Steven Lane shares the remarkable story of a spontaneous spiritual awakening in his twenties that radically altered his perception of reality and set him on a decades-long journey of exploration, monastic life, and deep transformational work. In this conversation, we explore the paradox of awakening and integration, the dangers of spiritual bypassing, and the ongoing process of becoming more fully human.
What happens after a spiritual awakening?
Many people imagine awakening as the end of the journey — a permanent state of clarity, wisdom, and freedom. But for Steven Lane, a spontaneous awakening in his mid-twenties was only the beginning.
In this conversation, Steven shares the surprising reality that followed his awakening experience. Despite profound insights into the nature of reality, he discovered that old patterns, conditioning, and human limitations didn’t simply disappear.
Wanting to understand what had opened within him, Steven spent seven years as a Buddhist monk before eventually returning to the world — building a family, studying psychotherapy and coaching, and developing an integrative approach to transformational work.
In this episode, Jonathan Hermida and Steven explore the deeper arc of transformation: awakening, integration, and the ongoing work of becoming fully human.
What we explore in this episode...
🔗 Connect with Steven
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Steven Lane: [00:00:00] So you think once you have seen through the nature of reality and you've seen that everything is a dream and you've come in contact with whatever we want to call it, spirits god, universal
Jonathan Hermida: intelligence,
Steven Lane: you'd think you'd be plugged in and you'd
Jonathan Hermida: really have
Steven Lane: wisdom just coursing through your veins all day long.
And what I found was a very mixed experience. So sometimes I would have extraordinary wisdom. I would see things, I would know things. And
Jonathan Hermida: then
Steven Lane: sometimes this parallel self that was still there that I knew wasn't even real, but it was still there doing stuff. It would make the most stupid decisions. mentioned in your mid twenties you were working as a logistics consultant when you had a spontaneous awakening experience.
Yeah. Now we're gonna get into all the juicy details around what that meant and the aftermath of [00:01:00] that. But before we do, who would you say Steven Lane was prior to that experience?
So, I, I, I think there are a lot of different things going on in parallel.
Jonathan Hermida: First
Steven Lane: of all, I was a very, very competitive driven. Self-centered human being with very, very little awareness and very little mindfulness, but very curiously. Even if I go back to maybe when I was 10 years old, there was a kind of parallel reality taking place for me always because despite this very, very driven character who these days would
Jonathan Hermida: almost certainly
Steven Lane: have been diagnosed with a DHD alongside that was this little
Jonathan Hermida: voice [00:02:00]
Steven Lane: that said things to me such as, it's time
Jonathan Hermida: to sit
Steven Lane: and do your practice.
And I had no idea. I had no idea what that meant. So I'd be there 10 years of age and this message would come in. And I somehow knew, oh, this is a meaningful
message,
but I, I don't know what it means. So it, it took me quite a few years before it landed with a oath. This is what I'm supposed to be doing.
Hmm.
What do you, what do you think it
Jonathan Hermida: was,
Steven Lane: by the way, just jumping in real quick, uh, what do you think that message now, in retrospect, what, what was communicating to you and why do you think it was communicating to you at 10 years old? Yeah. I, I think there was, I think there was a fairly significant past life
Jonathan Hermida: inheritance
Steven Lane: of spiritual practice.
Jonathan Hermida: [00:03:00] And
Steven Lane: I think I was being invited to restart where I'd left off. And, and I say that of course, you know, as soon as we start talking about past lives, we've now shifted into some kind of spiritual model. And whether anything is true, I don't know, you know, we attribute meaning to things that are not necessarily there.
Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. So then that happens, that's staying with you, yen tell me more as you enter into your teenage years. Yeah, so my teenage years were very tricky because I'd, I'd grown up in the UK and I'd had a very mixed childhood. My father was a military officer with everything that went with that, who then became a school teacher and he was quite prone to temper tantrums and the occasional violence.[00:04:00]
And at the same time, I was growing up in the sixties and the seventies and. Young folk won't understand this these days, but we had a phenomenal amount of freedom in those days lit. Literally, you'd get kicked outta the house in the morning and nobody would think of you until later on in the evening. So there was a level where it was a very, very happy, free upbringing.
I loved school. I was, I was very sporty. I was very sociable. I almost would say I, I had a dream life and academically I was, I
Jonathan Hermida: was
Steven Lane: very, very good. I was almost certainly headed for Oxford or Cambridge, and then my
Jonathan Hermida: parents split
Steven Lane: up and my mother is German. And I finished up being catapulted outta the uk, suddenly in Germany, um, away from this beautiful small town mentality that I'd grown up [00:05:00] in.
And now in a
Jonathan Hermida: small city
Steven Lane: not being able to speak the language, struggling at school. And so I did probably what many teenagers do. I became a rebel. I became a serious rebel. I got into a huge amount of trouble. I
Jonathan Hermida: lost
Steven Lane: every bit of
Jonathan Hermida: interest
Steven Lane: in my education. I got into a lot of fights. I started drinking at an early age, and I became very, very hedonistic.
It was, it was all
Jonathan Hermida: about seeking
Steven Lane: pleasure. And as part of the way that I dealt with this huge change. I cut off, I completely cut off from all of my emotion, and it was a little bit fashionable in those days for a man just to do that and to be cool. So like nothing, nothing gets So I was [00:06:00] very in that mode of, I don't, I don't really feel anything now.
I was, I was very, in my head, I was very cut off from my emotions. And somehow I came through school and I, I went off and applied for this job as a
Jonathan Hermida: consultant.
Steven Lane: Really not expecting to get it. I wasn't well
Jonathan Hermida: qualified
Steven Lane: in any way for it. And the CEO was extraordinary. He instantly recognized potential in me and he said, I will give you the job, provided your willing simultaneously to go to business And then they started throwing phenomenal amounts of money at Hmm. So I had all of that stuff going on, but this spiritual side had also been developing simultaneously.
At 16,
I'd started to play judo almost every day. It was how I got the, the energy outta myself. [00:07:00] And at the end of judo, we had this, we had this wonderful Japanese teacher.
He sat down and he made us meditate. There
Jonathan Hermida: was, there
Steven Lane: was no choice. You got to the end of your judo session and you sat down and you did Japanese style zen and I instantly loved It was, it was like, oh wow, why haven't I been doing this my whole So I started to connect up to that inner voice that had been there saying, it's time to sit and do your practice.
And I
Jonathan Hermida: just found it
Steven Lane: so beautifully peaceful
Jonathan Hermida: just
Steven Lane: to come inwards with nothing, nothing to do, nothing to achieve. It was, it
Jonathan Hermida: was just such a
Steven Lane: radically different experience and it gave me a huge thirst to explore. So at
Jonathan Hermida: the [00:08:00] time
Steven Lane: living in Germany, there were two big
Jonathan Hermida: spiritual
Steven Lane: movements. One was this guy called Three Chin Moi, who went on to become a U Un Ambassador for Peace, I think, and he taught beautiful meditations.
He taught this meditation where you imagine a candle inside your heart that gradually melts. And I loved this meditation because it, it opened my heart chakra, which was ice cold and closed up until and it, it started
Jonathan Hermida: to
Steven Lane: open and it was like,
Jonathan Hermida: whoa,
Steven Lane: this is, this is amazing stuff. And then from there, um, a lot of people will have heard of Osho, who at the time was called Bawan Rashish.
And he had a lot of centers in Germany doing radically different kinds of meditation. Some of them, they, they'd literally put you in a padded room and you'd behave like a wild animal for hours on end. So really, really [00:09:00] crazy stuff. And I, I loved But as I got more into the world of business, I gradually
Jonathan Hermida: forgot about
Steven Lane: it.
I was being paid incredibly well. And now it was all about how do I get more, how do I get more pleasure in a very conventional way? How do I buy a better bottle of champagne? How do I impress a better looking girl? And that, that became my world for a good number of years. Well, that's not very unusual for young men that run into some money.
I, I, I, I guess not. No. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's so, it's so fascinating because it's so similar, especially for young men and the, the, the, the men that have had on this podcast, podcast seem to, many of us have gone through this similar journey. We kind of have to go through this hedonistic period, and then that has its limitations, and then when those
Jonathan Hermida: limitations hit,
Steven Lane: something [00:10:00] opens up.
Yeah. I, when, when I look back, I find it extraordinary how I was very clearly running from myself. But I had no idea. I had no idea that I was just trying to fill in as much space and time as possible to actually avoid all of the stuff underneath that had been unprocessed. Yeah. So bring us into this.
Awakening moment that you had in your mid twenties. So there, there, there's, there's another small story actually before the awakening that I guess I should bring up. So at this stage, I'd, I'd been sent to the uk. I was a director of, um, a small consultancy in the uk. I was living with a girl and one day she, so, so part of my background is I've had health problems all my life and I still had very, very serious lung
Jonathan Hermida: [00:11:00] problems
Steven Lane: at this stage.
And my girlfriend suggested we go to a talk by this very interesting healer. So I go to this talk with this healer and he didn't really say anything that inspired me, but he singled me out at the end and he said, you, you need to come and talk to So I go to talk to this guy, and he had the most extraordinary name because he wasn't really a healer, he was a
Jonathan Hermida: psychic.
Steven Lane: And I'd, I'd have a lot of mixed, mixed views about Um, and his name
Jonathan Hermida: was
Steven Lane: extraordinary. It was called Patrick Deadman, and that was his real name. And you know, I just think, how can you, how can that really be his name? But it was his real name. And so he
Jonathan Hermida: starts to say
Steven Lane: things, which were just astonishing to me because he said two things.
He said, you've had two very interesting experiences lately. He said, you crashed your car [00:12:00] three months ago. I said, I did. And he said, you got out untouched, un hurt, didn't And I said, yes. I crashed my car at 60 miles an hour head on collision. This was in the days we didn't have airbags. And I got outta my car.
I was shaken, but I was completely unharmed. And it seemed like a miracle. So he says that wasn't, that wasn't
Jonathan Hermida: coincidental.
Steven Lane: He said you were being called
And what do you mean by that? Well, I said, what do you mean called? He said, you will
Jonathan Hermida: understand
Steven Lane: in the coming years what I mean by that. So he didn't, he didn't elucidate at that stage. But then he said, the second thing that happened to you, he said, said, do you remember that trip you did to London about six weeks He said, there was something very strange about and, [00:13:00] and I said there was, but I had doubted what had happened. I'd driven 200 miles to London and when I got there, I hadn't used any petrol, any gas. The gas tank was untouched. And I remember thinking. Did I go into a trance and fill up the tank without remembering it?
What happened here? And
Jonathan Hermida: I
Steven Lane: can't remember the exact words that this psychic used, but he said, he said it was a, essentially, he said it was a glitch in the matrix. And I didn't understand any of those things. You know, we didn't have access to many books or the internet in those days, you know, this was just very strange stuff to me.
And he then went on to say, he said, you are going to become very involved with Buddhism. And he said, I really [00:14:00] recommend that you don't. He said, you're gonna fall for the whole thing, hook, line, and sinker. You're gonna get involved in the whole guru worship thing. And he said, it's not what you need. Don't do it.
So he gives me this warning and then he. Tells me about lots of other things that would happen in my life. And pretty much everything has turned true. So that was a kind of interesting basis. Mm-hmm. And probably about two months after this meeting, I heard a little voice in my head that said it is time to remove the veil of illusion.
And this has always been interesting to me because I will very, very honestly say whatever spiritual insight I've had, [00:15:00] none of it has been my own doing. I have, I've tried, I've edited in the way that we do. Yes. But my efforting never, ever led anywhere. It was only when I
Jonathan Hermida: stopped
Steven Lane: efforting. That somehow something was given, you know, we could use the word grace.
Yes. So these, these words come to me, it's time to remove the veil of illusion. And again, I had no idea. I didn't know what that meant, what, what, what illusion. I didn't know there was an illusion going on. Even though I had played with spirituality for a number of years, I hadn't understood awakening. Um, I thought it was
Jonathan Hermida: just
Steven Lane: a way to feel better, maybe even developed a few superpowers or something.
But, um, you know, I, I [00:16:00] really didn't
Jonathan Hermida: understand
Steven Lane: what awakening. Would mean, I'd heard the word enlightenment and I'd, I'd watched this TV program Kung Fu with David Carradine that inspired many people later on. So I had some idea you could become this very, very serene, serene person. But I, I, I didn't know what I was So I hear these words, and the day after I start to have very, very strange dreams in which this man appears in the dream every single night without fail. I thought based upon his clothing, that he was a wizard because I'd never seen Tibetan
Jonathan Hermida: Buddhist llamas
Steven Lane: before. I assumed this man was a wizard. He had this pointed hat and strange cloak, and he spoke gibberish.
He came into the dream and he just spoke gibberish [00:17:00] to
Jonathan Hermida: And.
Steven Lane: I would become semi lucid in the dream, and I would feel as if something was being downloaded is all I can describe it as. And this went on night, after night after night. And sometimes he would spontaneously start speaking English and make some sense, but most of the time he was speaking what I thought was gibberish.
It was Tibetan as it so happens. And after this had gone on, I don't know for how long? Maybe three or four
Jonathan Hermida: months.
Steven Lane: And I know it sounds absolutely fantastical, the whole thing does. Um, it's, it's hard for people to believe, I think this kind of thing. Um, you know, I'm, I'm always reminded of Leon saying, you know, with practice number nine, trust in the, um, mystery and magic of [00:18:00] transformation that there is real.
There's real mystery. There's real, there's real magic. And it's, it's surprising. It is. Yeah. So, so I wake up one night in the middle of the night, and the room is luminescent. It is bright beyond belief. In fact, I could see through things and everything had changed because I had seen that life is nothing but a dream.
I, I knew in that moment, nothing has any more reality than a dream. I've, I've been dreaming and I, I woke up from the dream and the main feeling, the main initial feeling was
Jonathan Hermida: extraordinary
Steven Lane: relief. It was, it was just, oh my God. [00:19:00] How did I not see this before? This is kind of really, really It's really, really obvious, but thank goodness, this is all just a dream.
Even I'm a dream.
Jonathan Hermida: So
Steven Lane: I, I saw through the whole thing and I felt very, very light. I instantly knew that most of my unprocessed emotional load, not all of it, as it so happens as I discovered later, but a lot of it had been lifted, and I just started to laugh and, and I would laugh for the next two days. Not continuously, but from time to time, this laughter would just arise at the craziness of
And I didn't have any reference points for what had happened because [00:20:00] I hadn't really studied awakening. I, I didn't really have a reference point. I just knew the veil of
Jonathan Hermida: illusion
Steven Lane: had been lifted. And the first thing that I did was I, I woke up my girlfriend and told her all about it, and she said, ah, yeah, I go back to sleep.
That happens to me all the time.
Spontaneous awakenings every night.
So I, I, I knew then that there wasn't going to be much point in talking about it. And the experience remained
Jonathan Hermida: on some
Steven Lane: level. So the insight, the insight that everything is a dream that we are living in an illusory reality. On some level, nothing is actually concrete in the way that it seems to be that that has stayed with me ever since.
That never [00:21:00] disappeared. Um, but the intensity of it disappeared. And I don't know, Jonathan, are you familiar with Jeffrey Martin? I'm not. I'm not at all. So, so ge, so Jeffrey Martin is
Jonathan Hermida: this
Steven Lane: academic yogi who wrote a book called Finders and he charted the entire journey. Awakening. I do actually have book, I have his book behind me, actually.
I just, yeah. Once you mentioned the title. Yeah. He's, he's slightly persona non grata at the moment because his name turned up in the
Jonathan Hermida: Epstein
Steven Lane: files. Oh, there you go. But I, I got huge respect for, for sure, Jeffrey. I, I think he's done a phenomenal job of describing something. You know, he's
Jonathan Hermida: interviewed
Steven Lane: tens of thousands of awakened people and one of the things he, he talks about is that when awakening lands [00:22:00] with somebody, their nervous system has to find a way
Jonathan Hermida: of integrating
Steven Lane: it.
Mm. You know, it's there. There's no
Jonathan Hermida: awakening
Steven Lane: that is separate to the human body and the human brain. It's not that the human brain causes the awakening, but the awakening has to function. Via the human brain. I think. I dunno how else it would be. And so he, he says it has to, it has to land in the, in the nervous system in some way.
And
Jonathan Hermida: as
Steven Lane: it lands in the nervous system, it will experiment in terms of how it's going to actually
Jonathan Hermida: be,
Steven Lane: how it's going to enable you to show up as, as an awakened
Jonathan Hermida: being.
Steven Lane: And I didn't understand any of this back then of course, but I noticed that the light of the awakening [00:23:00] definitely dimmed. And I understand now having really studied in depth what happens with awakening.
I understand now that there's a lot more to awakening than awakening. There is what is going on with your nervous system. There is what is going on with your psychological development. There is how are you in relationship to yourself and others. You know? There are, there are many, many more dimensions mentions.
So I found that my nervous system and my brain somehow took this awakening on board without it being as complete as it initially was. Mm-hmm.
And. What then followed was an almost nihilistic loss of interest in everything in my life. [00:24:00] I had no interest in doing the work that I was doing anymore at this stage. I had, um, I'd set up my own consultancy and I lost every bit of interest. I was not interested in making money. I wasn't interested in my girlfriend.
I lost all interest in drinking alcohol. It was, it was just like, whats, what's the point? What is, what is the meaning? So the, the awakened
Jonathan Hermida: state had shifted too
Steven Lane: far
and, and again, I, I didn't understand that. All I knew was okay, something amazing has taken
Jonathan Hermida: place
Steven Lane: and. I need to know a lot more about and I want to dedicate my entire life to spirituality. But there were some beautiful [00:25:00] immediate side effects, the first side effects and, and PE people often hate me when I
Jonathan Hermida: say
Steven Lane: this, apologies.
But my, my inner critic disappeared. So I, I haven't had an inner critic since that day. It just, it was, it was gone. And, you know, when I sit with clients day in, day out, they tell me about their inner critic and I can remember my inner Um, and yet it's slightly hard to relate to now. I, I, I'm almost in the space.
Why would you talk to
Jonathan Hermida: yourself
Steven Lane: like that? Yeah, sure. Um, so it, it, it left and it, it never came back. And whilst the transformation, this really was the beginning of transformation for me. It has been a long, long journey, [00:26:00] and I think I'm probably a very slow learner. You know,
Jonathan Hermida: I,
Steven Lane: I, it, it took a, it took a lot for me to really get the full message, I think.
Jonathan Hermida: But
Steven Lane: what did happen straight after that
Jonathan Hermida: first
Steven Lane: awakening
Jonathan Hermida: was
Steven Lane: fundamentally my motivation. My intention shifted. I can't believe how self-centered I had been. It's embarrassing when I think of it. Um, but that disappeared
Jonathan Hermida: and
Steven Lane: my motivation.
Jonathan Hermida: Shifted
Steven Lane: 180 degrees, you know, it was now suddenly, how can I serve
Jonathan Hermida: others?
Steven Lane: Um, how can I serve others and how do I do that? So I was left in this space, [00:27:00] these changes having happened and not knowing what to do with it. My business went bankrupt, by 'cause I just didn't turn up. The business went bankrupt. My girlfriend and I split up and I moved back to my hometown and moved in with my dad.
And here's the strange thing. So my dad lived in this tiny little town in Yorkshire, I think 4,000 people. And there I was one day it, walking through the town. And this guy in robes walks towards me
and I had to go and talk to him. And I said, well, what are you, you a Harry Krishna or what are you? And he said, no, I'm a, I'm a Buddhist monk in the Tibetan tradition. And we had a good long chat. [00:28:00] And he invited me to the Buddhist Center stroke
Jonathan Hermida: monastery,
Steven Lane: which was a place I played in when I was a child.
It was two miles away from where I grew up, and I played there as a child. So that was interesting And I go into this Buddhist monastery and he shows me around and we go into the gompa, the meditation room, and there on the wall is the picture of the llama who was still appearing in my dreams.
Every night. He appeared every night for 10 years, and his, his, his picture was there. And I said, who, who, who is that? he said,
Jonathan Hermida: oh, that
Steven Lane: was Cap Song Rimpoche. Um, but he's dead. And it actually happens that he died about two days before I had the awakening. [00:29:00] So again, I, I had no idea what to do with this.
It did not, it did not make any, any sense to But I became very, very interested in Buddhism at this stage. But I still needed to make a living. So I took a consultancy job with a major news agency. Who paid me an extraordinary amount of money, who took care of me. In fact, I hardly had to work there. It was one of these jobs, um, that fell from heaven.
I'd worked four days a week. They paid me an extraordinary amount of money for
Jonathan Hermida: that.
Steven Lane: They took me out for lunch every single day, and a lunch would be two or three hours. We'd drink wine or beer during lunch. So there was no work to do when we came back into the,
[00:30:00] and
Jonathan Hermida: it
Steven Lane: didn't satisfy me. Sure. It just, it was like, yeah, sure. It's, it's nice money. But now the calling was so strong. I need to explore this awakening much more deeply. And within, within a year, I had become a Buddhist monk. Um, which I remained as for the next seven years, and which was an extraordinary, extraordinary time of my life.
It was the, it
Jonathan Hermida: was
Steven Lane: the University of the mind for me. Um, you know, I had a lot of, a lot of time to explore what is there in the depths of our being and, and I'm sure to integrate your [00:31:00] awakening ever, ever more. Right. Just having the, the solid to the practice, the, the
Jonathan Hermida: language.
Steven Lane: I was very, I was very slow, as I said before, I was very slow to actually really understand the integration that was required. So that came much, much later for me. In instead, what I was doing, I was, I became very, very obsessed with what is called Riana Buddhism or Tantric Buddhism. Um, I think two years into being a Buddhist monk, I just knew that the practices I was doing, you know, you, you meditate on impermanence [00:32:00] you meditate on loving kindness and you meditate on emptiness, and they didn't feel complete to me.
And I'd heard about the Riana path because appearing in my dreams had given me the transmission of Riana Buddhism, specifically a practice called ham mudra. So I wanted to. Receive teachings on Mahamudra, but they wouldn't give them to me. They said, this is something you have to wait many, many more years for.
So I discovered that an initiation was being given into what they call highest yoga Tantra. And I snuck into it and it was a three day event. It took three days. We were literally there for three days. I snuck into and nobody noticed at
Jonathan Hermida: first. They did after
Steven Lane: a while. Um, and they decided not to kick me out.
And I [00:33:00] received this initiation that enabled me to practice ham mudra meditation, including this very famous Tibetan practice called, um, the Inner Heat
Jonathan Hermida: Practice,
Steven Lane: which became a major practice for me because with. The, in a heat
Jonathan Hermida: practice,
Steven Lane: which is a little bit like Kundalini practice in, in the Hindu tradition, you can make very, very rapid progress.
You steal your mind. Um, you, you find extraordinary, extraordinary clarity in the mind that gives you phenomenal insight. And you, you may be picking up Jonathan, that despite the awakening that had taken
place,
what had not disappeared at all was the driven nature. I was as driven as I was before, [00:34:00] and it has been a theme throughout my whole life to have to repeatedly slow myself down.
So you can imagine when I, I was attending. Leon's course, and he presents this, um,
Jonathan Hermida: first
Steven Lane: practice, isn't it? The slow everything down. Um, I just found it so hilarious because there was the message, again, for me, slow down because it just seemed to be a part of how my nervous system functions. Yeah. Go for everything
Jonathan Hermida: intensely.
Steven Lane: Yeah. Hyperfocus. And, and yet there was this message, it came to me many, many, many times in my life. Slow, slow, everything down. [00:35:00] Um, this is not something, this is not about achieving. So it was curious to me that I'd had this awakening and that was really left completely untouched. Um, as were a lot of things, as were a lot of things as it
Jonathan Hermida: turns
Steven Lane: out.
And it was also strange to me as well that on some level I hadn't become super wise.
So you think once you have seen through the nature of reality and you've seen that everything is a dream and you've come in contact with whatever we want to call it, spirits god, universal
Jonathan Hermida: intelligence,
Steven Lane: you'd think you'd be plugged in and you'd
Jonathan Hermida: really have
Steven Lane: wisdom just coursing through your veins all day long.
And [00:36:00] what I found was a very mixed experience. So sometimes I would have extraordinary wisdom. I would see things, I would know things. And
Jonathan Hermida: then
Steven Lane: sometimes this parallel self that was still there that I knew wasn't even real, but it was still there doing stuff. It would make the most stupid decisions. Like what, what was an example?
Well, even staying in the organization that I was, the Buddhist organization that I was in started off as a very nice, pure Buddhist organization. And it gradually began to reveal some very, very ugly cult-like behaviors. Um, it was very undemocratic. Mm-hmm. Um, and very early on I knew [00:37:00] I'm not gonna get on well with this
Jonathan Hermida: organization.
Steven Lane: I'm a person who. Believes in freedom. I'm a
Jonathan Hermida: person
Steven Lane: who believes in fairness. I'm a person who believes in democracy. My values in this organization were very opposed. It turns out some of it was just very typical of how Tibetan Buddhism was run in
Jonathan Hermida: Tibet for
Steven Lane: a long time. But some of it was just very, yeah, very cult-like behavior.
So I saw it, but this other part of me basically said, ah, don't worry about that. This is a great setup. You've got
Jonathan Hermida: all day
Steven Lane: long to meditate. Just forget about that. Ignore it. And it felt wrong deep down. I, I just knew this is not, you know, I think
Jonathan Hermida: within two
Steven Lane: years I knew it's time to change but I stayed with it for seven years, two years in.
You thought it was time to [00:38:00] change path, but you stayed an extra five. I stayed an extra five, yeah.
Jonathan Hermida: And what was your experience in those five
Steven Lane: years? Did it feel like you just, that were, were the alarm bells continuing to go off? Oh, the
Jonathan Hermida: alarm
Steven Lane: bells got louder and louder initially. Yeah. And then four years in, I'd
Jonathan Hermida: completed
Steven Lane: the training that they were putting it through to become a, a teacher of Tibetan Buddhism.
And they dispatched me, I think it was a punishment actually, because I was objecting
Jonathan Hermida: to so many things
Steven Lane: at that stage. Um, they dispatched me to
Jonathan Hermida: Spain
Steven Lane: and the, the, the main Tibetan llama called me into his room one day and he, he said, how do you like the heat? And I said, the heat. Oh gosh, I'm dreadful with heat.
I'm really, really bad with heat. He said, I don't
Jonathan Hermida: think Seil
Steven Lane: se, I don't think it's, he said, I don't think it's too hot. He [00:39:00] said, you're going there. Here's a one-way ticket. And it turned out to be the hottest place in Europe. Oh yeah. I've been there in August. I know it well firsthand. It's in, it's, you know it well, yeah.
Unbelievable how hot it gets.
Yeah. So I, I arrived there in this very alien culture, which I grew to love, by the way. I
Jonathan Hermida: absolutely grew
Steven Lane: to love Spain and the Spanish people and their whole way of life. But the instructions I was given was spend 10 hours a day meditating and then spend time mixing with Spanish people. Wear your lay clothes, eat meat, drink alcohol if you want to do whatever it takes to connect to I was essentially given the instruction live a tantric lifestyle in Spain. So I, I had a number of years. Um, living like this with a huge [00:40:00] amount of time to do very deep meditation and at the same time, time to connect to people. And it was during that time that I actually discovered the first foundations for what I later discovered in Leon's course.
Mm-hmm. Um, it just happened to be that every afternoon people would
Jonathan Hermida: come to
Steven Lane: me with their problems. Um, the assumption being that a Buddhist monk has all of the solutions, you know, people have a lot of ideas. So people would come into me and they would tell me about their marriage problems or they'd
Jonathan Hermida: tell me
Steven Lane: about their illnesses or what, whatever it may be.
And I had no idea, I had no training in anything like this. I'd had no training in. Therapy or anything of the likes, I didn't know what to do [00:41:00] other than ask my inner wisdom. And at that particular time in Seville, I was renowned for
Jonathan Hermida: teaching
Steven Lane: and giving an initiation into a Buddhist deity practice called Tara.
Um, Tara is a female deity. She's the deity of love and compassion in action. And many, many thousands of people received this initiation from me and reported extraordinary outcomes. So when people came to me, I asked Tara, what do we, what do I do with this situation? And I trusted that the answers would come.
And I sat and just created a space, or better said, Tara created a space in which
Jonathan Hermida: something
Steven Lane: could [00:42:00] happen. I didn't really think of it in terms of transformation, right? Back then. It was, it was just, okay, there's a space here. People are gonna come and talk to me. I don't particularly know
Jonathan Hermida: what
Steven Lane: to say.
Jonathan Hermida: Um,
Steven Lane: let's see what emerges from the space.
And it was
Jonathan Hermida: extraordinary.
Steven Lane: Because people got healed from illnesses. Um, and I am not a healer. And yet healing took place. Okay? People discovered what to do with their relationships. They discovered what to do with their spiritual that weren't working. It just somehow magically emerged in the space.
And I later unlearned how to do all of that. By the way, I, I relearnt it with Leon. You actively unlearned it or [00:43:00] did it just, just from time lapsing. It was, it was unlearned when I went through formal training in psychotherapy. Gotcha. And then coaching. Okay. Because they didn't teach me that that wisdom is available to everybody.
It's, it's in there. They, they didn't teach us that instead, you know, you train in psychotherapy and related things, and they teach you structure and sometimes they teach you a set of questions. So I, I unlearned what I, what I was doing, which worked really well. Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic. And so then you give up your robes, and you mentioned that you got married shortly after, and that was quite a disastrous experience.
This was the lack of wisdom again. Hmm. On one level, the wisdom actually was speaking So I, I [00:44:00] fell in love with this Spanish lady, and at this stage I hadn't had a woman in seven years, and I had a real intense yearning
Jonathan Hermida: for female
Steven Lane: connection. So I fell in love with this Spanish lady and my wisdom essentially said, oh, watch out.
This is, this is not good. And then this other me, the conditioned self that was living alongside the awaken self. it said We won't listen to that. And I got married and we had a child and I did the typical thing that many men do. I married my mother and I had a very poor relationship with my mother and it was disastrous.
It was the unhappiest [00:45:00] time in my life and I went through a lot of spiritual bypassing. It was when I first really learned, um,
Jonathan Hermida: what spiritual
Steven Lane: bypassing is. It's just I didn't know I was doing it. Yeah. You know, I was trying to deal with this disastrous marriage by withdrawing and just sitting in meditation for many hours on end, just hoping, ah, that will sort everything out.
The positive vibes from my meditation will magically transform this relationship.
Jonathan Hermida: And
Steven Lane: it just progressively, progressively got worse. Um, un until I reached the stage where it was very, very clear, this has gotta end. Mm. And we were living, we were living together in the uk and [00:46:00] paradoxically she was Spanish.
But I decided then to move to Spain. And I remember arriving in Malaga Airport, a free man, and it was the most extraordinary feeling, almost as good as awakening. You know, it was the beginning of restarting my life and also starting to rediscover. Who I was spiritually, because once I gave back my robes, I developed a lot of, a lot of resistance
Jonathan Hermida: to
Steven Lane: Tibetan Buddhism and a massive resistance to any kind of guru worship or guru devotion.
Um, um, you know, it was very much, okay, I, I need to rediscover spirituality. So the
Jonathan Hermida: search,
Steven Lane: [00:47:00] the
Jonathan Hermida: search
Steven Lane: began again, even though the fundamental awakening was still there in the the searching began again. Mm-hmm. Hmm hmm. And it took a different form. This time. This time it, it, it, because you now were aware of the awakening, it seemed that now your mind was trying to awaken further.
Meaning you, you went
Jonathan Hermida: through
Steven Lane: modalities like psychotherapy and
Jonathan Hermida: eventually
Steven Lane: coaching. Correct. Yeah, so, so while I, while I was, while I was married, I, I trained in a whole load of different stuff, psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, homeopathy, um, and NLP and NLP coaching, and then gradually other forms of coaching.
So I learned a lot of techniques.
Jonathan Hermida: Um,
Steven Lane: and while I was doing that, I was working as an [00:48:00] NGO consultant and I was working with, with teams, and again, I was using disability while I was working with teams of just creating a space and letting stuff emerge. Again, I didn't understand this at the time. I just knew if I sit with a team, create the space, invite
Jonathan Hermida: Tara
Steven Lane: to come into the space, which is really the same as we do in transformational coaching, where we invite spirit something, something would happen.
So I had, I had all of that, and then I moved to Spain and my Spanish is reasonably fluent or was, it's pretty rusty these days. It was reasonably fluent. So I started doing sessions for people in Spain, which is when the next mind blowing
Jonathan Hermida: experience
Steven Lane: took place for me. That was completely [00:49:00] outside of my Buddhist framework.
Again, it sounds
Jonathan Hermida: absolutely
Steven Lane: crazy and who knows what was going on, but I was, I was there doing a, we can call it a healing session with a lady. Who was in a tremendous amount
Jonathan Hermida: of
Steven Lane: psychological pain. She had scarred herself with acid. She had destroyed her face. She had the deepest suffering within her,
Jonathan Hermida: and
Steven Lane: she went into some kind of a t trance as we sat and I suddenly witnessed, directly witnessed visually, three angels appear at her head and they looked at me.
I looked at them and I didn't know what to think of it. [00:50:00] Angels were not part of my framework as a Buddhist theis. Okay. The is, they have a very special way of being. They have a very specific but not angels. I, at that time, despised anything to do with Christianity. Um, my upbringing had been a Christian upbringing and I despised it.
It
Jonathan Hermida: was
Steven Lane: everything I disliked about religion. So I was horrified to see angels, and they proceeded to do a healing on this lady, and she would alternate making this horrendous sound. I said It was the sound of hell. And she'd be go, oh, and it was this horrible sound. It's like something from a horror movie,
Jonathan Hermida: and
Steven Lane: then there'd be a silence, and then the opposite would happen.
She somehow filled up with peace and light and [00:51:00] this went on for two hours. And I was just sitting there watching the whole thing and at the end of it, she opened her eyes and she said to me, Chappel, which was Chappel is my Buddhist name, and that's what she knew me by. She said, Cherelle, did you see the angels?
So again, it was interesting to me, I'm not just, yeah, hallucinating. I never saw this lady again, by the Um, I dunno what happened to her after that. There was, there was no follow up. But that night I had a dream and the three angels came into my dream and they said, Stephen, it is time to do God's work.
Are you ready? Now, I mentioned that I hated [00:52:00] everything to do with Christianity and that included the God word. I'm fine with the word God now, but at that time I was 38 years of age. At that time, I really, really. Had a resistance to the God word. So when they said, are you ready to do God's work? I said, hell no.
And they looked very disappointed. And they disappeared and that was that. So I'd never saw those angels in that particular format again. I've felt their presence many times since, but I've never seen them again. Yeah. What made you identify them as angels? What, uh, what did they look like? Precisely? So, so they, they were beings of light and they had wings.
Hmm. Um, they were beings of light, and yet they had form of some kind. It was like a very subtle form, and it was just [00:53:00] very, very, yeah. Obvious to me. There was one, one male, there were two females. It was very obvious to me. They were angels. Sure, sure. Yeah. Incredible. Incredible. And, and I
Jonathan Hermida: guess for
Steven Lane: that particular person who was receiving the healing, who was a Spanish Catholic, the angels would've been appropriate.
Yeah. Yeah. It makes sense. Makes sense. Yeah. It's incredible how your journey is
Jonathan Hermida: just filled
Steven Lane: with all of these, you mentioned it, moments of grace, just grace filled experiences, moments of grace with me doing my best not to receive it. The extraordinary thing. Active resistance. Yeah. Active resistance. Yeah.
It's unbelievable. Yeah, it's unbelievable. And, and so then you
Jonathan Hermida: still,
Steven Lane: you, you're, you are now though, doing God's work. However, you're still stepping, even though you said no, you don't want to, you said hell [00:54:00] no. In fact, I, I said, I said hell no, but um. My journey did then take me back to, yeah, Tibetan Buddhism, but into a radically different form of Tibetan Buddhism.
It took me into what is called Zog Chen, which is a little bit similar, I guess to adv Viter. It is the, the non, the direct, non-dual path in Buddhism. And I was in a bookshop one day. I saw a book called The Self Perfected State by a Buddhist, um, called, called Namca Norbu. And
Jonathan Hermida: instantly
Steven Lane: the driven part of said, that's what you need to do.
Mm, go and seek this man out. Every bit of
Jonathan Hermida: me said,
Steven Lane: okay, forget everything else.
Jonathan Hermida: Go
Steven Lane: and find this man and receive
teachings.
So I traveled with my wife. Who was pregnant at Um,
Jonathan Hermida: 20
Steven Lane: years [00:55:00] ago, we traveled to Italy where he lived to this beautiful part of Tuscany and he happened to be giving a two week retreat and teaching on Zog Chen.
And I received all of these extraordinary instructions and I felt now I finally come home. This, this is the teaching I've been seeking. It's the teaching that is beyond
Jonathan Hermida: effort
Steven Lane: because
Jonathan Hermida: Chen teaches
Steven Lane: very similar to Zen. I guess you are already enlightened, you just don't know it. That's right. Yeah, yeah, What, what was fatherhood like throughout this period? So you are on this journey, you're also having these, you know, continued experiences. How did you relate to fatherhood at that time? So, so. Fatherhood from my first wife, my Spanish wife. Right? Sure. [00:56:00] And I maintained a lot of contact with my daughter and had an absolutely fantastic relationship.
And I gradually embraced fatherhood because initially I found it very, very difficult. You know, I had, I had the mindset, my life is about meditation, not about changing diapers.
Little did you know, that was the teaching. Little, little did I know. Yeah. So, yeah, so, so I, I gradually, I gradually shifted into the role of fatherhood. And then I met my, my second wife, my Irish wife, who I've been with for 24 years now, and we have a child together. And, and that was a very different experience, I guess, because there was a lot less resistance at this stage.
[00:57:00] I was, I was more integrated. And the practice of Zog Chen is very, very much about integration. You know, it's, it's not, you're not sitting on, sitting on your cushion somehow witnessing all of this stuff that's going on that you know isn't real and kind of not really fully participating in life. Zog Chen
Jonathan Hermida: is,
Steven Lane: you dive in there, you get dirty.
Yeah, You are
Jonathan Hermida: experiencing
Steven Lane: everything from the
Jonathan Hermida: inside,
Steven Lane: but without clinging, right? You are, you are relaxing into openness. Continuously, um, but you are living it. So, you know, this was the, the completion that I was seeking. And at this stage it was, it was mixed with making a living by being in
Jonathan Hermida: service
Steven Lane: primarily, um, doing
Jonathan Hermida: transformational
Steven Lane: sessions with clients, whatever form that [00:58:00] took.
Hmm. And, and how did you find your, so this, this was already post deep coaching intensive when you were offering this, or this was prior to that? This, this was prior because I, I had a sense that I needed to do transformational coaching and it didn't seem to exist. I didn't know that phrase. Yeah. Um, but I cobbled.
My own version of transformational coaching together, based upon what I'd learned from my conventional coaching courses and from what I understood from spirituality and non-duality, and to some extent from the framework I'd learned in Eric Sonian hypnotherapy, um, which is the most beautiful framework for doing any work.
And I actually think all of coaching actually is done within an Ericksonian [00:59:00] framework on some level. So I, I, I cobbled it together and it kind of worked. And I say it kind of worked because what I didn't understand, I hadn't come
Jonathan Hermida: back to
Steven Lane: what I had discovered when I was a monk. I didn't
Jonathan Hermida: understand
Steven Lane: that I didn't need to do the work.
I, I didn't have to make the transformation happen. You know, so I was efforting still. It was like, I've gotta use all these techniques that I've learned and I've gotta ask some really cool questions and I've gotta teach people what they need to know. And I remember when I first witnessed Leon coaching, I thought, he's hardly said a word.
He's, he actually hasn't really done anything, [01:00:00] but somehow a shift
Jonathan Hermida: has taken place. How does
Steven Lane: he do that? Yeah. How does he just sit there in that space so quiet and say things at a very, very appropriate and somebody shifts. How is he doing that? And even though I can practice that. To
Jonathan Hermida: some
Steven Lane: extent. I am still every time in awe when I watch
Jonathan Hermida: Leon
Steven Lane: you know, it's an extraordinary thing to watch time and time again.
Yeah. It's a, it's another level of mastery Yes. Around that, that modality you can say. Yeah. It's incredible. Yes. And, and, you know, the whole, and I, I guess as the years go by, I become more and more
Jonathan Hermida: steeped
Steven Lane: in the understanding that if [01:01:00] we just
Jonathan Hermida: create
Steven Lane: the space, we really, really create the space. emergence takes place.
Hmm. And I love that word, emergence. It's, you know, it's one of my favorite words. Emergence takes place and then transformation takes
Jonathan Hermida: place.
Steven Lane: Yeah. And. In recent years, I've, I've really taken Leon's concepts, Leon's way of doing things. I've taken it into the corporate world, um, alongside some other structures such as Otto Sharma Theory U, which fits
Jonathan Hermida: very
Steven Lane: nicely with what Leon does.
Yeah. Um, and I've, I've run sessions and I've been absolutely astonished how organizations transform. Of course, I've probably used [01:02:00] different language a lot of the time, according to who the organization was, but
Jonathan Hermida: the principles
Steven Lane: have been the same. Create the space, watch for what wants to emerge,
Jonathan Hermida: and
Steven Lane: transformation just seems to follow.
Yeah.
Jonathan Hermida: Especially
Steven Lane: when there's a readiness on the part of the individual or in, in, in, uh, it's this the case of an organization on the organizational bat. Yeah. Yeah. There has to be a willingness. Yeah. There has to be a willingness from somebody anyway. I mean, right, right. Yeah. Yeah. You know, pre preferably the ceo, um, needs to be willing and Sure.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that willingness is often very subtle as we know. You know, they're not necessarily approaching us saying, I want to make my organization into some super conscious, contemporary organization, and we're ready to do this amazing, transformational work. But they're not coming to you with that.
They're coming to you [01:03:00] with something not working. Yeah. In our organization. And we think that there might be a better way, and we'd like to explore that. Yeah. It's extraordinary what can happen, you know, as, uh, from a, from a held, from a deeply held space with, with intention. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. What's incredible about your story is that we're not done yet in terms of these transformative experiences.
There was another incident that happened not too long ago, a cardiac incident that further awakened you in some regards. There, there, there is, I, I'll actually go back two months before the cardiac incident because I was approached a year before the cardiac incident. I was approached outta the blue by an acquaintance in Japan who said, my zen master has asked if you would like
Jonathan Hermida: to
Steven Lane: train with him in Cohen practice.[01:04:00]
You know, these Japanese cos, and I knew of Cohen's 'cause I'd always been interested in Zen. My understanding was cen practice was a long, a long thing. You'd be given a cone and you'd practice that one cone for many years. So I said yes, just generally because I say yes to most And so I start having zoom sessions with this zen master, whose name I still do not know by I have no idea who he is. And we meet three or four times a week. And at the outset, he said, in one year we're going to go through 100 cones. Highly unusual, highly unusual And he said, you are already very awakened, but you haven't completed
Jonathan Hermida: integration
Steven Lane: And he said, this cone practice will lead you to [01:05:00] full integration.
And he started off with this very, very famous cone. And he said, he said, what is Moo? Have you heard this before, yes. Yeah. He said, what is Moo? And I, I, I said, give me some context.
Jonathan Hermida: Mine
Steven Lane: took over. Mine took
Jonathan Hermida: over.
Steven Lane: Yeah. And he said, he said, no, what is Moo? And he said, I will talk to you again in two days time.
You must know what Moo is in two days And so I didn't work for two days and I sat with this for two days and I, I really had no idea what to do with it. I just didn't know how to answer And then, as seems to happen with me, because I really. Myself, never get anything.
[01:06:00] I woke up in the
Jonathan Hermida: night
Steven Lane: and I had full clarity on what was being pointed to non-con conceptually. And I speak to this master the next
Jonathan Hermida: day
Steven Lane: and I tell him what Moo is and he's, he's half happy What was your answer to him? What did you answer? I, I, I said something along the lines of, I
Jonathan Hermida: said,
Steven Lane: Moo is what is, and it's all that It was something along those lines. Yeah. And he was, and you know, the way it works with these Zen masters
Jonathan Hermida: is
Steven Lane: two people could give them the same answer and they might say that one of them is wrong. Sure, You know? Yeah. It's not about the answer. They're checking. Yeah, they're checking something else.
But anyway, he was half happy with And then he said to me,
Jonathan Hermida: [01:07:00] express
Steven Lane: it in a way that I can really know if you have discovered what Moo is. And again, something non-conceptual arose within me and I gave him, I gave him the answer. Um, and the answer was, Moo is moo.
And he said, yes, very good. You've, you've, you've, you've passed the first code and now we have 99 more to go. That's incredible. That's incredible. And I never got to the end. Um, because I got COVID, I got very, very bad COVID, which interrupted it. Um. And probably two months after getting COVID, I started to have episodes of losing
Jonathan Hermida: [01:08:00] consciousness.
Steven Lane: And then one day I lost consciousness big time. And when I came to, I knew I was in the process of dying. Um, I couldn't hold consciousness for very, very long. I somehow managed to crawl to the couch and lie on the couch. And my wife was having a bath at the time and she heard me moaning. So she came running naked outta the bathroom.
Sees that I am passing out and starts to do CPR on me. And from time to time I come to and see my wife naked, straddle on top of me giving me CPR, which is still on some level a hilarious but traumatic memory. And an ambulance crew [01:09:00] arrives and they can't do anything with me. And a second ambulance crew arrives and they managed to keep me alive.
But I've, I've lost consciousness. I've had seizures over 70 times at this
Jonathan Hermida: stage,
Steven Lane: which is still impacting me because I definitely got a level of brain damage from it. Um, my IQ is
Jonathan Hermida: definitely
Steven Lane: 50 points down at this stage and, um, memory is not what it used to be. But eventually, eventually they take me off to the hospital.
The hospital has no idea what to do with me. A local regional hospital. There's a young doctor there, it's a Sunday evening and he says, never seen anything like this. Dunno what to So they put me in a, in an ambulance and send me off to Dublin, which is an hour and a half and I'm lying in the back of this ambulance and I feel blissfully happy.
Jonathan Hermida: This
Steven Lane: calm [01:10:00] just came over me and I, at this stage, I'm fairly certain that I'm going to die. And I'm
Jonathan Hermida: very surprised. I'm very,
Steven Lane: very surprised that death is arriving
Jonathan Hermida: so soon.
Steven Lane: But it just seems okay. It's inevitable. One of the paramedics had said to my wife, um,
Jonathan Hermida: don't,
Steven Lane: don't drive your car to the hospital. Go with the, go with the crew.
Um, he's probably not going to make So they get me to Dublin into this extraordinary high-tech cardiac unit, and they say you've got what is called third degree heart block. Nothing to do with a heart attack, nothing to do with blocked arteries. The battery, the heart's battery has stopped working. The electrical circuits have [01:11:00] stopped.
I burned myself out. Wow. The constant efforting of my life, the living life, to fully, I think, and it was life's final message to me to slow down. It was definitely life's final message to slow down. So I'm, I'm in this unit for two weeks, touch and go for two weeks. Eventually I'm discharged, sent home, I lie down in bed thinking, wow, this is all over.
And my wife watches me die. And it was the quintessential
Jonathan Hermida: dying
Steven Lane: experience that we hear of, you know, going down the golden tunnel of light and going into a space of utter, utter love. And it felt very, very similar to my initial awakening and really, [01:12:00] really being perfectly okay with the whole thing. It's like, okay, this
Jonathan Hermida: is cool.
Steven Lane: This actually is way better than ordinary life, actually. Yeah, we'll go with this.
And,
Jonathan Hermida: and then
Steven Lane: something inside saying, no, it's, it's not your time. And coming back and, and feeling immensely disappointed that I've come back and my wife there looking at me saying, breathe, breathe, breathe. Because apparently I hadn't breathed in a long time and. The same thing happened another two nights in a row.
Um, and what is that about? I don't, I don't know. It was like another preview. Another preview of something and losing fear of death because I think we all live our life
Jonathan Hermida: on some
Steven Lane: level in fear of death. We are biologically [01:13:00] predisposed to hold on to life, and we make a lot of decisions based upon that holding on to life.
And so I, I think that final lesson was okay. You can, you can let go even of that layer of holding on and probably the
Jonathan Hermida: consequence of that whole
Steven Lane: experience was finally some degree. Of wisdom. Wisdom. I'll probably never really get to proper wisdom, but some degree of wisdom started to arrive and a lot more integration in terms of now realizing, okay, my nervous system has actually been quite stressed, much of my life.
There's still work to do. And so [01:14:00] I, I've spent in the last four years since that event, a lot of time working on my nervous system and discovering that as I worked on my nervous system, my awakening actually stabilized much more deeply. And that has been a surprise to me because. Over the years. I can't tell you, Jonathan, how many people have come to me for post awakening coaching And they'd say something along the lines of, I've had this amazing awakening. I know that I'm not my mind. I know that I'm not my body. I know that I'm not my thoughts. Why am I so anxious still? Why am I so
Jonathan Hermida: depressed
Steven Lane: I, I heard this time and time again, and I did people a great disservice for many years because I said to them, well, if you're still anxious and depressed, you didn't wake [01:15:00] up.
And I think at
Jonathan Hermida: some stage
Steven Lane: I read Shanti, his book, um, I can't remember what it's called, maybe the End of the End of Your World, where he talks about post awakening problems. And I love Shanti as a. Teacher, um,
Jonathan Hermida: absolutely
Steven Lane: beautiful, direct, non-dogmatic path. Um, has, it, has been a big part of what I've done alongside Zog Chen.
And so I started to do a lot more research into why do people not integrate after
Jonathan Hermida: they've
Steven Lane: had awakening, um, experiences or, or apparent full awakenings. And I've, I
Jonathan Hermida: started
Steven Lane: to find a lot of
Jonathan Hermida: answers
Steven Lane: related to incomplete nervous system, um, work related to trauma not having been fully [01:16:00] processed related to, um,
Jonathan Hermida: attachment
Steven Lane: issues from early life, not having been resolved, um, related to.
Not really feeling relaxed at the level of
Jonathan Hermida: relationship
Steven Lane: with the world or oneself. So all of these other things that potentially were operating alongside awakening. And so that's a lot of the work that I do now, a a lot of people come to me having had those experiences and wanting
Jonathan Hermida: to
Steven Lane: know why am I still having
Jonathan Hermida: this
Steven Lane: experience?
I am awakened, um, what, what, what do I do with it? And really coaching people through that. And what, what does a nervous system integration look like when you work with someone? What is, um,
Jonathan Hermida: so
Steven Lane: it's, it's, it's really first of all looking at, is the nervous [01:17:00] system
Jonathan Hermida: consistently
Steven Lane: stable and calm, or is the
Jonathan Hermida: nervous
Steven Lane: system being triggered?
Is it being agitated? And if anybody is still on any level, still in a state of seeking, they're gonna be reactive still on some level, and the nervous system is going to get triggered. And
Jonathan Hermida: as soon
Steven Lane: as the nervous system gets triggered, you start to move away from your core sense of presence, and you start to move and try and fix something.
Yeah. On the outside. So what it really looks like time and time again, is
Jonathan Hermida: coming
Steven Lane: back to yourself, coming back to presence, coming back to your experience of spirit and relaxing into it and, and trusting it. Even, even if trauma gets [01:18:00] triggered, that really, you know, for, for a long time I was doing trauma work, believing that the.
Approach to trauma work was to go back into somebody's
Jonathan Hermida: past
Steven Lane: and resolve what happened to And modern day trauma work doesn't really put that as the first thing that you do. That might be something you do at some late stage, but modern day trauma work is work with the nervous system, work with the body somatically, work with whatever attachment wounds that, and then most of the other stuff sorts itself
Jonathan Hermida: out.
Steven Lane: It's very true. It's very true. Yeah. And the, the body keeps the
Jonathan Hermida: score,
Steven Lane: the, the traumas living in our body right now, in this moment. Yes. Can we access it? Can we soften? Can we release? Yeah. Yeah. That is the front, front lines. And it's the very opposite of [01:19:00] spiritual bypassing. That's right. That's right.
You're, you're head on, head on with it. Yeah. You're, you're head on with it. Yet spiritual bypassing. It's so, it's so tempting. You know, this, it seems as if, it seems as if only we can transcend, if only we can have this profound spiritual awakening, everything else will just sort itself out. It will magically all sort itself out, and it kind of seems to, for some very, very rare people.
But for 99% of people who awaken,
Jonathan Hermida: awake
Steven Lane: is still the beginning of a long process in my experience. Experience, yeah. Yeah. I mean, 'cause the reflex towards
Jonathan Hermida: i
Steven Lane: attachment, you know, there, there's still attachment to identity happening. Yes. You know, and to, to
Jonathan Hermida: aspects
Steven Lane: of one's life and, you know, [01:20:00] uh, so that, that grip then creates friction, creates tension, creates continued chaos.
Until we loosen that grip completely and become completely non-attached to whatever, and really be present in, in the moment and
Jonathan Hermida: settled
Steven Lane: in our being. You know, we're, we're going to have turmoil or we're gonna experience aspects of our life from through a lens of turmoil. Yeah. Yes, yes. And, and you know, in, in Buddhism, the term that is used is self grasping, grasping at an inherently existing self grasping at an inherently
Jonathan Hermida: existing
Steven Lane: world.
So in Buddhism, and especially in Zog Chen, the practice over and over again is to notice when grasping is taking place and to relax back into presence. And there was a very famous, controversial Tibetan Lama, um, called ch Yum Trumper. He lived a lot of his life in the States, [01:21:00] and he, he had this phrase where he said.
As you let go, he said, you are gonna free fall without a parachute. And he said, it's gonna be very, very disconcerting. All of your reference points are going to be removed. He said, but the good news is you are free falling without a parachute, but there is no ground. That's right. That's right. That's right.
Yeah. And I think that really is what the spiritual path is, isn't it? It's just, you know, this long, long journey of over and over and over again, noticing where we're holding on in the smallest ways. It gradually becomes the smallest ways of holding on. And I still find, I have blind
Jonathan Hermida: spots
Steven Lane: Oh yeah.
Oh yeah. I'm constantly astonished that I [01:22:00] have blind spots sometimes They're huge. It's so true. And you know, so I
Jonathan Hermida: still,
Steven Lane: I still regularly, um, have
Jonathan Hermida: coaching,
Steven Lane: I still regularly have meetings with teachers because I know there's still blind spots there that have to be looked at and
Jonathan Hermida: released.
Steven Lane: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's an, uh, life's lifelong journey of refinement into being.
Yes. I would argue Yes. I I I, I was very interested when I started studying what, um, Jeffrey Martin had done with his work because he describes, I dunno if you remember this from his book, but he discovers that 5% of human population have shifted into what is called fundamental wellbeing. Right? Right. And, and what that essentially means is that the brain [01:23:00] no longer has negativity bias.
Because negativity bias stops you awakening. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And he ex, he describes a set of
Jonathan Hermida: practices,
Steven Lane: very, very diverse set of practices that can shift a person into fundamental wellbeing, literally physiologically. And they've measured this in FM RI machines, physiologically, the brain changes.
And from that moment onwards, there is always a deep rooted sense of everything is fundamentally okay. Yes. It doesn't mean all your problems disappear, it doesn't mean you become superhuman or clairvoyant or whatever. But this very significant
Jonathan Hermida: shift
Steven Lane: of being
Jonathan Hermida: Yeah.
Steven Lane: Has taken place. And I often think, Jeffrey, you know, I [01:24:00] think a lot of people.
Chase
Jonathan Hermida: awakening
Steven Lane: via nodule paths, et And I think it's very, very often the inappropriate path for a lot of people. I think
Jonathan Hermida: shifting
Steven Lane: into this fundamental wellbeing is really what is required for humanity at the moment because
Jonathan Hermida: there, there
Steven Lane: is a critical mass when, I dunno what the percentage is, I think it has been worked out by the TM movement.
At
Jonathan Hermida: some stage
Steven Lane: there's a critical mass of when enough people have shifted into that space, the world just starts to transform. And I think we're very close to
Jonathan Hermida: I
Steven Lane: think so too. I There are, there it is just so far ranging the amount of people that are not just waking up but, but moving, like you said, into this state of fundamental wellbeing.
And, and everybody's journey is different. I, you know, I went through the non-dual journey [01:25:00] myself, and that was, a lot of it had to do with spiritual bypassing because it was the only place that I can be, I, I, I was not assaulted by my own self, you know? And, and the emotions that I was, uh, running away from.
So it, it is, it is, you know, I think part of whatever life presents us and whatever journey we, we kind of undertake is, is part of our journey that then leads us to this place of greater recognition later on. And so,
Jonathan Hermida: if, if
Steven Lane: for some of us, we can
Jonathan Hermida: fast track
Steven Lane: that for some people, I think that'll be a, a wonderful thing.
Hey, don't go there. Hey, do this instead, you know, kind of thing. I, I've, I've really wondered if
Jonathan Hermida: our
Steven Lane: main role as transformational coaches is to facilitate that space where a shift to fundamental wellbeing Sure. Just takes place for clients and. I really understand that it's not about them doing stuff. It is, it's really about them opening and being [01:26:00] willing.
Yeah. And settling. Just think that space. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. Well, as we wrap this, uh, beautiful, beautiful episode and thank you so much for all that you shared and your story is incredible and inspiring. for anybody that's listening that is on their own transformational journey, what advice, what, what sort of tips might you give them that would support their own journey?
I think firstly, it's all about keeping it simple. It's keeping it simple, and it is staying out of the head, even not doing a lot of reading because it's a
Jonathan Hermida: practice
Steven Lane: of the heart ultimately.
Jonathan Hermida: So
Steven Lane: I think it is about coming back to ourselves. Via the heart and noticing this essential presence, [01:27:00] which is always there.
You know, we say awareness already is, it's not created By the brain. We, we all know this experience. It's just, it isn't obvious to us because we're not used to looking for it. So I think it's coming back to ourselves via the heart. Via the heart is essential. Otherwise, it's just a head trip and noticing this presence and many, many, many, many times, every day, coming back to
Jonathan Hermida: that space
Steven Lane: and simply being, without striving, without trying to achieve anything, without trying to know anything.
And just allowing whatever emerges to emerge. I, I actually think if I was to start my spiritual path all over again, if I could give myself that advice, that would be the Of what I would do. Well, thank you for the long journey that you did [01:28:00] undertake so that you can come to this place of wisdom and understanding, you know, and, and really thank you for sharing all that You did it, it's, um, extraordinary and I, and I, there are so many tidbits and so many, um, pieces of your story that I know many people will take with them.
So thank you so much, Steven, for being here with me and for sharing so much of yourself with us. Thank you for inviting me on, it's been a real pleasure. Thank you.