A Takeaway for 2018: Creating Space Between Ourselves and Our Experiences

The years keep getting faster. At Upbuild, we’ve gotten to know so many wonderful souls who we become very attached to. In our workshops, the way people open up and show themselves is so precious, it’s very difficult for us to just go back to our lives and not keep the company of such exceptional persons. We live to see this work continue and we love to witness the ongoing strides of those we become invested in. And as the year comes to a close, I find myself reflecting and missing everyone we’ve met, as is my custom throughout the year, but especially in retrospect.

I pray each of you are well, keeping this transformative work alive and personalized. For us, every time we put on an event, it inspires and even forces us to be accountable to the work we’re trying to share. That’s a huge boon! Of course, we also have our personal practices which are vital for us to never stop growing.

So in looking back on 2018, I see first the faces of you who move us to do what we’re doing at Upbuild. Then I think of all the stress we’ve had to encounter along the way. It has been crazy and we feel ourselves to be maxed. Countless experiences that don’t go our way, personal failings that humble me every day, and a sense of not having enough time or energy to meet natural expectations for the different roles I play. What a formidable challenge that’s ongoing!

I would say that nearly all of this comes from the place of just wishing I could do more, give more, and be better for the world I care about. I actually have too many good things going for me. I know Rasanath and Vipin feel the same. It’s a good problem to have, yet I’ve learned the hard way that even a good problem is still a problem… We’ll come back to this.

I see we’ve been able to develop significant new workshops and experiences that I’m so proud of. I’ve written works yet to be released and shared from my heart the best I could this year. We’ve partnered with a young artist and friend - Rukmini Poddar - who’s beautifully illustrated descriptions I’ve been writing to help people better understand themselves through the lens of the Enneagram. We’re hoping to do more together in 2019…

This year, I finally settled into married life with my wife who just moved last December from Toronto. That’s a huge landmark and one that’s taught me a lot about what it means to really be a partner to someone, day in and day out. It’s a constant source of support and a constant pushing to get to the next level of empathy and spirit of service. To see our differences, consider life from the standpoint of another, and look at my own life as affecting hers at all times, has offered me so much opportunity for growth. How she’s in turn impacted this community is a tremendous gift I’d been envisioning for years and which I can’t wait to see come to further and further fruition.

    Finally, in all that has struck me this year, there is one thing I keep close to my heart every day - an instruction from my guru. A few months back, he asked me for an urgent phone call related to some service I could do for him. He was at his home in Germany and I had just finished teaching our weekly Bhagavad-Gita class, Gita Direct, at our home in Long Island City. He wanted to have a personal word with me and I shared with him the good problem I have which is still a problem… As much as I love everything and everyone in it, I’m sadly not able to keep up with my life, I shared. He empathized in a way that touched me, and in a moment, offered me a lifelong aspiration:

Create space between yourself and your experience of life. That is the key.

In other words, you are not your experiences, you are not your stress, your challenges, shortcomings, or even your gifts and accomplishments. Just last night I told my wife, “If I get attached to the praises that come my way encouraging me in the work that I do, then I also unwittingly will be attached to the opposite.” When people say good things about me and I care so much about those good things said, then I will naturally care so much when they’re not said. When you get attached to the good, you must be prepared for its opposite.

It’s not that we are to remain callous or shut our hearts to the good and the bad of others. But what we need is to engage with safe distance from the ego identification with glory and the lack thereof. When I had an amazing workshop experience at our recent Working With Your Inner Critic, I needed to orient myself that it’s not about me. It’s not that I’m so good and I live through the glory of that experience. I am on a journey and I will have good experiences and bad. I am going to be happy and distressed. As the adage goes, pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.

What I need to gracefully move through this life is the orientation that I am not my experiences and they do not make me. I was myself even when I was an infant and had no experiences, believe it or not. That’s the same person I call me. But I am all the more myself today as I try to separate my self from the ego attachments that obscure the real me.

I visualize who I am at heart and I visualize that the heart really is the seat of identity. That there’s a spark of consciousness which lights up my body and mind. And I think of how that light can never be dimmed. No matter what.

Whether things are happy or rough, I do not cease to be. And I choose to identify with that me, rather than the constant flux of this world. When I identify with everything going on in life, there’s no stable ground. It’s always in motion, intense, overwhelming. I need that distance from the happenings without by identifying with the deepest self inside. Being in touch with the self within is the only way to the serenity we crave.

At the close of another year which feels like but a blur, this is what I felt deeply called to share with you. Let the blur of life not blur ourselves. Practice visualizing yourself within as having space from all the experiences, and even thoughts, that come moment to moment. Please also kindly bless me that I can do the same!

We must see ourselves, and know all these fleeting moments that keep coming in a constant onslaught do not encroach upon us! You are you. No matter what. What could be more valuable? Remind yourself of this, and strive not to be attached to the good or the bad which is bound to come. You are separate from the phenomenon of experiences. Imagine 2019 as your real self, spacious and free.