Soleil Lithman

	Workshop Facilitator ~ The Hladina Method,  2004 – Present
	Private Practice ~ Integral Evolutionary Facilitator, 1987 – Present
	MA Transpersonal Counseling Psychology, JFK U California, 1987
	Certificate Natural Health Counselor and Advanced Massage Therapist, Twin  Lakes College, California, 1982
	BA Education- Health and Physical Education, SOU Oregon, 1980

Since I was 16 years old the entire thrust of my life has been to find and live the Divine in the body and discover the pathways of humanity’s further evolution. This has involved deep and daily inner and outer studies. Along the way I had Darshan with The Mother, was a marathon runner, did a year of pre-med studies, a massage therapist, counselor, hatha yoga instructor, studied dance therapy, married Wolfgang, and most importantly became the mother of Sunny.

I continue to  participate in modern dance, contact improvisation, and sacred ceremonial dance. I also enjoy professionally collaborating with Wolfgang Schmidt-Reinecke, for some of his film and media projects, and educational aid projects in Africa and India. Wolfgang also assists me with my seminars and training workshops around the world and is a full partner in The Ashland Experience. We have a dynamic co-creative relationship, full of mutual respect, deep listening, creative fun, loving adoration, and venturing together in realms of liquid light.

The substance from the Supramental world is infusing through the subtle physical realms into our most visible outer world.  More and more people around the world are aware of these waves of acceleration; in Integral Yoga they are called Descents. In other quarters they are called portals or gateways of energy. My body is exceptionally aware of this process as it moves through. With daily clearings, openings and integration my body is more and more clarified. Still I am aware of what inside yet to transform.

All is in process. I know that deep peace, patience, and non-clinging to what happens and when, is the best and surest route for this ascension and becoming. However this is not a complacency but a self-giving each and every day to this process, especially during my morning meditation time. Although the processes continues through the day, much of my outer life is focused on  bringing expression of the subtle realms through into the daily outer life. This has its own challenges and often beautiful manifestations especially in the Hladina Center Gardens.

Working with clients is a profoundly important part of my life, which brings me deep gratitude for the Divine wisdom and on-going evolution which reveals itself in every body. I love the total focus of being in the moment with clients with whom I learn new things in every session, and share in the wonder of the unfolding journey. Sometimes both Soleil and the client are taken to entirely new experiences.

My other profound love is for nature. We maintain an extensive magical garden. The family cats Minou and Coco participate nearly every morning at meditation time. Often the cats come to greet clients. They are exceptionally loving and transmit their own healing energies. Many clients comment that the New Creation can be felt at the Hladina Center.

I was born in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia in 1955. My American parents had taken jobs working for Aramco Oil Co. because they wanted to see the world. Every two years we would take off for three months. They gave me and my sisters a very earthy global education staying in huts on Fiji & Bali, camping through Europe, and sleeping in a cement bunker at Machu Pichu (before the tourist agencies discovered the remote places).

By 14 years old l had traveled through 40 countries and felt natural as a global citizen. Therefore my first time living in the states presented some shocks. There was no American high school in Arabia so I chose, with my parents consent, to go to a community based private high school in Colorado. I arrived by train from California to discover that in one hour a nuclear underground test was going to take place and my driver needed to hurry back to the school! It was Sept. 1969. Not long after l was horrified to hear that the beautiful ruins of Anger Wat that my sisters and I had roamed through in August were being bombed. The Viet Nam War had spread—surprising how no one had advised my American family not to travel in Cambodia!

During the next two years my inner and outer worlds collided into a chaos which did not feel very creative at the time. Although I appeared to be doing fine with studies and activities a deep questioning began from the up welling of emotional pain and the need to make sense of a world which no longer made sense. At 15, I became vegetarian and began doing Hatha yoga daily. Almost immediately I started having wonderful experiences but because I was brought up as an atheist I didn’t know these experiences were spiritual! I also got excused from dissecting frogs and was able to do an independent study of Jung and dreams—including having volunteers sleep in the biology lab where I would wake them up at intervals to record their dreams. In the midst of many wonderful adventures, skiing, and hiking through the four corners area, my heart began to feel like a black hole vortex.

The questioning became a dire need to know. l had seen all these different cultures, each with different values and beliefs, was there anything essential? Was there a unifying truth? (The question- did God exist did not even arise because l had seen the Christian and Moslem versions and found them very unappealing.) I took a course in comparative religions which also was unsatisfying. Finally l consulted the I Ching about going to India, the answer was convincing—One MUST cross the great water. One MUST meet the great man. The great man turned out to be a great woman. A very great woman, who was more than a woman or person or any other creature that l had ever met in all of 41 countries.

l arrived alone at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram on Aug. 5, 1971. I knew nothing about the ashram except a rumor that it was unusual, and it had a school. I figured my parents might let me stay if they thought I was finishing high school. Madav Pundit, one of the ashram’s secretaries, immediately asked me if I wanted Darshan (Spiritual Blessings—Interview) with The Mother, the head of the ashram. At that time The Mother had outwardly retired but was deeply immersed in the Supramental transformation of her cells. l didn’t know that, I just felt that if I didn’t get answers that I would literally die. Madav’s only advise in meeting The Mother was “quiet your mind and be open”.

On Aug. 9, I waited for two hours on an open air veranda outside of the Mother’s room with a few dozen other people. I felt a strange weight and intensity above my head. This made my body squirm so I was having a hard time achieving the “quiet mind”. When the Que finally moved into Mother’s room, we were on the opposite side of the room to where she was sitting. I looked over and in shock my mind silently screamed, “She isn’t human!” (This was the best that my western mind could come up with.) I simply could not equate Her with anything in this world. She did not strike me as a Goddess nor as an advanced Holy person—just wholly different. Her body did not resonate like anything in my known universe. So by the time it was my turn to kneel before Her I think I had achieved Madav’s advise—my mind was a complete blank!

I felt her eyes penetrate my being and I saw with her seeing- it was pretty dark and mucky in there. Suddenly She touched something—a light, and I KNEW, I knew that She knew and I walked out of the room transported, silent, in a suspended time-space continuum. I sat by Sri Aurobindo’s flower covered Samadhi in the courtyard for hours. Slowly I saw words forming above my head that literally dripped into my mind. ‘I knew why I was alive, the meaning of my birth. I knew that there was an essential truth of which we are all a part.’

In the days that followed I began lucid dreaming with The Mother. She has given me an abundance of instruction and experiences in this way. I began learning massage from therapists at the Ashram’s physiotherapy clinic.

The question of an essential unifying truth was answered; the quest of spiritual-physical conscious evolution began.

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