Trillium Awakening is a spiritual path and global community guided by over 40 diverse teachers who share a unique, three-petaled approach: Consciousness, Embodiment, and Mutuality. This integrated method supports individuals in awakening to Whole Being Realization—a deep, non-separate conscious embodiment. Trillium Awakening helps people uncover their true nature and navigate life’s challenges, offering support through free virtual introductions and sessions.
With a mission to foster authentic, embodied awakening, Trillium Awakening has successfully guided over 500 individuals worldwide on their journey to self-discovery and transformation. The Trillium Awakening Teachers Circle (TATC), a 501(c)6 non-profit professional global association, is a network of awakened teachers dedicated to offering Trillium Awakening services and raising public awareness about the Trillium path and embodied awakening.
TATC members uphold strong ethical agreements and regularly meet in small groups for mutual support and education. The Trillium community, including teachers, mentors, and participants, is committed to the path of embodied awakening in mutuality. The Trillium path evolved from the teachings originally associated with Saniel Bonder and the Waking Down movement, with current offerings informed by decades of collective awakened experience and ongoing development.
MysticMag has the absolute pleasure of chatting with four of these wonderful teachers. Please find our exclusive interview below.
Can you explain the three-petaled approach of Consciousness, Embodiment, and Mutuality in Trillium Awakening? How do these facets work together to facilitate Whole Being Realization?
Jim: In traditional teachings, Consciousness is often emphasized as the nondual experience of one’s essential nature—the ultimate reality that can be realized. The exploration of nonduality is crucial because this experience is subtle and easily overlooked in the bustle of daily life. Learning to stay present to this deeper reality helps us recognize that we are more than just our bodies, emotions, and thoughts.
However, focusing exclusively on Consciousness as the entirety of our being tends to dismiss the physical, embodied dimension as illusory. This disregard overlooks the richness of our everyday experience. By learning to discern what is happening within our bodies, we can deepen our bodily awareness and feel more vital and alive.
Through our exploration, we have come to understand that Reality is the inseparable co-arising of both the nondual and the dual. Neither aspect is superior to the other; both are ever-present. The still, unchanging nature of Consciousness paradoxically rests beneath and within the constantly changing flow of physical reality. Delving into both aspects leads to a profound experience of our divinely human nature and fosters a deeper connection to others and the world around us.
Moreover, we have discovered that working with others significantly accelerates the awakening process. Engaging with others constantly challenges our comfort zones, bringing our limitations of mind, body, and emotions to the surface. These can then be explored and healed within the safety of small groups of teachers and peers. The exploration of all three petals—Consciousness, Embodiment, and Mutuality—creates fertile ground for the initial Whole Being Realization, our term for awakening into non-separate conscious embodiment.
How does the Trillium Awakening path address the “core paradox” of being both finite and infinite? Can you share insights on how this paradox influences one’s spiritual journey?
Steve: When discussing the Core Paradox of being both finite and infinite, it’s important to begin by acknowledging that Trillium Awakening is a transmission-based process of self-realization and profound personal healing.
By “transmission,” we refer to a subtle event where the radiant, embodied, and awakened state of the teacher is communicated nonverbally through a resonance effect. This transmission serves two primary functions: it jump-starts or catalyzes one’s recognition of themselves as consciousness, and it deconstructs the layers of psychological defenses—splints, braces, shields, and armor—that we’ve accumulated over decades in a world where love has not fully taken root.
For most people, “life” consists of their thoughts, feelings, and sensory perceptions—nothing more. The source condition, our conscious nature, which enables all thoughts, feelings, and perceptions, remains unrecognized. We are likely familiar with the occasional restless, hungry feeling that whispers, “There’s got to be more than just this.” The good news is that there is indeed more than the limited, conditioned existence we’re all too familiar with. Our conscious nature is changeless, boundless, timeless, and perpetual, and it can be realized without decades of intense self-work.
With sufficient exposure to this transmission and the guidance of a teacher pointing out this unrecognized dimension, that hidden reality eventually becomes known. Whether this happens suddenly or gradually, and usually within six months to two or three years, one’s being becomes whole, integrating both the limited and the limitless. This integration often occurs through a series of oscillations between these states until stability is achieved, though for some, it arrives with breathtaking suddenness.
Finally, it’s essential to note that Whole Being Realization marks the point where the booster rockets of inner transformation truly ignite, leading to a profound change known as Sacred Reconfiguration.
Mutuality is a significant aspect of Trillium Awakening. How does this practice of conscious relating enhance the process of awakening, and what challenges do practitioners typically face in embracing mutuality?
CC: Mutuality is the art of honoring one’s true self while making space for others to do the same. It involves honest, vulnerable communication, deep listening, and the exchange of feedback with the aim of healing any ruptures and reopening our hearts to love. Since many of our traumas originate in relationships, the deepest healing also tends to occur within the safe container of healthy, mutual relationships—where we can experience different outcomes.
Sharing our insights during the awakening process with supportive listeners helps to ground those insights in reality and provides an opportunity to correct any misunderstandings. It also inspires others on their spiritual journeys. Having a safe environment, whether with a Trillium Awakening teacher, mentor, or peer group, allows us to reveal personal limitations in our own time, helping us to recognize our shared humanity and alleviate any lingering shame.
Mutuality is challenging because it can trigger old wounds, leading to potentially messy interactions. Despite our best intentions, we might hurt others or be hurt ourselves. Mutuality is not about achieving perfection; it’s about having a safe space to explore, learn, and grow through the complexities of conscious relating.
Over time, as we deepen our practice of mutuality, we build trust in ourselves and others, recognizing that ruptures can be repaired and harmony restored. Awakened mutuality becomes more fully realized as our embodied awakening takes root, revealing our fundamental non-separateness and shared humanity. In this process, we gradually shed the conditioning that has kept our hearts closed, opening ourselves to greater empathy, tenderness, compassion, and mutual love.
Ultimately, mutuality becomes the vehicle through which we express our divinely human awakenings in all our interactions.
The Trillium path emphasizes awakening in the midst of everyday life. Can you share some examples or stories of how this approach has transformed the lives of those who follow it?
Cielle: I am happy to share my own personal story to answer this question. In my early 20s, I was deeply involved in a meditating community that emphasized long residential courses. These courses removed us from everyday life, immersing us in up to 12 hours a day of breathing exercises, yoga asanas, and silent meditation. I participated in many of these courses, ranging from four weeks to six months, multiple times each year. Eventually, I helped run a residential facility where these courses were held, taking on administrative duties within the protective cocoon of this non-ordinary life.
My husband was on the same path, and when we moved out of the residential facility to start a family, we continued to teach meditation part-time. We lived in a small town with a large meditating population, dedicating 1-4 hours each day to meditation and related practices. Through this path, I gained spiritual understanding and experienced Consciousness as a transcendent field, but it wasn’t “whole.”
It wasn’t until nearly 20 years later when I encountered Trillium Awakening that I realized how disconnected I had become from everyday life. With just a brief introduction to Trillium’s embodied path, I felt the transmission of awakened teachers and recognized that I could fully engage in everyday life while continuing my spiritual awakening. Trillium Awakening is a path of “Whole Being Realization,” and I had been only partially engaged. I had neglected a significant part of reality—everyday life.
Through Trillium, I learned to embrace the totality of who I am, integrating consciousness, embodiment, and mutuality—a style of conscious relating that honors both myself and others as unique expressions of “Being.” I discovered the dynamic current of Consciousness expressing itself into, as, and through our human bodies, feelings, phenomena, and all experiences.
No longer isolating consciousness as something that transcends material existence, I began to engage more fully in everyday life, advancing in Whole Being Realization. This shift allowed me to become more alive, engaged, real, and whole.
Trillium Awakening is described as a process that includes everything and excludes nothing. How does this inclusive approach help individuals navigate their “broken zones” or deeply held conditioning during their awakening journey?
Jim: Everything we have ever experienced is stored within our bodies—all our traumas, beliefs, conditioning, and suppressed emotions. These accumulated experiences create constrictions within both our mind and body, leading to a disconnection from our body-mind. As a result, most people tend to live in or around their headspace, treating the body as a danger zone to be entered only when absolutely necessary.
I believe that any discomfort, pain, or suffering that arises in the moment is the body’s way of signaling, “Hey, you might want to look at this.” I hold the underlying belief that the body is always striving to heal itself, yet we often ignore or suppress its messages because the idea of moving toward painful experiences, rather than away from them, feels counterintuitive.
However, when we allow ourselves to fully experience pain—or any experience—without judging it as good or bad, we create space for the experience to unfold and reveal itself. From this more neutral or witness perspective, we can begin to truly see the experience, feel it, live it, embody it, transcend and integrate it, and eventually articulate it. With the guidance of a teacher, a student can safely navigate and heal their wounded areas.
This process of accepting everything as it is gradually releases the psycho-emotional pressure of our unresolved past conditioning, which in turn releases the constrictions in the body-mind. This creates space in the body, allowing us to move out of our headspace and reinhabit our bodies. Over time, this ongoing exploration and reintegration of our bodies often leads to an initial Whole Being Realization.
If you would like to find out more about Trillium Awakening, please visit https://trilliumawakening.org/
For introductory information go to
https://trilliumawakening.org/intro-video-series/
For event calendar information go to
https://trilliumawakening.org/events-calendar/
Becoming Divinely Human by CC Leigh https://a.co/d/ds1wRKC
