One Spirit Many Voices

The Trillium community includes a global network of teachers, mentors, and participants committed to the path of embodied awakening in mutuality. Our Trillium path emerged from the work cooperatively developed by a collective of teachers originally associated with Saniel Bonder and the Waking Down teachings. Our educational offerings and coaching services are informed by principles from those teachings first articulated by Saniel.

As that culture evolved, the original founder-led structure began to constrain expression of the work’s democratic spirit, and in 2005, with Saniel’s full support, two new organizations were formed by seasoned teachers to support the next stage of development:

The Trillium Awakening Teachers Circle (TATC) was originally incorporated as the Waking Down Teachers Association. It was founded as a 501(c)6 non-profit professional association of awakened teachers dedicated to offering Trillium Awakening services and raising public awareness about the Trillium path. TATC members honor strong ethical agreements and meet regularly in small groups for mutual support and education. Key issues are decided democratically, with each member having one vote. Teachers offer Trillium Awakening in their own style, and some also offer their unique awakening, healing, or transformational work.

Our Mission

Trillium Awakening supports the conscious awakening of individuals as their authentic embodied selves in intimate mutuality with all life.

Our Manifesto

Whereas, we are a Teachers Circle named after a wildflower whose threefold petal represents the flowering of an awakening that includes consciousness, embodiment and relatedness, and

Whereas, while we honor and value any aspirant’s orientation toward a specific teacher or tradition, our association has evolved into a democratic Circle where all member teachers contribute to the collective transmission of the whole group, and there is no one specific teacher, tradition, or lineage that speaks for, or represents, the Circle, and

Whereas, we are an association of teachers whose history contains many lineages and traditions which have coalesced around the breakthrough principles of Saniel Bonder’s Waking Down® work, and

Whereas, within the Teachers Circle and community we recognize everyone’s fundamental equality in Being and a hierarchy of experience, training, and leadership with the intention of living mutuality across all levels and

Whereas, this Circle itself is governed by an Operations Circle based on a model adapted to our association to allow for a distribution of roles and projects among our members while maintaining the guidance of the entire circle for substantive decisions that effect overall identity, membership, and teaching, and

Whereas, this Circle has evolved a transparent Ethics Policy subscribed to by all member Teachers, which provides a framework that governs Teachers’ behaviors toward their students, with accountabilities for violation of this policy, and

Whereas, Teachers meet monthly in small groups, as a circle, and annually in retreat, to share insights, teaching skills, refine our common principles and grow from mutual association, and

Whereas, the Teachers Circle recognizes each student as a sacred mystery and provides a safe context through courses, sittings and private sessions, for all to come forward and awaken to the full range of their identity, and

Whereas, we trust in each student’s personal process, so that students hold the reins in their movement toward an organic, balanced, uniquely personal awakening, and

Whereas, students enjoy a collective approach to their awakening from teachers who teach courses together and singly, so that they may choose the teachers they most resonate with rather than template off of just one, and

Whereas, an association of awakened teachers trusting in their collective transmission with established ethics policy and student-centered orientation is a new emergence in the world today, therefore,

Be It Resolved, that we as the Trillium Awakening Teachers Circle dedicate our teaching toward a wildflowering of whole-Being love and wisdom in ourselves and our students to serve the evolutionary force of life emerging throughout the world.

Our Organization

Trillium Awakening Teachers Circle (TATC)

The The Trillium Awakening Teachers Circle was originally incorporated in 2005 as the Waking Down Teachers Association (WDTA), a 501(c)6 nonprofit professional association. In December 2015, the WDTA changed its name to Trillium Awakening Teachers Circle (TATC), and its members now offer Trillium Awakening educational offerings and coaching services, which are informed by principles from the Waking Down teaching.

During its first few years, business matters were largely handled by the entire membership, with each teacher having one vote, and a three-person board serving as president, secretary, and treasurer.

As the WDTA gradually grew to include dozens of teachers, conducting business by consensus proved increasingly unwieldy, and in 2011 the organization began experimenting with Holacracy, a progressive form of governance.

Holacracy is a distributed authority system – a set of “rules of the game” that bake empowerment into the core of the organization. Without relying on parental heroic leaders, everyone becomes a leader of their roles and a follower of others’ roles, while processing tensions with specific authority and accountability through dynamic governance and transparent operations.  Holacracy harnesses the conscious capacity of members to sense “tensions” — dissonance between what is (current reality) and what could be (the purpose of the organization). Without clear and effective channels for processing tensions, they fester into frustrations, burnout, and disengagement. Tensions are useful to the extent they can be processed into meaningful change. Holacracy provides several explicit channels for organizations to process tensions.

In 2012 the TATC formally adopted Holacracy as its operating system. Actions and projects are managed by the Trillium Operations Circle (TAOC), a volunteer group that meets monthly via video conference. TAOC members attune to the needs of the organization and the work it conducts by sensing tensions – the gap between what is and what could be — and defining roles with authority to address them. Role-fillers are given wide latitude to energize their accountabilities. The inquiry “Is it workable for now?” helps keep work flowing, as decisions can easily be revisited when future tensions surface. Role fillers are free to seek input from others, and may also be required to do so through specific governance.

TAOC members are assigned roles suited to their skills and interests by the Lead Link—one of Holacracy’s core roles. The Lead Link also has authority to allocate resources and add or remove circle members. The entire TATC elects the Lead Link annually. In September 2021, Jim Trofatter was chosen to fill this role.

Currently, most TATC functions and projects are energized by the TAOC, while key issues of interest to the full membership, including approving mentors and interning teachers, are determined by a majority vote of all teachers. Transitions to full teacher status are determined by a majority vote of full and senior teachers, while transitions to senior teacher status are determined only by senior teachers.

We invite you to check out the roles currently energized by TAOC members (who are sometimes assisted by people outside the circle) at our governance records page. You can click on a role’s name to see its list of accountabilities and contact the role-filler if you have questions or suggestions relevant to the function of that role. You can also suggest issues for the attention of TAOC members at a future meeting.

Institute of Awakened Mutuality (IAM)

The Institute of Awakened Mutuality was incorporated in 2005 as a 501(c)3 nonprofit educational institution, and was authorized to offer educational courses for Trillium Awakening. In 2021, the IAM was dissolved and most of their educational offerings were transferred to the TATC.

Our History

Trillium Awakening educational and coaching services offer a path in community dedicated to spiritual awakening and its integration in daily life. Our work is informed by principles from the Waking Down teachings, and continues to evolve through the collective experience of seasoned teachers and students who deeply explore the living paradox of being divine and human while relating consciously in mutuality.

In this path, both infinite Consciousness and human embodiment are equally valued. This simultaneous embrace of the timeless and temporal dimensions of life—in the context of our catalytic focus on conscious mutuality—is central to our teaching work.

Sanial Bonder – Founder of Waking Down in Mutuality

Trillium Awakening teachers recognize the existential equality of those who participate in this path and also honor the need for functional organizational hierarchy. Our services are offered by members of the Trillium Awakening Teachers Circle, a professional association of autonomous teachers originally incorporated as the Waking Down Teachers Association, and also through the Institute of Awakened Mutuality, an educational association that trains teachers and mentors. Founded in 2005, both organizations are further described in One Spirit, Many Voices (above).  

The Trillium path is informed by the Waking Down principles that Saniel Bonder developed soon after leaving Adi Da Samraj, his teacher of nearly 20 years, in 1991.  Through “daring to grasp the means of [his] own realization,” Saniel rapidly awakened and began teaching in a participant-centered, rather than guru-centered, manner. He honored each student’s individuality, and encouraged them to begin teaching in their own unique manner after they had clarified stable awakening.

Learn more about the in-depth history of our work.