The following teachings were recorded in Adelaide in September–October 2013 over the course of an introductory six weeks “Practising the Presence” meditation workshop.
When and how did you start on the spiritual path?
ENZA: When I was 17, I left Italy and came to live in Australia on my own. This seemed like an attempt to rebel against authority and to step into the unknown. At the time, I felt that I needed to find something that I didn’t yet have.
After a few days in Alice Springs, walking along the main street, I noticed in a shop window one of two symbols that I had been drawing since I was a little girl – a lotus flower on the cover of a large book displayed in the window. Even though I couldn’t read English, I went in and bought the book. I went home and painstakingly started deciphering every word with the aid of my Italian– English dictionary I had brought with me from Sicily. This was the start of my outer spiritual journey. Since that day, I have read many spiritual books, joined many spiritual teachings and dabbled in many spiritual practices.
Even though I got “spiritual experiences” from some of these practices, I knew that this was not it. What I was looking for had to be much simpler.
At some point, there was the recognition which is sometimes called “awakening”. Space and time stopped and “my life” and “my history” disintegrated.
Identifying myself as someone located in this body–mind stopped. I realized that I had always known this but somehow, as a child, I had accepted the rules of the society I lived in and learned to overlook it and pretend I didn’t know it.
Did you have any spiritual experiences or inclinations when you were young?
ENZA: I did but I didn’t give them much importance.
Could you give us some examples of the type of experiences you had as a child?
ENZA: Sometimes I would wake up in the morning and be greeted by a vast, alive blissful space. I was filled with this energy flowing in my body like surging waves, an extremely pleasurable ecstasy, a feeling of orgasmic ecstasy that was “everywhere” and “in” everything and “as” everything. I would flow like liquid mercury from one place to another, dizzy with delight and everything I looked at was radiantly beautiful.
Also I seemed to have prophetic dreams, lucid dreams, dream teachings with “maroon-robed monks” and occasionally dreams within dreams where I would lie awake in the morning wondering if I was awake or still in a dream.
I remembered once waking in my parents’ bedroom, reaching to touch my mum and suddenly jerking awake in my own bed. Was I really awake now or was I still dreaming? I extended my arm, just reaching over to touch my bedside lamp. But the lamp wasn’t by my bedside and the sensation of movement woke me up once again. Then I started to free-fall into endless space. Is this the last level? I thought for one heart-stopping moment, before I disappeared.
I know that you have studied with teachers of many different spiritual traditions from Dzogchen to Advaita, Zen and Sufism and many others. How have these teachings influenced what you teach today?
ENZA: There is no greater gift a teacher can offer the student than the inspiration to uncover that potential within themselves and my life was changed through that exchange. It gave me the opportunity to see the One Truth that is the essence of all things and it taught me not to cling to one way, one idea, one expression of it.
I have had some past lives where I did lock myself in one viewpoint, fixed ideas about the Truth and I made a vow never to repeat that experience. I vowed to find and share with others the One Truth shining at the core of every path.
To see that One Truth in so many different traditions has been a great gift and a great blessing and I am deeply grateful to all the amazing teachers who have guided and inspired me on my path. My life rests firmly on the foundation of their transmission, but I can’t really claim to be transmitting any of these particular traditions.
Nisargadatta told us to find our own path because “Unless you find it yourself, it will not be your own way and will take you nowhere”. So, what I am teaching is my own way, the one that worked for me, so in a sense I am biased, but every teacher is, because every teacher teaches what has worked for them.
How would you describe your teaching?
ENZA: My teaching is purely about awakening and my intention is to capture the heart of these traditions, stripped-down of the beautiful but sometimes limiting cultural and religious baggage. Even though at the time I was going through my spiritual training, I could see the reason for them, I didn’t feel drawn to that. And I strongly feel that there is a real need for teachers who are not into a traditional religion. A lot of people who contact me are really interested in becoming more aware, but don’t want any of the rituals and traditions.
Today, as part of my teaching, I may use some of the methods I have learned from these teachings; there are many methods we can use, but I am not attached to any particular one. You need to tune in to the person in front of you and nudge him or her to discover for themselves what’s really important and what is needed for their next step. It’s very important for a teacher not to force anything on students but to help the students discover what they need for themselves …
I’ve come to realize that being told what we are supposed to do doesn’t tell us much about ourselves and that if we’re given the chance, the Self we all partake of will come to the fore and exceed all our expectations.
Could you explain the practice you teach? These days there are so many ideas about meditation and spiritual practice that it is very confusing for someone starting on the path.
ENZA: The biggest misunderstanding about meditation and spiritual practice is that you should do something when you meditate. But natural meditation is not about doing anything. Natural meditation is an un-doing. Basically it’s a relaxing, a resting, while being alertly aware.
I will give you an example: right in this moment, just notice the awakeness that is looking through your eyes, there is an aware intelligence that allows you to notice everything around this room, including yourself. You can get a sense of this by first simply looking out through your eyes and then “looking back” at that which is doing the looking. Just look right now, don’t take my word for it.
This is the practice in a nutshell. To notice what this wakefulness is and to rest in it as long as you can. At first, we may only be able to rest in this aware presence for a few seconds before we are distracted by thoughts. Every time you get distracted, simply bring the attention back toward awareness itself. Relax into this aware presence many times throughout the day. Continue to be aware of that, and soon the distractions will be a thing of the past.
What is your motivation for teaching?
ENZA: I simply speak, knowing full well that this that I talk about can never be touched with words … and yet there is this impulse coming from this beingness ... This beingness is constantly making love to everything … the air we breathe, the carpet, the water in that bottle … everything. And it’s incredibly ecstatic, incredibly beautiful and, I guess, it wants to awaken whoever may be interested in awakening.
My motivation is to share this with others, not because I want to but because I have to. I feel the yearning like a lover does, to share this with everyone. To share this so that everyone can feel this.
Some traditions suggest that years of spiritual practice are necessary before one becomes enlightened, but you say that this is not necessary …
ENZA: This is a misunderstanding of my words. While it’s true that we are always the Self, if this hasn’t been truly and directly realized, this knowledge won’t do us any good.
If this is where we are, it is really important to keep coming back to it until it’s effortless to be natural.
How do you know when you have reached the ultimate? How is progress assessed on the spiritual path?
ENZA: At first “progress” is assessed by the degree of our inner expansion, but as we enter more deeply into progressively more subtle and transparent inner territory, it becomes increasingly difficult to assess the nature of our experience because progress here is measured by the dissolution of the self into the Absolute.
What happens to the ego or little self in the moment of enlightenment?
ENZA: There is not an ego or little self and a higher one. Enlightenment is the direct realization that we are the awakeness that’s experiencing every moment of the dream, including the ego character. What you call the little self is not an aware being. The only aware being is the One Being in all beings.
What about thoughts? Where do they arise?
ENZA: All thoughts, including all emotions, arise in that One Being in which everything shares in.
Why would thoughts or emotions like anger or grief arise in the perfection of that One Beingness? Does this still happen to you? Do you still get angry or sad?
ENZA: Of course. What we are in essence includes everything – our humanity and being human involves having thoughts and feelings. This is not something to be abolished, but to be fully experienced. Enlightenment does not abolish one’s humanity, but actually makes one more human because nothing is resisted.
It’s a delusion to think that we can clear up everything so that only beautiful thoughts and emotions remain.
In this world and in this body there are both positive and negative experiences, but they are both coming from here [points inward] which is beyond both.
With enlightenment, the subjective self may still arise but some part of us always knows that this experience is just a wave called “I/me” or Enza or John, not a separate particle called self. The viewpoint that there is a particle inside this body–mind called self disappears at enlightenment.
When we are emptiness, when we realize that everything is emptiness, then we can be everything.
When we meet so-called enlightened people, we always imagine them as having something which the ordinary person in the street doesn’t have …
ENZA: That distinction between an “enlightened person” and the ordinary person is not at all real. I never see some people as “enlightened”, myself included, while others are not.
Enlightenment is not something we can achieve because enlightenment is what one already is. Every one of us lives from exactly the same place, living from who we really are – every one of us, but some of us are not using that gift. It’s like having a bag of jewels in our pocket and not knowing about it.
The moment that we contemplate the idea that there is someone or something in us that can find this elusive thing called awareness or enlightenment, in that moment we have created a separation, a gap between us and It.
Then we try to remove that gap by having ideas like “I already have it, I am already enlightened because I am already the Self, Awareness, God, the Essence of everything”. But there was never a gap in the first place apart from a thought and an idea.
The Self is ever-present – to seek it or long for it is to seemingly deny its presence here and now.
No effort can take us to the true Self. In fact, it takes a lot of effort to pretend not to be this Self. And that is what the imaginary “I” is – the effort of pretending to be something other than this ever-present awareness.
Let our efforts instead bring us repeatedly to this aware space until they arise less and less, leaving us simply here, silent, open and unknowing. That is our true original effortless stateless state.
How does one start?
ENZA: We can awaken only in this moment and everyone can manage an awakened moment. Any moment in which clarity takes the place of confusion, insight displaces delusion and love and compassion dislodges hatred and selfishness is a moment when we are awake. And if we can manage a moment of wakefulness, why not another?
Does enlightenment happen by effort or grace?
ENZA: Enlightenment happens by itself when all ideas and concepts of the mind are released (including the energy behind thinking), when all the wants and needs are released (including the want of enlightenment). It “happens” to itself by the blessing of itself on itself. Does that make sense? I hope not … [laughter]
Is there a final truth, Enza?
ENZA: Look up to the sun; it shines down upon you effortlessly. Look down to the ground; your feet are already on the path. Look into your heart and find that enlightenment is already there. Come back home and realize that you were there all the time!