Joan Tollifson writes and talks about the ever-changing, ever-present aliveness of Here / Now, that which is obvious, unavoidable and impossible to doubt. She has an affinity with Advaita, Buddhism and radical nonduality, but she belongs to no tradition or lineage. Her main teacher was Toni Packer, but Joan has also studied with several Buddhist teachers and has spent time with a number of Advaita and nondual teachers. She has been holding meetings on nonduality since 1996. In her books and meetings, Joan invites people to explore their actual present moment experience and to question the deep-seated assumption that we are each an independent entity encapsulated inside a separate bodymind looking out at an alien world. Instead, we may discover that everything is one seamless, boundless, unbroken whole in which there are no separate parts. Joan also invites people to question the deep-seated assumption that we are in control of our lives (or should be), and she points to the realization that everything is one choiceless happening. Joan is known for her honesty and her sense of humor. She is the author of Bare-Bones Meditation: Waking Up from the Story of My Life (1996), Awake in the Heartland: The Ecstasy of What Is (2003), Painting the Sidewalk with Water: Talks and Dialogs about Nonduality (2010), and she has written two more books that are slated for publication early in 2012. Joan has lived in California, New York and Chicago, and is currently living in southern Oregon.
Joan's website
Transcript of this interview
Interview recorded 9/4/2011
YouTube Video Chapters:
00:00:00 - Introduction to Joan Tollifson's Work
00:03:00 - Defining "Awake" and "Enlightenment"
00:06:07 - The Illusion of Being an Encapsulated Unit
00:09:24 - The Illusion of the Self
00:12:24 - The Illusion of "Me" and "Happening" in the Movie of Life
00:15:02 - The Illusion of Self-Improvement
00:17:38 - Being an Individual Wave in the Ocean
00:20:34 - Trusting the Unfolding of Life
00:23:24 - The Conceptual Picture of Totality
00:26:11 - Emptiness and the Conceptualization of Reality
00:29:02 - Dependent Reality and the Manifestation of the Universe
00:32:03 - The Three Stages of Perception in Zen
00:35:19 - The Paradox of Absolute and Relative Realities
00:38:04 - The Paradox of Enlightenment
00:40:46 - The Subtle Misinterpretation
00:43:10 - The Openness of Awakening and the Paradox of Inclusion
00:46:29 - The Practicality of Life
00:48:59 - The Switch that Happened
00:51:57 - The Liberating Realization of Unicity
00:55:13 - The Liberation of Non-Ownership
00:57:48 - The Pitfalls of Progressive Practices and Non-Progressive Approaches
01:00:31 - The Place for Everything
01:03:13 - Embracing Individual Perspectives
01:05:46 - The Nature of Political Views and Choices
01:08:39 - The Illusion of Choice
01:11:42 - The Illusion of Choice and Consciousness
01:14:08 - The Power of Conditioning
01:17:07 - The Illusion of Authorship
01:19:31 - Accepting the Movement of the Universe
01:21:39 - Upcoming Books and Mailing List
01:23:34 - Join the Email List for New Interviews