What led you to focus on the concept of “Maximizing Your Joy” in life, work, and relationships?
Several years ago we came up with that concept as the title and unifying theme for a live online course, “Maximizing Joy: In Your Life, Work, Relationships — and World.” We intended to make it available as an evergreen course but weren’t able to do so until recently.
In the meantime it dawned on us that this concept, “Maximize Your Joy,” is something many people might readily respond to — especially in these extremely challenging times, when rates of depression, despair, hopelessness, fear, overwhelm, and anxiety are only increasing in nearly all age groups and demographics.
In the three-plus decades of our work, we have specialized in helping longtime spiritual seekers achieve unshakable non-dual, embodied awakenings and then learn to live on that new foundation. But we’ve always also felt a calling, in Linda’s words, “to reach and touch many other hungry or hurting hearts.” We’ve wanted to find ways to help people lighten their stress, strengthen their resilience, manage their lives more confidently, and brighten their spirits — whether or not they’re also interested now, or might be later, in the in-depth, intensive transformations involved in spiritual embodiment.
So, just over the last year or so, we realized that focusing on “Maximize Your Joy” as a primary outreach message is something that can potentially reach, touch, lighten and brighten the lives of many, many people. And, while we’re continuing to facilitate seekers of awakenings and those facing the challenges of post-awakened living, we’re very happy to add that joy-focused message to wider audiences now and going forward.
How do your teachings help individuals navigate challenging times with more light, peace, and wisdom?
Our approach helps people stop fighting or struggling against some parts of themselves — the ego, the thinking mind, their desires, cravings, attachments and aversions, their emotional reactivity and coping mechanisms — in order to have more access to and identify more exclusively with their spiritual, more loving, wiser, and compassionate parts or potentials.
We help them “greenlight” or learn how to be with and integrate all their parts, including the disowned voices or fragments of their psyches, the darker, traumatized, or less conscious realms of their identity and history. We are not therapists and this is not therapy to understand mental and emotional issues. It’s a whole-being process of enlivenment and consolidation into a more and more grounded, singular, peaceful sense of who and what they are.
In the process, we help them “reframe” how they understand not only their own total, divinely human nature, but also the nature of reality. They cease to assume a fundamental split between spirit and matter, light and dark, positive and negative. This liberates enormous energy and attention from inner conflicts that have previously been so problematic for them.
Paradoxically, it really is true that not only “what you resist, persists,” but also, in our way of saying it, “what you greenlight, transforms.” You don’t perfectly master, overcome, and transcend your darker parts. Instead, in accepting them deeply you transform your relationship to them. You outgrow being governed by their previous effects on you. It’s as if they no longer have a chokehold on you. And as a result, you are able to navigate both inner and outer challenges with more light, peace, wisdom, love, and trust.
Can you explain the “Two Kinds of Joy” and why it’s essential to embrace both?
We’re all familiar with the kind of joy, happiness, or delight that comes as the result of something we experience, in our outer lives and relationships or more inwardly. Whatever the cause, that kind of joy is temporary and experiential. It’s something that happens to us, even if only on a psychological, emotional, or energetic level, rather than being intrinsic to us. An ice cream cone, a friendly smile, a loved one’s hug, a sunny morning, a career success, a deep insight into our emotional patterns, helping someone in need, a spiritual epiphany — the causes of temporary joys are innumerable.
But: no matter how hard we try to hold onto them, experiential joys eventually dissipate. They come and go.
The other kind of joy is different. Once we tap into it deeply, we realize suddenly or gradually that it’s unshakable, un-lose-able. And, it’s not the product of experience. It’s not something that happens to us, even if we perhaps first discover it or feel like it’s been initiated in us through a specific inner or outer event — a vision or epiphany, an incident in a love relationship; it could come through any number of events in our lives.
But its nature is not experiential. It’s existential. We sense that this joy is innate, the anchor or foundation of our very sense of being. Once deeply accessed, it becomes obvious that it does not come and go. It’s always present. And we are not having an experience of it. We are being it. Or, maybe better to say, it is being us. Sometimes it shines strongly. Sometimes, especially in times of stress or challenge, it feels like it’s more in the background. But it’s always there. It can’t be eradicated or lost.
For some this unshakable, existential joy is associated with their religious faith, at the very root of their souls. It’s the essence of their relationship to the divine, however, they relate to that ultimate reality. For others, it’s not associated with any religious faith or even any spiritual practice.
We wouldn’t say it’s essential to embrace both the experiential and the existential kinds of joy. We do suggest that for optimal wellness of our whole being, it’s wise to “maximize” both kinds.
Many religious, spiritual, and psychological approaches propose that we should strictly limit, avoid, and transcend much or all seeking for and even enjoyment of temporary, experiential, especially material pleasures and joys, in order to focus on finding and abiding in a deeper, more pure or mature wisdom and joy. We don’t agree.
That’s why we say “It’s totally OK for you to maximize both.”It’s just important to understand the difference — and to discern which is which!
How do your methods support an embodied spiritual awakening that integrates all aspects of a person’s being?
We’ve both been blessed with a capacity to “see” and feel people very deeply, and, through counseling and our simple presence or “transmission,” to help them reframe how they see and appreciate themselves. All of our offerings, and not just our personal coaching and counseling, communicate this deeper recognition of who people are and what and who they are becoming. Our books, online courses, guided meditations, and music CDs are what the European cultural philosopher Jean Gebser called “catalytic” publications.
The most wonderful thing about this is that we’ve found others can readily access these catalytic capacities themselves. Our methods support this kind of awakening and also, time and again, have supported others coming into such awakened presence and manifesting their own activating transmissions.
So, we also model this process to those we serve, whether directly in person or through our other offerings, and the whole process appears to be more and more self-democratizing. The transmission of people who live this radiate is not so much an energy or presence others feel experiential as it is an inter-subjective existential signal. It’s a mysterious “green light” to their own greater, inclusive, divinely human identity and potential. It stimulates them to come alive and awake and to spontaneously integrate all their parts over time into their own unique presence and gifts.
Many spiritual approaches today are overly “masculine” — challenging, penetrating, and often modeled on the attributes of a fierce warrior. Ours includes wise and effective masculine orientations and practices. It’s also deeply “feminine” — accepting, tolerating, communicating appreciation, and lovingkindness. This encourages people to develop both of those dispositions and capacities and to discover in their own ways how and when to animate each one. As married partners for nearly three decades, we model this as a couple, balancing masculine and feminine in ourselves and with one another. Many people have told us how inspiring this example has been for them, helping them strengthen their participation in intimacy and in all their relationships.
In what ways do you help individuals ignite their passion and express their unique gifts?
In some ways, all of our earlier answers have addressed how we provide this particular kind of help. There are several other things we can say about it.
Late in his life, Carl Jung made the highly controversial statement that the deeper meaning of human history and evolution is not that man is seeking God, but rather that God is seeking man — that is, seeking to embody each and every human being. We literally see and relate to people with this kind of perception and understanding. It might sound grandiose to say that, but living it is actually kind of humbling. We get to see others’ passion and their unique gifts as attributes of their divine humanity coming more and more alive and awake, their “God-ness” crystallizing in, as, and through their own distinctive, whole-being presence and expressions.
On their side, people often feel profoundly seen, heard, and met. They sense they are being encountered as what we call “the one great Heart we all share, coming alive and awake in, as, and through everybody” — and, particularly, themselves, in their totally unprecedented forms and ways.
On a practical level, we also counsel them on how they can access that passion and bring their gifts to the world — how they might dare to live and speak their truths as no one else possibly could! As Linda likes to say, this is not a “cookie-cutter” process. It is unique to each individual. That’s its special beauty and sacredness.
More about Saniel Bonder and Linda Groves-Bonder:
Saniel Bonder and Linda Groves-Bonder have been among the founding pioneers of the movement of “embodied awakening” in current-day spirituality. For over three decades, their Waking Down in Mutuality® work has helped thousands lighten and brighten their lives, many hundreds enter unshakable, embodied awakenings, and dozens become independent, creative teachers and transmitters of these blessings themselves. They continue to coach and teach many people worldwide.
Saniel was an Honorary National Scholar at Harvard, earning a B.A. in Social Relations. Linda has a B.S. in Art Education from Ball State University and has been a professional singer-songwriter and photo stylist as well as a lifelong artist. You can learn more about them and their work, including their primary general offering of “Maximize Your Joy,” at www.sanielandlinda.com. They live with their two cats and the hundreds of birds Linda feeds near Sonoma, California, amidst the rolling hills, vineyards, and pastures of the wine country.
