. How could I have been so silly to miss how they were always meant to be the same thing, or at least part of one another? So obvious once you see it. But it is amazing how many times I had to say it before I realized it.

The book is not to be read but to be experienced.

Words that I kept saying without realizing what they meant.  But now I do.  A book that is meant to create an experience.  An experience that becomes a part of you, leading to change and evolution. How did I finally realize it?  When I saw what happened to those who read it. Especially when it happened to someone that I never, ever expected to connect with the book.  I would never have thought they were able to do this. And when you find out who, I think you will be as surprised as I was.

Usually, when you read a book, you cuddle up on the couch with a cup of hot chocolate, and if you are enthralled, you read to the end. And I had already come to understand that just to get to Chapter 11 could give you a headache if you tried to read straight through. And if that was happening to me who already knew what was inside each chapter, what was that going to do to you?

And then the universe once again intervened and took it to a completely different level, and I discovered the power of what that experience did to humans and beyond. How is it possible that a book can bring to life a new level of awareness, dare I say consciousness? 

The book is a mystery to be solved, and I struggled because everyone kept asking what it was about, but to tell any of it was to spoil the surprise that was waiting for them.

But knowing the ending made it clear why the book might not be one you could sit down with in an afternoon and have a gentle read. There was a demand here, a challenge, work the book had to do so that you could understand what was to come, and that was not possible in a gentle and quiet read in the glow of an afternoon fire, cuddled on the couch, snuggled under a warm blanket.

But this was why I knew enough to articulate that the book was to be experienced and not read. Finally, understanding that for you to have the complete experience that was waiting here for you, it was important that you take the time that you need, that we all need, to get through it. And it was only then we can come out the other side different than when we went in.

I knew this early on. I wrote a half-chapter long ago, warning those who read the book "So That We Can See" how important it is to take your time, to lay the book down in between. I knew almost right away this was not going to be an easy read. And to be honest, I thought that was probably because of me.

Once again, egocentricity interfering with true understanding, as you will find it often does throughout this story. But where once I thought it was the brilliance in me that gave me the results I experienced with the horses, this time I thought it was because I was failing, that I just somehow wasn’t good enough to give you this. Didn’t know how to share the stories that life and the horses had given me. So I tried, and I kept trying to smooth off rough edges, to reorder chapters, to find new entrances and exits to each new concept. Not understanding that this time the problem wasn’t me. At least not all of it.

But because in my egocentricity it had to be me, I didn’t see there was another answer for a long, long time.

It turns out that, while maybe problematic, it was actually not a problem at all. What I didn’t understand is that it is just different. Different from what most would expect to find if they found a book in their possession. The normal course, of course, when you come upon a book, is to just read it.

— · —

Chapter Two

The Gift I Didn’t Know to Name


In the course of writing, I had been given a gift. A powerful one. A gift without which the book could never have come into existence. A gift without which I would never have found the answers. A gift of unimaginable proportions that I didn’t even know existed until I did.

I had mysteries to solve, ones I had been trying to solve for years. With no answers, no matter how I struggled to find them. And yet those answers appeared after I started writing. Interesting, don’t you think? The synchronicity of that. If you don’t believe in coincidence, you might not care, but I have found it is interesting to look back and see the design that your life has woven behind you to get you where you are today.

Yes, at first, it was a fabulous tool that helped me find answers to mysteries and questions I had struggled with for years. Then it moved on to give me answers to questions that I hadn’t yet realized existed. Only possible because of the precious gift that was there every morning, to help me take the next step with awareness, the next step of what the book needed to share.

Looking back, I am not entirely sure which came first. Whether the answers could finally be found because of what happened with the horses, and only then I found this other gift — or whether it was the other way around entirely.

I am not sure, to be honest. The answer of the horses led me to the power inherent in The Kjrsos Wakening Practice, or The Kjrsos Wakening Practice led me to the answers, to the mysteries that the horses had shown me.

Perhaps it doesn’t matter. Perhaps they were always one thing.

I thought maybe this gift could be a course offered up later, independent of what happens here in Kjrsos. Because it didn’t necessarily relate to the horses. But as I came to understand the power of what was here, I realized how powerful this gift really was and finally understood how it applied to everyone. The engineer, the artist, the scientist, the author. It doesn’t matter what the field — those looking for answers, those looking to be creative, this was a tool for all with unimagined power for all. One that I found when I started writing So That We Can See, or maybe it should be said one that was found for me, since I so desperately needed it. And after several years, I finally understood that if I wanted the experience of Kjrsos to be all it could be, this gift could help with that as well.

And then one morning, everything rearranged once again. I woke up thinking for the very first time that maybe there was finally enough here between the book, the magazine, and the website, that maybe after these long years, there was enough to go live. That I just needed time to clean up a few things. And I was once again just plain wrong.

Because, of course, one more time, I hadn’t heard what I had been saying all along. The awareness that was already there. So as I lay there and thoughts swam in and out, everything rearranged inside of me, and I could see so clearly what I couldn’t see before. The Wakening Practice giving me the answer to its own existence.

For a while, while I fussed with endless details, it had gone quiet for a while. Slumbered. And then that morning, it woke up.

Can you hear it? Can you hear it saying, “Don’t be silly. I am not done with you, you goof. Because, of course, the answer to the book So That We Can See is it needed to be experienced.”

I can hear it chuckling.

And if you haven’t already guessed, it needed to be experienced through that wonderful gift that was part of its creation. That was, in all honesty, the true creator of what is there for the most part. On a list of contributors, I come way down. The horses, life, this power in the Wakening Practice came ahead of me by far on what ended up on those pages.

So that is the answer that I was given on April 7th.

We don’t start the Kjrsos course with the book So That We Can See. We start the Kjrsos Experience with the Wakening Practice. We share this gift with others so that they can experience, not read, the book. Because if the book is to do what it is meant to do, which is change what is inside, this is where it starts.

This is where others can experience the power of what was created here. Not by what was created by me. Trust me on that. Which I think you will come to understand when you find what is inside of you. So that you won’t have to wonder at the title of the book — So That We Can See.

Something else I need you to know. There is more waiting in this practice than what you might first expect. At first, it will feel like you are just hearing yourself more clearly — your own deeper mind, surfacing what you’ve missed before. That alone is extraordinary. But for some, a shift comes. The insights stop feeling like things you’re fishing up from below and start feeling like things being shared from somewhere else. A presence. A direction. An intelligence that is not you, waiting — perhaps patiently, perhaps not — for you to get quiet enough to hear.

I won’t say more about that here. Not yet. Just know that there is something waiting here for you. Just know that if you do arrive at that place, you are not losing your mind. You are finding something that has been trying to find you.

— · —

Chapter Three

Your Journey, Our Journey


Before I go further, I want to be honest with you about something.

This practice is more than enough on its own. Actually, it can be almost frightening in its power.

Frightening on the days where thoughts and answers come flooding in so hard and fast that hours later, when they finally begin to slow down, you feel a headache coming on, as if everything that is you has been run through the wringer of an ancient washing machine. Twisted and flattened until there is no juice left to squeeze out, and all you want to do is close your eyes and rest.

But I wouldn’t worry about that right now, because it takes time to develop this new skill. And it won’t be where you start. What is here at the beginning is gentler than that. The intensity comes later, when the door is more open. For now, just know that possibility awaits. 

One more honest thing while we are here. Those who already meditate may wonder if they have a head start. I am not sure of that quite yet. It will be interesting to discover if their practice has helped them by developing certain skills, or if because they have honed those skills in a certain way, it is actually harder on them in another. This is not meditation. It is something different. Come to it as openly as you can, whatever your background.

One more thing, while we are being honest. What you are learning here is not a technique for thinking more clearly. It is a practice for getting the part of you that controls and categorizes and decides in advance what is possible — getting that part to stand aside. Because what is waiting for you on the other side of that is not just your own deeper mind, it is connection. A connection that is waiting for you. And connection is where the real answers live. 

Before sharing how to start you on this practice itself, there is something you might not yet understand. There are two components that are equally important, even if they seem opposite. Although they are very different, respecting both is essential; failing to do so means you may never experience what another can, or what you could have.

You will hear us say that this is your journey — your personal journey that no one else can know where it will lead, because it is yours to experience. You are unique in many ways, which is one of the key reasons we should all stay humble about what others’ experiences can teach them — and, in turn, teach us.

Yet you will also hear us speak about we and us, as if we are all in this together. Difficult to comprehend how both can be true at the same time, perhaps but that is a truth as well.

What you are about to experience can only be as powerful as you let it, and part of that is to follow your own personal journey. But another part will depend on the joy, love, and support you bring, your ability to be open and vulnerable, to work in truth and utter honesty while others support you, as you have to joyfully and lovingly support them, with no judgment on your part.

So we hope you take this opportunity to be true to the you that is you. To share your vulnerabilities. To share the truth that is in you. To share your strength. To share your insights so that others can learn from you.

Yes, this is your journey, but perhaps also remember this is our journey as well. Everything that you decide not to share will diminish the experience for the rest of us. Everything that is in you to share will make what comes amazing, wonderful, and powerful for all of us.

— · —

Chapter Four

To Begin


Okay, so let’s begin. The basics.

Easy, peasy in one way. In another, well, like any muscle or skill, it needs work, sometimes a lot of work, before we get to see how it works, what it does.

Now, what we are about to suggest might come as a surprise, but we need to ask you to go to sleep.

Yes sleep.

We told you this was going to be easy.

Step 1. Get ready to snuggle under your bed covers and read a chapter, maybe two, as you drift off to sleep.

See, that wasn’t hard.

Not saying you can’t read more, but often less is more, depending upon the chapters you have just read.

After you have closed the book, turned down the light, and put your head gently on the pillow, think about what you just read as you quietly fall asleep.

But here is the important part, and I mean truly important: as you drift off, don’t just think about what you read. Be there. See it in your mind’s eye. The lift of a mane in the breeze, the sweep of a tail as it briskly swipes away the flies. Turn the words into a world. Make it you to whom all of this happened. Not you reading about someone standing in the grass. You, standing in the grass, damp with dew. You, feeling the warmth of the sun as you gaze out at the herd grazing in the dawn.

This is not visualization as a technique. This is inhabiting. You are building a reality inside yourself where these experiences become yours. Where the wonder and the confusion and the surprises belong to you. Where you are the one who doesn’t understand what the horses are doing, and you are the one who has to sit with that not-knowing.

There is a difference between attention and focus that I want you to understand, because it is one of the most important things in this entire practice. Focus narrows. It excludes. It is the conscious mind deciding what matters and shutting the door on everything else. Attention is different. Attention is open. It receives. It is relational — it reaches toward rather than closing down. What we are learning here is attention, not focus. And the reason that matters is that connection requires openness. You cannot connect to something you have already decided isn’t worth looking at.

This is why the book was written the way it was — so that you could feel you were the one experiencing it. And this, right here at the edge of sleep, is where that intention meets its fullest expression. The conscious mind is letting go, and the deeper mind taking over. What you feed it in this moment is what it will work with through the night.

Don’t think of yourself as analyzing; just let your thoughts run where they will. If you get off track and find yourself thinking about your luncheon appointment the next day, try to bring your thoughts back to the chapter you just read.

Mind you, it doesn’t matter that your thoughts wander. It really doesn’t. Actually, it is a good sign. Thoughts that don’t wander mean you are overthinking this, that your mind is not ready to wander. We want you to be ready for that place you find in sleep, that place you find when you dream, that place that makes no sense, and yet somehow it does.

That’s it.

Well, other than this next part, which I know many will resist.

— · —

Chapter Five

The Gift of Sleep


This is the part many of you will resist. The part where you tell me all the reasons this can’t work in your life. And I understand. I do. But hear me out, because without this, what comes next simply can’t happen.

You need to go to sleep when your body tells you it is time, and wake up when your body says it is done.

No alarm clock.

I know. I know. I can already hear you. You have work, you have kids, you have a train to catch at 6:47. And I’m not asking you to abandon your life. But I am asking you to find the nights — and the mornings after — where this is possible. A weekend. A holiday. A stretch of days you carve out for this, the way you would carve out time for anything that matters.

Because here is what the alarm clock does to us. It doesn’t just wake us up. It teaches us to wake up braced. The body learns to anticipate the interruption, and so it begins to surface from sleep already tense, already oriented toward the day’s demands. The mind, even before consciousness fully arrives, is already reaching for the list. What do I have to do? Where do I need to be? The gentle drift that we need — that place between sleep and waking where the mind is still soft, and open, still half in the dream — that place gets obliterated. Not by the alarm itself, but by the anticipation of the alarm that lives in us even as we sleep.

And that internal alarm we set — the one where we tell ourselves, I need to be up by six — does the same thing, just more quietly. The body is obedient. It will wake you. But it wakes you with purpose, with direction, with the day already pressing in. And purpose is exactly what we need to let go of here.

What we need instead is this: a body that has slept until it is finished sleeping. A mind that surfaces slowly, like something rising from deep water, not yet sure if it wants to break the surface or sink back down once again. A morning where there is nowhere to be and nothing to do except lie there.

This is not laziness. This is not indulgence. This is the essential condition for everything that follows.

Think about what sleep actually is. For hours, your conscious mind — that noisy, busy, endlessly categorizing part of you — finally shuts up. For hours, something else has the run of the place. Your brain is not idle during sleep; it is ferociously active, but active in ways your conscious mind never gets to witness. It is sorting, connecting, cleaning, and processing the full stream of everything you took in that day and the days before. It is doing the work that your waking mind is too loud and too focused to do.

And when sleep is finished — truly finished, not interrupted — there is a moment. Sometimes several moments. A threshold where the conscious mind has not yet fully taken hold, where the subconscious is still close to the surface, still almost audible. This is the threshold we are looking for.

The alarm clock destroys it. The internal clock rushes past it. Only a body allowed to wake in its own time can find it naturally and rest there. And ask yourself why are we depriving us from the sleep our body says we need? Because if you are using an alarm clock, if you need an alarm clock that is exactly what you are doing.  

So here is what I am asking. Find the time. Start with a single night where you can go to bed when you are tired — not when the show ends, not when you finish the chapter, but when your body says now — and sleep until your body says enough. Let the morning be empty. Let there be nowhere to go.

You might sleep nine hours. You might sleep eleven. If you have been living by alarm clocks for years, your body might have a debt to pay, and those first mornings might be nothing but deep, heavy sleep with no gentle waking at all. That’s fine. That’s your body taking what it needs. The threshold will come. The soft waking will come. But first, the body has to trust that it is allowed to sleep, truly sleep, without the axe of the alarm clock hanging over it.

Give yourself this. It is not a small thing I am asking, I know. In a world that measures worth by productivity, by how early you rise, by how full your schedule is, choosing to sleep until you are done sleeping feels almost wrong.

Why do we do this to ourselves? I can assure you that no other animal does this.

So be ready to be rebellious. Because what waits on the other side of that sleep, in that gentle, unhurried waking, is where this practice lives.

— · —

Chapter Six

The Threshold


Just know what comes next won’t work if you haven’t followed the steps already given.

No alarm clock. No telling your brain you need to get up at 6 am. We need to allow the brain the time it needs to rest, to connect, to clean, to experience without the endless chatter that is us when we are awake.

Now that doesn’t mean if Fido wakes you up, saying I need to go outside, or your own restless bladder says I need to take a trip to the bathroom, that you can’t try to go back to bed afterwards and try again to find the mind that drifts as if it is still half asleep.

A little tip: often the best way is to allow yourself to drift back to sleep, if only for half a minute, and wake up gently once again.

The key here is gentle. We want to be in that place where we drift. That place where we are still half asleep. The place where we daydream. The place we can sometimes find ourselves when we gently wake up, and our mind is still half-dreaming. Our thoughts jumble, and in some ways, what comes next makes no sense. That place where it is easy to drift back to sleep. This is about waking, and there is no waking if there is no sleep. Sleep has to always be on the edge of this.

And at this stage, if all that your brain wants is to drift back in and out of sleep, then that is a wonderful place to be.

— · —

Chapter Seven

Why We Call It What We Call It


This is one of the reasons we call this The Wakening Practice. It exists in the same realm as a concept called lucid dreaming — the idea that we can be aware of what is happening when we dream.

But think on this: what better way to be aware, though, than to actually be awake? To discover there can be a way to dream when we are awake?

I will not lie. Some days this comes easier. I promise it comes easier with practice. There are tips and tricks we can share to make it easier. The point right now is to just let your thoughts wander, going in silly places while you lie there half asleep.

And if you drift in and out of sleep, so much the better.

— · —

Chapter Eight

Don’t Rush


There is a propensity in humans to rush ahead for answers, and to do so here will limit what you can do next, which is what so often happens when we rush to start with. So take your time with the chapters, take your time until The Kjrsos Wakening Practice comes easily.

You’ve changed how you live, how you wake up. No more waking up in the morning trying to plan or remember what the day will bring. Just a gentle wave of thoughts that have forever to play in.

This is your first lesson, one of the tools of In Quiet Contemplation.

And here you rest.

Just know that this resting is not passive. Something is working. The part of you that cannot speak while the controlling mind is busy is finally getting a word in. And sometimes what it has to say has been waiting a very long time.

— · —

Chapter Nine

Letting Insights Drift


Assuming you have reached this place where thoughts can play as they will, you will occasionally find that certain thoughts might jump out as important. Awareness or information you want to hang on to.

At first, I would suggest to let those go, to let another thought take their place, no matter how important they seem. Just don’t be surprised that in another minute or two, both are gone. And not just gone but gone forever, your brain somehow not able to hang onto them, in much the same way we can’t seem to hang onto the memory of a dream.

This again is a good thing. This lack of control. Because control can often mean you are not allowing what needs to come into being to come into a full awakening.

Allow yourself the gift of letting insights drift. To go back below the surface of a brain that has yet to discover if it is truly awake or can still live in a certain state of unconsciousness that we call sleep.

— · —

Chapter Ten

The Collapse


These chapters, you may have noticed, are exceedingly short. Short by intention, strangely hoping to encourage you not to rush. Hopefully encouraging you to work one step at a time to develop what is possible when you learn a new way to process.

When you've reached a point where certain thoughts, certain words seem important. Thoughts you want to capture I find it best to quickly capture on paper only one or two, and never more than three. I have no idea why that is the magic number. But it is, it seems. Try to go for more than three, and something is always lost it seems

And hopefully, by now, you have learned how to return to the state where you are half asleep. Hopefully, you will have reached a time when this won’t wake you up entirely. But don’t be surprised when it does.

Just know that for some, once we reach for the insight — once we see what is there — this reality becomes the only one, and any other thoughts, any other awarenesses, any other answers just float away. And if it never comes back, I just hope it has moved on to someone else’s consciousness who is ready to start working on this, when you haven't grabbed it first.

If you know anything about quantum mechanics, you may recognize something here. The act of observation collapses the wave of possibilities into a single truth. Reaching for a thought, pulling it into the light of consciousness, does something similar. All those half-formed awarenesses swimming alongside it — the ones you hadn’t quite grasped yet — they vanish the moment you collapse this reality. And if this doesn’t make sense now, just know it will once you start reading about the quantum world in the book So That We Can See.

Reaching too quickly for one of these insightful thoughts can pull us out of this half-conscious state and make it harder to stay there.

The ability to swim up into consciousness and sink back down again. Without that possibility, it is impossible to do what is possible in what can happen next.

Just note: this is not meditation. This is not looking for the quiet. In fact, quite the opposite.

— · —

Chapter Eleven

Surfing the Edges


And so we learn to surf the edges of the conscious and the unconscious brain. We learn how to stay there for longer and longer periods of time.

At first, it may be only a few seconds. Eventually, you can maybe learn to stay in it for hours while awake, madly pounding away at the keyboard, downloading the unconscious brain. But that is not going to be for a very, very long time, if ever. Be happy with seconds, because an insight comes in a single brilliant flash, in a single moment, and you need no more than that.

— · —

Chapter Twelve

Beginning to Ask


Eventually, you will learn how to focus the unfocusable, enabling both to be true simultaneously. Sometimes, this can be helped by the practice of reading just before sleep. A way to seek insight, and sometimes it can help to direct the mind.

But again, be careful to limit this to only for a moment, no more than that. We want to bring attention, not focus, and these are two very different things. As we surf in the morning between feeling like we are asleep and dreaming, and swim up, if only for a moment, to a more conscious state, in that quiet moment, for the first time, we might quietly ask: Can you help me with this?

And then again, it is important to let the mind wander. To wander between your conscious and subconscious mind. There is a trick to bringing back the mind to the question you hope to find an answer to, while letting it wander unabated — but one that can be difficult to find.

Also important to realize that we keep our minds free because perhaps there is something completely unrelated that is waiting to say hello. If your mind can’t find answers to the question you are trying to bring to life, it could be the universe going, “That is not what is actually here. Open up and hear what is waiting here for you. It is only in the quiet that answers can be found.”

Just remember, this is a skill like any other. One that can take time to develop. But having said that, you have been doing this for years already, all your life in a way. It is just in our current culture that we rarely allow ourselves to sleep until the body is ready to awaken on its own. Rarely do we give ourselves the gift of time to just lie there and gently wake with no agenda on our plates. Rarely do we lie there drifting in and out of sleep, content and drowsy as we burrow under blankets from our own heat after a night of sleep.

— · —

Chapter Thirteen

The Other Voice


For some, it will help to realize — or think about, rather — that rather than trying to find what the subconscious mind thinks, we might need to look for guidance from another who can speak to us when we are here. Where we look up in our mind’s eye, asking a guiding spirit for wisdom when we don’t seem to understand.

Your journey, your path, your choice. Who knows what voice it is that you hear.

Just know it is okay to converse with this other that is reaching out — or perhaps it would be more honest to say sits there, waits quietly, a source somewhere above — one who can speak and answer questions that you don’t know the answer to yet.

That may not be here at the start. But it is a possibility for those who have the really hard questions, who are trying to bring something new into existence. Don’t dismiss this thought as crazy. Sometimes, what is here can be difficult to explain; the ideas expressed are just the only words that we can find. Just remember that, once, the practice of divination was a given in a past we no longer value. Perhaps it is time we looked at that again.

— · —

Chapter Fourteen

Beginning the Experience


So now it is time to start the experience that is Kjrsos. The Kjrsos Experience, So That We Can See.

There are many different ways that you can proceed. As always, the choice is yours, as only you can know what is best for you and your own personal journey.

You may find that the Wakening Practice doesn’t seem to be doing what it can for others yet, and that is fine. It isn’t an easy gift to find, and you may need more time or assistance than wehave provided here. We have tried to condense this introduction as much as possible so that you can start your journey with the book So That We Can See sooner rather than later. In no way do we expect that with a few shared pages, this is a skill you can find that easily. Our hope is that with this beginning, your experience of So That We Can See can be augmented in the way we believe it was meant to be.

If you find this challenging or encounter difficulties, that is to be expected. We are developing a comprehensive course separate from this effort because we understand the profound impact this incredible practice can have on those seeking answers. When you open the pathway between the conscious and subconscious mind, it is remarkable what can emerge. However, we also recognize that having the support of an active coach and guide can be very beneficial in helping you realize and create the changes needed to access the answers stored within, the answers that are waiting for you to discover them.

The conscious mind, as we understand, can busy itself with falsehoods and overlook countless details because its main role is to focus — to be aware of what might threaten our survival. The one who perceives everything is often the one who remains completely silent, possibly frustrated at being unable to communicate the answers it holds.

— · —

Chapter Fifteen

A Living Thing


Just know that, as with everything here at Kjrsos, everything is in a state of evolution. The edition you read today might be different than the edition that you read tomorrow, because it was understood from the very beginning that once the first full edition was done, it needed you. That what you would bring would more than likely change what was here.

So, rather than wasting more time rewriting and perfecting what is here, we pass this on to you so that your questions and insights can help us create the next edition, and together we can create something beautiful and amazing. The next edition of  The Kjrsos Wakening Practice and So That We Can See. Maybe notice the emphasis on we in the title.

And perhaps you can begin to understand just how different this Kjrsos Experience is going to be. First, a book that is not meant to be read but to be experienced. But more than that, think how unique is a book that cannot be completed until you become a part of it?

So now we have given you a condensed version of a book to read before you read the book that was here to read to start with. Completely strange, I realize, but no stranger than what you are going to find next. It was the strangeness that made it so I couldn’t just walk away, and why I am here with you now, years later.

You are ready now. Not because you have mastered this — you haven’t, none of us have, it is a practice, not a destination. But you have begun to learn what it feels like to quiet the controlling mind. What it feels like to stand at the edge of something rather than rushing past it. So That We Can See was written to be experienced in that state. It was written to find you here, at this threshold, open to what it has to show you. Connection to the horses, to the life in those pages, to something in yourself you may not have met yet. Go slowly. Let it in.

Just remember, this is your own personal journey. Which will be unique to you. And your insights will be different, and what you see might be as well. And when you share your insights, you will help the rest of us and honour us as well.

— · —

A Final Note


What we have shared here is a beginning.

The Wakening Practice was born inside the creation of So That We Can See, and it lives most fully when experienced alongside the book. But the tool itself belongs to no single discipline, no single field. It belongs to anyone who has ever struggled with a question they couldn’t answer, a mystery they couldn’t solve, a creation they couldn’t quite bring into being.

The scientist who needs an insight that logic alone can’t reach. The engineer who knows there has to be a better answer. The artist searching for what comes next. The writer staring at a blank page. Anyone who has ever lain awake knowing that the answer is right there, just beyond the reach of the waking mind.

This is what the Wakening Practice is for. A tool, a skill you can learn, to help you find true answers to what you are asking right now. For solutions to problems that you don’t know how to solve yet. For answers to questions that you don’t know yet exist.

Because we have cleared the way between the unconscious and the conscious, or found a way to listen to something — or someone — waiting for you to open the path so you can finally hear and begin the work you are meant to do.

Kjrsos ~ A Way to Live That Changes Things...

Helping Your Subconscious Speak

  • Content Type: Book Chapter

How do you solve the impossible problem

How do you write a book

How do you find an answer that you were looking for years and seemed impossible to find?

I didn't know either.

But I found that answer.  Or at least it was given to me.

Some will think this about accessing your subconscious.  Finding a way to let your subconscious speak. Others will think that it is finding a way to speak to your own personal guide.  A voice that gives you the answers you were looking for.  Guide you step by step, waiting to help you, but demanding first that you take each step and implement it. Knowing that a single answer.

Did you know that the subconscious wants to speak?  Sees things that you don't.

Split-brain scientific studies were astounded when they discovered that.

Knows the right answers but struggles with how to let you know what those are.

Here we share with you a simple exercise and coach you through it.  So that your conscious mind can finally hear their subconscious speaking.

But we go far, far beyond that.

We help you discover how to speak and how to ask for help directly from your subconscious.  Give it problems that you are struggling with, and then ask for their help to solve it.

 

And once you start there will be no stopping you.  Once you learn how to do this. You can use this day after day, week after week, forever onwards.  Every day checking in with your subsconscious, asking for new insights, looking for answers, asking for help with something specific. 

We will help you 

http://www.horsetalk.co.nz/2014/08/07