Drop your fears and reinvent yourself

That year was 2005, one evening I had my 1.5 year old son playing besides me on a bed and suddenly a negative thought came into my inner space – “What if I die at this moment?” Suddenly, I experienced an intense fear through out the whole body with my heart palpitating in such a fast speed. Having learned yoga since 2000, I knew the spirit is eternal but I also understood that it had not become my own experience yet. The immediate next thought I had was – “I need to learn how to meditate and start understanding the deeper truth in life.”

This incident started my quest to seek for a spiritual teacher who could show me the door into my inner world and the reality. In 2006, I found him – he is Paramahamsa Nithyananda (fondly known as Swamiji), a living enlightened master from India who helped me understand one very important law of life – Whatever we hold with fear of losing it, exactly that will only be taken away from us. If we want to retain anything in our life, all we need to do is – just renounce the fear of losing it.

Let me share with you some things I thought I couldn’t live without and how I reinvented myself.

• Leaving my corporate job. After having built my identity as a marketing professional for 18 years, it was really a difficult decision to leave my marketing career besides losing the financial security and status. It took me 2.5 years before I had the courage to jump out of the rat race. There were many fears such as fear of not able to make it in my new business, the fear of unknown, fear of running out of my saving, fear of not able to provide for my family. But one clarity I had was that my job would be taken away from me one day when I became obsolete in the corporate world, nobody is indispensable. Do I want to wait till that day? With clarity comes courage, I left at the peak of my career at the age of 40 and I went on to start my own company called Other Ways of Learning and founded Your Presence Heals as my gift in sharing and enriching the world. It took me 3 years to figure out with trial and errors and divine guidance but eventually I learned to reinvent myself as a spiritual guide which was something totally new in Singapore. By combining my passion in enriching people with Vedic Psychology and Science of yoga with my business, this new invention not only gives me so much freedom in planning my life but also brings tremendous fulfilment whenever I see people getting healthy and healed through working with them.
• Not enough money. Since young I had been conditioned that we would need to save a large sum of money for retirement and medical care when we grow old. Having tasted poverty at a young age, I developed an insecurity with money. Literally once I needed to see many zeros in my bank balance to feel secured. One big lesson shook me completely – once I lost a large sum of money because of my fear of losing the stock options. Exactly the fear came true and I carried the guilt for a few years till I completed with it. In the process of reinventing myself, I finally understood 2 important lessons – 1) wealth is an energy that should run as currency, not hoarding; 2) I can create wealth and attract abundance with my creativity, energy and power of manifestation.
• Living without solid food. I enjoy food so much that the thought of living without solid food was unimaginable for me. The body used to be programed by parents/society to eat 3 meals per day with all the necessary nutritious food. But I was shown that human beings can indeed live without solid food, just liquid diet and prana (life energy). The Yogic technology of Nirahara Samyama not only created a new yogic body in me but also I experience a totally new level of energy and such a freedom knowing that eating solid food is now choice, not a necessity.
• Losing my Guru. In March 2010, there was a conspiracy to destroy my master in a religious persecution. He was illegally put into jail for 53 days. For 3 months, I was living in utter uncertainty and identity crisis, while going through the churning, I learned to stand up for myself. I have to raise myself by myself and I cannot let myself down by myself. That 3-month period taught me so many lessons which otherwise I had to learn them in many births, it was literally going through so many “deaths” – deaths of my old mind in one body. One thing kept me grounded, the transformation I received from Swamiji and the trust in my spiritual experiences. Now, after having experienced the worst spiritual crisis in my life, I developed a kind of spiritual strength that is unshakable. After the truth came out, I was so relieved to hold on to my faith and now life showers me with more than what I thought I lost.
• Living without mind. The thought of living with the mind seemed unachievable for me in this lifetime. The mind when it is untamed, creates so much unnecessary suffering in my life. After having experience the thoughtless zone of Shivoham (I am Divine), now living without the mind is such a liberation. I can use it when I need it and put it away when I want to get back to my space. By dropping the mind, I am now the master of my mind, no longer a servant.

Swamiji made me understand the law of life: Life does not want to see any powerlessness in our inner-space. Anything which creates powerlessness in our inner-space, precisely that will be taken away just to make us understand we can live without that, not as a punishment. When life takes away something from us, it is telling us that we are able to still live our life beautifully.

As revealed in the great Vedic truth in Ishavasya Upanishad: Eeshaavaasyamidham Sarvam Yathkincha Jagathyaam Jagath | Thena Thyakthena Bhunjeethaa Maa Gridhah Kasyasviddhanam ||

The verse means that the world is ever-changing, but it is filled with Consciousness, “Eesha”. The Consciousness is independently intelligent and compassionate.

As long as your cognition is “Why me?” and that life is taking away the things which you really enjoy, “Life is cruel!” You will only experience all the happenings of your life as accident. But, the truth is change established in change. When something is removed from you, don’t curse life. It is done with tremendous compassion. If you can cognize that whatever is, is change established in changing, and this whole thing is filled with Consciousness and intelligence. When you are only perceiving with your limited 5 senses, you think only this earth is moving. Once you start to expand your understanding to reality, you realise that the entire Solar System in which the planet is a part of, even that whole Solar System is also moving. Not only what you perceive as the world is changing, even the perceiver is changing! When you know that even the perceiver changes, and you accept this change, simply you start to update or reinvent yourself. Everything when it is removed from your life, it is just life giving you a beautiful opportunity to reinvent yourself. Life just want to remind you that without that thing, you will be powerful.

In essence, expand your limited perception of life to the reality that anything removed from you or added to you is only done for your fulfilment and joy, not to punish you because life is celebrating, fulfilling itself through you. Namaste. 😀