Integrating Awakening Part 2
Episode Summary:
Episode 6 of Redesigning The Dharma by Sahaja Soma features part two of a conversation between Ryan Oelke from Buddhist Geeks and Adrian Baker. This episode talks about integrating awakening into modern culture through cultural, philosophical, and personal experiences. They discuss the distinction between proprietary dharma and open source dharma, the importance of personal development, societal structures, and the significance of embodying awakening. Oelke also shares his journey from traditional Vajrayana to studying with Judith Blackstone and the creation of his Integral Dharma course, emphasizing the essence and experiential aspects of awakening.
Episode Highlights:
00:10 Introduction and Guest Background
01:21 Exploring Proprietary Dharma vs Open Source Dharma
08:55 Transition from Traditional Vajrayana to Integral Practices
11:13 The Role of Therapy in Spiritual Growth
17:09 The Concept of Integral Dharma
30:06 Closing Remarks and Future Plans
Guest Bio:
Ryan is an Executive Coach at Stagen, an Integral Leadership Academy based in Dallas, Texas; co-founder and teacher at Buddhist Geeks; and a Senior Teacher in Judith Blackstone’s Realization Process. He has an MSEd in counseling psychology and 20+ years experience in meditation, particularly in the Tibetan Buddhist and Dzogchen lineages.
Ryan teaches an integral path of embodied, responsive presence and invites others into the mystery of their own lived experience and embodiment. His approach is grounded in the foundation of waking up, and includes cleaning up (healing), growing up, and showing up in the world.
He also has a BA in Spanish, 3 years of graduate study of classical Tibetan and translation, and is a passionate learner and teacher of languages.
Full Transcript
Adrian: Hello, welcome to Redesigning the Dharma, and I'm your host, Adrian Baker. Today, I'm speaking with Ryan Oelke. Ryan is an executive coach at Stagen, an integral leadership academy based in Dallas, Texas. He is a co-founder and teacher at Buddhist Geeks and a senior teacher in Judith Blackstone's Realization Process.
Ryan has also a MSED in counseling psychology and over 20 years experience in meditation, particularly in the Tibetan Buddhist and Dzogchen lineages.
This is a two part conversation, and this episode further expands on the conversation of discussing integrating awakening through cultural, philosophical, and personal experiences. We identify several aspects of spiritual and therapeutic practices and their impacts on modern society. We also touch on the importance of Integrating and embodying awakening.
As well as accounting for the importance of personal development, the societal structures on individuals, and how various practices can aid personal growth and understanding. We wrap up with a conversation on the importance of Integral Dharma and Ryan's upcoming offering in this respect. So I hope you enjoy my conversation with Ryan Oelke.
I think, underneath a lot of the discussion we're having about Vajrayana, it's this discussion of what happens as dharma evolves from the traditional to modern, I won't even say modern Western or just modern, and it moves from this proprietary dharma to open dharma model.
And part of it is, be more explicit about hierarchy and some of the power imbalances that can come with that and how to work with that. But there's so much more to it, I think, as we translate these practices.
So I'm wondering. If you can define a little bit for folks who aren't familiar with that. What is proprietary dharma versus open source dharma and how does that fit within your project and Buddhist Geek's project of evolving dharma?
Ryan: I feel like our good friend Vince would answer that really, really well.
Adrian: He's very good with these kind of answers.
Ryan: Very good. Yeah.
Proprietary Dharma, this is just my take, and one thing I love about Lama Lena, she'll say a lot of times she's like, she says, I'm just a Yogi, so I'm not a scholar. So you need to ask other people about the scholarly thing.
I resonate with that somewhat where I'm like, I'm very intellectual, but I feel I'm sloppy in terms of a scholarly discussion of, that, distinction there so I just come at it from my own intuitive experience.
With proprietary Dharma I just think my Dharma is the one true way. It is infallible. It has everything that I need. So that's one aspect. That's one of how I think teachers and especially students will experience that, which means I don't need anything outside of
Adrian: It's a complete path.
Ryan: You see, it starts leaning, starts getting momentum really quickly with all the assumptions put into it. So I don't need to look at anything else. It has potentially all the answers. It has all the answers. Then it's like, when I look out the world and all the problems, I might start seeing it through proprietary Dharma lens.
Not saying it goes that far, but I'm saying I can see it slide quickly, but nonetheless, it's just like, as far as awakening goes, this is the one true way. And then you got to jump through the hoops, pay to enter, you know, something that you got to get in the door. It may not be money, but you know, it's like, you got to do the right things or you don't get that Dharma.
Adrian: Access is restricted.
Ryan: Access is restricted, and then, that means outwardly it's harder for other people to benefit from what that tradition has.
Even inside the Tibetan tradition, man, there could be a community where it's like, Oh, that's really interesting. I'd like to go over and do a little bit, but I have to start at the beginning. It's like, Oh, you want to come join us? Well, you got to start at square one and check all these requirements off, and then you can do this teaching or practice here. And it's like, yeah, but I have all the requisite experience, needed for that. I just did it a different way than what you lay out.
So other people can't benefit, it can't be shared, these two proprietary dharmas can't learn from one another, cross pollinate, evolving together. It's like if you got everything you need, I think the tendency would be to think that you don't need to evolve that much.
But with the open dharma, turns things on its head pretty quickly, especially In Tibetan Buddhist tradition, right, you have to have empowerments, you have to have permission, transmission, you have to have all these things in order to be able to do a practice, to study a teaching. So it challenges some of that. And I'm not saying that there's not a time and place for some of those restrictions and thoughtful steps but not always.
So we open it up and say, well, here are these teachings. They're available for everyone who needs them, which kind of The spirit of generosity and Dharma but even more on the practice front, like offering practices up.
But then I think what happens is like as soon as the Dharma is opened up, then it can start to evolve and translate so we can innovate new practices that get at the essence of it. So that's for me Dzogchen, getting at the essence. That's what Namkhai Norbu always did, was get at the essence.
And so I can look at practices from Dzogchen that I experienced and have done this. We created a 10 week awareness training. Did you do that one? I can't remember.
Adrian: I did at least one with you. I'm trying to remember that was it.
Ryan: Wrote Dharma. Well, we, we, Francis and I created a 10 week awareness training for the Buddhist Geeks community where everybody, regardless of their tradition, could show up to it. And we borrowed teachings and practices from Dzogchen, but we adapted them, essentialized them, through social meditation practice.
So they were different practices, but they were really a similar flavor. So that wouldn't be possible unless something got opened up. Now, we're just opening it up ourselves. And the phrase I'll tend to use is like inspired by Dzogchen because I don't want to confuse anybody. I'm not literally trying to translate because it's a whole approach and system and set of practices.
But it was amazing to do that. I really loved it and I'm able to share my experiences from Dzogchen with a lot more people who come from different traditions. And they can benefit from awareness style practice and maybe they haven't done any of it.
So I tend to think about that. I tend to think about what's the experience like as a practitioner. You know, what, can we all be exposed to? What can we integrate? How can we learn from one another? And bringing together different forms of practice inside of awakening is incredibly important this day and age. But I mean, going beyond that, things like cleaning up and...
Adrian: mm hmm.
Ryan: psychotherapeutic work, things like this, it's like we need some openness.
But there are downsides, difficulties and opening up things. You know, do they get unpacked and watered down? Does their power get lost? Right, so, you look out in the world and see how many people say they meditate and don't know what are what are they doing with meditation? Are they waking up? Are they doing something else? So you could wonder that by opening up a lot of different practices.
But I think it's unavoidable.
Adrian: Mm hmm. Yes,
Ryan: It's not the question of "if", it's just like, how?
Adrian: Well, everything that, that was, that seems traditional now was heretical at one point going all the way back to the Buddha.
Ryan: I know, I know that's
Adrian: You
Ryan: For anybody, the three turnings are evolutionary unfoldings. The three turnings of Dharma will Dharma
Adrian: And even the original Buddha, I mean, he was absolutely, you know, rejecting the common, he could create something new because he couldn't find a solution to his problem in the existing technique and teachings.
Ryan: Exactly. So yes, from that perspective, ain't no thing. It's just like, well, of course it's going to happen. The process was started long ago. I mean, as soon as the Dharma coming to the West. That was the start of it, books being published everywhere.
I think that's just the funny thing. It's just like, I'm able to pick, picked up that self liberation through single naked awareness from the Tibetan book of the dead, you know? Just bam, there it is off the shelf. You know? So it's like, all these things have been exposed. I think the only time I, worry about anything is like, if a person's doing a practice that's very esoteric and potentially very disruptive to their sense of self. Because there's some quirky, weird practices like in Dzogchen and Vajrayana
where, yeah, yeah, where like you gotta be careful, like what's your trauma, what's your psychological history? So there's some practice and some methods that require some care. A lot of practices, there's danger inherent in life, and doing any kind of practice is no way to prevent that. So most of them I think are fine. You don't need to worry about it.
Adrian: Yeah.
Ryan: Could go better if you can work with somebody who has done the practice, but probably not going to lose your mind, hopefully.
Adrian: Right. Many are safe, but some things shouldn't be tinkered with. Yeah, or, without a qualified instructor who knows you really well.
Ryan: That's very true in Tibetan Buddhism. There's definitely those set of practices. But I think those have stayed mostly secret anyways, because they're too strange and weird. Like they're explicitly weird that I don't think people are going to just up and do them.
Adrian: Yeah, you can do things like, I mean, I think the "Feeding Your Demons" program by Lama Tsultrim, the way she translated practice is a great example of taking those powerful practices and teaching them in a way that's conscious, trauma informed, you know, right. safe, accessible.
Ryan: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So in your own journey, how did you make that transition from being in the more traditional context with Namkhai Norbu to studying with, because I know you study with Judith Blackstone, right?
Adrian: So what sort of transitioned you out of the more traditional Vajrayana stream with a teacher like Judith?
Ryan: I think it was just a natural progression. So one of the models I like to use for stage kind of unfolding for awakening is again from Vincent and Emily, "The Waves of Wakefulness."
It's a nice model that I think people can grab onto from different lineages. So in a wave and you have a glimpse for like direct introduction and Dzogchen, recognizing nature of mind, and then you're going through efforting, trying to get on demand like in practice and then you reach a point where you recognize that practice was never needed in the first place. Like it was a deep letting go and it's just called always already.
So there is a point where I arrived at that and what's funny though is that it comes down, right? No escape. So waking up and then the wave goes down, waking down, no escape and integration. If you stop it at the top there, you get an idealized version of enlightenment, of awakening, because you'd be like, well, everything's good man, what could be the problem?
Adrian: Mm hmm.
Ryan: But something gets funky after that even because I was in a space of like, now what? You know? Without consciously realizing, but I just couldn't do formal practice anymore in the way that I had in the past. But it was not like I disliked it. And I'm like, I like these things, these practices. But at the same time I sit down and do it, I'm like, I don't need to do them.
I hope I'm communicating and say, I didn't, it was like, I don't need these practices, but I didn't need them in the way that I used to.
So I entered into a much more responsive, organic place in my path. But at that time it was kind of disconcerting actually.
I felt like I should want to do the practices, there was some part of me, even though I'm like, but I don't really need them. It's not going to produce awakening, you know, I'm not going to be more who I already am. But there, I was like, there's still something, but I just let it happen over time. I was just like, well, eventually, something will shift.
And the embodiment piece is where something clicked for me. Been a long path of doing therapeutic work and cleaning up, I've always valued that. That never stopped. So that was the thing, even though always already, yay! But trauma and shadows and neuroses, that never stopped. There was never a moment where I was like, I got it together. Kept having those experiences
Adrian: So you were already working with a therapist throughout that
Ryan: Oh, yeah, because I, I, like I mentioned, I, I got my master's in counseling psychology, so I really valued that. And ever since then, I had always worked with a therapist off and on, and...
I love therapy. I think it's super useful.
Adrian: I do too. And you know, one thing that I love about my therapist, is that she's been on a spiritual path, but she's not a Buddhist and I'll ask her a question and she'll say something that's totally not Buddhist, not yogic, and like, she'll be like, well, yeah, isn't the purpose of life to have pleasure and to create a pleasurable life? Like, how do we like cultivate that and have more, you know, and it's like, you know, she just brings like a very, like sensuous, like feminine, unapologetic approach. That's not rooted In that cutting through samsara and it's like, take that and reconcile it with the dharma part and don't, I think that's the thing about the teachers that goes back to the teacher part, don't look to one person to have all the answers for you or to, to have this perfect system. You're supposed to feel conflict and it's how do we live with paradox instead of trying to solve everything into a neat theory of everything.
Ryan: Well put. And in that orientation, there's a possibility of us being open
Adrian: Yes.
Ryan: to like your therapist and like, cause everything, it's like, Oh, it's got to sound a certain way. It's got to be a look a certain way, but no. It's like, it can be just that simple and great that you found somebody who you feels brings that spiritual dimension.
It's hard to find those folks. And getting easier and easier. But that's always a requirement for me is like, I want somebody who can resonate. They don't have to be Buddhist, but I just want to be able to, I want to be able to bring in my experiences, like from awakening into that context cause otherwise I feel like I'll compartmentalize myself of sorts.
Adrian: Yes.
Ryan: uh, the embodiment piece, there was some point in time, Emily had recommended one of her books to me, " Belonging Here", which is for spiritually sensitive people.
Adrian: Belonging
here.
Ryan: Yeah, so prior to that, you know, the highly sensitive person now has been the terminology people would use. Other terms, you know, like empath, things like that. I don't tend to like all those because sometimes in the trying to own the truth of that, there is a way of orienting where it's like seeing it all as really good and the problem is, is like other people not recognizing, you know?
Adrian: Oh, it puts the problem on other
Ryan: Kind of, yeah. Like it's a little, like I'm a little too, I'm too special kind of thing, it's kind of. That never resonated with me because I'm like, I do feel really sensitive, but I've always.
There is an important shift of going from like perceiving yourself in negative ways based off of response from society, so like me being male, young boy and growing up sensitive I did not get a positive feedback loop from a lot of
Adrian: Right.
Ryan: in school. So like to come to a place of appreciation for those qualities in me, that's important, that's a healing aspect. You just go But you got what Judith pointed out in that book that was so useful for me. It was like, okay, what are the struggles with that, that are turned into my own constrictions, my own neuroses, my own shadows from coping with it, you know? And, and inherent to myself, not even, not even just like how to other people react. It's like, we all got our shit, you know, it's just different flavor that if I'm uh, sensitive in particular way.
So I really liked her approach where it was like, I'm honoring who you are and your gifts as a spiritual sensitive person, but also that here are the struggles you have and it's your work to do essentially. She says in a very loving way, but it was kind of like, put the work on me to do. And gave me actual tools to work with that aspect of myself.
But also she's a teacher of non dual awakening. So just like we were talking about the therapist just now? She has a therapeutic background, and so she understands trauma work and she understands awakening. And so that was beautiful for me because I'm like, okay, I can do this healing work via my own ongoing realization. Like they're not separate. It's like I heal through my fundamental nature.
But on a personal level, it was just relevant at that time. And it was just like, oh, I need this. I need to do this work. So, Emily passed that because she's similar to me and she told me, she's like, I think this is our, our Bible is what she said at that time.
Adrian: Nice.
Ryan: which made sure like, this is the shit we got to work with.
And I was like, all right, let me look at it. So I did it. And I really found it incredibly helpful, especially the particular dark night I was going through spiritually. Was rough, energetically rough, disruptive, terrifying in a certain way. So finding her work at that time helped me ground and work with my experience in an embodied way.
And so that started off a longer journey that took a little time to really get the steam going. But eventually I did like three months of Reggie Ray stuff. I just every day was just doing like an hour or so of embodiment work. I was like, this is the work I need to do. So I went from that time of being like, I don't really know what to practice anymore. Could practice, couldn't practice to being like, yes. Yes. I need to do this,
Adrian: Right. You need this practice. A new practice.
Ryan: Yes. Which had to do more with that no escape and integration like awakening is here. Embracing life, but not leaving awakening behind, otherwise we have this split inside myself, right? Awakenings over here and then all the other shit going on life is over here but knows like the merging, truly blending of those through that path.
So that's how I came to her. It was just organically and then. I connected with Judith and I ended up doing one of her teacher trainings and loved it. I found it was perfect for me because it embodied so much flavor of Dzogchen.
Adrian: Hmm.
Ryan: To where I was like, it's even closer, like we're talKeng about Spanish and Portuguese, it was just like a, almost a different dialect to me in a certain way. It fits so well.
So yeah, I just embraced it completely intuitively. And that's how I usually do things. It was just like, well, this makes sense. I'm going to do this now.
Adrian: Yeah, And that makes total sense. I can resonate with that myself and actually did a workshop once with Judith just over Zoom and I could see how it integrated all that.
So I'm curious coming full circle to what you're doing now, how does that lead you to the Integral Dharma course that you've created and if you could talk about within that context, the way you talk about Awakening in life.
Ryan: Yeah. Well, it's interesting, an awakening in life.
When I first started my stepping as a teacher, came up with that title awakening in life because that just wasn't resonating with me on this deep feeling that this is where awakening is. Embracing everything, the playfulness, the quirks, just all the weird shit of who we are as human beings.
Adrian: The messiness.
Ryan: The messiness. I feel at home with it It's like, the beauty and the messiness, the artfulness of it. So that captures that for me. It's awakening in life. It's just like many pointers in awakening It's kind of a silly phrase because ultimately it's like where else is it happening, you know? It's happening right here. But for a while You know, I didn't think that. It's like oh, awakening's gonna be somewhere else of sorts, right?
So the realization process and this approach of a very simplified, direct, pragmatic ways of practicing embodied non dual awakening, I loved it.
It just embraced this awakening right here, who we are. So like, you know, one of the principles in realization process is that we're not trying to eradicate ourselves.
It's like we awaken right where we are through the self that we are. Our fundamental nature is realized right here. So we'll always adding a great phrase of wherever there's an experience, there's a body. So that's kind of like, it's like, you're always here. Yeah.
Yeah. So we're here. It's all good. It's not a problem.
And then, of course, we already mentioned the integration of healing; of therapeutic work with awakening was really pivotal for me as well and important in the work I do now. But what it also did for me is it provided a bridge for me. A bridge to bring together different practices. Different ways of working with experience.
It's like a base ingredient that you can use in so many different recipes. So Judith's approach is very stripped down in terms of a view. She intentionally doesn't get too abstract because she wants to point people right to their embodied experience. And not that the mind is any problem, just... her latest book, The Fullness of the Ground, has the most view I've seen in any book, and it's super short, still.
Because of that, it can pair well. Right? So if you have two big systems that have a lot of views and a lot of practices, you have to try to figure out how to put those together. But if it's, if the approach is stripped down, sometimes you might want more view at different points in time, but you can really pair it well.
So, I'd already been through Integral. Been in the Integral community Integral theory, as long as I've been practicing Buddhism almost. But the techniques and realization process allowed me to innovate more. So I, of course, use them as is a lot, but I also have been really creative in pairing things together.
Like teachings and practices from Dzogchen, I can bring into embodied practices. Some of the instructions from the realization process, I can then bring that into other practices like embodied inquiry. So what does it mean to inhabit the body, to attune to, we'll say fundamental consciousness, but awareness itself, to ask a question. And that question could be about something, in life, not just about who am I, right? Some fundamental question.
So social meditation was similar too. I'd say that's the other element. Like with social meditation, we're going to use our, our voice out loud. And so in Vajrayana, what are we doing? In Tibetan Buddhist practice, we're using body, voice, mind. Our whole experience into one practice.
It could be really, really stripped down or it could be really elaborate, but we're bringing it all together because it's happening all at once. That's another quote I always bring in from Hokai, a tweet, don't worry, it's just everything and everyone happening all at once. So,
Adrian: I like that.
Ryan: So there was some like technique bits that came in to the picture all at once that then allowed for me, just to myself, but also working with people, a way to practice and a way to teach that embodied everything that I found important from my traditional past. So social meditation stripped down to the essence, using your voice and practicing with others.
Uh, realization process stripped down into the point, embodied awareness. We would use a different term in realization process, but we'll just say embodied awareness. And then I'm able to bring in subgen pointers and different techniques and adapt that within all of that.
So I got the essential ingredients to start teaching and practicing as an Integral Dharma teacher. Might have to unpack what we mean by Integral Dharma, but
Adrian: Please. Say a little something, like a brief...
Ryan: So Integral Dharma... What my strengths are and how I work with people is I'm, focused on the essence, I'm focused on experience, and pragmatic realization and transformation.
I love theory, but I only use it just enough to get you in the door. Because I believe that if you can recognize through your own experience, what the theory is pointing to, you're good to go. And then you use the theory to get down deeper into your practice.
So, in Integral Dharma, we start with a map, which is based on a theory. And I just give a couple examples here to get people in the door. But first we start with this premise that awakening is not everything. Essential, but we need more than that for our lives, for all the opportunities, all the beauty, all the joy, but especially all the problems that we have and crises that we're facing. We need more than that... so awakening is not enough.
So we have things like therapy. I think most people, even a lot of traditionalists will come around to that and be like, yeah, yeah, therapy is good. You have to be pretty hard core traditionalist and dogmatic to think therapy is not useful.
So we say, well, we have therapy and waking up, but there's more to it. So in Integral Dharma, we'll talk about Ken Wilbur's "Four Ups,", waking up, cleaning up, growing up and showing up. Four big buckets of practice that aren't necessarily exhaustive, but very important to include.
We want to wake up. We want to clean up. We want to work on our trauma. We want to reclaim our wholeness. Because those patterns are sticky. They keep happening. As much as we wake up, we can see through experience down to the essence of experience. We can unhook and feel in real time, our neuroses happening, but they'll happen all nonetheless and that's who we will be unless we work on the patterns themselves.
So that means we have to undo them. We have to investigate them. We have to embrace and love those parts of ourselves again. We have to work it out in relationships, right? We have to do that work.
Growing up, it's a longer topic, but just maturing. And we can see, we can feel that as we grow up as kids to teenagers, to adults. This is always the easiest thing, it's like, you don't expect a two year old to act like a teenager because we know that they don't have the capacity to act like a teenager yet. So there's some developmental capacity where we can better understand and make sense out of reality. Our very structures of consciousness, how we interpret and what we can see and understand changes. They, they categorically change over time. So
Adrian: I key part, sorry, just to add to that, right, is that emotional maturity, it's actually not happening naturally with age. It is something we need to be proactive about.
Ryan: Yeah, yes, exactly. We have to be proactive. Just like waking up. Even when we come from a non dual tradition, I'll always say this, it's like, okay, we start with the end and work backwards. But everybody's doing practice. Even people who might be very, very purist about a non dual approach and don't do anything, you'll hear him talk a lot about it. And hanging out with people who are talking a lot about it, you know? So come on, we all get it. We have to do something and waking up.
Yeah, and then the maturity of who we are as people... Life makes that happen. We engage with life and when our assumptions about life keep not working out, we keep bumping up against them, we're forced to grow.
And then showing up, it's like, our actions in the world, what are we doing in the world, through our work, and our communities, and our relationships, there's this behavioral aspect, which does get talked about in Waking Up, but it's more behavior as related to waking up itself.
But as far as like, what is needed? What should we do? Like, we can look at any situation in the world, say climate crisis, right? What do we do? Well, we have to engage. Through action, through our embodied being in action.
So, those ups are like pragmatic categories that we can investigate in our lives, reflect on, and then do practice with, right? So like, what's going on in these different ups in my life, and what do I need to work with? Then only looking at waking up.
The other bit is just the quadrants I'll mention. So like, the four quadrants is inner and outer of reality. And let's just say the human experience for the moment.
So there's the interior subjective experience we all have. We close our eyes, for sure. We have that. But um, yeah, we work with that when waking up, right? Awareness itself. It's not matter, but there is brain. There is a brain happening at the exact same time. And so we can hook a meditator up, you know, EEG and other devices see stuff happening or not happening.
So there's a correlate. So we have an outer reality. So I'll make it even simpler. I take a cholesterol med because I have shitty genes. No matter what I do, I can't get it down enough. They know perfect diet. Ain't no perfect nothing. Trust me, sky high. So I take a little pill. That's my physical reality.
There's more to it. It's like our whole physical body, the exterior, but it's all happening at the same time. Simultaneously. It's not either or and then individual and collective. So there's the I and then there's a we happening at the exact same time and then systems. So it's the outer of the we.
So when we get a map like this, all of a sudden the everything and everyone happening all at once starts having some distinctions. That we can pay attention to with more presence, with more engagement. And then we get more information about what's happening. And then that can inform us of what to practice, what to work with, what to do, how to be. So we don't collapse them all down into just a blob. Or usually what happens, our favorite quadrant, it's like, oh, as practitioners of awakening, we really like the interior state of the, yeah, I want to stay there. I don't want to deal with the physical body or forget economic systems and stuff like that.
Anyways, so it's a bigger topic, but Integral Dharma, we've kind of been talking about it the whole time. It's just continually opening up to more of what's actually happening.
And I always summarize a fourth turning in a really poetic, simple way by saying what's happening here matters. Meaning that if we have transcended everything and into the essence of experience and reality itself, there's a deep letting go.
There's not like a grasping or a fighting. On some part of our being, we can relax in that sense and just be with what's happening. But what's happening matters. So we have to engage with it and then once we do that, the distinctions start mattering.
This happens all the time with anybody who's living modern life. But the funny thing is, like, if we're not conscious about this and articulating it, especially in today's time, it's freaking overwhelming. The complexity of what the times are living in is immense.
So having a map to help us give some distinctions that for me, I only care, does it help open things up a little bit? Pragmatically? Yes. Do I care if someone says, I think there's should be quadrants. I don't know what you call six, six, what's the six version of that, six boxes. Fine. Add two more. I don't care.
But I'm like, let's include at least these four, because it's really hard to feel like they don't exist. Let's at least conclude these four ups, because if not, it's incomplete. But now by doing all that, now we're awakening in life more fully. We're less likely to leave things outside of what we consider our awakening to be.
So there's more to an Integral map or to Integral dharma, but that's the principle for me. Go for the essence, go for the experiential essence, be pragmatic about it, and try to include as much as we can simply. And I call that Integral Dharma.
It doesn't have to be Ken Wilber specific, but that's my basis is Ken Wilber's map, because it's pretty damn handy. Tend to be useful over many, well, at this point, a couple decades,
Adrian: And and for folks who are interested in that, they can take a course that you've created on Integral Dharma, and we'll include that link.
Ryan: Yeah. So we ran live 10 week trainings for Integral Dharma over a few years. It's more condensed compared to my course, but we got to try a lot of innovative practices that go for the essence like we talk, you know, social meditation especially, which I, I use in the course as standalone out loud practices, which would be similar to a lot of Tibetan practices where you use your voice.
So I brought in some of that from those trainings and then got to expand it much more because an online course gives you a lot more space to unpack things. It's a very comprehensive course, but each bit of the course is very digestible. Again, the framework is very essential, and then we go right into a practice that's also very essential.
So, comprehensive, like, you know, there's like 40 plus practices in there. But my goal is that, like hey, this is a way that you can include all of these elements, this is a way that you can open up your awakening more fully. And then I hope that you then take off in whichever direction you need, which means, like, what kind of teachers or professionals, you know, as a therapist? Who do you need to work with? What communities need to be a part of? What more specific practices do you need?
But we have to have the essence. Once you've got the essence, you can run with it. Just like you get the essence of what awareness is, you can do a lot of different practices.
Adrian: Yes.
Ryan: But if you don't get the essence of awareness, you're faking it until you make it until you get there.
So if anybody's not overly intellectual, this course will be designed for you as well. If somebody isn't intellectual, there's plenty of threads to pull on to where you chomp away at that if you'd like.
Adrian: Great. Well, we'll include that link. And Ryan, I just, I'm conscious of our time. I want to thank you so much.
Ryan: Yeah, thanks. Hopefully I wasn't too winding about, you know uh, if there were responses,
Adrian: I, I'm winding as
Ryan: questions. Okay. Well, thanks for all your great, questions and you gave me a few new things to think about today. So I super appreciate that.
Adrian: Great. Likewise, I really enjoyed the free flowing nature of our conversation and learned a lot, and I'm sure that other folks will benefit from as well. So on a closing note, do you just want to let people know where they can find you and about any upcoming offerings that you have?
Ryan: Oh yeah. You can just find me in my, in my website, RyanOelke.Com and that's my main home base. And then latest things that Integral Dharma course, which is, we talked about my journey this whole time, you know, covering from my start to the end of sorts, that really is a culmination up to this point. A reflection of my journey that I've baked in there.
Um, so just happy to have it out there, so find me there as well.
Adrian: Nice. Well, Thank you so much, ryan. We'll hang out for a minute after we, we stop recording, but I just want to say thanks so much.
Ryan: Yeah, thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
Adrian: Absolutely. Okay. Talk soon.