My April 29th dialogue with Candice O’Denver was the second time we’ve dialoged as a part of the Beyond Awakening Series. Her unique and original approach cuts always to the root, using fresh, direct, intuitive, universal language, like “open intelligence,” “clarity”, “life satisfaction”, “flourishing”, “bursting forth” and “being of benefit.”
Her vocabulary is a meta-communication, worth contemplating for the nuances it includes and declines to include. Whenever we talk, she transmits awakening, greatly deepening the field and always advancing my understanding of how radical, non-dual, non-problematic consciousness can liberate the frame even while it “rolls up its sleeves” and digs into practical engagement with the issues before us.
We began with Candice giving an overview of the anchoring tenets of the Balanced View teachings, including the core algorithm of “short moments of open intelligence repeated many times until it becomes obvious.” According to Candice, open intelligence gives rise to a life of flourishing, beauty and discernment.
When we live as the “singularity” of open intelligence (not separable from the “data” of all experience) our available intelligence is no longer confined to our personal point of view. If open intelligence becomes our primary reference, shining forth with all data and points of view, we experience the bursting forth of creative intelligence and the natural flourishing that is at the basis of our reality. Candice emphasized that this is what reality actually is. As our self-focused frames of reference are relaxed, everything arises with newness and freshness. We express an exquisite clarity and are able to create knowledge on the fly. This is what she means by “open ended-knowledge creation.”
I also found it extremely satisfying to delve with Candice into what I see as her radical claim about how knowledge itself arises. She responded deceptively directly to the most radical question that arises in the philosophy of information theory (“What is most fundamental — consciousness, matter, or information?”) essentially saying “yes!” (Since they cannot be radically separated.) This non-separability allows her to express a radical simplicity that joins equally with information theorists who see information as fundamental, scientific skeptics who see matter as fundamental, and awakened mystics who point to the consciousness as most fundamental.
In response to the evolutionary imperative, open intelligence is now bursting forth and empowering human nature from within. I told her I was reminded of what I see as a newly emerging, free, transpersonal clarity in which the directionality of inquiry is now accounting for “ the user illusion,” or our embedded anthropocentric point of view, and how a relaxation into raw, unprocessed experience is needed to truly liberate our capacities and potentials. I wondered if open intelligence was perhaps a convergence between an inquiry about coming alive as the core of what is most passionately uniquely personal (what Ken Wilber calls “Eros”) including our personal mission and purpose; and the transpersonal and impersonal process of raw recognition of the field of reality or what is.
Candice offered another resounding “Yes!” She sees open intelligence expressing the evolutionary imperative by changing everything from within. Open intelligence is becoming apparent to all, bursting through so that self-concern and anthropocentrism are no longer the defining point of view or orientation. All “data” are allowed in for a totally inclusive view.
Our dialogue was truly rich. It brought new insights into the ongoing koan of this series—of optimistically trusting evolution while facing (and not bypassing) the alarm and pessimism so often triggered by our global crises. A beautifully freeing implication of Candice’s insight is the “perpetual optimism” that is allowed by open intelligence.
During our final question and answer session, Candice reflected on some vulnerable personal questions from listeners. I was moved by both the transparency of the callers and by Candice’s responses.
I invite you to enjoy this download here so that you may also share in this rich dialogue!
Dear Terry, Thank you again for an amazing and inspirational conversation with Candice. Her discussion of open intelligence was excellent and as I listened I felt as if I was experiencing exactly what she was speaking about. It seemed as if she were offering us a way of visiting the deep womb of gestation and silence where perpetual optimism and beneficial awareness gushed forth as from a fountain of life. Your ability to ask penetrating questions to help illuminate the conversation is something I have come to look forward to and enjoy. Beyond awakening is providing a format that brings clarity to deep issues while keeping it all real. Thank you once again. Woody
Hi David,
We apologize for the technical problem with the audio quality and now have helped the Beyond Awakening team re-post a higher quality recording of the conversation on this blog.
Candice
Dear Terry and Candice,
Thank you for a powerful dialogue about the nature of reality! The Balanced View Training and the Four Mainstays are an empowered way to live life bursting forth with knowledge and benefit creation at every turn. How lucky we are to live at this time in human history where technology and global communication allow all beings the incredible gift to train up this most powerful juncture of open intelligence and data. Thank you Candice for this worldwide offering of the Four Mainstays so that mental and emotional stability and our vast, empowered open intelligence are recognized as the fundamental reality of all, spawning incredible innovation, peace, and beneficial action.
Hooray!
Thank you very much Terry, I was pleased to my core listening to the interview. You are so very gifted, sincere and insightful.
Candice, I will never cease to be amazed by your skillful means, profound kind heartedness and unerring wisdom. Thank you for the unparalleled service you have done me. With deep respect, and devotion to the benefit of all. Silfan
I appreciate this interview and your comments Terry. I have worked with these teachings for two years now, and continue to find them extraordinary. I love this radical concept — I am (and we humans are) at the crucial juncture of vast and penetrating Open Intelligence (the Primordial Presence) AND the “data” of our world. This puts us right in the middle of the the Unfolding Revelation AND the fray!
Dearest Candice, thank you once again for your dynamic, brilliant, ever shining clarity and precision and for so courageously blasting open the ever present here and now with Omniscience. You leave nothing unturned. Thank you also for the invitation to celebrate the openness of the unwinding contininium of open intelligence. Thank you also Terry, you too are amazing. With eternal love and gratitude. Atma 🙂
There are some among us that have been living this reality for many years. The importance is to not take the new information into the old patterns, but to allow it to develop new patterns. This is Divine creation which comes from a higher consciousness and is needed to change the very form of the world and how we know it. The physical form of man is still very mush asleep and bases most of it’s decisions on fear mainly because the matter itself has not awoken to its True nature which is a Divine partnership with the manifest world. Spaciousness without words is what is needed to create new form since how we see form itself comes from the concepts within the limitations of the mind and its current relationship with the physical world. I appreciate this knowledge to be known but the energies need not be placed into the old patterns to creat something new. This also goes with the structuring of our physical bodies which are largely based on old experiences from our past clinging to them rather than able to open to a new experience. I call it the limitation of the hard wiring of the physical form that needs to change and embrace a more fluid state of being. The internet shows this and also its current limitations, and the need and ability to decern correct or higher information from repeating patterns.
Thank you for this discussion it WARMS a heart that has been waiting for this Moment in time. May humankind find a way to recognize the unifying principles that are not binding but are freeing and allowing new life to flow and create.
Allways in gratitude to what is,
Heidi Lorenz
To both Terry and Candice . . thank you for all that you contribute. Much love.
This is a great one to share with friends. The interviewer as deep as the interviewee as the listeners. All already here, letting go, meeting at the juncture, allowing short moments of this recognition that nothing is separate in our own direct experience–constantly recognizing, using and going beyond what we were taught, heard and learned. Training up the view that all of what appears is the shine of the expanse never separated from anything. Wherever we “stand” it is in the midst of space with no reference point but in relationship with all that is appearing inside and out, welcoming this, in an eternal what’s looking “place.” With your broader view, you know that its simpler than any words pointing to your always direct experience and can only check it out for ourself.
And of course,
Thank you, thank you, thank you,
Candice
Terry, Thank you for your inspiring and informative series and your thoughtful and insightful commentary and questions.
The the love and wisdom of Candice is so effective in that she has transmitted this to countless individuals, through the media and trainers. I have experienced great benefit in less than two years without having met her in person. I will finally meet her in an upcoming training. She has clarified many missconceptions in the world of spiritual traditions and disciplines.I encourage anyone who feels stuck to give Balanced View a chance.
Dear Terry and Candice,
Thank you both for this heart warming and empowering broad cast. I so much enjoyed listening to you both and I want to thank you both for making it happen.
With Love
Olle,
Sweden
Thanks, Terry, for having Candace on your series… again. Her call is contemporary and speaks to old line practitioners of many stripes and from different schools who understand full well what letting go means. It means a practice of always, everywhere and at all times, letting go. Too often the discussions about which came first or what is more important is a hindrance. After a time, the practice of letting go becomes constant and no longer requires as much energy and attention.
The ensuing levels of clarity makes it increasingly apparent that intelligence is not created; it arises. There is no entity that does it. Or putting it more exactly, creation occurs as the occasions arise. The drive to continue and go beyond is built in as a result.
Our evolutionary mission or purpose is already imbedded, is already a part of open intelligence.
YES!!!!!
Terry, your comments are compelling, I’m downloading now. Thanks
Candice rocks! 🙂
Thanks Terry … I felt it was an important conversation as well.
I must confess … I had a hard time with the low energy level of her voice. I don’t know if she is physically-challenged, or if it was a techie issue.
I felt a disconnect between the power of the ideas and the energy level …
My confession!!! … Blessings … DK
Hi David, try searching under her name on youtube or vimeo and you’ll find heaps of talks she gives and the audio and her personal energy are just fine. Enjoy!
It is always a pleasure to have a conversation with you, Terry. Below is a brief commentary.
The beneficial intelligence that provides the meaning to this writing comes forth inexhaustibly.
As completely pure benefit there is spontaneous existence encompassing all, where complete purity means that beneficial potency is completely pure of the entirety of reification, the claim that data have an independent nature. In our purely beneficial nature, there is no object of view, not open intelligence or data, and benefit does not depart from a nature of dazzling primordial purity, spontaneity and devotion to all in which forever there is not known the separate existence of particularity.
Similarly, the nature of completely pure benefit is that it is as it is in its spontaneous existence without parts of moments for even an instant.
Completely pure benefit is the nature of this spontaneously arising benefit at the crucial juncture of open intelligence and data.
Human beings are the crucial juncture of open intelligence and data, thus rest potently and only as this power of great benefit. This is reality–the Era of Great Benefit.
thank you candice so very very much .. there is such a deep recognition of that which has a “nature of dazzling primordial purity, spontaneity and devotion to all” .. everpresent beneath the stream of thoughts .. in love and gratitude, dee
Thank you deeply Candice, for such potent and aligning text.
With honouring,
Silfan
Thank you Terry for these comments they ephasize our need for reminding of open intelligence.