Natalie: Hello, Everyone! My name is Natalie Ledwell and this is the Inspiration Show. Today on the show we’re going to be talking with an author of a new book that has come out called, Better than Sex. Not exactly what you think, so we’re going to go into this with the author today and the author is Arjuna Ardagh. How are you, Arjuna?

Arjuna: I’m wonderful. Thank you, very nice to meet with you again.

N: So, of course it’s quite an interesting, an intriguing meaning having a book called Better Than Sex. Why don’t we start with, before we get into that, why don’t we talk about who you are and the life you live right now?

A: Okay. Well, I like my life very much. My kind of job description is I’m an awakening coach. So what that means is, it’s a little bit different than personal development or transformation or something. I support people to have recognition of their true nature beyond thoughts and reactive feelings. I am helping them recognize the dimension themselves that is free, that has no boundaries, that has no (1:17), that is actually the source of creativity and love and solutions to problems. It is the source of all human. That is actually remarkably easy to drop into, it’s right there. It’s that which is experiencing everything already. So we hear sounds, it is that that is experiencing the sounds. We see movement. It is that (1:45) which you see in the movement. It is just usually overlooked by the rapid possession of thoughts and reactive feelings. That’s what I do, I’m an awakening coach, I help people not only to recognize that but much more is to live their life from that because when we actually connect with that dimension of ourselves and live life from there, we become the source of all solution, we become the source of love. So you can imagine that learning to stabilize ourselves in that infinite dimension of consciousness. It makes you a better leader. It makes you the better lover. It makes you the better parent. It makes you present in every aspect of your life.

N: Right. So what I’m hearing you saying is you teach people to connect with their true essence of who they are. The person that which is underneath all that patterns, underneath that personality, underneath their behaviors, underneath all the dean of life they’re getting down to the their true essence of who we are and teaching them to on a daily basis to be able to connect with that choice.

A: Yes, that’s right and the main thing that I, the main role I have is to train the people to do that. So,  we have a training on the awakening coaching training – the methods for the awakening training and the training for the awakening coaching training. So we’ve trained about 14, 15 hundred people already over the last 20 years to be facilitators to awakening. We’ve discovered that anybody can become a really effective facilitator of awakening to anybody else. There is some kind of mystic or energy that this is the domain of mystics from India who lived in (3:34) for years but we’ve been experimenting for a couple of decades and we’ve discovered that anybody can become an effective facilitator to awakening consciousness in everybody else. We have trained psychologists and psychiatrists. We’ve trained many business coaches and life coaches. We’ve trained counselors. We’ve trained all kinds of people to be highly effective facilitators of shifting consciousness.

N: Right. Now, I’m assuming that awakening coaching and being a spiritual teacher are two different things?

A: Yes. A teacher has answers to questions, a coach has questions to answers. So a teacher will tell you this is how it is, so a teacher has a teaching. I don’t have a teaching. I am not a Buddhist or a hindu. I’m not against those things. I’m not a Christian. I’m not against Christianity. I’m not affiliated to any particular tradition. I am skilled in asking the right question and most fundamental question, in fact should be a great takeaway for anybody listening to this call is the question, what is your deepest longing? What is your deepest longing is a little bit different than what you want (mumbles). Whatever you want is very often conditioned by what we were taught to believe. For example, we’ve been taught to want money, really love money in on itself is a very empty goal. Once you have a lot of money, you don’t necessarily feel any better. We’ve been taught to want control over other people. If we do achieve that, we don’t necessarily feel any better. We’ve been taught to want fame. I’ve worked with a lot of people in Hollywood, I can tell you this famous people are not better off than anybody else. So, the first fundamental question is what is your deepest longing? What is it that you really long for? A skilled coach can help to guide you deeper, deeper, deeper into the (5:30) question, what is your deepest longing? We discovered that if we really guide people there your deepest longing is actually, many people would say is to come to themselves, feel and act who they are, to feel at peace and be comfortable in their own skin – different ways of saying that. So the next fundamental question is if you just think you can just take it away right now from the core, you don’t need to do any kind of training, you can get it right now, the next really important question once you’ve asked this a few times, what is your deepest longing is to ask yourself would you prefer for it to be simple or complex? Now, supposing you long for love, the love is a very simple longing, the longing to experience love. (6:17) so you long to experience love, that’s an intrinsic longing. Intrinsic means once you have loved love, it doesn’t need you to do anything else you feel fulfilled. Money is different. You can say, I want money but once you get the money there’s almost certain to have another desire, right? Now, I want to buy a car, now you’ve got the car, now I want…desire keeps leading to more desires. The longing brings you home to contentment. Let’s just say, I want to feel love, that’s an intrinsic desire (6:49) love, would you rather it’s simple or complex? It’s a very important question. Would you rather that the fulfillment of this longing be simple or complex? Of course everybody says simple, I’d like it to be simple but when we investigate the way we live our lives, the choices we make, the prioritization that we give, we discover you may say simple but your life may be a demonstration of complexity. So these are two fundamentally important questions to coaches, what is your deepest longing? Would you rather it be simple or complex? Once we know what is your deepest longing, and then hear and willing it to be simple, then the other steps and tools of the awakening coaching can really serve a deeper (7:33).

N: Right. Okay, so it sounds like it is fundamentally very simple to be able to get to this connection. So, let’s talk about the book. So what is better than sex, Arjuna?

A: Well, let me tell you the story of how that (7:54), would that be okay?

N: Yes.

A: I was teaching a seminar in Vienna, Austria. There was a whole bunch of people there and we explored radical awakening and (8:06), so people had a deep, deep taste of this infinite dimension of consciousness like they were marinated in a (8:12). They all went home to their lives and they came back the next day and I wanted to do a checking how’s everybody doing? Someone said, I feel a lot of energy. Somebody said I’ve got huge rising creativity or very creative. Somebody said I really felt good in my marriage and I felt having cared for with my wife. I just went around the room. Finally, there was one woman there and she said, I don’t know how to describe it. I felt so good, so good in my body. I just don’t know how to say it, it’s, it’s, it’s better than sex. And somehow that stuck and I said, thank you, is it okay if I used that as a title of my new book. So that became the title of the new book, better than sex, because actually relaxing to this infinite dimension of yourself and knowing to facilitate that in other people it’s a more meaningful connection with other people than sex. It’s the ultimately fulfilling exchange to have and to guide in the dimension not only to feel relaxed into being infinite and at peace and creative and loving that you recognize that it’s (9:23) same infinite consciousness for both of you. What more can be more intimate than that? It’s even more intimate than sex is to feel the dimension where you are fundamentally (9:34).

N: Right. So I know you have coached like thousands of people around the world through this awakening coaching. What types of people are more prone or how do people know if they’re ready for this type of coaching, could be able to coach this type of material?

A: Well, let me just make a small semantic clarification. I train people to become coaches. I haven’t coached thousands of people myself. I coached may be hundreds but I have trained thousands of people to become coaches, they coach other people. So in terms of what it takes to coach, I talked about this in the book, better than sex, there’s a chapter called become a coach and it talks about 5 qualities that make a good coach, one of them is you have a natural curiosity to care for everyone – when you meet people you’re naturally curious what is their experience, what’s going on for you? If we care naturally we would like other people to be (10:36). Another quality that makes a good coach is that there’s a willingness to be a beginner, like non-dogmatic. The willingness to let go of pre-sent answers, curious about what shows up in this (10:48). I define other few qualities in the book as well but that gives you a good start, if you love people, you care for people and you’re willing to let go about being right about things and be a little bit curious about what shows up moment-to-moment then probably you’re going to be a good facilitator.

N: Right. So let’s say somebody is already a coach, a life coach for example or a business coach, is this type of material a great extension of what they already teach?

A: Oh yes. Most people training are like that. Majority of those who trained have a background on coaching. So we’re teaching them tools to expand their coaching skills beyond the usual boundaries of coaching which is often about (11:31), so we’re training coaches with a new set of tools which expand their repertoire. I think of any coach that has read the book, better than sex, they would quickly see that it does offer tools that is beyond the (11:45) of the conventional culture.

N: Right. So can you share any story that you have that may be you have heard through the coaches that you’ve trained of how this kind of material has really helped change people’s lives?

A: Well, so many stories, I mean so many, many stories, but I think I’m reminded of one very particular, a lot of the work we do Natalie, beyond awakening is the relaxing of (12:11), because early on in the development of this work we had to ask ourselves what is it that gets in the way of resting in this infinite consciousness? It’s so easy access it, give them the right guidance. It’s so easy to relax into a sense of infinite presence. (12:32) love themselves, so easy. Then we can ask, why should we have an appearance of losing? Why should it seem like we’re losing? So we investigate. Some people say, well, I lose some thoughts. That’s not true. You can contain any thought you want and it does not disturb the presence. Some people would say it’s feelings, I have negative feelings. That’s not true. You could let anger bubble up it still does not disturb the presence. People have all kinds of answers – the ego, the mind - all sorts of things but none of them really sticks. So they willingly investigate it, what is it really that interferes with resting in the presence? We discovered a very simple answer, resistance. Whenever there is resistance happening to anything that meeting that is naturally occurring would be resistance causes a split within yourself, which gives the subjective feeling of being disconnected with yourself for life. So, for example, that might be the thought, “I’m not good enough,” very common thought, “I’m not good enough,” that thought is not a bad thought. It’s fine that thought, “I’m not good enough”. If someone says can you conduct this interview in Chinese? It would be intelligent to say, “no, I’m not good enough in Chinese”. I’m not good enough is an intelligent evaluation of situations sometimes. If you get stuck in “I’m not good enough” it’s because you are resisting, because you don’t want to feel I am not good enough. So it becomes like a pervasive atmosphere, and we resist I’m not good enough, we resist nobody loves me, we resist there’s not enough time; these are all unwelcomed frequency or unwelcomed points of view. So one of the tools used in the awakening coaching is to relax the resistance. You asked me about a story, I remember a very touching story about the coach in Metz, Germany. Her name is Vorina (14:35), she’s mentioned in the book and she’s a social worker, so she works with immigrant families to Germany from Turkey and she was working once with a teenage girl 15, 16 who was failing at her Math class, failing, actually not doing great at all, and so Vorina asked her permission if they can do this radical awakening, this young girl of 15, 16 relaxed very quickly into infinite consciousness and continue to this radical releasing around this statement, “I hate school,” “I don’t like school,” I can’t remember exactly but something like that, I don’t like school or I can’t do it. So they did this radical releasing and they test it – I hate school, I love school, I hate school, I love school – which charge was gone – I can’t do it, I can’t do it, I can’t do it – the charge was gone and neutralize it. So there’s no preference on one thing over the other, and then this young girl who’s basically set up for failure because of her grades actually, within a few weeks, she was getting a B grade on her Math class and apparently now has go on to being qualified to go on to university. So that completely changed the course of a young person’s life by just relaxing resistance.

N: Awesome. Arjuna, it’s been an absolute pleasure having you on the show today. We also did an interview for our monthly SSA members as well. So if you’re a SSA member make sure you keep an eye for that and if you’re interested in finding out about that membership make sure that you put on the banner on the side of the page and have a look for that. So, again, thank you Arjuna. It’s been such a pleasure talking to you today.

A: Thank you, pleasure on my side too.

N: Awesome. If people want to find out about working with you or the book or anything like that where can we send them?

A: Well, the book they can get from amazon. So amazon.com, you can get it for Kindle or you can get it as a physical book, that’s the easiest place to get it. If you’d like to know about a training go to awakeningcoachingtraining.com and it says become a coach, you can use the dropdown. You can put in an application and talk to an admissions counselor, you can choose to go on our next training which is online, two hours a week. You can join that training (16:57).

N: Wonderful, awesome. And remember guys if you click on the banner to the side then you’ll go straight to Arjuna’s website from there. So, I encourage you to share this video and you can do that by clicking on the Facebook and Twitter share buttons on this page. Make sure you download the app if you haven’t done so already. You can watch the shows on the go, you don’t necessarily have to be in front of your computers anymore and make sure that you leave your email address on the box on this page because I would love to send you the manifesting with the masters video e-course. It is actually valued at $87 and I would love to send it to you for free. So until next time, remember live large, choose courageously and love without limits. We’ll see you soon.