David D. Cicia, Ed.D.
My name is David Cicia, Ed.D. My Free-Beingness guidance comes
out of more than 37 years of my focused experiential research and
growing understanding that accompanied that.
I spent most of my life looking for these experiences and realizations, and only recently did they open up to me, like a kind of revelation. I think of them as revelations because after many decades of searching, exploring, pondering, thinking, trying just about everything in the "personal growth" field, getting lost, being out to sea, etc. etc. this came to me as such an utter simplicity that at least at first it just didn't seem like it came from me. When, through this program, I realized who I really am - as distinguished from who I thought I was - then I realized that it did indeed come from me. This means that it came from Self (Radiant Pure Awareness), not from ego, not from my former little thinking mind that did all that searching. And the unfolding of it in me into ordinary everyday life is continuuing and growing.
So, in that perspective, a biography here would be irrelevant. But the question "Who am I?" is certainly not irrelevant. There is no answer - at least that the thinking mind can comprehend. But Self can and is revealed easily and directly through the Free-Beingness realization process and the unfolding of this in daily life. Then you will have the answer to "Who am I?" For yourself. As your Self. That is all that is really and truly relevant. This program is not for me. It is for you - and not who you think you are but who you really are.
However, you might want to have some assurance about who is going to convey this to you. That is reasonable.
I was born in 1948 and grew up in the small college town of Northampton, Massachusetts. Except for going away to college, the army and various training programs, I spent most of my life there up until 1997. Then I moved to Vermont for a short time, then Denver for a very short time, and finally ended up in Florida. I spent about 6 years in Ft. Lauderdale, and now I am living in the quieter seaside town of Venice, Florida. I enjoy the sun and the seaside (Gulf Of Mexico), walking, riding my bike, and the many parks and nature preserves here.
I started having experiences that led to this guidance process very early in life. I remember my grandmother living with us when I was very young. I didn't know it then, but looking back on it I realize that she existed in Beingness. She and I used to sit next to each other in the kitchen as my mother went about her cooking, me in my high chair, her in her wheelchair. I don't remember her and I ever speaking, but I do remember the feeling of ease and contentment sitting next to her. I also remember very vivid internal experiences of being huge, i.e. feeling big, thick and heavy. That is my first memory of a mystical or unusual experience.
When I was twelve years old my parents took me to a presentation of a movie about a nearby Trappist monastery. Trappist monks keep total silence, and this really impressed me. There was a story in the movie about one monk who lived to a very old age in complete silence. They had some relics from him. I was deeply moved by this. That sense of peace, of deep real silence, resonated with me, even at that early age. It was reminiscent of my grandmother.
At age fourteen I went on a camping trip with the boy scouts to New Mexico. On one of the hiking trails one day in the forest deep in the mountains I got separated from the rest of the group for a brief time. I happened into a glen, where light was shining in through the trees - a sort of miniature cathedral in the woods. At that moment a complete and utter silence totally overtook me. It was as if a trap door in my head had opened and the noisy contents of my mind had just slipped right on out - completely!! Along with this, the whole world became utterly silent too.
Looking back on this experience later, I concluded that it was not the first time this had happened to me because it did not seem new or strange at the time it happened. But it is the first time that I can attach a place and time to the event. What I came to realize later, with a little more understanding, is that this was an experience of pure Beingness, pure silence, Pure Awareness. Of course, I didn't know it then. It was something that just happened out of nowhere, seemingly. Now I know that it was that Beingness that brought so much contentment when I sat next to my grandmother, and that Beingness was the perpetual silence that resonated with me so deeply in that Trappist monk.
This natural and spontaneous realization of Pure Awareness occurred repeatedly throughout my life, gradually becoming more permanent, and then getting to where it is there all the time, and actually in all my outer experiences.
This is the real basis for my knowing what I am offering to you as guidance. I have lived it all my life with great clarity and complete innocence. It did not come to me from any technique or practice. I therefore know without any shadow of a doubt that Beingness just is and doesn't need any path to get to it. And that is what I convey to you, as the experience of awakening or realization.
In relation to the way I convey this to you, I have had much experience exploring, experiencing and teaching things that are either related to or which have contributed to Free-Beingness. Amont these are subtle body energy, bodywork repatterning, experiential focusing, general sensate focusing, and meditation. Free-Beingness is nothing like any of these, but my experience with them has given me enough skill and refinement in experience, and in teaching on refined, subtle levels, that I am able to bring all that to my present teaching. This kind of sensitivity and refinement is essential for successfully conveying Free-Beingness.
I first started meditating and doing yoga in 1968, on my own. I became a teacher of Transcendental Meditation in 1974 and taught that for many years. In 1975 I learned Polarity Therapy, a form of subtle energy body work, and practiced that for a few years, also giving classes and workshops in it. Around 1980 I learned and started teaching Gendlin's method of Experiential Focusing, which is a way of opening up the internal bodily sense to the wisdom and guidance that is there at subtle experiential levels. Using this, along with various forms of guided meditations and hypnosis, I created and taught a course in experiential writing from inside oneself, at the University Of Massachusetts, Amherst, in the early 1980's. In 1983 I graduated from The School For Body-Mind Centering, which is a form of developmental bodywork repatterning. I have studied and utilized other forms of repatterning, including the Feldenkrais method, Eriksonian hypnosis and NLP (neuro-linguistic-programming.) In addition to these formal studies I have pursued very many allied fields and studies on my own, in my continuing search that I mentioned above.
I have also looked into, studied or practiced methods from just about all forms of known personal growth teachings, spiritual teachings, guru teachings and meditation techniques. This has proved particularly valuable to many of my students because I have been able to understand and help clarify their experiences, doubts and confusions that have arisen from many of these. I have developed great clarity and understanding over the years from having made many wrong turns, gone down many painful and confusing roads, and tried out all sorts of paths that led nowhere or places that weren't fruitful. I have especially learned what is real and true, as distinguished from what is fake or false. There are very, very many pitfalls along the way, and I know just about all of them. A lot of what I can help you with is in that territory. I have found that I have had to spend a lot of time with students in correcting mistakes and clearing up confusions. My years of personal mistakes and learning from them gives me compassion and clarity in this realm.
I also have natural psychic and intuitive abilities, which have opened up tremendously as a result of my own Free-Beingness realization (as one of the many higher level abilities that come with that awakening.) As a matter of fact, psychics call me for advice. At once point in the 1980's I studied at the School For Inner Sense Development (now Delphi University) and did "Soul Readings." I put these abilities to use in tuning into exactly what you need from moment to moment during our sessions. I no longer do "soul readings" but I do look into your deepest being (your true and pure individuality) and help you awaken this and bring it out.
As far as credentials go, I have some major ones also. I graduated from St. John's College in Annapolis (the "great books" college) in 1970. I received a doctorate in education (Ed.D.) from the University Of Massachusetts, Amherst, in 1987. I wrote my dissertation on The Practice Of Freedom, which was an attempt to show how the deeper level of Socratic dialogue was really a practical means for self-realization. I continued beyond that to develop a very effective method of Socratic type dialogue as a means of deep repatterning of the whole being into self-realization. I continued this exploration right up until January, 2005, when the Bliss Of Peace realization hit me and knocked me off that track for good. Now I have completely dropped the Socratic dialogue, because this new thing is so much better. I have since expanded the Bliss Of Peace guidance program into Free-Beingness guidance, which completes the discovery, by taking the Bliss Of Peace into full integration into all aspects of body-mind and life.
Who am I?
That's a question for all of us!
The real answer to that question takes you beyond yourself, beyond your thinking mind, beyond your tumultuous emotions, and beyond all limiting conditions - into the ecstasy of true freedom in Self.
This is Free-Beingness - the ultimate Bliss Of Peace.