Natural Awakening: An Advanced Guide for Sharing Nondual Awareness

ISBN 978-1-896559-24-7
336 pages, paperback, 7 x 10 inches
4 Charts, 4 Appendices, Bibliography, References, Index of sections
Buddhism, Buddhist Psychology, Psychotherapy

NATURAL AWAKENING: An Advanced Guide for Sharing Nondual Awareness

By Peter Fenner, PhD

Foreword by Pir Amadon

“When crystallized identities enter a nondual field of awareness and begin to interact with a being embodying that state, suffering can’t be sustained. It dissolves into a space where there is neither suffering nor its absence. Nondual awareness creates a transformational field or vortex that gently or abruptly, but irrevocably moves people into radiant awareness…. This is the paradoxical state that bodhisattvas play in for eternity.”

This Guide goes behind the curtains of Dr. Peter Fenner’s highly distinctive nondual teachings. It reveals in great detail and clarity the subtle and sometimes mysterious skillful methods he uses in his workshops, trainings, public presentations and coaching to swiftly awaken people to the liberating freedom of nondual, panoramic awareness.

Peter has a unique ability to reflect on the deep processes involved in his nondual transmission, especially the nuances of language, deep feelings and silence. He is well known for the rigor, precision and organic flow of his unfindability dialogs.

The skills he reveals in this Guide are many of the very same methods used by Dzogchen masters, Zen roshis and Advaita sages in “pointing out events” and “mind-to-mind transmission”. Peter’s teaching has been described by others as “free-form, continuous pointing to awareness.”

In Buddhism nondual awareness is often called the “ultimate medicine” because no higher evolutionary accomplishment is possible for any conscious being, living anywhere, at any time. When we see everything as the seamlessly changing fabric of immutable, unfindable awareness it’s impossible to be negatively touched by any environmental circumstance or inner perturbance. We move into the realm of embodied transcendence beyond disturbances and conditioned forms of peace.

In this Guide Peter often shares at the “result, or fruition level.” He shows us how comprehensive awakening is our natural state, that infuses and embraces the totality of existence whenever we let go of personal striving, ambition, fantasies, hopes, fears and self-judgment. At this level our familiar preoccupations transform into a blissful and exquisite mandala that’s completely free of the narrow concerns of a self-absorbed life. The neurotic energies and paranoiac projections that shape samsaric existence self-liberate into a panoramic clearing that supports evolutionary transformation throughout the universe.

In this Guide Peter’s outlines everything he has discovered in 42 years of teaching. The Guide is especially useful for facilitators, therapists and coaches as it powerfully accelerates the integration on the nondual in a form that lends itself to the public sharing of pure awareness.

Part One is a virtual manual for spiritual teachers, therapists and coaches in how to introduce groups and clients to the ultimate state of healing and being—pure, pristine, timeless awareness.

Part Two traces Peter’s contemporary expression of nonduality, and more especially his well-known Radiant Mind course, through to its Asian origins.

SELECTED REVIEWS

In Natural Awakening, Peter has taken the refined deconstructive practices that have liberated tens of thousands of Asian contemplatives and adapted them for effective Western use. I highly recommend it.

—Robert Thurman, Ph.D., Buddhist Scholar, Columbia University, President of Tibet House in New York, NY.

How wonderful that Peter Fenner is so generously making his masterful nondual
training manual available to the public!
—Risa Kaparo, Ph.D., author of Awakening Somatic Intelligence: The Art & Practice of Embodied Mindfulness, California.

This masterful work—lucid, keenly insightful, and beautifully written—will be of interest to beginning students and experienced teachers alike. A real gem and resource.

—John J. Prendergast, Ph.D., author of In Touch, Chief Editor of The Undivided, California.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

   Peter Fenner is a leader in the adaption and transmission of Asian nondual wisdom worldwide. He is a pioneer in the development of nondual therapy and creator of the 9-month Radiant Mind Course and the Natural Awakening: Advanced Nondual Training. He was a celibate monk in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition for 9 years and has a Ph.D. in the philosophical psychology of Mahayana Buddhism. Over a period of 40 years Peter has distilled the essence of traditions like Zen, Dzogchen and the Buddhist Middle Way, and adapted them to suit our post-modern culture.

He teaches in North America, Europe, Israel, India, Australia and New Zealand and has presented his work at leading universities and institutions including Columbia, Stanford, CIIS and Naropa. He has written extensively on Buddhist nondual traditions. His books include Radiant Mind: Awakening Unconditional Awareness (2007); The Edge of Certainty: Dilemmas on the Buddhist Path (2002); and The Sacred Mirror: Nondual Wisdom and Psychotherapy (ed. with John Prendergast and Sheila Krystal, 2003). Peter is the Director of Education at Timeless Wisdom: wisdom.org

Listen to an interview with Peter Fenner on the Imperfect Buddha podcast here: https://newbooksnetwork.com/natural-awakening