Guidance to Awakening

Guidance to Awakening is a dialogue aimed at causing a permanent and irreversible shift in the mind of seekers by means of direct pointing. Guidances usually last anywhere from a few days to a few weeks at maximum. Email is the most convenient way to organize guidance because both parties can reply when it best suits them. During guidance, messages are exchanged daily.



Preparing for Guidance

The core of the guidance is the so-called Two-Part Formula for Awakening (2PF). It is necessary to properly familiarize oneself with these instructions, through materials like Awake! Handbook of Awakening before starting the guidance. Our experience is that the process is best carried out under the guidance of an awakened instructor. One-on-one instructions make a world of difference. However, numerous seekers have awakened using the 2PF on their own.


Rules of the Guidance

From the beginning of the guidance, emails are exchanged at least once a day. Your ongoing efforts with the 2PF, and the continuous feedback makes the process ideal. This is an intense undertaking, and one should not take it up casually. Understand that most people have to work hard with their self-based emotions and reactions. When the guidance has started, no breaks are taken until awakening takes place. Having started the process, one should also finish it.

Processing with the 2PF requires perseverance. You will more than likely experience frustration and fatigue at some point during the guidance. Although it can be emotionally challenging, generating awakening with the 2PF is not a battle or fight that is won. The insight revealed is that there is no winner or loser, no entity called “me” or “you”. The process can be compared to a scientific experiment that requires wits, effort, and determination. Big hopes, dreams, and emotional expectations are of no use whatsoever. Thus, it is necessary to wipe the slate clean and forget everything you have previously heard or read about awakening. This is often easy for those with little familiarization with spirituality, and hard for those who have gathered many preconceived ideas about what awakening is or should feel like. Do yourself a favor and forget all that. Start fresh every day, every moment of the process.

What is required of you is that you keep exercising the 2PF according to the instructions given by the instructor. The instructor is there to offer support. Sometimes this support comes in the form of encouragement, and sometimes in the form of a rap on the knuckles. Regardless, the intention is to help you finish the guidance successfully. If you are not following instructions, or there are indications of mental health problems, the instructor will end the guidance. You can also stop the guidance at any point should you wish to do so.

Verification of Awakening

Before starting the guidance, take a picture of your face (looking straight into the lens of the camera, not the picture on the screen of your device, good lighting, no eyeglasses, relaxed face), date it, and save it for later. When it seems that awakening might have happened, the guide will ask you to take another picture and send both pictures (dated) for analysis.

Photographic analysis is done because photos easily show whether awakening has happened or not.

According to the 13 bhumi model, awakening refers to the opening of the 1st bhumi (literally ground, or stage). You can read more about the 13 bhumi model, as well as bhumi analysis in Awake! Handbook of Awakening and What’s Next? On Post-Awakening Practice.


Is this for me?

Spiritual seekers come to yoga, meditation, and spiritual teachings because they feel that something is not quite right. They feel that something is fundamentally wrong even if their life situations are good by any standard. This feeling of unease, or discontentment (Skt. dukkha) comes about because we are confused about the reality of ourselves. Instead of experiencing reality directly, we experience it through the notion of a “self” or “me-ness”. The 2PF will be helpful to anyone experiencing this problem.

Guidance to Awakening is for people who are mentally healthy, and not for people who suffer from severe mental illness like psychosis.

Compensation for the Instructor’s Time

Amrita Mandala instructors are all laypeople. We are normal Westerners with families to feed, bills to pay, and other responsibilities. Also, Amrita Mandala is not a large organization backed by a religious establishment with unlimited resources.

Giving guidance is work for the instructor, and therefore we feel that it is appropriate to ask for financial compensation for the time and expertise offered by our instructors.

Below you can find a chart with indicative amounts of compensation. You can choose a suitable amount based on your financial situation and ability to pay. Details for payment are given directly from the guide.

If you are less well off but want to take up guidance, please mention this upon contacting us. No one is turned away due to lack of funds.

Chart of compensations, sliding scale.

  • 1-3 days: 100-200€

  • 4-6 days: 200-300€

  • 7-14 days 300-1000€

If you want to arrange a guidance, please use the form below.

  • ”Awakening has made my life much easier.”

    - Elizabeth

  • ”The Two-Part Formula is too good to be true, except it really is true! This is so wonderful. The distinction between the subject-self and the object-self is such an important distinction to make, something I never understood until I came across the Guidance on the Amrita Mandala-website. Really crucial to awakening. I spent 18 years working with the object-self doing Buddhist meditation which would have knock on effects on weakening the subject-self, but left it still alive and kicking, whereas after two weeks looking at the subject-self in the Guidance with Amirita Baba I finally woke up! I feel so grateful for this - it's been life changing for me. I don't think there are many teachers out there that understand the subject versus object self distinction. Amrita Mandala is really lucky in this regard. In terms of Buddhism in general, this really is ground breaking stuff.”

    Jonathan