June Konopka

Teacher

Welcome Message

If some of the things I write here sound familiar in your own life, make you curious, or move you to want to connect, please feel free to e-mail me or phone me. The first part of this discourse will tell you a little about my history, while the second part will say more about how I currently find myself working with students.

My Journey

Right after graduating from college, I began a personal meditation practice called Transcendental Meditation, which captivated me and held my attention for 30 years. I also taught this meditation for 17 of those years, resulting in a deep and permanent ground of understanding and experience of what we called Pure Consciousness. This Pure Consciousness was described as the unmanifested unchanging Absolute aspect of life which was in contrast to the more relative changing familiar side of life. Laying this groundwork was like plowing the field and planting the seeds for what was to come.

In 1999, I meet a teacher who ignited in me what I call the “fire of Being”. This felt like the rain coming to the planted field, causing the seeds to begin to stir with life. Through his transmission, my Being force woke up and started moving through me as if alive on its own. This was in contrast to the previous meditation experience of leaving my life and body to go to a silent field of Consciousness. The silence was moving through my life and body instead. Concepts and ideas were secondary.

This teacher gave me powerful darshan (spiritual energy), but I had trouble finding the support system or intellectual framework I needed. I found when I was around him, my Being force increased and I felt open, alive, and spacious. In contrast, following these exposures I would be thrown into emotional upheavals. Long ignored and unexplored parts of myself were starting to wake up too…..some parts were wounded….. some parts were more powerful than I was used to. I was very confused and conflicted. How would I fix these wounded parts? Was all this power safe? There was no support system around this teacher for me.

Luckily, I was introduced to the Waking Down in Mutuality work in 2000. I was pretty hesitant at first, but an old friend of my husband’s who was involved in the work had made a major transformation that was unmistakable and lasting. My hesitation revolved around not wanting to give up my self-guided path, or adopt any group practices that would limit my own impulses. A lucid dream opened me to give Saniel and Linda a chance. I was pleased to find out my unique impulses were keenly encouraged by them. My Soul desired to be seen, honored, and invited into this world, and the teachers and the community of people in the Waking Down work provided that kind of holding, without other expectations from me. They shared my same passage, held and soothed all of my humanness, and welcomed my powerful parts. And to my amazement, they offered a gazing meditation that continued to call forth that initiated Being force in me.

They kept holding me in all my raw and vulnerable places, and patiently called me forth through what felt like a long birthing process. I didn’t have to fix or perfect my human woundedness. I only had to be willing to be present in all its pain and limitations, while at the same time resting in the great All That Is that is also Me. I lingered on the edge of falling into this paradox for a few years, really taking the time to explore myself, and develop some safety around it so my mind could let go comfortably. In that time, I spontaneously discovered other dimensional parts of myself including goddess archetypes, animal aspects, and the spark of shamanic tendencies. I revisited past vows that needed renegotiating before completing my birth. I made use of other modalities, like Hakomi body-centered psychotherapy, to explore myself and understand my shadow more deeply. I read extensively in Saniel Bonder’s writings, as well as teachings from many other traditions, during this transition.

Fully pregnant with Being, I awoke in 2003 to recognize my true nature as Conscious Awareness, to recognize that same true nature married in my own human form, and in all other forms of creation simultaneously. My identity shifted. The seeds from the fertile field had sprouted. With this awakening, everything about life changed. I felt birthed into a whole new way of existing, perceiving, reacting and creating. Yet, none of my outer circumstances changed. I lived in the same town. I had the same job. I was still married to the same man. But, my connection and interaction with the people, things, and events in my life were all different. Each moment had a richness and realness that permeated everything.

Today, I know this awakening has many facets. The most delicious facet is that I find myself continuously deepening into the present moment….deepening into the silence of my own Being. I often like to sit and just be the Silence, while simultaneously enjoying its blissful manifestation in my heart and body as freely circulating energy, and in the world as a magnificent creative dance. From that Silence comes another facet…..a rhythm that is unique to me. I find myself being challenged to do and think in new and different ways by this rhythm. It seems like my Divine Soul has also awakened in this body, and with ruthless compassion, is systematically aligning my human personality with its nature.

Sometimes I am in awe at what comes through me as my unique Soul’s desires and expressions. Other times, I am in awe of the Great Mother who births and destroys this precious creation in a rhythm all Her own. The seeking has ended, but the conscious unfolding of Me in human form has just begun. I can only hope to surrender to it more and more easily.

I give endless gratitude to all my teachers and guides who have been in my life.

 

Working with Students

My interaction with each student is unique depending on what arises at the time. I have learned to trust the wisdom of each person to let me know what his or her unique path and needs are at any particular moment. My job is to remain humble and open in order to receive that wisdom as cleanly as possible. Some of the components may include:

Transmission: The Trillium path includes a direct transmission from teacher to student. It is a palpable, mysterious exchange that results in the enlivenment of Being in the student, as well as a deep sense of being seen and nurtured unconditionally. This underlies all our interactions, but can be intensified in specific meditation times.

Consciousness Exploration: I also focus on guiding students to explore and inquire into all of who they are. Oftentimes, just pointing attention in the direction of Pure Awareness through questions or directives can bring sudden realizations about our true nature as Consciousness that are beyond the mind’s ability to realize.

Freeing Energy and Attention: Sometimes the student is strongly identified with a wounded part of himself that is still fixed, or frozen, at the time of the original event that caused the pain. Energy and attention will tend to stay fixed there until that part is heard from and held in its pain. Once the part is listened to, greenlighted, and given what it needs, it can move into present time. Generally, a student will deepen into her own Presence and Being as this happens. These parts do not need fixing. They need compassion, mothering, and holding by both the teacher and the student. Spontaneously, changes in long held beliefs, dispositions, and defenses of the mind can accompany this process. I often use the Hakomi method of body-centered psychotherapy (self-study may be a better term) to help students explore and get to know themselves in these wounded places. You can read about the technique at Hakomiinstitute.com, if you are interested to know more about that particular process.

Dropping into the body: This is an embodied awakening that is lived and experienced in all parts of our life. We, as God, wake up to ourselves here in this body. This can be a bit of a shock, so I encourage and guide students to ground deeply into the key energy centers of the body through meditations and centering exercises. Since we are energetic beings, the enlivenment of these centers supports the recognition and deepening of the awakened state. If trauma is present in the body, students learn how to stabilize symptoms and resource themselves, while allowing the body to discover what it needs to do to complete actions frozen during traumatic events.

Shamanic Shortcuts: The processes of ceremony, invocation, imagining, energetic healings, journeying and dream work are often shortcuts for freeing energy bound up in genetic or strongly held dispositions. Sometimes contacting and making use of parts of ourselves that are not always conscious can furnish us with resources and speed up breakthroughs. Energetic shamanic healings can break up energy patterns in our field, allowing the true matrix of our wholeness to take form spontaneously.

All of these modalities are also useful for post-awakening explorations, understandings, and deepenings.

 

Education/credentials:

B.S. Psychology – M.S. Nutritional Sciences – Teacher of Trillium Awakening – Unlicensed Psychotherapist (Colorado) – Certified Hakomi Body-Centered Psychotherapist -Trauma Training with the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute – Apprenticeship with Don Oscar Miro-Quesada, Peruvian Curandero – Ordained Minister through One Spirit Seminary (NY)

If we decide to work together I generally offer an hourly rate. Evening, weekend and day-long events are often held in Colorado to accelerate students’ progress.

Blessings, June

Tony & June on Oregon Beach
With my husband, Tony, who left this Earthly realm on June 4, 2009