Guest: Ilona Ciunaite author of Liberation Unleashed: A Guide to Breaking Free from the Illusion of a Separate Self

This week on Relationships 2.0 my guest is Ilona Ciunaite author of Liberation Unleashed: A Guide to Breaking Free from the Illusion of a Separate Self About the book: Liberation Unleashed introduces you to the process of unraveling the false sense of a separate self at the center of your existence. With insightful metaphors, personal stories, and guided dialogues, this book points directly to our lack of separation and helps you move toward a new, more open reality of selfless bliss. Using the seven clear and focused steps presented, you’ll find liberation in realizing there is no individuated “I” and marvel at the true nature of things. Author Ilona Ciunaite’s search for the truth began when she first “experienced silence of the thinking mind, a sweet sense of being, contentment, peace,” and “feeling at home.” Driven by a desire to reach that state of oneness once more, her path led her through spiritual writings to the process of deconstruction and non-dual self-inquiry and finally to a peaceful emptiness of not knowing, but of simply being. It’s from that place that Ciunaite cocreated the popular Liberation Unleashed forum—a global Internet-based community helping people see through the illusion of a separate self—and it’s just that sense of unknowing peace she wishes to impart with this book. Liberation Unleashed is a lively, fresh, and moving account of the author’s own searching, liberation, and transformation, woven together with the stories of fellow seekers and a clear exposition of the simple, focused tools you can use to go through the “gateless gate.” With its conversational tone, provocative questions, and the presentation of the seven steps—“Clearing the path—meeting the fear,” “Strip away ALL expectations,” “Get in touch with the real,” “‘I’ is a thought,” “There is no separate self,” “How does it feel to see this?” and “Falling”—this book serves as an introductory how-to guide, demonstrating how to use the process of self-inquiry to get free from the falseness of the separate self and realize a blissful oneness. So many of us go through life feeling isolated, searching for ourselves, or seeking a more authentic reality through religion, spirituality, or other, more unconventional means of expanding consciousness. Now, with this book and its guiding principles, you’ll learn how to look deeply into the nature of self and existence; combat the anxieties, fears, mental blocks, and reservations that can arise in self-inquiry; and see the simple beauty of the everyday moment. About the author: Ilona Ciunaite was born in Lithuania. Always interested in the mind and how it works, she has a degree in psychology and a mind-set to focus on freedom for herself and those who find her. Ciunaite lived in the UK for twenty years. Together, she and her husband Narimantas, a tattoo artist from whom she learned the art of tattooing, ran a custom tattoo studio in West Sussex (http://www.mantas-tattoo.com). They currently live in Mexico. Ciunaite’s search for truth started in 2002, when for the first time she “experienced silence of the thinking mind, a sweet sense of being, contentment, peace,” and “feeling at home.” In 2010, she discovered Jed McKenna’s books, which were a shock to her belief system and catapulted her “out of hypnosis” and toward the realization that all she believed was not truth. It wasn’t until the initial deconstruction was done, after months of painful self-inquiry, that Ciunaite felt at peace: there was an emptiness, a not knowing, a not believing anything about anything. Then the last step was taken and the separate self was seen to be an illusion. She started writing a blog, Marked, Eternal, where she shared thoughts about this newfound freedom and invited readers to look for themselves in their own experience. Later, Ciunaite and her friend Elena Nezhinsky helped develop a process called Direct Pointing, which consists of a dialogue between a guide and a seeker. In September 2011, the Liberation Unleashed website and forum was launched. Together Ciunaite and Nezhinsky published a book, Gateless Gatecrashers, that consists of conversations leading to self-realization, and which can be downloaded for free from the Liberation Unleashed website. Liberation Unleashed is a global movement of people helping others to see through the illusion of self. Ciunaite has had hundreds of conversations with people from all around the globe. Her main focus and work is helping people end their seeking by inviting them to question their fundamental assumptions and look at their own experience. She does not give answers, only questions. In this way a seeker may see what is going on for themselves and free their minds from conditioned patterns to explore whatever comes next. Ciunaite holds live meetings and group sessions in the UK. All of her work can be found on her blog Marked, Eternal at http://markedeternal.blogspot.com and on The Gate forum at http://liberationunleashed.com.