Candice O'Denver is the remarkable founder of the
Great Freedom movement.
The following extract is taken from http://www.saieditor.com/stars/odenver.html.
Candice began formulating the Great Freedom teachings 25 years ago, after a profound and permanent awakening unexpectedly occurred in her life. She had been raised Catholic, but as a child she intuitively rejected substantial portions of what she was taught through that religion, yet she had a strong, natural faith in God, and prayed every day for many years to be “able to see the face of God”. Her deep connection with nature in her childhood brought about a profound experience of “the oneness of all things”, but she never practiced any kind of formal meditation, and had never met a guru or had any esoteric spiritual training prior to her awakening. As a young adult she was highly successful in many ways, “efforting and achieving” as a way of life, and receiving many accolades; in fact, at age 28 she was named one of 100 outstanding women in America. But her successes gave her no real satisfaction, and by the time she was 34 she realized that no matter how hard she tried, or how many successes she had, they never would satisfy her.
She then went through an profound personal crisis which led her into states of intense fear, alienation and despair. During that period she found that everything she had learned through psychology, philosophy, religion, and all other belief systems she had studied were of no help to her whatsoever.
Furthermore, every remedy she had previously relied on to give her relief, including alcohol and marijuana, now gave her no relief at all. During that extended period of being overwhelmed by negative emotional states, she somehow discovered that beneath all those states, there was a “basic space of pure awareness” which was free from suffering, a space of complete relief. She gradually familiarized herself with that basic space by resting as awareness for short moments, repeated many times, and soon she was able to rest in that awareness for 10 continuous days. At that point “awareness rose like the sun”, and from then on that unchanging space of pure awareness became her primary reality, and the painful thoughts and emotional states which had tormented her faded away like stars in the light of day. Her discovery of all-encompassing pure awareness, and the complete relief that comes with it, proved to be permanent. From this profound awakening the Great Freedom teachings have come, offering a simple and direct path for others to gain the same realization, and the same permanent relief from suffering.
The Great Freedom teachings are designed to be acceptable to the largest audience possible, and therefore do not rely on the word ‘God’ (which would surely alienate some people), nor are they aligned with any religion or based on traditional concepts such as original sin, karma, reincarnation, or ego. Candice doesn't even use the word ‘Enlightenment’, saying it has been so tarnished through years of misuse and misinterpretation that it often just creates confusion. Although after her teachings were formulated she discovered that they are similar to the Tzogchen teachings of Tibetan Buddhism, and share the same essence as ‘The King of Samadhi Sutra’ given by Lord Buddha, the Great Freedom teachings are not presented as Buddhist, and are not called religious, spiritual, philosophy or psychology; they are simply presented as being “about the ultimate truth of what it means to be human”. Unlike most paths, which might require the acceptance of some culturally-specific set of religious beliefs, or faith in some kind of cosmological system, the Great Freedom teachings are based solely on the direct experience of awareness, which is always present within everyone.