Several weeks ago my beloved soul sister, Prema Gaia, emailed me her story… When I read this story it touched such deep chords in me. It is so powerful to tell our stories and to have them witnessed. If you would also like to write your spiritual journey story to be featured on the Teja Blog, please send it to me at teja@yogini-bliss.com ~ Here is Prema’s story, with photos…

In 2001 I was working as a model, living in the Hollywood Hills and hanging out in VIP lounges. By 2006 I had received compelling inner guidance to give away all of my possessions and go on a long walking pilgrimage, living totally moneyless for seven months, dumpster diving and sleeping outside on the front doorsteps of churches. During the next four years I hitch-hiked 20,000 miles, visiting sacred sites, intentional communities, monasteries, ashrams, spiritual teachers and shamen. My Truth-Quest led me to explore the world's wisdom traditions, healing arts and spiritual practices and at times deeply question my sanity, identity and reality in ways hitherto unimagined.

I believe that we choose the families we are born into, and that the challenges I experienced growing up were exactly what my soul needed to bloom into fullness during this auspicious time in planetary evolution. I experienced my childhood as being love-starved, lonely and heart-breaking, but looking back now, and reflecting on how magical life has become, I can’t help but trust with my whole heart that this was all part of some kind of beautiful Divine Contract that my Higher Self consciously requested. My childhood experiences served to strengthen my intuitive and empathic gifts and enabled me to experience my feelings and interactions with others in a deeply soul-stirring and heart-penetrating way for which I am truly grateful.

I was born into an adventurous, world-traveling family, and had traveled to almost forty countries by the time I finished university. I always secretly wished that my family could be a little more “normal” and that I could find a way to blend in a bit better. By the time I finished high school, my parents both had rather conservative government careers, as did many of my friends' parents since we lived in Ottawa, the capital city of Canada.

I grew up in various cities across Canada and spent my adolescence and university years in the not-so-progressive city of Ottawa. Like many people, I never quite felt that I fit in, but I found a niche which provided a temporary distraction from my loneliness when I discovered alcohol, boys and dance clubs at age 15. By that time, I was totally onboard the mainstream bandwagon; my favorite TV show was Entertainment Tonight and my favorite magazines were People and US Weekly. My main hobbies in high school were: getting drunk, kissing as many boys as possible, gossiping, shopping, getting stoned, going to parties and watching TV.

The way that I see it now, I feel that young women have an infinite supply of Sacred Feminine Healing Love flowing through them that wants to be expressed in its most transformative, nurturing, uplifting form. For me, however, the only way I (and many of my friends) knew to express that Shakti, was to get drunk and make out with lots of guys at parties. It became a game for me and I kept a list of all the guys I had kissed. By the time I stopped keeping the list, the number was over 150.

Many years later, when reflecting on these events during a series of spiritual retreats, I was struck by the profound irony that I had been trying, for so many years, to transform this pure love to sync it up with the denser thought-forms that were subscribed to by the predominant culture I was born into. I felt gaping canyons of grief when I reflected on how devastatingly sad it had been for me to translate my Divine Feminine Shakti into a painfully lower frequency expression of it, through seeking to connect with men based on the cultural norms I had seen in the media, and knew of no higher consciousness alternative to.

By the time I finished university, I couldn’t wait to move to Los Angeles and try my luck working in modeling, music videos and anything in the entertainment industry – a dream that I had secretly been harboring for years. I signed with an agency in L.A. and landed a few TV commercials and music videos, and catalogue modeling jobs for a few different companies.  I got a job as the assistant to Jay Bernstein, a famous Hollywood talent manager, and got an inside look at the lifestyles and tribulations of people whom I had grown up watching on TV.

Within a few months I had familiarized myself with the scene of getting backstage passes, getting into A-List Hollywood clubs, and networking with celebrities. I was so fascinated by this lifestyle at the time. In retrospect, I realize that I was always on a quest to find inner peace, true happiness, and liberation, but since I had been fed prime-time TV from a very young age, the only paradigm I was familiar with for what ‘liberation from suffering’ might look like, was attaining the Hollywood dream. Like many young people today, I confused celebrities for the spiritual mentors that my deepest heart was truly seeking. Although I never made much money as a model, within a couple of years I did have the opportunity to work at agencies in Barcelona, Hamburg, Athens, Toronto and L.A, and had started dating a 30-year old American billionaire.

There was just one glitch in the system, though. The problem was, I really didn’t like the selfish, social-climbing, hidden-agenda person I had somehow become, and  my behavior patterns seemed to indicate that I was trying to destroy myself. This unexamined shadow side, which had been growing since childhood, was showing up in increasingly imbalanced coping mechanisms. I had developed an obsessive bingeing and fasting relationship with food that, at times, seemed to occupy about 90% of my psychic space. I also exercised compulsively and had liposuction in a misguided effort to combat my body image issues. In retrospect, perhaps it was because I am so empathic, that I was intuitively picking up on the predominant thought forms that were in my immediate field each day, and taking them on as my own thoughts.

I could feel this repressed self-hate, despair and rage looming over my life like a psychic ticking time-bomb that was increasingly impossible to sweep under the rug. By this time I had also experimented with every drug that was offered to me, and had a rather intense cocaine binge in Athens at a modeling party. But for some reason drugs never comforted me in the way that food did, and it was much easier to give them up than my food bingeing.

There have been two major spiritual awakening blasts in my life and the first one hit me like a ton of bricks in the summer of 2001. After a vacation in Mallorca, my billionaire friend dropped me off in London in his brother’s private plane. I decided to take the opportunity to go visit a former boyfriend who lived a few hours away.  I arrived at his parents’ conservative countryside home in the South of England, with my oversized pink Gucci sunglasses and low-cut halter dress, totally unaware that what was about to transpire would catalyze a complete paradigm shift in my life.

My gorgeous ex-boyfriend had, as best as I could figure it out, decided to live like a monk, giving away a lot of his possessions, going to some sort of ghastly sounding long meditation retreats and –gasp!– telling me straight-faced that he didn’t particularly care if he never had sex again! What had happened to my fun-loving, skinny-dipping, drug-taking vacation playmate that I had known and loved only two short years before? And who was this handsome yet clearly quixotic monk masquerading as him? When I asked him if I could take the meditation book he had shown me, he furrowed his brow and looked at me skeptically. "If you'll read it." he replied dubiously.

Back in London, I got totally hammered on beer with an old friend from high school I was visiting, and hung out at the London Bridge, drunkenly hashing over my romantic dilemmas and bemoaning my inability to find a path that was leading to any kind of fulfillment or happiness. In retrospect, I was also feeling the building internal pressure of a spiritual breakthrough about to happen, and the energy felt foreign and scary at the time, so I tried to numb the intensity by bingeing on alcohol.

The next day I was so hung over that I could barely function. I arrived at the airport too late to make my flight and was informed that the next flight to Toronto wasn't until the following day, twenty-four hours later. I was left stuck in the airport with absolutely nothing to do, nothing to pass the time, nothing to read except.... hey…what about that meditation book that my friend had given me?

I probably would have procrastinated on reading that book for God-knows-how-long, but with the Divine Timing of the Universe, I sat down in the airport that day, and read the entire book from cover to cover. I had the first experience of something that would be a very commonplace occurrence for me in later years. It felt that the book had been written specifically for me and what I was going through at that precise moment in time. It spoke to the deepest core of my being and touched parts of my soul that I didn’t even know existed.

After that turning point my consciousness evolution seemed to take on an unstoppable momentum of its own.  I started doing 10-day meditation retreats, became a raw vegan, did a 3 ½ week water fast, started practicing yoga and ecstatic dance avidly, and founded a not-for-profit organization.  In 2005, I did something that seems like a common step that spiritual seekers often take before they take the plunge to go deep within: I decided to first try to change the world outside of me, and channeled all my creative energy into a ‘save the world’ project. I produced a big festival called ‘The Better World Handbook Festival’ with speakers and artists from across North America.

Producing, promoting and hosting the event was pretty overwhelming and I felt that I hadn’t been able to pull it all off in the way I would have liked and I lamented that my ego had definitely gotten in the way. I was realizing more and more that what really needed to happen in order for me to be able to serve my role in the Divine Plan was for me to take a big step back and search for my own inner wisdom, intuition and integrity.

Some disconcerting and uncomfortable phenomena of expansion and contraction in my heart chakra and lungs started becoming really noticeable around this time. I wondered if there was something wrong with me that I could find a convenient label, and maybe even some medication for. I looked into these things and decided that “social anxiety” might be a label that could fit my symptoms. I went to a psychologist for a while and even went to some anxiety support groups, but I just didn’t feel resonant with these modalities.

I started taking more and more silent Vipassana meditation retreats but I had fallen into a common pitfall of nouveau spiritual seekers – I believed that the meditation tradition that I was practicing in was the one true path and that I had to follow everything that was being taught to me, to the letter, or else I would be ‘off the path’. I started readying myself to do the second level Vipassana meditation course, joyfully anticipating the internal fireworks and zing that must inevitably come, as the keys to enlightenment are revealed, hopefully in some kind of ecstatic, kundalini-activating dharma transmission.

Just before the retreat, something happened that foreshadowed the second and most profound spiritual turning point in my life. I came upon a book in a meditation lending library about a woman named Peace Pilgrim who had walked 25,000 miles across North America to spread the message of Peace. When I discovered an Internet video about Peace Pilgrim, I saw a look in her eyes that I had never quite seen before. The wake-up transmission I received from looking in her eyes was about to drastically change the course of my life. It dawned on me for the first time, in an experiential way, that it was actually possible for someone from my culture and my era to attain deep inner peace and spiritual awakening, something which was so painfully far away from my own melancholy and bleakness.

By day four of my long-awaited advanced meditation retreat, I was so incredibly disappointed by the anti-climactic discourses and the total absence of zing that I decided to blow it off and leave early. “But, you can’t leave this serious, old-student meditation retreat half-way through, nobody ever leaves, it’s just not the done thing!” declared the teachers, alarmed at my apparent total oblivion to dharma protocol.

“Again, my regrets, but I must go and serve the planet.” I reiterated, firmly convinced that once I fully turned my life over to the Universe and surrendered myself to being a World-Server, everything would be smooth sailing and I would have no more of those pesky worldly-life problems to deal with.  

Now liberated from the container of spiritual elitism and the demarcated box that my consciousness evolution had been limited to, my inner guidance started coming through and speaking to me in an immutable voice. If you want to break out of your misery, despair and longing for your life to be over, you have to clear the entire slate of this illusory life you have created and give away everything that is anchoring you to this maya, the voice kept repeating, over and over in my head. "God, that’s so extreme!" my rational voice kept arguing, and the inner conflict between my mind and spirit kept escalating and escalating until there was just a heck of a lot of noise in my head.  Finally I was so overwhelmed by the intensity of the inner conflict and my increasing feelings of desolation and gloom that I said “OK, you assertive new voice in my head that wants me to be a spiritual pilgrim! You win!”

My next step was to go about the long and arduous process of finding homes for 30 years’ worth of accumulated possessions. Every single thing had to go, until I was left with only the clothes on my back and a small brown paper bag that carried my ID, my phone numbers, a toothbrush, a spoon and a comb. My entire modeling portfolio found its happy destiny in the recycle bin, along with my high school yearbooks, my old love letters and so many other sentimental and ego-attached mementoes.

My guidance was telling me to re-connect with Earth Mother and to learn how to live in a primitivistic way and gain knowledge about wild edible plants and the cycles of nature. I also felt a strong pull towards Mexico. And I planned to walk.

For the next 7 ½ months, I lived totally moneyless. This lifestyle necessitated learning really quickly how to become an efficient dumpster diver, urban camper (one who is skilled in finding safe places to sleep in cities and small towns), freegan (one who knows how to find everything they need in dumpsters, free boxes or other resource recovery methods) and skillful hitchhiker. I was in Texas at the time when I decided to do a 500-kilometer walking pilgrimage across to Mexico, living moneyless and sleeping outside along the way.

The walking pilgrimage was sometimes ecstatically liberating, sometimes exhaustingly intense but always magic-filled. On the third day, I had the unprecedentedly cosmic event of meeting my soul twin: we seemed to have known each other from a past life and had some kind of soul contract to meet up at this particular point in our Earth Walks and transmit wisdom and inspiration to each other. It was amazing: everything we shared with each other was like the missing puzzle pieces to all the spiritual questions we had both been internally pondering in the preceding days.

She introduced me to some people she knew, one of whom said to me: “It’s so good to see you again! I’ve missed you!” I had never met him before, but the joy in his eyes, as they welled up with tears, was something I will never forget.

Every cell in my body was vibrating with the energy high of my first ever soul-family reunion and as I walked along towards the next town and reflected upon the turn of events, my feelings of deep fulfillment and joy grew. My consciousness was so flooded with bliss chemicals that spontaneous neural networking started taking place in my brain, answering questions I had long been pondering in my life. I was totally saturated by the awakening experience, laughing, crying and feeling such a sense of unequivocal confirmation from the Universe…

That night, I experienced the most radiant mystical dream I had ever had. I witnessed a luminescent nativity scene where my friend was being born and I was there alongside jubilant, enraptured onlookers, all speechless with gratitude and delight that this Divine child (which represented us all) was being born to share its gifts with our world. Being immersed in this energy of such profound thankfulness and honoring of life was some of the deepest heart-medicine I had ever felt, and I was awoken the next morning by the audible sound of an angel’s voice, with tears of joy still wet on my cheeks.

That spiritual high easily carried me through the rest of the walking pilgrimage. I slept outside in lots of creative places ranging from the front doorsteps of a church, picnic tables, inside a children’s play-house in the backyard of a church, and even inside a porta-potty on one really cold night! Often though, wonderful people would invite me into their homes and we would share stories about our spiritual paths. In one town, I connected so much with the conscious community, that three families took turns hosting me in their homes and we all shared a really sweet feeling of organic soul camaraderie.

I walked across the border to Mexico on New Year’s Eve, 2006 and finished my 500-kilometer pilgrimage. Shortly thereafter, I had a very serendipitous connection with a shaman near San Miguel de Allende and experienced a lot of healing with her. Next I went to visit the sacred Mayan ruins in Palenque, connecting with some of the amazing people that are continually drawn into the vortex of that sacred land. I was still totally moneyless, eating fruit off trees and finding bruised and half rotten veggies that were being thrown out in the marketplace, chopping off the bad parts and using the rest. It was much harder to be a freegan in Mexico and I decided to head back to the US, to New Mexico to visit a cave hermitage retreat center that the shaman had told me about.

I had an instant connection with the monk who was running the cave hermitage and I ended up doing a retreat in the cave, which had been built up and was quite cozy. This monk had an amazing spiritual library at his house, with books and videos about all the wisdom traditions and all the great spiritual beings.  I would sit there watching videos about sages like Ramana Maharshi, St. Francis and Amma, and spontaneous waterfalls of tears would release from my eyes without my even thinking about it – it was like the tears were flowing straight from my soul.

That summer, I followed Amma all around on her entire North American tour and I was still moneyless, so I slept outside on hotel pool deck chairs and squatted on rooftops of apartment buildings. My favorite story was the time I was looking for a place to squat in a New York City hotel and I went up to the second floor and found a place that looked quiet and safe to sleep, under a big buffet table with a long tablecloth that went down to the ground. I awoke the next morning to the sound of glasses clinking above my head. Oh, no, they’re setting the breakfast table with me still under it! I used my stealth detective skills to scope out an opportune moment when no one was looking to dash out from under the table, regain my composure, and try to look normal as I strolled out into the fresh morning air. Try to look normal, try to look normal –how many times had I thought that one to myself!

I was volunteering to clean up the dining hall at Amma’s programs, and often people would take a few bites of the Indian food and decide they didn’t like it, so that was how I got fed that summer. I was still often using food as a coping mechanism to try to stay grounded through the spiritual roller coaster I was on, and it also seemed to help transmute intense energies that were stuck in my field. I was still reticent to talk with many people about this.

I got a chance to ask Amma’s guidance about something, so I asked her if I should continue to live moneyless. She said it was time to start using money again and later that day, one of her devotees found a $20 bill on the floor and handed it to me, saying, “Here, this is for you from Amma.”

Mid-way through the Amma tour, I was told by the registrar of the kundalini yoga Summer Solstice Sadhana Celebration that I was the only person out of 1800 yogis that he was going to grant a full scholarship to, because he resonated with my motivation for living moneyless. I went to the first few days of the kundalini yoga retreat in Espanola, New Mexico and it was great, but my heart was yearning to be back on tour with Amma, so I left early to rejoin the tour. After the Amma tour, my parents agreed to sponsor me to go on a spiritual pilgrimage to India, and I visited Amma’s ashram, Gandhi’s ashram, the Ramakrishna ashram in Delhi, Ramana Maharshi’s cave, the Dalai Lama’s temple and many other places. I also met with Tenzin Palmo, a British woman who had done 12 years of cave retreat high up in the Himalayas. I talked with her about my increasing desire to do long solo retreat out in nature. She suggested that I find a place back in the US or Canada, as solitude is very hard to come by in India these days, even in the Himalayas. 

After returning from India, I went directly to a 10 day Vipassana retreat in central California to get grounded and tune into my next step. On the day the retreat ended, I discovered that one of the kitchen volunteers was driving to Taos, New Mexico. "I'm going to move to Taos." I told him. "Could I get a ride with you?" "Do you know anyone in Taos?" he inquired. "No, but my friends are waiting for me there."  I replied, speaking my intuition aloud. After arriving in Taos I lay on the earth in full prostration in front of Taos Mountain. I prayed "Sacred and glorious mountain, if I am meant to stay in this beautiful Land and do any kind of service for the people and the planet from this location, please let things flow clearly for me here. I surrender completely to Divine Grace."

Taos has been my home ever since.

I became a regular at the local ecstatic dance and as my levels of comfort and safety in that sacred container grew, I went incredibly deep in my exploration of liberated, tribal, uninhibited, inner-child-healing movement, toning and dance. Sometimes I danced alone, or often with other liberated playmates, going into realms of ethereal child-like playfulness, joy and magic.

I was offered an amazing long-term house-sit within a week of arriving in Taos. While walking in the hills behind the house, reflecting on stories I had been told about traditional Aboriginal yearlong walkabout initiation, suddenly it dawned on me: I had left Canada, life as I knew it, and all my possessions behind on October 17th, 2006. The date I had landed in my beloved Taos? October 17th, 2007, one year to the day after I unknowingly began a yearlong walkabout.

The next year, I started doing several short solo forest retreats, to prepare myself for longer ones in the future. I also met an amazing neo-primitivist mystic, who was living in a mud hut, weaving plant fiber bags, firing pottery over an open campfire, weaving baskets, making gourd water vessels, wildcrafting local edible foods and plant medicine and carving art from stone and rock. He became my treasured mentor and when he left for the winter, I did a 20 day solo retreat in the mud hut, praying, doing ceremony, studying spiritual texts and deeply connecting with the earth.

During these years I also went on a number of spiritual pilgrimages to meet sages and spiritual teachers such as Baba Hari Dass, Shree Maa, A.H. Almaas, Tsoknyi Rinpoche, Amma, Swami Paramatmananda, Jack Kornfield, Tenzin Palmo, Roshi Reb Anderson, Mother Meera, Timothy Conway, Ajahn Amaro and others.

I was feeling drained and dismal from hitch-hiking around and sleeping outside in order to visit spiritual teachers on a zero-dollar budget. Sometimes I felt such deep loneliness and isolation that it was almost too much to bear. I felt direly in need of some grounding and a sense of belonging. But where on earth could I possibly fit in? The one place that I felt safe, welcomed and resonant was a freegan, eco-activist, bike-loving Zen meditation community in Portland, Oregon, which I joined for seven months in 2009. The community woke up at 4:45 am and meditated five times a day, did tai chi, yoga, chanting, studied raga music, ate a strict sattvic vegan diet and lived a monastic lifestyle. Our accommodations ranged from squatting in a dilapidated house, to sleeping in our friends’ backyards, to doing retreats in the forest. We cooked over a tin can stove, dumpster-dived much of our food, and were active members of ‘Food Not Bombs’.  Like many women in the community, I chose to shave my head as a symbol of renunciation and letting go of my ego.  I was in the middle of a three-year period of celibacy, totally focused on spiritual practices, and felt very identified as a nun at the time.

During the time I spent in the community, I had totally isolated myself from my family and friends, because I had an idea in my head that this would help me focus more on the spiritual path. I was desperate to find an end to the inner misery which had started rearing its head again, and I wanted to give all my energy to my quest for spiritual liberation. I had also given away a lot of my power to our meditation guide, and had totally lost touch with my intuition and stopped tuning into synchronicity and Divine flow as a way of guiding my decisions.

After I left the disciplined and structured container of the meditation community, I had a spiritual free-fall experience and, for a time, I had no grounded notion of who I was, or whether “I” even existed as a separate entity from the whole. I was so uncentered that one of the only things I could think of to ‘come back into my body’ was to fervently binge on food. During this time, I questioned my sanity and fell into the deepest dark night of the soul I had experienced, with thoughts of dying never far from my mind. I felt driven to seek answers by doing another 20 day solo retreat, this time out in the Gila National Forest, with javelinas, coatimundi and bighorn sheep as my adorable neighbors.

There were many storms on that retreat, both inside and outside. It was a profound and humbling experience and, like my long retreat the year before, I didn’t see another person the entire time. I stayed in the National Forest and later in a tent just outside the forest for five weeks and got very comfortable with the wild animals, cooking over an open fire, and got acquainted with the stars and bird songs. I had finally experienced the lifestyle that my spirit had been insistently guiding me to for so long.

I had left a few of my belongings in my friend’s hogan near Taos, and I returned there, thinking that I was just going to be picking my stuff up. But, much to my awe and delight, Taos Mountain welcomed me home with open arms and synchronicity and magic started happening for me as soon as I arrived. I was offered a great place to stay at the Neem Karoli Baba Ashram, I connected with some amazing spiritual mentors as well as many old friends and I felt joyful and happy for the first time in recent memory. After one particularly soul-nourishing heart-to-heart with one of my meditation teachers, I remember skipping all the way home with a big grin on my face, thinking to myself “I’ve been seen! I’ve been seen!”

My ‘inner critic’ had gotten in the habit of criticizing me for being an oddball, having a very unusual lifestyle and using emotional-eating as a grounding and coping mechanism. Consequently, I had developed a long-standing fear of living in community and I wanted to face this, by doing that which I feared. My four months at the Ashram were wonder-filled, vulnerable, sometimes heart-breakingly blissful, sometimes terrifying, but always heart-expansive.

That Spring during a solo retreat back at the cave hermitage, I received some remarkable inner guidance that led me to attend a 2 ½ month long Intentional Community Apprenticeship program at Hummingbird Community. The synchronicities and signs that led me to the community were so prolific and varied that it amazed me.

The summer program consisted of Non-Violent Communication training, Lakota Vision Quest, family constellation work, a blind-folded trance dance retreat, permaculture training, and a lot more. The energy field at the community was like nothing I had ever experienced before, even in India, and it was the most transformative and healing summer of my life, heretofore.  There were twelve Vision Questers and we all went into the forest and found a spot alone, where we would remain for three days, praying continuously, and not eating or drinking anything during that time. It was an incredibly powerful experience and I felt that we received a group transmission of Divine Grace as a blessing from Earth Mother for coming together with such a sacred intention.

After three years of celibacy, I started exploring my sexuality again.  Through an ethereally beautiful tantric exploration with a dear friend, I was amazed to discover that so many of the spiritual practices I had been learning, such as chi circulation, conscious breathing, eye gazing and presence practice are all part of tantra.

I still had a lot of fear and hesitation around allowing myself to be totally transparent and vulnerable with a partner, especially because I felt that most men wouldn’t understand my unusual life. I also still had a lot of residual body-image issues, despite all the years of spiritual practice! I had an attraction with the partner of one of my closest friends, and through a lot of heart-centered communication, openness and trial and error, we decided to allow these inclinations to be explored. We treated the exploration with a great deal of intentionality and we put a lot of time and energy into our communication. It was a beautiful experience although not without some heart-ache, and I feel that our friendship is now deeper and more expansive as a result.

I felt the need for some solitude and time to integrate all the transformation that had been occurring in my life, so I went to Crestone, Colorado and did a retreat in a small geodesic dome hermitage there. One day, I was hitch-hiking to an appointment with a healer, and the famous Tibetan teacher Tsoknyi Rinpoche III picked me up on the road, and cracked me up with his crazy driving and jokes! 

I then spent some time in the powerful vortex of Ashland, Oregon and I participated in two ayahuasca ceremonies with the Santo Daime Church, which was quite an intense and eye-opening experience. I was also invited to be one of 19 Goddesses to help co-create a Goddess Temple Healing Arts Center in Ashland, with some of the most empowered, radiant and wise women I have ever met. One of my greatest passions is being involved with projects that focus on the re-activation of the balance between the Sacred Feminine and Sacred Masculine on the planet, and I am continuing to work with the Temple as a ‘Melissa’ (sacred space holder).

So what is the harvest from this weird and wonderful spiritual adventure? The precious cord that now connects me to Spirit, and my relationship with prayer and ceremony in my daily life seems to be, in itself, the biggest gift that has come out of all of this. Friends who have heard my story have commented about some of the “humiliating” experiences I’ve been through. Humiliating – maybe. Humbling – very. And the longer I’m on this path, the more and more impossible it becomes for me to even consider judging another person. It makes me laugh to think that I could even presume to judge anyone after all I’ve seen and been through.

One of the biggest challenges and gifts that has been developing recently is an overwhelming ability to feel other people's feelings, vibrations, thoughts and moods, as if they were taking place in my own energy body. This can sometimes be quite intense, and require me to spend a lot of time in solitude, and do energy moving practices such as chi gong, movement, vocalizing and toning. At times I have felt so profoundly drained that I have had to go into the forest alone for hours, doing purification ceremonies with the elements, until my chi levels are restored. I trust that this is also a perfect piece of my consciousness evolution, but I am definitely on the learning curve of these new phenomena.

One thing that I’ve gleaned from all of this is that it is now time to embrace the totality of who I am, “shadow” and all. Also, my intuition now makes it clear to me much more quickly, if my Heart is not saying “yes” to something. Conversely, I notice that I feel incredibly activated when I am working on projects that are in attunement with my Higher Purpose, which is to serve during the planetary shift that is underway. I now realize that Spirit orchestrated everything perfectly by giving me a business degree and a background in publicity, because there are so many inspiring and enheartening service projects to help promote during this time of Global Shift. My prayer is that I may always trust the Divine Pattern, although my mind may never be able to cognize it, and that I may follow my truest heart-guidance, for the benefit of all beings.

Thank you for reading! Namaste and Blessed be!

After working as an event producer, a videojournalist, a model, and a publicist, Prema Gaia received compelling inner guidance to give away all of her possessions, stop using money and embark on a Truth-Quest of indeterminate length. Several years of studying the world’s wisdom traditions, spiritual practices and healing arts followed. Prema traveled extensively and met or studied with a diverse range of spiritual teachers including: Baba Hari Dass, Shree Maa, A.H. Almaas, Tsoknyi Rinpoche, Ammachi, Jack Kornfield, Tenzin Palmo, Mother Meera, Ajahn Amaro and others.  Prema now works as a freelance writer and lives at Hummingbird Community, a community dedicated to the evolution of consciousness.  http://www.hummingbirdcommunity.org     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2s3E0_IRX0

Comment (3)

This weekend my 11-year-old son played in three soccer games. Fortunately the sun was shining and we enjoyed a touch of warmth. While watching the games, I also cultivated the witness… And as I watched myself, I again saw the truth of that expression “Where-ever you go, there you are.”

As Teja the yogini soccer mom, I witnessed myself doing spiritual practices through it all: in the car on the way to the game I chanted to Lord Shiva; during the game I chanted mantra japa (mantra repetition) with my sandalwood mala (necklace with 108 beads); and after finishing the mantras, I experienced a peaceful meditation state. Any time we are fully focused in the present moment, we can enter a meditative state, so I discovered that I can find inner peace whilst watching a soccer game!

Two other things I noticed: 1. I really enjoy watching people who are skillful at what they do, and my son’s team is very adept at passing the ball. They have such an amazingly high level of teamwork for their age. And 2. I acknowledged the way competitive sports can separate people, so I intentionally focused on watching the parents of the other team and seeing their joy when their players did well. In that practice, I noted Compassion and Happiness rising within me and rippling out to everyone on the field.

Today as I’m reflecting on the weekend, I’m feeling happy and grateful. I’m filled with Gratitude that I get to be who I am, where-ever I go…

May all beings know the truth of their paths. May all beings be free to be themselves. May all beings know Inner Peace.

Om Shanti (Peace),

Yogini Tejaswini

Photo of Teja Yogini Soccer Mom before the game by Teja’s son Gabe.

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In my last blog article I wrote about the three New Year’s intentions that I ‘heard’ whilst stargazing the night before New Year’s Eve: Shiva ~ Power ~ Magic. I understood that for me to effectively move forward with my “cheerleader” goals, I would need to somehow pull my focus off of the unrequited love lila and place it strongly on God. Just thinking the phrases “Yes! Yogini!” and “Open yourself to new magic” filled me with ecstatic tingling sensations, letting me know that the time is ripe for me to go through the portal of yet another transformation.

So then, on a chilly New Year’s Eve afternoon, I went to relax at a nearby spa, called Chozu. The heat in the steam room and warm pool calmed my system, and I naturally turned my attention to Shiva, who is the Pure Consciousness and Bliss (within and without). Then, as soon as I entered the sauna, with its ethereal vibration and earthy scent, I felt myself going into a very deep state. I sat in meditation pose on the warm wood, and began silently chanting Om Namah Shivaya over and over. Ever a practitioner of Cultivating the Witness, I watched myself going deeper and deeper into a state of Union, and I ‘heard’ a voice saying, “Now you are truly Married to Lord Shiva.”

In that state of Bliss, the karmic lilas with the earthguys seemed so insignificant, and I really understood how it is ALL the Divine Mother’s Play. I could see that I’ve been taking it all way too seriously. I ‘got’ the Cosmic Joke, and I felt free to just watch the continued unraveling of any karmic residues in the unrequited love lila.

With a bright red face and a wide-open heart, I returned home to prepare for the evening kirtan with Prema Mayi. As I put on a fun New Year’s Eve dress, I felt open to new magic coming into my life this year. Then, sitting in the yoga studio, surrounded by beautiful beings devoted to the Light, I felt very much in my power as a yogini committed to radiating Love to all beings. In animal medicine, horse represents power. I felt as though I was sitting on a magnificent horse…

… But then, with a big, painful “Thud!” I fell off that horse and spiraled down out of my power. Very big expansions are often followed by very big contractions, so it shouldn’t have surprised me, but since I am quite human, it surprised me anyway… Basically, as soon as I saw the earthguy, I fell into a state of longing and sorrow, in which I quickly forgot that it’s ALL the Mother’s Play!

In my pocket book, Radiance Rising: Spiritual Practices for Daily Living, I describe the inevitable spiritual process of expansions and contractions. Also, in my memoir, The Rita Lila: A Western Yogini’s Journey to Bliss, my teacher Basil gives the following advice:

“Take your openings extremely seriously! You are There, when deep states happen.  But when you are in reactions, don’t take them too seriously – just let them go through and release them.”

For most of us, there is a tendency to think that the expansion wasn’t real, since here I am back in this familiar, contracted “reality”, but the opposite is True! The expanded state is REAL, and the contracted state is temporary, passing, and unreal. With that understanding, I’m back on my horse, ready to go for a long trot through the Ashland mist today! Jai Shiva Shankara… Victory to Lord Shiva… my beloved husband.

May you thoroughly enjoy every expanded state that you are blessed with in 2011…

May all beings everywhere know Peace and Happiness.

Om Shanti (Peace),

Yogini Tejaswini

Caballo photo by Oneras (Mario Antonio Pena Zapatería) – CC license

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In my last blog I wrote about the first of three requests that I took to Amma last month. Today I will write about the other two requests.

My second request was for increased Radiance, which I know was happening, since quite a few people told me that I was shining and glowing. My third prayer was for Dharmic (Right) Livelihood. A series of things let me know that Amma heard – and was responding to – this request. I’ll outline them here.

The second day I was at Amma’s California ashram, I ran into an Indian man who I’ve met there on past pilgrimages. He told me that he had read my pocket book, Radiance Rising: Spiritual Practices for Daily Living, and he was very impressed with how I had written it in such a way that Westerners would be able to easily understand the practices. He strongly encouraged me to promote that book.

The next day, while sipping hot tea in the snack shop, I met two beautiful soul sisters who immediately ‘saw’ that I should be promoting my books. One woman suddenly took on the role of coach and said firmly, “You have to stop being small. Get out of the way – the books are not about you. You don’t have a choice – it is your job to put the books out there, because people need them. Stop being small: think Big. You need a fiery publicist who really gets what your books are about and who has the know-how to get them out there!”

Later that afternoon, I went up to Amma for my first darshan (hug/blessing) of the week. I took a bag with 22 copies of Radiance Rising for Amma to bless so that I could then donate them to the ashram store. Amma put an apple in my hand, held me close in embrace saying “My daughter, my daughter, my daughter… MaMaMaMaMaMaMa,” and then she threw some beautiful flower petals on the books. I knelt on the carpet in pranam (prostration with my forehead on the floor), and began sobbing. I cried for several minutes, feeling a burning sensation throughout my body. Then, as I sat in meditation close to Amma, I reflected that during that crying sob, there were no thoughts at all. I wasn’t crying for any particular reason – it was just a healing release of some kind.

Next I took the flower-adorned bag of books over to Swamini, the woman sannyasini from Australia who has been Amma’s close attendant for nearly three decades. She looked at the books enthusiastically and when I told her that I loved her books, she said, “Well, I am loving your book!”

The next day I tried to get in the question line, but I wasn’t able to, since there were so many people with much more dire life situations than mine… So, I wrote my question down on a card and when I went up for darshan, I handed the card to Amma. This is what I had written on that card:

Dear Amma, I bow at Your Holy Feet. All of my work is Yours. I’ve self-published 3 books; publish regular articles on my website blog; lead a weekly spiritual practices circle; give Reiki healings; and mother 2 boys (divorced). I have 2 month’s living expenses left. Please give me guidance on what my next steps should be. What should I do next to align with dharmic livelihood? How can I connect with a publicist and secure financial support for my work (as a cheerleader for spiritual practices)?   Om Namah Shivaya, Tejaswini

P.S. I donate 10% of website sales (and donations) to Your charities, and I intend to increase that as I make more money.

When Amma took that card into her hand, instead of quickly embracing me and kissing it while she hugged me, she very purposefully kissed the card, as if she intended for me to see her kiss it, and then she embraced me. When I sat down to meditate near her after that darshan, I felt her Presence strongly in my field, and I understood that Amma is Right Behind me always. Then I ‘heard’ something that comes from a teaching Amma often gives: ‘I am not a little lamb – I am a lion cub!’ Then I thought, ‘Yes, I am a lion cub, and I am strong, and I am doing correct work. I should just keep doing the work I am doing with full faith that I am supported. Work hard, and at the same time play and have fun – don’t get too rigid in your mission to spread the Light!’

That afternoon I noticed that there were only 7 copies of Radiance Rising left on the shelf in the store, so the next day I took 22 more copies up to Amma for blessing. She looked right in my eyes, and then again threw flower petals on the books, which I then I donated to the store.

With so much Gratitude in my heart, I continue the work assigned to me.

May all beings everywhere have food, clothing, shelter, peaceful sleep, and spiritual upliftment.

May all beings everywhere know Peace and Happiness.

Om Shanti (Peace),

Yogini Tejaswini

Book cover designed by Gaelyn Miriam Larrick.

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A few days ago, about 7,000 feet down from the peak of Mt. Shasta, I sat in meditation while my boys hiked up to the snow line with their grandparents. With a warm stone beneath me, and the hot sun behind me, I was in yogini bliss heaven. As I tuned in to the energies of the sacred mountain, I felt incredible surges of shakti (spiritual power) go through me. I visualized potent mountain energies entering my root chakra and rising up through my crown, while sweet heavenly energies flowed through my crown, down to my root.

I collected some warm stones, communed with a cricket-like being, and energetically charged up the Reiki healing energies and Reiki healing symbols within my being. In that incredibly connected state, I affirmed my intentions to give more and more Reiki healings and to offer more and more Radiance Rising Circles. I also sent Reiki healing energies and Mt. Shasta healing energies to my dear yogi friend, Pete. I silently thanked the Reiki Guides for gifting me with this opportunity to deepen into the experience of being a Reiki Practitioner. For me, as a raja yogini, practicing the healing art of Reiki is just one more wonderful spiritual practice that brings me to the state of Union.

In cultivating the witness, I watch myself expanding through the yoga of giving Reiki energy healings. I witness the positive healing effects that Reiki is having on my being, and I am super grateful to be a vessel for the Unconditional Love Energy that the Reiki Guides channel through me.

When I returned home from that potent Mt. Shasta meditation, it was the evening of Sri Krishna Janmasthami, a Hindu festival honoring the birth of the shimmering blue being who came to Earth about 5,000 years ago to radiate Love to all. I chanted the Hare Krishna mantra while cooking food for my family, and I gave thanks for this wonderful life.

May all beings everywhere know Peace and Happiness.

Om Shanti (Peace),

Yogini Tejaswini

Photo of Teja on Mt. Shasta by Teja’s Mom. Photo of Mt. Shasta by Teja Shankara.

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In my last blog article, “Merging with the Compassion of Green Tara,” I gave a general overview of Reiki healing and highlighted some things I learned at a Reiki intensive last weekend with my teacher, Reiki Master William Bagley. In this blog post I will share my personal experience with receiving the Tanran Reiki relationship healing symbols.

The first evening, Will gave us an overview of the relationship healing symbols, and then we sat in meditation while he guided us to visualize and receive those symbols. During the lecture I thought to myself, ‘This will be good information for me to know for when I work with couples. I don’t really need this right now personally, since I just took the brahmacharya celibacy vow for at least six months, and I’m not planning on being in a relationship any time soon.’ So, without feeling any emotions, I took the following notes on the meanings and actions of the relationship healing symbols:

The five Tanran Reiki relationship healing symbols support the cycle of a healthy romantic relationship. The first four symbols are in a circle, with the fifth symbol placed in the center of the circle. To view the symbols and read more extensive information than I will offer here, go to the Tanran Reiki Blog at http://tanranreiki.blogspot.com/ 

The first symbol is Toh Noh Men, and it supports the honeymoon phase when male and female are resting in each other. When male and female relax into each other, their muscles relax, and that releases all the repressed emotions that were stored in their muscle tissues. The tendency is then to blame the other person for how bad they’re feeling, rather than seeing that those emotions are releasing because of the Love. When Love brings up the repressed emotions, then that means it is meant to be a healing relationship.

The second symbol is Teh Gah, which supports the processing phase of the relationship. The key to this phase is both people committing to holding the container of the relationship. For talking to be productive, couples need to process energetically first. So, when an issue arises, rather than verbally arguing about it, the first thing to do is to get the energies back into harmony. Breathing is the key for getting the energies right. Once the energies are back in harmony, then the talking level communication can be productive.

Will taught us two breathing exercises for harmonizing the energies. One is to sit facing each other and cross your arms and hold hands. One person exhales while the other person inhales. Eye contact isn’t necessary. It is easiest to watch your partner’s mouth so you can get the breathing flowing correctly. Then you can add eye contact if you wish, by looking into each other’s left eyes. The other exercise is to sit back-to-back with arms locked on the sides, and then one person exhales while the other person inhales. Whichever way you choose, you need to breath like that for at least 42 minutes in order for the energies to really shift.

I know 42 minutes sounds like a really long time, but a good argument can go on for much longer than that, so this is definitely worth a try!

The third symbol is Neh Tah Ru, and it supports the process that unfolds when the male and female are merging their energies more and more in sexual union. With sexual union, there is a surge of energies: sexual union relaxes the tension in the muscles, so all the repressed emotions that were stored in the muscles get released, AND the karmas that were stored in the sacrum get released. The more the hearts unite, the more the energies rise up. As soon as you merge sexual energies, the natural process is that the karmas get released. If you know that this is going to happen, then you are prepared, and you can work consciously with the released energies.

This symbol is about being aware of the inevitable process that gets activated by the merging of sexual energies. There is a lot more than pleasure going on during sexual union: the Kundalini Energy is actually doing quite a lot of work, because the sacred action of sexual union is the healing of karmas. Love will bring up anything that needs to be healed. The key to this phase is both partners being committed to staying PRESENT with whatever is arising. If both partners surrender to the Energy, then they can go deeper because that mutual surrender to the Energy resolves the power struggles.

The fourth symbol is Teh Mah Lah, and it supports the whole Energy Field created by the couple. Male and female are the same, but different: here they process in a mirror image way, and they commit to being aware of the atmosphere that they are creating with each other. They commit to balancing their energies in the shared space of the breath, so that the atmosphere becomes charged by them breathing loving energy in and out of the energetic field around them.

The fifth symbol is Sakarah, and it supports the couple in unifying all dualities and floating in all of Life. When each person resolves all dualities within, then “male and female resting in each other becomes each person resting and floating in all of life.”

Again, for more information on these symbols and to see the symbols drawn, go to the Tanran Reiki Blog at http://tanranreiki.blogspot.com/ 

After the lecture, Will guided us to open and receive these symbols in meditation, and that’s when I emotionally fell apart. During the first symbol, I started crying, and with each symbol I cried harder, until we reached the fifth symbol. The first four symbols brought up all my grief that my romantic relationships haven’t been so healthy. During the fourth symbol I was crying so hard that I wanted to run away, but I made myself stay with the process, which was good, because once he started talking about the Wisdom and Divine Grace associated with the fifth symbol, Sakarah, then I immediately connected with Divine Love and my system relaxed.

As the last tears streamed down my cheeks, I had a big “Ah-HA” moment in which I understood all of the pain and suffering that I’ve gone through in romantic relationships. I saw clearly how my choosing to participate in connections that did not have healthy energetic containers inevitably led to all the dramas that played out in the stories of my life. In some of my romantic lilas (Sanskrit word for “divine plays or divine sports”), I behaved in ways that I did not like, and I regret some of my words and actions. However, in that meditation I was able to forgive myself because I understood what caused my reactions. Simply put, intense karmas arose within connections that did not have the proper containers to hold them.

Will echoed my own inclination when he said that it really works best to go deep with just one person. Due to my past propensity to attract males of the polyamorous persuasion, I have had many heated conversations on this topic. Because of the inevitable release of karmas, sharing sexual energies with more than one person at a time is like jumping into a huge fire. It is delusional to think that you won’t get burned by all those karmas.

Due to some not-so-good choices on my part, I’ve been burned a few times too many this past year, so I’m taking a “time-out” with the option to not go back in! Strangely, as I am typing about fires, a huge wind is bringing the smell of smoke into the valley, and now I hear a helicopter overhead. I pray for all the beings affected by all fires: all the actual fires and all the metaphorical fires!

Soon I will write a blog about this brahmacharya vow I’ve taken…

May all beings everywhere know Peace and Happiness.

Om Shanti (Peace),

Yogini Tejaswini

Photo of Oregon Coast by Teja Shankara.

August 18, 2010... My Reiki teacher William Bagley's response to the above article:

Dear Teja, thank you for posting all this and sharing your experience with the symbols on your blog. You definitely get the living sense of how they are meant to work. What I would like to add is that I received these symbols in dreamtime... from the Reiki Guides. It was wonderful to receive them and feel the truth behind them, and they form a kind of mandala where each of their energies is constantly interacting with each other, and there are four other heart symbols that surround them. The meaning behind the other four being there (transmuting love, trusting love, radiant love, and forgiving/processing love) is that we need the foundation of love in all our relations in order to support the more focused love of a romantic union, that both need to be committed to their spiritual path, their healing, their emotional growth, and, hopefully, even meditation practice on their solo path before they meet someone to do a "dual vehicle" journey with. The Tibetan Buddhists call this "karma mudra" to emphasize what kind of process one enters into. The relationship journey can be the easiest, more rapid, and most peaceful path to healing and enlightenment, a natural place to deeply learn what love is. Meditating on top of a mountain may give deep peace, but love is partly interpersonal and is meant to grow in relationship. There is something beautiful and deep to evolving as humans that can be learned there. It has to do with trusting the larger energy of life that brings the two beings together. The Reiki Guides said that they released the symbols into this world at this time to help something that is meant to grow and appear in human life. It is behind all the focus on relationships and healing them. Deep down we know that love in relationships can be more than it sometimes has been. Blessings, Will

May 22, 2011... My dear Reiki healer sister D. M'Chelle sent me her artistic renditions of the Tanran Reiki Relationship Healing Symbols. Please enjoy them in my blog posted today, "Tanran Reiki Relationship Healing Symbols by D. M'Chelle"

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