Last Friday, in anticipation of beginning to read Tulasidasa’s Shri Ramacharitamanasa (The Holy Lake of the Acts of Rama), I cleaned my living room and bought myself flowers! The next morning I began reading the introduction, written by Ram Chandra Prasad, Professor of English, Patna University, Patna, India. Each morning this week, I spent my “time-out-of-time” spiritual practice in studying the introduction, and here I will share a few highlights from those studies…

Tulasidasa (1532-1623), poet-saint of Northern India, began writing the Ramacharitamanasa (his version of the Ramayana) when he was forty-two years old (my age now!), on March 30^th (today’s date!), of 1574. With his incredible capacity for work, and his determination to revitalize Hindu society, he set about the task of writing that great epic story anew, to remind his readers that there is no reason to despair. Through his depiction of Rama’s victory over the demons, the reader remembers the ultimate victory of truth over evil.

Ram Chandra Prasad, who edited and translated Tulasi’s great work into Hindi and English, writes, “Endowed with the prophetic vision of a true seer, Tulasi is alert to the present need and understands the requirements of modern times, of what he calls the Kaliyuga, and devotes all his creative energies towards providing a sure antidote to the poison that has corrupted human society today.”

Already greatly inspired by the introduction, I am very much looking forward to reading the first pages of the epic tomorrow morning, which happens to be Ram Navmi, the birthday celebration day for Rama! And, three weeks from tomorrow, in my own small way of providing “a sure antidote to the poison that has corrupted human society today”, I will once again be offering weekly Radiance Rising Circles! (Beginning April 21^st, Saturday mornings, 10:30am – 12 noon at the Unitarian Universalist Center, corner of 4^th & C Streets in Ashland.)

May all beings be Happy and Free. Jai Sri Rama! Victory to Rama!

Om Shanti (Peace),

Yogini Tejaswini

Photo of Shri Ramacharitamanasa with flowers by Teja Shankara.

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I snapped this photo of myself on New Year’s Eve, after returning from my true home, the Amma Satsang. It was the perfect way for this yogini to end the year: chanting the Names of God and meditating with a loving sangha (spiritual community). Just the day before I had finished reading Ram Dass’ book, Be Love Now, so I was already feeling quite full of loving spiritual energies.

Be Love Now is truly more than just some papers bound together. Whilst reading about Ram Dass’ experiences with Neem Karoli Baba-ji, I felt as though I received spiritual transmissions, and my daily sitting meditation practice has deepened as a result.

What I loved most about this book is the way the sacred and the mundane are woven together, which is reminiscent of what Maharaj-ji (Neem Karoli Baba) taught. Primarily a “householder guru,” who himself was married with children, he spent much time counseling people on the ordinary aspects of householder life. Ram Dass describes the way loving service can transform even the ordinary act of grocery shopping:

“That’s the Hanuman mode, serving through love, opening and opening until you become the Beloved or the Beloved becomes you. You’re absorbed into that consciousness, and the Beloved’s being permeates yours. Then the ego perception shifts to the soul perception, the whole world is radiant, and the grocery store is your temple, full of souls.”

Ram Dass explains that in India “holiness is not confined to celibate sadhus or renunciates.” In fact, Maharaj-ji himself said that one can reach God while fulfilling his or her duties as a householder.

Of course we householders need to be disciplined and committed to our daily spiritual practices, and Ram Dass also offers much in the way of spiritual teaching and inspiration for keeping ourselves dedicated to the path. In one section that really struck a chord in me, Ram Dass points out that attachment is attachment on any plane. In reference to the loving and helpful guides we can access on the astral planes, he writes:

“By acknowledging such immaterial beings and planes as equally real – but not more real – than this immediate reality, you start to free yourself of attachment to any one plane or level of reality. Thinking of them as more real than this physical reality, however, can create more attachment. The attraction to the energies and mysteries of other planes can be a tremendous distraction or side trip from one’s path. Attachment is attachment on any plane.” 

In addition to sharing much about his guru Neem Karoli Baba, Ram Dass (and his co-author, Rameshwar Das) also highlight the incredibly inspiring accounts of many other Indian saints, including Anandamayi Ma, Sri Ramakrishna, Sri Ramana Maharshi, Sri Nityananda, and more. I received darshan (a view or encounter with a holy being) from the photographs of several of these high beings.

And then what it comes down to, when I finished reading the book, is: can I apply these teachings to my daily life? Well, sometimes yes, and sometimes no… So, in the moments when I cannot rise above my own limitations, I am heartened by Ram Dass’ words in Be Love Now: 

“You can only go at the rate you can go…The only thing you can ask is that you keep awakening at the fastest rate at which you’re capable. You can’t go any faster than that…” 

That advice echoes my favorite part of his spiritual classic of several decades ago, Be Here Now, in which he wrote, “You can’t rip the skin off the snake. The snake must moult the skin. That’s the rate it happens.” (See my review of that book: Teja’s Review of Be Here Now by Ram Dass)

Obviously I highly recommend Ram Dass’ new book, Be Love Now. I have so much Gratitude for all the beautiful seva (service) that Ram Dass gives to help raise the consciousness of the human species. May all beings everywhere benefit from his work.

May all beings be happy and free.

Om Shanti (Peace),

Yogini Tejaswini

Photo of Happy Teja on New Year’s Eve with Ram Dass’ book Be Love Now taken by Teja Shankara.

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Much to my initial dismay, this year I was not able to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with my beloved Guru, Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi, the “hugging saint” from India who is popularly called Amma, which means “Mother.” Due to financial, health, and other issues, I just was not able to make the pilgrimage down to California. Although I felt some sadness, I remembered Amma’s teachings about the importance of celebrating life and of making the most of each moment, so I consciously transmuted the sorrow into joy by bringing Amma home to my heart here in my temple cottage.

On Thanksgiving Day I gave thanks for so many things, especially the memory of three years ago on Thanksgiving Day, when Amma looked in my eyes and gave me the name Tejaswini. Whilst cooking festive vegan foods, I listened to CDs of Amma’s bhajans, burned her Rose-Sandalwood incense, and remembered all the times I’ve sat near her, watching her give darshan (hugs). After serving the meals (lunch to my sweet boys and dinner to a beloved friend), my friend and I watched Darshan, the Embrace, a film by Jan Kounen. I had heard about this film for a while, but just hadn’t gotten around to watching it. Now I am glad I waited, because watching this film on Thanksgiving was the perfect way to bring Amma’s Darshan home to my heart!

I highly recommend this film. I loved it so much that I watched it again the next evening with my sons, and then today I watched my favorite parts one more time before returning it to the video store! The film really captures the Love and Beauty that Amma embodies, and I am ever filled with Awe and Gratitude that I have had the amazing opportunity to be one of the millions who have received her darshan in the form of her loving embraces. Kritajuutaa! Amazing Gratitude!

May all beings everywhere know the Sweetness of Deep Amazing Gratitude.

Om Shanti (Peace),

Yogini Tejaswini

Photo of sweet orchids from Advait taken by Teja Shankara.

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Happy Birthday to Gandhi-ji, who was born 142 years ago today! I’m celebrating his life as I head off to a soccer game with my parents who are visiting this week… Life is crazy-busy-full right now, which is why I’ve been away from the Teja Blog.

If you have any questions (see “New Teja Blog Feature: Ask Teja!”), please email them to me: teja@yogini-bliss.com

Let’s all follow Gandhi-ji’s advice and strive to be the change we wish to see in the world!

Om Shanti (Peace),

Yogini Tejaswini

Photo of Mahatma Gandhi sourced from TopNews.in

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This Wednesday, September 21^st, 2011, is the 22^nd Annual International Day of Peace. This global 24-hour observation is meant to demonstrate the power of prayer and other spiritual practices in promoting peace and preventing violence. Amma has asked everyone to participate in the collective minute of silence and prayer at 12:00 noon (your local time) that day.

Amma said, “It doesn’t matter where you are – whether at work, at home, traveling, or even in the bathroom – you can participate in this prayer. Just stop whatever you are doing at that time and spend one minute praying for the peace of the world. We should encourage as many people as possible to take part in this prayer.”

So, the International Day of Peace is all day, September 21^st, with a minute of silent prayer at 12:00 Noon, your local time, anywhere you are on the planet!

May all beings feel the Peace that radiates around the world this Wednesday!

Om Shanti (Peace),

Yogini Tejaswini

Photo of Sacred Mt. Shasta taken by Teja Shankara.

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Several years before I met my beloved Guru Ammachi, my other beloved Guru Neem Karoli Baba-ji had already jumped into my heart and life… so a magical thing happens when I go down to see Amma at her ashram in California: I just “happen” to meet other Amma devotees who are also connected with Neem Karoli Baba! On my most recent trip to see Amma, I was still reading Krishna Das’ book, Chants of a Lifetime: Searching for a Heart of Gold, and when people saw that book in front of me in the snack shop, they started up conversations about Neem Karoli Baba. One woman told me about this temple she visited in India, in which they had life-size posters of Neem Karoli Baba! After she told me about that peak experience, I shared a story that I’ve heard several times… in the story, an Amma devotee took his friend to see Amma: the friend had been a devotee of Neem Karoli Baba, who was known for wildly throwing fruit in all directions at his devotees… the two men sat near Amma for a while, and then the Amma devotee turned and asked his friend, “Well, what do you think of Amma?” The friend said, “Well, she’s okay, but she’s not like my Baba.” Right at that exact second, Amma picked up a banana and threw it at the guy! Needless-to-say, he became an Amma devotee!

So then… right after I told that story, I went back over to the Hall and sat near Amma, watching her give darshan (hugs and blessings) to people… and after a short time, Amma suddenly started throwing handfuls of chocolate kisses over her shoulders at the Indian musicians who were playing music and singing bhajans (devotional songs) on the stage behind her! She must have really liked the music because she was throwing those kisses hard, in all directions! I thought about how I had just told that story of Amma throwing the banana at the Neem Karoli Baba devotee, and I marveled at how splendidly connected in synchronicity everything really is.

All the time everything is connected in harmonious synchronicity, but we so often miss seeing it because we are caught up in our thoughts and life situations. I felt so much Gratitude for that moment of seeing the interconnectedness of it all. Amma doesn’t miss anything, because she is beyond thinking… and Neem Karoli Baba was the same – he lived beyond thoughts… I aspire to also get there – to that place beyond the thinking mind…

May all beings know Peace.

Om Shanti (Peace), 

Yogini Tejaswini

Photo of Teja Smiling Big in Amma’s Field taken by Kate Milliken.

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This is a short note to share the gorgeous beauty on my kitchen table today. This past week has been a wild ride: I returned home from my pilgrimage to see Ammachi (in California) on June 10^th; my parents arrived to visit on June 11^th; and I went back to work at the outdoor gear shoppe on June 12^th. This past week I worked over 49 hours, while my parents were visiting! They drove away today, and although I felt sad to see them go, I have to admit I am enjoying this quiet time to myself! With the boys at Papa’s house, I now have a little time for reflecting… while I catch up on dishes, laundry, bills, and shopping!

Here’s my little reflection for today: after being away from Amma for ten days now, I am amazed at how the transformation is not only lasting, but it is deepening and ever-unfolding. I asked Amma to help me release the attachment to the earthguy, and to help me find acceptance and peace… And Amma has given me all of that, and so much more! I am experiencing what Rumi called “the sweetness that comes after grief.” I feel so in love with everyone and everything!

Well, now I’m off to take a barefoot walk in the sunshine…

May all beings everywhere find Acceptance of What IS… and may that Acceptance lead to an experience of inner bliss! 

Om Shanti (Peace),

Yogini Tejaswini

Photo of gorgeous roses on kitchen table by Teja Shankara.

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On June 1^st I drove down to Castro Valley, California to see my beloved Guru Ammachi, who is popularly known as the “hugging saint” from India. During the drive, I was feeling distraught and overwhelmed by the on-going grief over the earthguy who I long for but cannot be with… so when I went up to Amma for the first darshan (her embrace), I gave her a letter in which I asked for her help in releasing the attachment and finding acceptance and peace. So many transformational things happened during that week with Amma, and I will write about them in a series of blog articles. In today’s article I’m focusing on why I look so happy in this photo taken of me on that sacred land at Amma’s ashram.

Each evening there was a program with a talk, bhajans (devotional songs), and a guided meditation. The first evening, one of Amma’s devotees gave the talk. He said that in India everything is considered to be God: all of Nature is seen as Divine, so plants and trees are worshipped at sunrise and even the buildings are seen as God. He explained that Indian culture is based on the principle that the Creator and the creation are not two. Then he said – and this is what really touched my heart – that rather than being in love with just one person out of seven billion persons, Amma is in love with the entire Universe: past, present, and future. The fullness of Amma’s Love is what makes her Shine. He then said that when we get fed up with the current state of our minds, then we start trying to transform ourselves and be like Amma.

That talk affected me so deeply that the next day I felt my smile rising again, and I felt so happy to be smiling so much at all of the beautiful beings around me. In this photo I see that Amma’s shine was radiating through me, transforming the grief into joy.

I bow down to Ammachi, with Gratitude for all of her blessings. 

May all beings know Peace and Happiness. 

Om Shanti (Peace),

Yogini Tejaswini

Photo of Happy Teja in Amma’s Field by Teja Shankara.

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Over the years, I have created little altars all over my temple cottage. Lately I have been especially enjoying the one behind my bread basket, toaster, and fruit bowl. I just love all the orange and green tones in the images. And I am touched very deeply by seeing my beloved teacher, David La Chapelle (in the green hat), surrounded by Beings he loved so much while he was in his earthly body: St. Francis of Assisi, Green Tara, and Ammachi.

When I moved into this temple cottage in the summer of 2004, I invited some dear friends over for a housewarming gathering. At the end of the evening, we sat in a circle in the grass in my new backyard, and David (who is “Basil” in my books, and who left his body in July, 2009) strummed his guitar and led us in a chant to Green Tara, the Tibetan Goddess of Compassion: Om Tara, Tutara, Ture, Svaha. David said that chant is a good one for householders because calling on Tara helps the day flow with delight rather than with drudgery. 

Simple little altars remind me of the sacred at every step throughout my home space. Divine images raise our vibrations and bring delight to our days.

May all beings know the Divine Inner Light. May all beings have food to eat each day. 

Om Shanti (Peace),

Yogini Tejaswini, who is heading down to California tomorrow to see Ammachi!

~ I’ll be back on the Teja Blog after June 10^th…

Photo of Teja’s Toaster Altar by Teja Shankara.

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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

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