Q 1: Please tell us about yourself. What is your connection to alternative ways of knowing?
I am a classical pianist and teacher of meditation and expanded awareness. I have been on the stage as a musician for most of my adult life, but simultaneously began practicing meditation and was associated with a very intense Zen dojo for 7 years in Paris. There I learned the way of hatha yoga, Irano-egyptian yoga, Zazen and Kriya. I immersed myself in the ways of integrative transformation.
Q2: Tell us briefly how you found your Lost Art.
When I moved to Seattle I was hired as a pianist to accompany the Sacred dances of gurdjieff and there found an entirely different mode of integrating the mind, body and emotions to bring forth a presence i had never experienced. It was a teaching, often known as the Fourth Way, that pulled together everything i had been previously studying. The unification of being in my body, feeling my emotions, and aware of my thoughts as well as stilling my mind opened a world of freedom. the fourth Way is called that because it is not the way of the “fakir” (body), nor the way of the Monk (heart), nor the way of the Yogi, (mind) but all three out in everyday life.
Q3: How have you integrated your innate talent and your Lost Art practice into your life? What challenges did you face in this integrative process?
This was learning presence and developing an observer, so that eventually i came to understand Self Observation. Most of us feel we have the ability to choose, but it is really very automated and pre learned from our past. to see things objectively is very very difficult, like looking at your own eyeballs.
I am a very tenacious person and because of the great suffering I experienced growing up, being a victim of sexual abuse and psychological abuse, I was grateful to find how much traction I could get from these practices. I had to get around a lot of self importance and feeling isolated really. I was terribly unhappy and began to struggle with the practices daily. Even meditating daily still left me with many things unanswered and many negative emotions and reactions flying about. the practices I found in a Fourth Way School in Seattle was what got me incredible results.
Q4: What does your Lost Art practice look like on a daily basis?
This wasn’t meditating more and more or visualizing or tons of ritual, it was out and about in life, creating a kind of intentional inner friction through small choices or simply seeing the struggle of wanting to do one thing and knowing i needed to do the other. That is why I talk so much about resistance and how to work with it. When we intentionally choose to sit with the yes and the no, we create friction and friction creates movement within us. Our energy upgrades and so we begin to have the ability to see more. When we push things into the shadow, we avoid the friction. When our ego grabs ahold of what we observe and judges, it is no longer an observation, but the ego taking the practice. slippery slippery slope.
The practices entail bringing sensation into your body while doing other things. This immediately took me out of my thinking. It defined what is me and not me. It provided healthy boundary. initially studying the body and its habits keyed me into my emotional habits and stock reactions. From there, the practice is catching myself in a state of identification with my story. The body is extremely tied into this, so that is why we must first understand sensation and how to use it. Studying things like our gestures, movement, facial expression are a good start.
through this build up of self study, I help people navigate their Ego and face it, recognize it and help them catch themselves in the trance state of identification.
It is no help to intellectually know “your story”. That will never extricate yourself from it. You must be able to observe it from this new perspective of expanded awareness and then the light is shown onto the shadow.
I had such an incredible mentor for 12 years, like a Yoda of my own, and so i learned the way of The ancient masters of wisdom. Included in this practice were sacred dances which do just this profound integration of thinking, emotion and body. it brought me to profound understanding of Presence. I include teaching these at all of my retreats.
It takes getting out in the trenches and grappling with our lower nature and I have many many exercises that were given to me that woke me up to what was really going on.
The first thing I had to do was to start questioning everything, assume nothing and verify everything with my own experience. it was only real if I could observe it.
Q5: What important lesson would you share with an earlier version of yourself, or to somebody who is just now exploring what a mystical path might mean to them?
The advice I would give to my younger self is to quit avoiding the writing on the wall. if my life was manifesting in a way that I knew did not work, very reactive and depressed but acting like I wasn’t, then seek out a teaching until you find something that actually works. I was trying all these affirmations, clearings, healings, but it was all coming from a place of non acceptance and the urge to “be better”. Once I found a regular practice that started giving me real permanent results and taught me how to accept what is, I knew something was changing. i wish i had admitted to myself how separated I was from others and how full of self importance I was.
Q6: If there was only one thing a person could find the energy and resources to make a priority, what should it be?
The priority should be to find a spiritual practice and stick to it until you find results. it is ineffective to dabble in this or that. It is not an easy process of uncovering these things, so the feel good stuff won’t help If you give it your all, stay disciplined for 6 months and not much is happening, then it is not the right teaching for you. Move on and find a spiritual mentor who can help you. Books and recordings can only take you so far. A real mentor will call you on your shit and not let you get away with the nonsense we all create to avoid seeing the awful contradictions within ourselves.
Q7: What is your favorite inspirational quote?
My favorite quote is one of G.I. Gurdjieff which states “With the present, repair the past, and prepsare the future. This is the most true statement I know. When I could enter into a kind of understanding deep inside of me from an all encompassed integrated state of presence I could see it, feel and understand it thus repairing that part of me and unlock the ancestral piece and be able to have free choice for myself and my children and so forth. It is spiritual evolution outside of time and space, a quantum field that has been taught about for many many milenium in secret teachings of attention and awareness.
Molly Knight Forde, professional classical pianist and international spiritual mentor, leads people to personal freedom using wisdom teachings and unique mindfulness methods practiced out in the world, not just on the cushion. As founder of the Awareness School, she teaches the Art of Self Observation and has been facilitating global retreats, courses as well as one on one mentoring for over 15 years.
Her CD’s The Art Of Dance as well as French are available on amazon.com.
Her greatest wish is to contribute to the New Epoch by assisting individual transformation through expanded awareness, meditation, Sacred Dance and music.
The Practical Awareness ECourse is a chance to experience techniques that show you how to be mindful. Learn to recognize your attachment to thought so you can unhook from the negative emotional reactions that leak valuable energy. You will never look at life the same way again. With the present, repair the past and prepare the future. These 8 modules delivered weekly will give you a lifetime of meditation and awareness practices to live a fulfilling and meaningful life. Join the Practical Awareness E-Course starting February 14th, 2016
http://mollyknightforde.com/ecourse-info
