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

LiberationUnleashed further documents an exciting new spiritual activity: online peer-to-peer mentoring, no airline tickets required. This book helps move us from the age of the guru to the age of the friend.

GregGoode, author of TheDirectPath and AfterAwareness, and coauthor of EmptinessandJoyfulFreedom

As Ilona points out in this wonderful book, there was truly a fire started with the Liberation Unleashed movement that occurred several years ago. I remember it well, as many people flocked to the movement in order to cut a path straight to liberation. In many ways, the movement has revolutionized the way people consider liberation these days. The pointing is very direct and leaves out a lot of unnecessary spiritual stuff. Ive known many people who found it to be tremendously helpful. And the fire of the movement is still burning strong with this powerful book by Ilona. Highly recommended.

ScottKiloby, CEO of The Kiloby Center for Recovery

In this book, Ilonas honesty and integrity shine through. In a world of gurus vying for your devotion and money, Ilonas new book is refreshingly different. In ordinary language, completely free of pretense, she invites you to take a look for yourself and discover whether your assumptions are true. She skillfully guides you through an investigation that may reveal a shocking clarity that you are not what you thought. I enjoyed this book.

JoeyLott, author of TheBestThingThatNeverHappened

Publishers Note

This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering psychological, financial, legal, or other professional services. If expert assistance or counseling is needed, the services of a competent professional should be sought.

Distributed in Canada by Raincoast Books

Copyright 2016 by Ilona Ciunaite

Non-Duality Press

An imprint of New Harbinger Publications, Inc.

5674 Shattuck Avenue

Oakland, CA 94609

www.newharbinger.com

Cover design by Amy Shoup

All Rights Reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Ciunaite, Ilona, author.

Title: Liberation unleashed : a guide to breaking free from the illusion of a

separate self / Ilona Ciunaite.

Description: Oakland, CA : Non-Duality, 2016.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016017899 (print) | LCCN 2016033385 (ebook) | ISBN

9781626258068 (paperback) | ISBN 9781626258075 (pdf e-book) | ISBN

9781626258082 (epub) | ISBN 9781626258075 (PDF e-book) | ISBN

9781626258082 (ePub)

Subjects: LCSH: Mind and body. | Self. | Spiritual life. | BISAC: BODY, MIND

& SPIRIT / General. | RELIGION / Eastern. | SELF-HELP / Spiritual.

Classification: LCC BF161 .C458 2016 (print) | LCC BF161 (ebook) | DDC

202/.2--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016017899

18 17 16

Your heart and my heart are very, very old friends.

Hafiz

This book is dedicated to you.

Elena Nezhinsky

Dear Reader,

Are you looking for something? Do you wish that life was different, more joyful, and free? Do you feel a longing for somethingeven though you may not know what that something might be? Are you on a mission to improve yourself, or are you looking for the way to end suffering? I was looking for answers, too, and what I found was so surprising and simple that I have to share it with you.

I was born in Lithuania. For the past nineteen years I have lived in England. I am happily married to a man whom I met when I was twenty-one. He was a tattoo artist when I met him. I learned the craft from him and became a tattoo artist too. We have a little custom-tattoo studio. I enjoy drawing on skin, creating beautiful designs, and meeting people from every walk of life. If you would like to see some of my tattoo work, you can go to www.mantas-tattoo.com.

Once I was a little girl, and I believed in Santa. I also believed in a magical fairy friend and a little devil named Number 13 who could make things happen for me. I think I was about seven when the first illusion crashed. My friend Sandra told me that Santa was not real and that it was my parents who put the gifts under the Christmas tree. I wanted to cry. It was unbelievable, and I argued with her for a bit. She insisted that my parents had lied. I couldnt believe it, but she was right. This was big. The magic world was breaking down and I saw that parents lie. I could not believe that they had tricked me. The whole illusion, that Senis altis (the Lithuanian name for him) came and left us all these presents, had been so convincing. With one look at reality my belief in magic had been shattered! And it was gone for good. Since then, no one could possibly convince me that Santa is this guy who lives at the North Pole and brings presents to all the good kids all over the world on one magical night. Yeah, imagine that!

Time passed, and I grew up and picked up beliefs about everything. Some of them seemed quite magical, including new age teachings about the Higher Self and so forth.

The searching for the truth started on one magic night in 2002. I experienced silence of the thinking mind, a sweet sense of being, contentment, peace, and feeling at home. That magic-mushroom trip was the beginning of my journey to find home. I wanted to reach that state again, where all was felt as one, stillness, just being, and the sweetness of bliss. I then spent several months searching the Internet, just like Neo in The Matrix, looking for clues, reading all kinds of stuff, and wanting to understand what had happened. A lot of anger came up. I could not believe that no one had told me about this state of being.

To tell the truth, I was a lazy seeker. I read a few books but never went to any meetings, retreats, or groups. I had not heard of satsangs, had never met a teacher or a guru. I was alone in this search most of the time; at one point I had a friend who would talk about spiritual stuff and share thoughts about books that I read. I liked the authors Osho and Richard Bach.

I loved experimenting with different modalities, especially sound healing, binaural beats, Holosync, and so forth. It was easy to get into deep states with the help of technology, particularly as I did not have the patience to meditate. I would put headphones on and let the frequencies take me away. Most of the time I just fell asleep. I tried many things for fun and exploration.

It took eight years and many bumps in the road for me to arrive at Jed McKennas books about spiritual enlightenment and the search for truth. I read all three of his books in two weeks during Easter of 2010 and got a real shock to the belief system. Jed catapulted me out of hypnosis. By hypnosis I mean following other people, looking for truth in what others were saying, believing this and that, and trying to fix my beliefs as if that would give me a happy tomorrow. As Richard Bach says in his book Hypnotizing Maria, a suggestion accepted is hypnotism. I accepted suggestions from everyone and everything around me: friends, parents, media, school, university, books, movies.