A Map of Spiritual Awakening: The Liquid Armature

Hi, my name is Scott Kaelin. Welcome to The Form of Emptiness. We just finished up a guided meditation that will be available on the website, and now we are going to do a spirituality talk on some of the offerings on the new business, The Form of Emptiness. I have developed two different things.

One is called the Liquid Armature, which is a three-dimensional Blender model. Blender is a three-dimensional rendering program, and then I've also developed the Theory of 1 and 2. The Theory of 1 and 2 is a little bit more in its infancy, but it will be an ongoing process. Also with Liquid Armature, the three-dimensional model, which is maybe one way you could put it.

It's a map of the path of spiritual awakening. It's one map. I'll probably, I will be making more maps, but this is the first map I've made. They're both available on my website, and so it'll be a brief intro to those, and if people are interested, there will be many more talks and discussions about aspects of the model, and of Liquid Armature, the model, and also the Theory of 1 and 2.

So once I decided that I was going to fully embrace the path of being a spiritual teacher, which was about eight months ago, I began to assemble different things to do that, such as video equipment and studio equipment and things like that. Cameras and lights, microphones, and also then I got closer and I was kind of ready to begin to teach feeling more ready. And then I realized that I needed to figure out what I was going to teach and what would be the most helpful for my students. And my experience with spiritual awakening and abiding awakening is largely one of forgetting, meaning I, the whole path of my own path of spiritual evolution and awakening experiences and peak experiences and insights and realizations, which at the time were the most important thing in my world, the most important thing to me, now seem totally not important, and meaningless, and of no real function or value.

That is because before the path, before my walking through the door of abiding awakening, it was as if my own wholeness, my own peace, the experience of flow state was something that I visited and would find my way back to, but was not necessarily the very ground beneath my feet, the very substance that everything is built out of. After fully moving through abiding awakening, and not that it's an end state because we're always having to re-realize our own awakeness all the time. That is what abiding awakening means from a certain perspective.

But what I found after moving through that and transitioning and getting used to it is that everything before that seemed mystical or magical or shiny or colorful or bright or exciting became everyday normal. It was the most normal thing to be awake to our wholeness, to live from the ground of your being, value the depths of your soul, the depths of your soul, the depths of your own personal transmission, your own authenticity, more than the superficiality of life, more than the stories in the mind, more than the movements, the fleeting emotions, or highs and lows of our energy, or the states of being.

Right? And once I found that I was the very thing that I kept encountering, that I kept reaching for, that I kept realizing, that everything became extremely normal, and calm, and stable, and not very flashy, and not no more, very little peak experiences. I'm a kind of person on the spiritual path. I personally had a lot of intensity, a lot of energetic shifts, a lot of peak experiences, a lot of ups and downs, so to speak, a lot of I got it, I lost it, a lot of something's releasing, and crying, and grieving, and processing, and ungrounded for two days, and then grounded, and all this, and it kept happening, and over and over this process.

And so, there's a beauty to that, there's an authenticity to that, it's an important part of the path. But what I found, after letting go of the existential grasping in the gut for the first time, was that, it's not any of those things. All it is, is that we're whole, and we somehow, well, we very early on, for specific reasons, forgot that we are whole. And we just need to not forget anymore.

That's it. And a large part of that has to do with seeing through the self, the separate self, the delusion or illusion of separation, so fully, on every level, so many times, that even when we are fully attached, and contracted, and stuck in a very small fragment of our traumatic self, we still never forget that this is just a momentary experience. And what we truly are is the totality and wholeness of life and everything that we're experiencing. And we are that fragmented, separate self at the same time.

And so when we have so thoroughly and methodically and exhaustively encountered all of the pieces of ourself, all of the different types of energetic and emotional experiences, and recognize that we are both not that, and we are that at the same time, that it is a piece of us, a part of us, but it is not all of us. And that framework, that viewpoint, is the correct valuing, the correct orientation, and largely what the liquid armature and the theory M1 and 2 is all about. It's a path, it's a three-dimensional path. It's more a landscape than a traditional A, B, C, D path.

But it's a path, it's a map of the world of spiritual awakening and spiritual evolution, among many different levels, emotional, thought-based, energetic, traumatic, somatic, all of these different levels. It is a guide to help people on that path. It is a resource. And ultimately, it is my personal experience and expression of my own path into and through Abiding Awakening.

Specifically, my inner world, the liquid armature is my inner world, right before I let go of the existential grasping in the gut. So right before I walked through the door of Abiding Awakening. We cannot control or make certain things happen on the spiritual path. We can only cultivate the conditions for those things to happen.

And so my hope is that the liquid armature and the theory of one and two And my teachings related to both allow you to create the appropriate most advantageous conditions so that you may also find your own awakening, multiple awakenings. Awakening on the level of mind, awakening on the level of heart, awakening on the level of gut, and then ultimately walk through the door of Abiding Awakening yourself. My belief or my view is the only way for our world and humanity as a whole to evolve beyond this current state of separation and suffering and pain and competitiveness and mutual destruction is by more people wanting to and awakening to their true nature and then embodying their true nature and then living from their true nature because they've walked through that door of Abiding Awakening.

And they have found some level of mastery with that. And so that is my personal hope and calling with being a spiritual teacher and and creating the liquid armature in the theory of one and two. I see the world in three-dimensional images. I think in three-dimensional images.

I see my inner world in three-dimensional images. The thinking, the thought-based thinking, the word-based thinking is an overlay for me. It's my attempt to translate my own inner world and inner experience into a format that other people can understand so we can connect and help each other and connect and have communion and community and things like that. Once I realized that I could create in Blender as a computer program, but I could create a three-dimensional model.

I was very excited about it and and put off being a spiritual teacher for four months as I created the three-dimensional model in Blender. I never used Blender before. I'm not a particularly computer savvy person. I'm pretty good with computers, but regardless, I'm getting better now.

But anyways, I was so excited. I'm so excited because my whole life I've been taking these three-dimensional visions that I have. I'm an artist. I've been a ceramic artist.

For example, when I was a ceramic artist, I would see a vision of the art piece that I wanted to make and then it would take me two months to make that piece in the vision. And then ultimately, the piece would not really look like the vision, which is interesting. But the vision to me was always the starting off point, the momentum, the drive, the energy. And then there's this journey on the artistic path where you fail and try again and fail and try again and you find a flow with it.

It's like water moving through an ancient stream bed that hasn't seen water in thousands of years. And it's like, oh, this way. No, this way. Oh, this way.

Right. And that's the awakening of our soul, the awakening of our unconsciousness into consciousness, the awakening of our repressed or rejected or abandoned parts of ourself and allowing them to come back to wholeness. And so just like the artistic process of me seeing a vision and then working to create that vision, but understanding that I do not have control over how the vision looks in the end, but rather I am a steward. I am birthing that vision.

I am helping that vision come into being and that it will most likely be different than what I initially thought. That process, right? That artistic process in a lot of ways is the muse or the impetus for the business, the form of emptiness. Because as of now, the form of emptiness is taking on the form of spiritual teaching, right?

The form of emptiness to me is what is applied true love. What is your applied true love? What is the form that you will give to your rendition or version of emptiness? And I think for me starting this business and starting this community, my great goal is for so many of us to step through the door of abiding awakening.

And instead of it being a spiritual teaching business, it is now a spiritual expression community. We're all getting to express our own authentic calling, our own authentic versions of spirit, of our personal transmission. And that's to me what the form of emptiness means. So now the form of emptiness for me is taking on the studio production that I'm working with.

It's taking on channeling truth. It's taking on the liquid armature is an example of the form of emptiness. It is an artistic expression straight from emptiness. The theory of one and two is also that me making tea in just about every one of these videos is a direct expression of my own awakening and also a gift of my transmission.

For example, eventually I would like to do retreats. Um, I imagine, uh, other people want to do retreats. We'll probably start with online retreats, but eventually, uh, hopefully sooner than later, probably soon, we will do in-person retreats. And on those retreats, I would like to, if possible, if people are interested, pour everyone a cup of tea.

And so then quite literally, um, and also in traditional Chinese tea ceremony and Gong Fu tea ceremony and Zen Buddhism and all these things is that the transmission of the person that makes the tea is in the tea. And so then you can drink the tea and it's another form of expression, another form of expression of our transmission, another form of emptiness, right? Ultimately, all we are, are forms of emptiness. Humans are forms of emptiness.

Um, so, so that's kind of the impetus behind, um, the name. And yeah, so, so when we think about, I'll maybe just kind of give a general introduction to liquid armature. It's highly complex. Uh, the funny part is, is that my goal when I made it was complexity through simplicity.

I'm not quite sure if I achieved that. To me, it seems like the best I could do for that, but, but maybe not that simple to everyone. Um, the goal of it is to define what are the, um, most essential aspects that I did on my path to, uh, walking to moving into abiding awakening. And then what do I think is necessary for my students to do?

So they may also rapidly, uh, I hate, I don't like to say the word achieve because it's just so not the right word, but it's hard to know another word, but so they may realize their own abiding awakening. Um, there's really nothing to achieve from a more accurate language perspective. It's a returning, it's a going backwards, right? If I'm walking through the door of abiding awakening, I'm actually falling backwards through that door.

If that makes sense. Uh, I'm returning to the, the source of reality and then looking from the source as the source at the world and never forgetting that I am the source and that I am also while being the source, I am also all of the world because all of the world is made up of pieces of me pieces of source. Right? So once again, my last guided meditation and other guided meditations, I strongly encourage people to find a safe spot in their body.

Like we talked about before, say at the back of the head or in the chest or in the abdomen. And then you imagine that there's a lighthouse and it's looking out into the body from there. Right? So once again, that is the source and then the field.

So I'm teaching in that, right? That is a repeatable simplified pattern. You have 70%, 80% of your awareness in that spot in your body. And then 20 to 30% in the field.

That is just how I am in abiding awakening. I am 70, 80% of my energy is in the source of my being in my lower abdomen. And then 20 to 30% is in the body. Right?

And that's, that's why that teaching is there. I am. That's the point of liquid armature. That's the point of the theory of one and two is to find the simplest, most root patterns that define awakening, define being human that allows someone to fully be themselves to live in this way.

And then write those down, put those into liquid armature into theory one and two, and then create talks, guided meditations, um, spiritual inquiries, all of those things to help drill those into your mind. And then ideally, if you're motivated and interested and you believe me, you can repeat, repetitively practice those like I did when I was more on the path and you can master those. And if you can master the aspects of liquid armature and you can master the aspects of the theory of one and two, um, then I believe that you will rapidly move into abiding awakening.

And so that is the point. And that is, uh, the whole kind of method. Um, if you look at liquid armature, you can look at it on the webpage, it's really two things at once. It is the armature, which is a, uh, physical expression of the self, the human self, your humanness.

And then there is spirit or your spiritual self or your higher self, or, um, I'm not sure what the words are, but any of those words are fine. And so what you have is actually in some ways two separate, but interlocked systems layered on top of each other. Meaning you have the spiraling wooden armature, which is defining the separate self. That is how we generate a self and how we have a human, how we're human.

It is what makes us human. It contains all of the selves, right? So, and get somewhat more complicated, but all of our separate cells, which all form into oneself in the mind. And then it also contains our emotions and that kind of stuff in there as well.

And then we have the gold temple spire at the bottom, right? All the atoms. There's gold atoms. There's gold atoms moving through the armature.

There's gold atoms in the spire. There's gold atoms moving up the solenoid central column. Then you have the manjusri sword tip, also gold, right? And then you have the three crystals and you have their forward light cones.

Those are all the spirit aspects of the model. So we basically have humanness and spiritness overlaid. And so the path that I recommend and the hardest thing to do on the path of spiritual evolution and abiding awakening is to hold fully both your humanness and your spiritness, spiritualness at the same time. It's what tends to happen on the path is that people shift between, oh, they get very fixated on their humanness or they get very fixated on their spiritualness.

And neither of those is the whole picture. The whole picture is learning to hold both at the same time. And so that is partially what the liquid armature map is about is helping you understand all the different aspects of your humanness that make up your humanness. And then all the different aspects that make up your spiritness or your spiritualness, your spirit.

And then, okay, I'm familiar with every piece of the liquid armature model, literally every piece. And now I can forget all those pieces, right? So in Zen Buddhism, Shinryu Suzuki says, we study ourselves to forget ourselves. When we forget ourselves, we become intimate with the 10,000 things, right?

So intimate with the 10,000 things is enlightenment and Zen Buddhism. So that's what we're doing. We study ourselves to forget ourselves. So if we study the liquid armature and we become intimate with every aspect, then we can completely let go of all those and just be the source of being.

The source of being is what gives rise to the liquid armature. The liquid armature is literally in your body or in my body. And the source of being is that pool of dark liquid at the bottom of the liquid armature with the droplet emerging, right? That's your little ball that goes in your body of the source.

We're all the source. We're all the liquid. And then we each have a little piece of it, drop of the ocean, so to speak. So the goal of liquid armature is to identify all these different points within the human body and also within the spiritual path of evolution and also of human emotional maturation that I recommend you become familiar with.

And then if you don't know what they are, if you're not familiar with them, if they're unconscious to you, now you can go, "Oh, look it. Scott says this is here, but I have no awareness of that or I think that's, you know, not true or it doesn't resonate with me." And then we can, you can go, "Okay, well maybe that's a blind spot I have." Because I would argue that all of these pieces in the liquid armature are aspects for anyone on the path of spiritual evolution, any human, and if you're not aware of them, then they are repressed.

I was not aware of most of the things in the liquid armature when I began the spiritual evolutionary path, my own path of spiritual awakening. And now I am, you know, I've become aware of all of them, thus I made the liquid armature. So the hope is that it will, it's a bridge, it's like a, it's like a dictionary or if you go to a restaurant and they have like a menu with all the different pictures of the food, but you don't know how to read, right? Say you go to a restaurant in Spain or, you know, in another country and you can't read, but they, but the restaurant has a picture, you know, all the little pictures, and you can just point and say, "I want three," or, "Tell me about this food," or, "Tell me about that." That's what it's for.

Because you might not have the language, I might not have the language, but I do have this. And so you can go, "Oh, look it. I'm interested in this," or, "This resonates," or, "What's this piece?" And then we can talk about it. And we have a common place to start talking.

And if you're interested in, say, the crystal in the head, the phenakite crystal, what does that mean? And where does that come from? You know, you can click on that and there's a blurb about it. And then there'll be a link to a video, and then a talk, and then a meditation, all kind of giving you this fully integrated way to learn.

And also you can choose your own way through the armature, as opposed to being told A, B, C, D, E, F, G, which I don't think is real. Instead you might go A, and then C, and then E, and then G, and then H, which the armature supports that, or the theory 1 and 2 supports that. So it's a difficult thing to explain. I put about 400 hours of work, if not more, into the liquid armature.

It's relatively complex. And yeah, there'll be more videos about it. And then the theory of 1 and 2, we'll just talk about it briefly, is the liquid armature is the distilled version. It's kind of the most, they're both distilled.

I guess that's not the right way to put it. The liquid armature is quite literally what I experience inside my body when I'm working with a student. That's as honest as I can be. And it's how I understand where a student is, and then where they're stuck, and where they need to lean, or where they need to look, or what inquiry they need to do, or what practice they should do.

Because I find where they are in the liquid armature in my body, because I'm talking to them, and then they resonate with me. And I go, "Oh look, they're right here in this part of the armature," which is already in my body. And then I can kind of point them, "Oh, but you see that thing." And they go, "I don't see that." And I go, "Okay, well that could be good to look at." Or, "Have you experienced this before? Have you experienced this version of this?" And so it's a way for me to locate and then direct someone through the wilderness of spiritual awakening.

But I just figured if I could make it, then you could learn it yourself. You could direct yourself, which I would prefer, because I think the best way for this to work is for everyone to stand on their own two feet, be autonomous, and find their own way through. But I digress. So back to the Theory of One and Two.

The Theory of One and Two is just, is more of in its infancy. But the Theory of One and Two in a lot of ways is going to be more fully encompassing. It's kind of going to include everything in all of the theories of my own spiritual evolutionary path. The Theory of One and Two is a unified theory, so it's a theory of human maturation, specifically maturation of emotions and maturation of the self, attachment to the self.

So healing the attachment to the self, learning to have flexible attachments that are rigid, learning to heal some of the fractured self is important on the path of spiritual evolution, though often overlooked or under-emphasized. But I, as a trauma therapist and attachment-based therapist, disagree. I think it's highly important to be able to heal enough of the childhood self so that you can maintain abiding awakening, which is part of the Theory. And then mostly though, at this point at least, it's about spiritual evolution.

And then it's divided into three parts. It is into healthy patterns to master, right? And if you look on the website page, that's the top part, patterns. And then paradoxes, which is an important piece of the Theory of One and Two.

And then laws, right? So we have the spiritual laws or kind of the laws of how the spiritual world works. Like everything is one would be a spiritual law, right? And then we have the paradoxes.

So both fullness and emptiness exist at the same time. That's a paradox. Another paradox is we are both human in a finite body and spirit in infinite spirit. And those are our paradox.

And then we have the rules of the rate limiting steps. I call them rate limiting steps. It's not the best word. It's accurate, but it doesn't sound the best.

Basically the idea is if you can master these patterns, then the process of spiritual evolution can go much more rapidly, efficiently, and with less friction. So that's the point of those patterns. Some of the patterns you'll know probably some of them are just taken or, you know, used or from traditional Buddhism or from Adi Shanti or Zen Buddhism or different teachers or Sharon Landreth. And some are I made up.

So, or, you know, maybe making up isn't the right word, but some just came to me. So yeah, so that's a kind of intro to all of it. There'll be more many more talks and information. Uh, I've, uh, have many things I can talk about with liquid armature and the theory of one and two.

There'll also be new versions of liquid armature coming out that depict different levels or parts of the path of spiritual awakening as this is depicting kind of the endpoint. There'll be earlier points, which will also be helpful, I believe. Um, so if you're interested, please sign up, uh, get a login on our webpage. We have a free, uh, user area, um, that all you have to do to get that is to give us your email.

And then, um, there's chat rooms and then you can also see some videos there, interact with the model. You can purchase videos. Um, if you would like to join the free weekly group on Sundays, you can join the group there.