Fully Human Fully Divine

Awakening to our Innate Beauty through Embracing our Humanity

There is a value in seeing how spiritual awakening and being human meet in an ordinary Life, in relationship with our partners, kids, families and friends, with our busy lives, in illness, transitions, death, careers and in every area of our lives. This book is a call to awakening and embracing and transforming our humanity. It is a radical guide to spiritual awakening in the modern world. Not written from the monastery or ashram, but from someone who has lived in the pain of samsara, from someone who after years of seeking and meditation found surrender in the depths of pain, while life was falling apart around him.

Craig Holliday is both a nondual teacher and a therapist.  He teaches in a way that instructs us to not run from life, but to face life head on through embracing every moment as it is.  Through this absolute embracing, we are given the gift of discovering that our Beauty—our innate Divinity is right here within us; that our very humanity is the doorway to our freedom.

Craig has spent 20 years intensely seeking, meditating and studying with some of the world’s greatest nondual teachers. Beyond his spiritual training, he has also bridged the gap between eastern spirituality and western psychotherapy. After years of trying to transcend his humanity through meditation and spirituality, his search brought him to the study of psychology and the emphasis on working with our humanity instead of simply trying to transcend it. Through this combined work of psychology and nondual spirituality, Craig offers a seamless transmission of nondual spirituality which fully acknowledges our humanity and our overwhelming Beauty and Divinity. His work is dedicated to the discovery of our innate Divinity in every aspect of our lives. He works in a way that addresses our everyday human suffering as a doorway to our inherent freedom. Craig offers Satsang, workshops, retreats and meets with individuals from around the world via Skype. For more information about Craig visit: craigholliday.com

From the Author: If you want to learn from a Guru or master or saint go elsewhere; I am simply a normal ordinary human who has struggled with life, who has been pulled in every direction and who failed totally at life; and yet, this failure lead to a deep surrender to Reality..

From this place of surrender, I write about the ineffable. If you want to examine with me, what it means to be awake and how to work with a huge amount of karma and egoic conditioning—read on. If you want to know how to work with repetitive difficult emotions, with anxiety and pain, with a career, kids and relationships read on. If you want to examine what life before, during and after awakening is; what enlightenment is beyond ancient mythological or a dogmatic understandings read on. If you are compelled to examine with me, what it means to be human and Divine—not in some philosophical sense, but in the context of a down to earth awakened practicality, join me in this.

What follows are a collection of reflections, teachings, writings, and personal experiences written over the period of many years that weave together what this radical shift called Awakening is. Even though Awakening is quite an impersonal shift, impersonal in the sense that it is beyond ego or a personal sense of self; I wanted to share a perspective of what awakening truly is from the perspective of our humanity. Many books are written from monasteries or ashrams, or by individuals who seem to have life completely worked out in some perfected spiritual sense. But for me this is not the case, life is ever unfolding, ever changing and the divine expression of our humanity is never fully worked out. I write with humility, from this ever unfolding place, where our lives are continually evolving; and sometimes this place is messy, painful and full of despair, yet this is our evolving edge. Some teachers do not like to discuss their humanity and instead teach only from the transcendent realms. Yet we are human, and often there is a bias against being human in the spiritual world, because the human world is messy and where we get into so much trouble. But there is nothing wrong with being human; it is actually a tremendous gift. The fact that we are amazingly alive shows we are Divine, what else could animate our body and minds if it were not the Divine? How could being human ever be a problem? It is only our egoic minds that have a problem with who we are.

Yet, if we want to be fully free, we must be willing to love and embrace all of life, even our very own egoic nature, which paradoxically is the Divine as well. No aspect of Life is outside of Divinity. Many books are written from a perspective of impersonal Enlightenment. I wanted to share both the impersonal and personal, because that is what it is like to be human, whether we are a Buddha or someone lost in pain and suffering, we all have some degree of a personal egoic nature. It is important to include both our humanity and our Divinity; we have denied one or the other for ages, but both are God. This work is an effort to create a deep understanding of what it is like to be human and awake. This book is a call to awakening and embracing and transforming our humanity. Join me in this...