Natural Awakening–the Guide Book

In 2014, I decided to make the Manual I had prepared to accompany the Natural Awakening Training available to the general public. Natural Awakening is the teacher training program I have offered with Marie in Europe and in USA. Participants have always commented on the long-term value of the Manual. I was delighted when my first choice of publisher, John Negru of Sumeru Press, accepted to publish the guide, as it, or with whatever changes I wished.

I am very pleased to announce that the transformed Manual is now available in print and ebook format as Natural Awakening: An Advanced Guide for Sharing Nondual Awareness. The book is available through Amazon worldwide, Barnes & Noble in the USA, Coutts in the UK, and more than 2500 other vendors.

In his Foreword, Pir Elias Amidon writes, “What makes this book such a precious resource? It is so uniquely generous. After a lifetime of study, contemplation, and teaching, Peter offers us a precise choreography of the moves he makes as he guides people into recognizing the open and radiant nature of being. He doesn’t hide anything, or try to franchise his “system.” In this Guide, he gives his life’s work away.”

John Prendergast writes, “Natural Awakening offers an illuminating look under the hood into Peter Fenner’s nondual teacher training program that guides us into not knowing and having authentic, spontaneous, and deeply transformative conversations about nothing. 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.” I hope you are encouraged to obtain a copy of the book.

In order to support people who are reading Natural Awakening and would like to dig more deeply into the skills and wisdom in the book I will be offering Video conference based Natural Awakening Courses in 2016. These courses will give you a wonderful opportunity to discover the deepest reaches of my teaching. I hope that we will meet soon in a course to explore the experiential heart of the book.

NATURAL AWAKENING

An Advanced Guide for Sharing Nondual Awareness by Peter Fenner, Ph.D.

ISBN 978-1-896559-24-7 – $34.95 USD, 336 pages, 7 x 10″

“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.

Samples of praise

Peter Fenner is one of the leading nonduality teachers of our time. In this generous, comprehensive book, Dr. Fenner offers a complete compendium of the ways he has found to evoke nondual awakening in his students. Here we find the full breadth of his understanding, based on his own realization of nonduality, his extensive knowledge of Buddhist teachings and his compassionate response to human suffering. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to open to, and guide others to, this most profound dimension of human experience.

Judith Blackstone, Ph.D., author of The Enlightenment Process and The Empathic Ground, New York

Peter Fenner’s exceptional clarity of mind, deep familiarity with Buddhist texts, decades of wonderfully caring teaching experience and his pitch-perfectly worded guidances in Natural Awakening untie myriad illusory snares of mental suffering for any reader.

Stuart Sovatsky, Ph.D., author of Advanced Spiritual Intimacy and Words From the Soul, California

In Natural Awakening Peter Fenner further develops his brilliant postmodern implementation of Buddhist nondual wisdom. 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.

I had the great fortune to experience Peter Fenner’s Natural Awakening Training and to immerse myself in this Guide. The Training has been a wonderful opportunity to experience a new way of being with my students and as a facilitator. Learning to hold others in a space of unconditional awareness has been a gift both for me and those I come in contact with as a mentor. This Guide has become my travel companion and the book that I go back to most frequently. The book organizes the practical teaching in such a systematic and complete way that that it can stand alone and be used independently of the Training. Peter convivially teaches us to dance in the paradoxes of nonduality and utilize participants’ cognitive powers to lead us beyond the limits of the conceptual mind. I give Peter the strongest endorsement possible, as my gratitude to his transmission cannot be expressed in words.

Mariusz Wirga, M.D., Medical Director, Psychosocial Oncology, Todd Cancer Institute, Long Beach Memorial Medical Center, Long Beach, California

Peter is a living master of Madhyamika-style deconstruction practiced with contemporary finesse… This book is both a practical teaching manual and an archivable reference work for nondual coaches, therapists, teachers, and students of many stripes. Clarifying the nature of unconditioned presence and presenting a feast of skillful means for facilitating the realization of such presence, this book contains many lively teacher/student dialogues that are at once laserfocused and relationally-attuned: the hallmark of Radiant Mind trainings. This book is a watershed moment in the extraordinary transmission of nondual wisdom from East to West and from mind to mind.

Ken Bradford, Ph.D., Clinical Psychologist, Adjunct Professor at John F. Kennedy University, author of The I of the Other, California

Through his Radiant Mind workshops and books and his Nondual Therapy trainings, Peter Fenner has shared his powerful and effective transmission with thousands of seekers and practitioners. Now, in Natural Awakening, he reveals the methods and techniques that have heretofore been available only to training participants—methods that can be applied not only to work with clients or students, but also to one’s relationship with friends, loved ones, and above all oneself. I highly recommend this brilliant, original contribution to the teaching and transmission of what cannot be taught.

Stephan Bodian, author of Meditation for Dummies and Beyond Mindfulness, New Mexico.

Like his root teacher, the beloved Lama Yeshe, Peter has a fresh and unusual approach. Through a natural process of deconstruction, underlying assumptions and belief systems that bind us to habitual patterns are revealed. As these belief structures and preferences rise to the surface, the sun of awareness dissolves fixations. As fixations are released, the space of suchness opens, and readers can experience the fresh, open quality of aware presence. Natural Awakening shows us how the process of awakening can be facilitated through simultaneously understanding the field from both the ultimate and apparent perspectives. This Guide is an invaluable contribution to nondual teachers.

Lama Palden Drolma, Founder and Director of Sukhasiddhi Foundation, California

Written as a “how to” manual, Peter Fenner’s excellent new book brilliantly lays out very practical ways of accessing and integrating nondual awareness. Dr. Fenner shows how simple, narrative conversations are extremely useful in deconstructing the dualistic worldview and leading us, instead, into a direct experience of who we already are. This content-rich book points the readers to a clear and compelling way for “abiding-in-awareness.” Highly recommended.

Chuck Hillig, author of Enlightenment for Beginners and The Way IT Is, Virginia

Reading this book was an awakening experience like no other. It opened my eyes and heart through both its incredibly helpful content and also its crystal clear transmission. Anyone supporting others in opening to pure awareness will be enriched and inspired by what Peter presents. My whole being relaxes into a spacious, passionate “Yes!”

Raphael Cushnir, author of The One Thing Holding You Back, Oregon

I came to Peter Fenner’s teaching after years of Japanese Zen monastic training. How refreshing and invigorating! I am so appreciative of his training, scholarship and unique way of making Buddhist nondual wisdom directly accessible to Western hearts and minds. With Natural Awakening Peter makes an enormous contribution toward bringing all beings to clarity and equanimity. I am profoundly grateful.

Jan Hodgman, Soto Zen priest, Focusing Trainer and nondual teacher, Anacortes, Washington