Everything Happens for a Reason – From Rationalization to Realization

“Everything happens for a reason.” I’m pretty sure I first heard these five words as a kid from my dad. Or maybe it was from one of my uncles. It’s such a common philosophical refrain among South Asians that I may have just picked it up through osmosis.

I’ve had three distinct relationships with these five words so far in my life: rationalization, adaptation, and realization. Let me explain.

Rationalization

For most of my life, I’ve taken these words as a rationalization. Something didn’t go my way…well, everything happens for a reason. Is that supposed to make me feel better about it? Kind of. Will I ever find out the reason? Maybe. 

A classic example was when it started unexpectedly raining like crazy in the middle of our outdoor wedding ceremony in 2007. Everyone ran for shelter, the ceremony required a 45-minute intermission, and the mandap (the flowered wedding ceremony structure) never looked quite the same. Now no one said, “Everything happens for a reason,” but many of our guests told us that rain on a wedding day is good luck across cultures (which I took as a similar sentiment). And I thought, what a convenient belief. If it’s sunny and beautiful on your wedding day, you have a reason to feel happy; and if it’s raining, you have a reason to feel blessed. Well I did take the rain as a blessing and that did make me feel better about it so I guess it worked!

Rationalization actually has merit because it helps us cope on a human level, but it’s limited as all rationalization is because it doesn’t deepen our character or our understanding.

Adaptation

Over the past five years, my relationship with those five words has shifted from rationalization to adaptation (I’m using the word ‘adaptation’ because it signifies to me a learning mindset). My view changed from: “oh well, there must be a reason so hopefully I can feel better about that,” to: “what am I meant to learn from this and how is this meant to help me grow?” Instead of throwing my hands up in defeat when things don’t go my way, I’ve been more contemplative and invested time in discovering what’s here for me. These questions have offered me a secret to a more constructive consciousness and experience of life, versus a more resistant and frustrating one.

The lessons are different in each situation when things “don’t go my way,” but in almost all cases, at a minimum, there’s an opportunity for me to learn more about the nature of my attachments and just how much control I desire and even expect in my life. Returning to the wedding experience, my wife and I were so attached to everything being “perfect”…everything going a certain way…as planned…wanting to control every last detail. Well that’s not how the world works. And when it doesn’t, we experience so much distress. And for what? For a little rainshower (maybe letting us know that someone is watching from up above). In our case we were lucky that we didn’t actually feel too distressed about the rain, but this is a lesson I know I’ll be learning for the rest of my life whenever things “don’t go my way”: how do I let go? How do I invest my best efforts into everything I do, and learn to let go of the results because they are outside of my control? My partner Hari Prasada wrote all about this in his year-end reflection about letting go.

I’ve experienced the evolution in my relationship with “everything happens for a reason” from rationalization to adaptation as great progress in my consciousness and in my experience of life as I mentioned above, AND it wasn’t the endpoint.

Realization

Two months ago I had a relatively benign experience through which my relationship with those five words shifted further, from adaptation to realization (actually believing that everything happens for a reason). 

My partners Hari Prasada, Rasanath and I are teaching a class that journeys through the spiritual text of the Bhagavad-Gita. The format of the class is primarily discussion groups that the three of us each lead separately. A lot of thought went into the formation of the groups based on what we thought would best serve the class. Hari Prasada, Rasanath and I felt good about the groups. But in our first class, when we separated into our three breakout rooms, I immediately noticed that there were two people in my group who weren’t on my initial list. There was a mistake in the creation of the breakouts.

I found myself a bit distracted. After all of our efforts, someone on our team had made a mistake. Should I interrupt the start of the groups to try to correct it? I didn’t. But I continued to remain conscious of it throughout the class. After the class Hari Prasada and I discussed whether we should switch people back to their original groups for the next class, and we decided not to because we were ambivalent about what effect that would have on the individuals and the groups. But it was still bothering me a little bit. Why was I so fixated?

Over the course of the week, I thought of this phrase, everything happens for a reason. By the time the second class rolled around, I had almost let go of my fixation and felt that this group was probably meant to be the way that it is. And then right before the start of the second class, another thought came to me: why had I been so sure that we had gotten everything right when we had initially created the groups? And then it struck me. Maybe we were the ones who had made the mistakes in our initial creation of the groups! And those mistakes were kindly corrected. Because the universe has a plan that’s more informed than our plans. I laughed out loud. All of a sudden I felt an ease. It felt clear to me that this was exactly who belonged in the group. I had a new understanding of what it means that “everything happens for a reason.” It’s a faith. And it’s immediate (not a “we’ll see how this plays out”). This was a profound realization for me.

Adaptation still had elements of rationalization in it for me. What can I learn from this experience that seemed to go wrong? The new questions that were alive for me all of a sudden included, why do I assume anything went wrong in the first place? Why do I assume that I had it right originally? What if everything were getting “corrected” moment to moment? And I can have faith in "Your plan, not mine." In the moment. 

I recognize that this third relationship with “everything happens for a reason” depends on a spiritual paradigm. But so does rationalization and adaptation in many ways. I don’t think it’s possible to believe that everything happens for a reason if you don’t believe in a higher power. And as my faith in a spiritual paradigm has increased, so has my realization that everything happens for a reason. 

The thing about the groups is that it wasn't that big of a deal, so making such a big deal of it may feel like a stretch. But I was still fixated on it. Because I like to control everything in my life, and when anything doesn't go as planned, I may perseverate on it. My mind had gone from being stuck on getting this thing right to feeling released because I understood I had done my part. In a moment it became so clear – I didn't need to keep the group formations and implications on replay in my mind. For me, the beauty of this realization is that it was about a relatively inconsequential matter, but the implications were far-reaching. What would it be like if I could keep this realization with me from situation to situation, and moment to moment?

I started thinking about all of the events in my life that had been corrections of my plans. That relationship that didn’t work out. That person who didn’t join my last venture. That poor financial decision I made. That school we selected for our kids but have been second-guessing. Even my nephew getting diagnosed with leukemia. That wasn’t so much a “correction of my plans” because it wasn’t part of my plans at all, but it was an unwritten plan, one of my unilateral contracts (as my partner Michael coined) with the universe – that all of my loved ones must be healthy and well. I can also see now how good has come from such pain. My nephew’s experience of his own unbreakable spirit, his Make-A-Wish dream coming true, his family’s experience of resilience through such distress, the awareness and critical funding raised for pediatric cancer research among our community, I could go on. What if I could see that there’s a divine hand in all of it? Even when faced with something much more tragic. Even if I myself am never able to see the good given my limited perspective. 

In the context of this third relationship (realization) with “everything happens for a reason,” the adaptive questions “what am I meant to learn from this?” and “how is this meant to help me grow?” are even more impactful because they’ve changed from “what can I learn from this unfortunate situation?” to “how has this situation been designed for my learning and growth?” The same questions carry a lot more power from this viewpoint, so realization and adaptation go hand-in-hand.

It’s important to mention that “everything happens for a reason” should never be justification for bad behavior. For example, if I’m not doing my best, that’s all right because everything happens for a reason. Or if I’m being unkind to someone, that’s all right because everything happens for a reason. No. Well, maybe, but then I can also expect the universe to respond accordingly and make the necessary “corrections.” I must do everything I can and then recognize that the results are beyond my control.

I’d also like to acknowledge that all of this is much easier said than done. To share an example of how difficult this is for me even when the stakes are low, we’ve been considering getting a house outside of the city for more than a year. A couple of months ago I became captivated by a property we saw. It was beyond the budget we were considering, and I found myself simultaneously dreaming up plans to have it while also praying to stop lusting after it so that we wouldn’t make a decision that we might end up regretting. After weeks of research and working through the details financially, we were finally ready to make an offer last week, and I called the seller’s agent to discuss. He informed me that the house had gone into contract the day before (after being on the market for more than six months). What?!?! If that’s not a sign, I don’t know what is. But I was still so disappointed. Why didn’t they tell us someone else was that interested? Why didn’t we move faster? On one hand, it seems pretty clear to me that this happened for a reason (even though the reason itself is not necessarily clear to me yet); and on the other hand, my toddler self is screaming, “BUT I STILL WANT IT!” If this is my response to something relatively trivial, how can I expect to respond when the stakes are much higher? When it’s about people, and there’s tragedy involved?

A few days later I’m still feeling disheartened when I think about the missed opportunity of the house, but I’m also curious what the universe has in store instead. And my recovery from feeling like I made a bunch of mistakes in the process (such as not moving faster) has been swifter than usual. Mostly because I have conviction that the universe has a plan. Is this rationalization or realization? The difference is subtle and the reality can only be known in the individual’s heart.

How many hours have I spent thinking (and rethinking) about things that didn’t go the way I had planned? How much wasted time continuing to think about those things after I had already learned what I had needed to learn? Ultimately, we have no choice but to accept. Instead, I spend all of this time fighting and resisting before accepting. What has changed is a much faster process of acceptance. And a joy knowing that someone much more qualified is also on the job :-)

Why should we trust that everything happens for a reason? Especially someone who doesn’t believe in a spiritual paradigm? Each of our journeys is so personal and unique, but I would invite you to try on “adaptation” and see what happens. Think about the struggles you have experienced in your life, and what you have learned and how you have grown from those experiences. What are you going through right now that’s not going according to your plans, and how might it be designed for your learning and growth? On a human level alone (as opposed to a spiritual one), this adaptive mindset and these questions have the potential to change your experience of life.

And for those who are open to a spiritual paradigm but also grapple with the idea, I would invite you to pay close attention whenever you experience a “coincidence” in your life. Coincidences have become like breadcrumbs for me, and when I’m not listening I easily miss them. But when I am listening, the coincidences in my life seem to multiply, and the trail of breadcrumbs becomes easier to follow. I would also invite you, if possible, to spend time with people you like and respect who have a spiritual paradigm, and observe their effect on you over time. This has been most beneficial to me in my journey from rationalization to adaptation to realization.

A few weeks ago in this telling of his first near-death experience, Hari Prasada’s guru, Sacinandana Swami, shared the profound experience he had of God telling him not to worry because “everything happens according to my will.” In the Bhagavad-Gita, Lord Krishna communicates the same message to his disciple Arjuna over 18 chapters. Given the reach and power of such a God, how can I assume that a seemingly small thing such as the formation of a group (constructed to cultivate spirituality nonetheless!) is not happening according to a divine will.

With time, I can see that everything in my life seems to have had a purpose, even things that still pinch a bit. My realization was about seeing it that way in the moment…before it has become clear…without the benefit of hindsight. That the invisible hand behind the universe is always at work. And always with me. Looking out for me. Correcting the mistakes I wasn’t aware I’d be making. And helping me learn and grow in all of the ways my soul requires. I just need to wake up to it.

The Salt in the Dish

“I am just the salt in the dish.”

Given salt’s low position on the totem pole of food preparation, this is a statement of humility. It is a statement of humility downplaying our own importance in any process out of deference to the larger mission or some greater good. It can be loosely translated as, “It’s not about me” or less succinctly as, “It’s not about me. I am involved in the process, and I help the process to run more smoothly, more efficiently, or make it better in some other way. But, ultimately, the mission is more important than any of my individual desires.”

This statement is easy to preach, but hard to live by. No matter how much we know “it’s not about us,” it still somehow feels about us. We are the protagonists in the narratives of our lives. We are the center of our own world constructs, and no matter how hard we try, we end up relating everything we observe and do back to us.

As an example, I recently facilitated a workshop with the goal of helping participants understand their personality types in order to build trust, self-awareness, and compassion among the group. In preparing for the workshop, I tried to repeat the mantra, “I am just the salt in the dish.” (hat tip Rasanath and Hari Prasada for introducing me to the power of this phrase in 2016 and to the spiritual teachers who passed it down to them). I had conviction that the workshop would make a real difference in the lives of the people who would be attending, so it should have been all about them. But as I prepared, it didn’t feel about them. I felt such intense pressure to deliver the perfect workshop that the purity and value of the work became secondary. My preparation, therefore, was less about how I could best serve the needs of the participants, and more about how I could deliver a shiny performance. And it was stressful. Because whenever a thought crept into my mind about how I could possibly slip up or how I might forget to mention a certain concept in a pre-scripted way, I got hit with a wave of anxiety. Instead of keeping the big picture in mind and feeling excited and grateful for the opportunity to positively affect the lives of people that I care about, I worried about what everyone would think of me. I shamefully concede that it became “all about me.”

One of the tricky things about this is that there is some truth that our desire for validation can motivate us to work harder, which can translate into a better experience for others. By making the work about us first, and the mission second, we can effectively serve others and the mission. But effective is not optimal. To optimally serve others, the needs of others need to be the first priority. Returning to the workshop example, I tended to emphasize content that I felt most comfortable and confident delivering. I was able to effectively serve the participants, but in my heart, I know I did not optimally serve them because I shied away from some of the content that would have been more meaningful and impactful for them.

To put our need for validation above the mission is unlikely to be sustainable, nor does it produce consistent results. Whether we deliver effectively or not, we may not always get external validation and others may outshine us. When this happens, even if the mission is being served, our motivation may wane or it could hinder collaboration. In the long run, this leaves everyone worse off. 

We may also lose sight of the original mission we were intending to serve in the first place. We may deliver a lesson (in the case of education), enact a policy (in the case of govt/public service), or make a contribution (in the case of business or philanthropy) that serves our own purpose and the mission’s purpose. However, if we put our own desires first, the mission’s purpose will be sacrificed in one way or another. This can be difficult to spot because the mission’s purpose is almost always one of our priorities, and we are highly incentivized to inflate its importance within our stack of priorities. We all want to believe the best about ourselves.

So what can we do about it?

As with all of our work at Upbuild, the first step is awareness. We need to catch ourselves in the act of putting our own desires first. A key distinction is that when we say “our” desires, what we really mean are “our ego’s” desires. This allows us to differentiate the desires of our egos (for validation, success, power, comfort, etc) from the needs of our true selves (which don’t include validation, success, power, comfort, etc). It’s not necessarily the case that these desires are bad, but they are just not our desires, which means that we don’t want to let them be the driving force for our actions. With a little humor and a little detachment, we can catch our egos trying to get their desires met, and then make different choices that are more aligned with the goals of the mission.

Another helpful step is to get crystal clear about what the mission is. Said another way, what is the deepest “why” for our involvement? On a team of people, there may be lots of different personal “whys”, and that’s okay, but as an organization, what is the “why” that surpasses all “whys?” 

There are also two questions that we can ask ourselves: 1. “In what ways am I trying to be the main course here?” This question will give us clues as to where we need to re-evaluate our involvement. And 2. “If I was not involved in this mission at all, what would need to get done, and in what way would it need to get done?” That will give us clues as to how we should be involved. 

This clarity is important because targets are a lot easier to hit when we know and explicitly declare what they are. There are always competing (conscious and unconscious) motivations, and if we can be clear about the most important motivation, day to day decisions about what to do and how to do it are easier to make. My experience is that having this clarity inspires me to act more like salt, and less like the main dish, which gives me access to who I am, and not who I am projecting. When we are trying to be main, we will never feel main enough. And when we are the salt, being of pure service nourishes us to complete satiation. 

Finally, if you are like me and need a constant reminder, a yellow sticky note on your desk with the phrase, “I am just the salt in the dish,” can be a beautiful service to yourself and to everyone who experiences the ripple effects of the deep and genuine humility we are aiming for.

The Oldest Profession in the World

I have this unattractive tendency that when you ask me how I am doing, I try to sell you something. The words that come out of my mouth, when prompted with that question, vary based on a gazillion factors, but the thing I am trying to sell is always the same: myself.

Hey Michael. How are you?
“Good, a really cool startup just hired us to do some consulting work, so I’ve been super busy with that.” 

Hey Michael. How are you?
“Good, I just did a meditation retreat so I am feeling particularly zen.” 

Hey Michael. How are you?
“Good, Covid cases have been super low in Japan, and the weather is amazing here during the winter.” 

Hey Michael. How are you?
“Well, it’s been a rough few weeks for our country, so I am just trying to get through it like everyone else.” 

Sometimes it is subtle, sometimes it is not so subtle, but the “sales pitch” behind the message is very different from the message at face value. When I am telling you that a startup has just hired us and that I am busy, I am selling you on my professional abilities and my importance. When I tell you about the meditation retreat, I am selling you on my balanced lifestyle choices and spiritual propensities. When I tell you about the Covid cases and weather in Japan, I am selling you on my decision to live abroad. When I tell you that it’s been a rough few weeks for our country and that I’m just trying to get through it like everyone else, I am selling you simultaneously on my political awareness and self-awareness. 

And just like in the marketing world, it is very rare that the seller actually has the buyer’s interest as a priority. When I tell you about the meditation retreat, for example, I am not doing it for your benefit. Although I might say something like “next time you have some time off, you should definitely check it out,” I am subtly telling you that you can be as great as me if you just follow in my footsteps. So when I answer the question in this way, I am really doing it in order to prove something about myself. 

And when I say that I am trying “to prove something about myself,” this begs the question, which self are we talking about? This came up in a recent Upbuild podcast on Detangling Self-Worth From Achievement during which Rasanath suggested that when we are talking about self-worth, we are almost always talking about the egoic self. The egoic self is different than the true self in that in order for it to exist, it needs to be constantly proving itself. The true self, on the other hand, has nothing to prove. 

So when I am selling you on myself, what I mean is that my ego is trying to prove its value. It does this because I am rarely in touch with my inherent value, which is based on core character qualities, and it is trying to fill the void from the feeling of not being enough by citing my achievements or something else for which you might validate me. It feels like how I choose to answer the question in that moment will determine who I am at my core. My identity is so tied to the choices that I have made, how I spend my time, and the degree to which I am achieving relative to others, that this question is often way more intense than it needs to be. 

The other thing I often do when you ask me how I’m doing is say something extremely generic. Something like “Fine” or “Hanging in there” or “Surviving” (“Surviving” is definitely the most cringeworthy of the three). This is also the work of the ego, and the underlying motivation for responding this way falls into one of two categories. 

The first is that I might be thinking that you can’t handle how I’m feeling, and rather than make you uncomfortable by telling you the truth, I just say something generic so you don’t have to grapple with how to respond. My ego tricks me into thinking that I am doing this for the benefit of you (our egos love to assure us that we are good people), but really what is happening is that my ego doesn’t want to lose control (our egos love control). If I am going to share my real feelings, my ego would want them to be received in a very specific way, and if they are not received in this way, it would be too painful (our egos love to feel comfortable and hate experiencing emotional pain). Generic reply begets generic reply, my ego reasons, so better to stick with that and then we can move on to the business at hand. 

The other thing that happens even more frequently is that I actually have no clue HOW I am doing. As we share in our Enneagram workshops, the heart is where emotions come from, so in order for me to know how I am feeling, I would need to slow down and check in with my heart. But since my emotions get in the way of my powering through life, and thus get in the way of my ego feeling valuable, I rarely take time to check in with my heart. I am very good at knowing WHAT I am doing, but I am pretty terrible at knowing HOW I am doing. 

If all this emotional drama sounds crazy, it is crazy. But unfortunately, this is such a common experience in life for me. When someone asks me to explain financial market derivatives or composition rules for photography, I don’t think twice about answering them. But when someone asks me how I’m doing (or “what’s up” or “what have you been up to”), it provokes me into a full-blown identity crisis.

So what can we do? As with all of our work, it comes down to awareness. We need to be aware of what is happening internally. We need to be aware of the needs of our ego. Although the specific needs of our ego will vary in intensity based on our personality types, our egos are all looking for some combination of feeling valuable, feeling in control, and feeling comfortable. 

• To bring awareness to our egos’ need to feel valuable, we can ask ourselves “what am I trying to prove to this person?” 

• To bring awareness to our egos’ need for control, we can ask ourselves “in this moment, what can I let go of?”

• To bring awareness to our egos’ need to be comfortable, we can ask ourselves “what am I unwilling to feel?” (credit Tara Brach for this question)

While feeling valuable, having control, and being comfortable are not inherently problematic, what is problematic is that we, and others, miss out on the experience of our true selves when the ego is the driving force behind our actions. We miss out on the version of us that has nothing to prove, is humble enough to know that almost nothing is in our control, and is okay with the discomfort that results when we sincerely check in with those sensitive hearts of ours.

So the next time someone asks “how are you” or “what’s up” or really during any interaction with a fellow human being, let us take a second to bring awareness to the needs of the ego. Let us acknowledge it to ourselves, and when we have the courage, share it with others. And then, in spite of those needs, let us respond not from the ego, but from the true self, which has nothing to prove and nothing to sell. 

A Takeaway for 2020: Letting Go of the Results

My Dear Upbuild Community,

This has been a formative year for all of us occupying the planet together. The trials and tribulations have never been more formidable on a global scale. Suddenly, no one can escape completely. The global village has led to global catastrophe. It’s never been more obvious how much we need help to raise humanity above its present condition of misfortune. We face a health crisis, climate crisis, racial crisis, political crisis, socio-economic crisis, species extinction crisis, and crisis upon crisis, as serious as they get, ad infinitum. But all are inextricably connected by one thing – a consciousness of selfishness. That is all.

I wrote about the health crisis in The Spiritual Dilemma Within a Pandemic, Vipin wrote about the racial crisis in We Are Not Our Bodies, I wrote about the climate and species extinction crisis in The Consequence of Not Caring About Consequence, and I spoke to the political crisis in Our Nationwide Wake-up Call. There’s always much more to address, but for now, and as always, I’d like to focus on what’s behind it all, which is also our only way out – consciousness.

What consumes your consciousness? In our workshops, we emphasize it is the desire to control, and thus we call our default state – The Controlling Consciousness. Specifically we try to control others and our environments to get the validation our egos crave. We try to get the world to make us feel like we are a secure self. We ache to know we are who we think we should be. And we require others to tell us that we really are! But it doesn’t work, because we’re not who we think we should be. Nor do others exist to give us a sense of identity.

Control to get what we want is the consciousness that created all of our messes, macro and micro. When we stop caring about anything else, it leads to definite destruction. Control out of the desire to serve others with a sense of responsibility is necessary. Control for providing the most beneficial offerings to ourselves and others is exemplary. And self-control is critical. But consciousness defined by control and driven by our ego is the opposite.

To stop being controlled by the desire to control is not a small feat! The sacred text we’ve lived to study and teach for so many years – The Bhagavad-Gita – is entirely about this most foundational of all afflictions. The attachment to control runs ever so deep and it pervades everything we think and everything we do. It’s as subtle as can be, and it only lets us be when we are acutely aware of the tendency.

Yet, even with awareness, which is one of the most powerful forces in existence, and a lynchpin of our work at Upbuild, still, the struggle does not abate. The degrees of selfishness and obstinacy of our desire to control will vary widely from person to person and moment to moment according to awareness. But the desire – to have things our way, arrive at the outcomes we want, have people see us as we expect – that is as formidable as the crises which result.

This year did not go my way. I started off with a personal retreat that was life-changing. It was the first time I ever did something like this by myself, for myself. I wrote about it in my Takeaway for 2019 and that writing helped me to follow through on it. I spent the first six weeks of the year (two weeks on retreat and four weeks thereafter) with better and more sacred habits than I had even in my five years as a monk!

I woke up consistently at 4 a.m. and did my morning meditation immediately, read sacred texts voraciously, exercised, and flowed with a sense of connection to my real self that was exhilarating amidst the calm. I’ve had greater excitement in my life. But I’ve never had greater calm. And that was more exciting!

I planned to have small retreats at regular intervals to keep this spirit going throughout the year and throughout my life! I calendared them and set the schedule with particular agendas for each, just as I did for the first. I conducted Upbuild workshops that would typically take everything out of me and disrupt my sacred habits for weeks at a stretch. This time there was no disruption. I was spiritually surcharged while working my hardest. It was surreal – a miracle I’d prayed for over the last 14 years.

Then I got sick for two weeks from not sleeping enough. That was not what I had in mind! Then I had to adjust my expectations – never what I have in mind. Then came a monumental pandemic that disrupted the world in an unprecedented manner. Disruption after disruption of every kind, and no ability to stay true to my greatest hopes. Perhaps even worse than this is the feeling of being fooled – I believed in my hopes. Not knowing what to trust and what’s possible or for how long is a heavy burden. Every time I’d toil like anything to get myself on track, I’d eventually be thwarted. That thwarting would last longer and feel more definitive than the progress made!

I see this as a metaphor for much of life. We desire, desire, desire. And when the results come, they lock us in the game to desire more… When they don’t come, we obsess over cracking the code and experience great frustration in so doing, until we have our moments of feeling on top again, which are, for even the best of us, just that – moments. Not even Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan could stay on top forever. Steve Jobs ultimately had to leave this world, as we all do. All results are temporary. All desire is perpetual.

What are we doing?! Are we not like the ant who labors to get the piece of food over the rock? Are we not Sisyphus pushing our boulder up the hill and then starting all over the next day? Is the pep talk about enjoying the journey to the top really going to make up for that? Is the self-help pump-up about how much we’re capable of doing and being going to solve the situation?

This year, I lost two of the people who meant most to me – one to Covid-19 and the other to cancer. Both are my spiritual heroes and nothing can ever make up for the loss. I’ve shed so many tears and I still feel bereft without them. One was a black, American lady, hailing from Cleveland, who some of you got to meet at our Remembering Who We Are – Krsnanandini Devi. The other was a Calcutta-born Indian man who I didn’t get to meet enough while he was here – Bhakti Charu Swami. Both were so different. One a mother of 10, the other a life-long monk. Both were self-realized souls - fully identified with the soul. They understood they are not their bodies, minds, or egos. They gave up their egos. Completely. I want the presence of these luminaries back with me and for all of you, but I’ve found that the best way to bring them back is to meditate on their instructions. I try to keep both Krsnanandini Devi and Bhakti Charu Swami safely tucked away in my heart and to meet them there. And I find somehow there they are. 

It didn’t go my way that they left, but they were not without their parting gifts. They gave me an extraordinary window into the mission of the Gita through their lives. It all comes down to giving up the results of our activities for a higher purpose. They were not afraid to give up anything. Not even their lives. They both knew they would die, and they were totally free. Happy. Neither accomplished everything they dreamed of in service to humanity, but both succeeded wildly. Both were detached from anything beyond what was meant to be.

I had a conversation with Krsnanandini Devi some weeks before she departed and then later asked a question of her during a talk she gave nearly from her deathbed. In each interaction, I found she was urging me toward surrender. Let go and let God. Be free. What are you carrying all these weights for? I felt her imploring me.

In 2015, when I stayed with my guru, Sacinandana Swami, who also has spoken to the Upbuild community, I asked him if he had any personal instruction for me. It was a night or two before I would depart his hallowed home in Germany, and I was very nervous to ask this groundbreaking question I can’t remember ever asking him before or after. He looked at me with surprise, readiness, and a big smile.

“Your plan, not mine.” 

That was all he said. I have a T-shirt, thanks to a dear friend and Gita student, which allows me to now wear this expression which I can never forget from that night in Germany.

We can continue to make all our plans. My retreats are still a life-giving staple and something I look forward to always. There are so many responsibilities and services for which I must plan and execute all the time. But unless I care more for a higher purpose than my own purpose, how can I say that my plans are satisfactory? And what is the ultimate test of purpose? When things don’t go my way. Can we still plan and see that there is something else being planned for me?

This is the difference between a life well-lived and a life crippled by anxiety. I know the latter very well. The former is all too elusive. But I am not giving up. And when I see the life well-lived directly before me, how can I deny its possibility? When Sacinandana Swami, Krsnanandini Devi, Bhakti Charu Swami, and so many great souls are modeling this, how can I pretend it’s not available? Not a necessity?

The other day, I had a striking conversation with my father-in-law while staying with my wife’s family in Toronto where I am currently writing to you from. Growing up in Lucknow, India, he saw his mother lose an immense amount of wealth going from riches to rags, lose her husband at a very young age, and have to raise a family of eight kids with no money, all on her own. It was an impossible situation. How did she manage? How did she get through it? Happily! Did she want any of this tragedy? Did she like the extreme difficulty and horrific uncertainty? Absolutely not. But she recognized it was not up to her. There was a superior plan. And if not superior in goodness, certainly superior in power. What would be the use in resisting it?

It turns out, she was a very self-realized soul on the spiritual path. She trusted in everything that came to be, no matter how dark and unending. My father-in-law carried these impressions deeply. They shaped him. When he had a severe heart attack, the hospital staff expressed their disbelief at his completely calm, jovial spirit. Years later, when he had chest pain that felt like another heart attack, he called 911 and the medic who rushed onto the scene expressed the same utter disbelief. This has happened to my guru regularly as he’s been on the brink of death so many times.

Dad Singh, as I call him, told me of times when he was on top working at GE, as if he could do no wrong and praised famously. He also told me of times when he could do no right at GE, accused wrongly and constantly. In either case, he showed up the same way – ready for whatever is meant to be, even if he didn’t like it. 

When I was in Croatia celebrating my guru’s birthday in 2014, he took me to a concert where he sang kirtan – musical meditation – for a packed house at a prestigious yoga studio. There were hundreds of people all cheering for him with great jubilation. He looked at me shyly and held my hand as we walked to his position on the stage. Then he spoke: “…Save me!” “Whether they’re all cheering for me or whether they’re all booing at me, it is always the same. …Save me! …Save me!”

In 12-step programs, the aforementioned phrase “let go and let God” is frequently used. Give yourself over to a higher power. This is the fundamental platform from which the journey to recovery begins. There’s been outstanding efficacy to this methodology as documented by numerous studies and countless anecdotes. I’m very close to former addicts who have been sober decade after decade and swear by this principle. Could there not then be something here for us who have the addiction to control?

Gabor Mate in his Ted Talk, The Power of Addiction and The Addiction of Power, which we screen and discuss at Upbuild events, makes the case that the “us and them” mentality we take toward addicts is entirely false. We think they are other. But we are all addicts, trying to fill the vacuum in our hearts. It’s perhaps the best Ted Talk I’ve ever heard, spoken from deep realization and about something so crucial. To treat our own addiction, we, too, need a methodology, and I find the starting point to be universally applicable – Let go and let God.

After speaking to Dad Singh and reflecting more on my life, especially in the light of my guru, Krsnanandini Devi, and Bhakti Charu Swami’s teachings, it became abundantly clear to me that I need to change something. I’ve been striving to make headway for so many years, but something needs to give way for me to finally progress on this front.

I saw myself through the eyes of those more experienced on the path than me. I saw my own striving to serve every living being as purely as I know how, dedicating each moment of my day, day after day, as a sacred offering. I saw I was doing my best. I am doing my best. I am limited. I am weak. I still have so much ego left in me. I am not great. But I am trying with all my heart. And with all the obstacles, all the constraints, pressures, failures, and frustrations, I am giving all that I can at my present level. I cannot expect more. It will not help to expect more. It also will not help to compromise my vision or lessen the striving toward higher levels. But I want to be happy with all that I’m giving and all that I’m receiving. I’m tired of being a more spiritually-inclined Sisyphus! 

I’ve gotten a good practice-run for the last several days living with less entitlement, trying to better accept what comes, good, bad, and ugly. I’m in suspense because this consciousness is not mine to possess. I can’t completely control the mentality of giving up control! But I can see a shift that my wife declared as night and day. I have experienced a freedom that I haven’t known previously. And it comes from striving to do everything in my power to serve while recognizing nothing will ever fully go my way, even with the best intentions. Let go and let God is the only path to emancipation from being controlled by the desire to control. I am now making a conscious decision when I feel the incessant pain of attachment for results to say: “Your plan, not mine.”

I used to wear that shirt and fear what would happen when I did. There seemed to be more upsets each time I wore it! But now I don’t want to fear. I didn’t want to fear then either, I just wasn’t willing to see that there is another plan in operation, which I’m but a tiny part of, whether I like it or not. I have my role to play, but the plan is not mine to sway. 

If we want to break free of the macro and micro-crises, it all comes down to consciousness. We all long to be untouched by this tumultuous world. We all long to be steady during every storm. We all long to be who we truly are, unshakably. Emerging from the wilderness of 2020 into an unknown future, why don’t we give our hearts to this cause and help everyone to be free?

Elon Musk and Ancient Indian Texts Suggest We’re Living in The Matrix

 What if we all live in a massive video game? What if there’s no reality to our world as we know it beyond someone else’s concoction where we play temporary roles with wins and losses? 5000 years ago, the oldest surviving texts we have today portray such a shocking picture of reality.

I lived as a monk for five years rigorously studying and teaching Indian Vedic texts as my primary focus. I continue to study and teach them to this day, and what I’ve gleaned is that our reality is very much akin to the movie The Matrix, which we screen and use as a teaching tool in our course The Call to Awaken.

The Vedic literatures of ancient India are an immense body of work numbering many hundreds of books and amounting to millions of poetic, philosophical verses that are all inconceivably united in describing the one complex reality of Maya, or illusion. Through the fascinatingly sophisticated lens of the Vedas, we peer into a Matrix-esque world where humans act out different roles, disconnected from who they really are in a construct where they ignorantly and blissfully live out their non-lives. It’s a prison with golden bars. This is the illusory world of Maya – literally, “that which is not.” And a prison is most sinister when its inmates have no idea they’re locked up…

The efficacy of Maya, as explained by the Vedic texts, is how it encourages its very captives to be cooperative in their own capturing! It’s the same genius of Aldous Huxley in his striking presentation of a Brave New World. Everyone is joyfully medicated by sex, drugs, and the other pleasures we commonly seek. Therefore no one rebels. No one wakes up. A perfect prison.

Enter: Elon Musk. I was absorbed in a lively coaching session with a bright startup founder, when this coachee and friend began looking deeper into the nature of reality with me. Noticing similarities to my experience with the Vedic texts, he enthusiastically pointed me the way of Elon Musk. When I did some research into Musk’s views, I found the tech giant claims there’s one billionth of a chance we don’t live in a simulation like The Matrix! I was intrigued.

Musk reasons that roughly 40 years ago, “we began gaming with a set of rectangles and a dot called Pong.” Today, “we have photorealistic universes” we can step into, that every year come closer and closer to virtual realities we can live in. Even if the rate of advancement in technology were to be reduced by a thousand times or so, in a thousand years from now, (which Musk points out is no time at all in the scheme of things), what will games look like? What will our world look like? Will we be able to distinguish the difference? These observations lead him to conclude that our current world is more likely than not a simulation!

Regardless of whether or not you find this a compelling argument, we can see there’s something rather haunting in the setup. And Musk is not alone in his perspective. As touched upon with The Matrix and Brave New World, not to mention The Truman Show, there have been a great many who’ve fantasized about this idea and set it forth in novels and cinema, as well as bold philosophers, and even physicists, who’d proclaim some version of this to be non-fiction.

So what if we do live in a simulation that’s less real than we think? Let’s say we dare to entertain the idea. Do we really need another disempowering perspective we can’t do anything about? Just one day reading the news or reflecting on what happens in the Oval Office is enough disempowerment for a lifetime. Living in a concocted game-world would be the very height of exercises in futility, right? Not quite. According to the Vedic wisdom, there’s a lot we can do! But it all hinges on recognizing what is and what is not (Maya), who we are and who we are not.

‘You can be anything you want to be’ we’re idealistically taught from a very early age. True, if you put on a mask. ‘You can try on anything you want to be’ would be more accurate. But to be what you try on is insanity.

Today we’ve become more enchanted by the concept of authenticity than ever before. Why? I believe it’s because we’ve come so far away from who we really are that we crave air in a world that reinforces the suffocating sense I can’t be who I am. I have to cling to my mask, or I won’t be good enough to survive and thrive on this planet where “perception is reality.” That’s illusion. Now, we may not all become self-realized in our lifetimes as the Vedic texts brilliantly envision and implore us towards, but we can take steps not to get lost in an ephemeral world.

There is a self within us that is not the same as who we actively think we are. We think we are the voice of the mind and we equate that to being the same as our present body. The fallacy here is that our thoughts are ever-changing, as are our bodies, and the person that harmonizes who we were as infants with who we are today has nothing to do with the outer layers of mind or body. Our minds and bodies are nothing now like they were back then. In fact, every seven years, there’s not one cell in us that remains from the previous seven years. And yet, we are the same person, though unrecognizable from these external vantage points.

What confuses us most is that everyone else identifies themselves with their minds and bodies as well. And so instead of being who we really are deep down, we get lost in a world of illusory pleasures and pains and wins and losses, participating in a societal situation that becomes a veritable hall of mirrors – Maya.

We all have our masks that we wear for the public. We like people to like us. We fear people may not. We have to be good enough, smart enough, strong enough, capable enough, charming enough, sexy enough. So we do ourselves up. We put on a mask we hope will convince, first ourselves, that we are who we want to be, and then hopefully the people in our lives. That’s how we fit into the world and contribute to the world. Morpheus in The Matrix calls it “residual self-image.” How you think you are then gets projected as your personality to the world. And now you have your secure place in The Matrix... 

But it’s simply not you. And your secure sense of belonging is to a prison.

The best place to operate from is who we really are, not a projection. But what’s often closer to us is who we’re not. That can start the peeling of the onion. By seeing the masks we take on to appear the way we want to ourselves and others, we suddenly have the choice to remove them. This is immediately frightening and freeing.

We can strive to be our best without striving to convince ourselves we’re enough. Without trying to prove. How many moments in the day do you have where, after sincere introspection, you can say you really have nothing to prove?

Even when we’re victorious in proving something, the pressure to keep proving continues. The best is when we can be our humble, honest, truest selves, and strive from there. Nothing to prove. To strive in this way is to try our best to improve ourselves, not to convince ourselves or anyone else of who we are or what we’re capable of. 

For example, I can tell you that when I get feedback which is painful and makes me feel like I need to prove I'm better than what the person is saying about me, I have to pause. I have to think about where I'm at, where I want to get to in becoming a more mature and helpful person, and how this feedback can support me to gradually get closer. Sometimes the answer is it won't, and that's very clarifying, but I'm always hungry to grow however I can, without trying to control what people think of me or what I think of myself.

In the work setting, this is the most crucial key for effective culture and effective teams - allowing ourselves and one another to be who we are without trying to prove. This is what creates the psychological safety for everyone to be free to be their best. It’s the same at home and in relationships. But it means we have to take time to unplug from the world of the external and illusory Maya to be with ourselves. It means we have to start taking off the masks we’ve been using to fit in and navigate the world with a secure sense of self based on how we’ll feel worthy. It means we have to go against the conditioning that’s been there for as long as we can remember. We must catch the unseen force that impels us to obscure who we are out of fear that we’re not enough as we are. We must catch the force that moves us to prove ourselves to ourselves at every moment, without cease, exhaustingly. 

I don’t believe Musk has a plan for how to get out of the video game. There’s no question of getting out without first understanding what we’re in. If we see the masks we use to prove we’re something worthy, that’s exceptional. And if we start removing them, then soon enough, the game is up. The simulation breaks down when we break free of the masks of who we think we should be.

Our Unilateral Contracts

Have you ever unilaterally written a contract between yourself and someone else, forged the other person’s signature without their consent, and then waved said contract in the other person’s face when they didn’t uphold their end of the deal?

I have. Hundreds of times. 

Despite what it might sound like, this is not some white collar crime confession. I am, of course, speaking in strictly metaphorical terms. 

I recently came across a social media post from a friend who is in the same industry as I used to be in when I was a trader at an investment bank. The post was a link to an article from a well known internet news site interviewing this person about his accomplishments and perspectives on the industry. Although it was too much to bear to actually read the whole thing, a quick browse of the article made it clear that this person was “crushing it.” As soon as I got the gist of the article, I closed my laptop with force and got up from my chair. A range of emotions washed over me. 

The first and easiest to identify was envy. This, unfortunately, is not an uncommon emotion for me. 

After envy came anxiety. Had I made the right choice in switching my path in life? Had I lost my chance to truly crush it?

Then disappointment. I’m better than this, aren’t I? I should be happy for this person. This is not about me. 

And then shame. Oh man, I’m not better than this. I’ve been exposed. It is about me.

By this point, my nerves were on high alert, and my mind was going in lots of different directions, none of them particularly pleasing. 

Really, more than anything, I realized I was pissed. Like super pissed! Yes, that was the emotion I would settle on. I was pissed because I had been betrayed by my friend who had so arrogantly posted the link to the article. 

How dare he share this article on a platform that he knows I might be trolling.

Didn’t he know that it would ruin my day? 

Didn’t he know that it would expose me for my envy and trigger all sorts of anxiety and shame?

Didn’t we have an agreement to never treat each other like this?

As ridiculous as it might sound, in my mind, I had created a unilateral contract with this person that was signed, sealed, and delivered. The contract stated that he was free to achieve as much as he’d like in his life, but that he would do his absolute best to keep my eyes and ears away from any sort of positive news. He was free to reach out to me for advice and to share any of his failures.  

This social media post was a clear breach of contract. 

With this example fresh in my mind, it got me thinking about some of my other unilateral contracts. And once the ball got rolling, it wasn’t hard to come up with more examples.

• I have a contract with all people not to ask me a question publicly that I don’t know the answer to, especially if I have made it clear to the public that I am an expert in the subject in question. 

• When I used to work at an investment bank as a trader, any time I came up with a trade idea that I sent around to my team, I had a contract with my team members to support the idea regardless of if they agreed with its merits or not. The fine print in the contract was that they had to talk only about the merits of the trade idea as they supported it.

• I have a contract with my friends not to talk too negatively about certain behaviors (e.g., receiving more than one Amazon delivery per week) that might expose me for my own ethically questionable tendencies.

• I have a contract with the TSA not to search me at the airport (in Dr. Attia’s podcast, he talks about his feelings about being searched at the airport and the narcissist anthem of “don’t you know who I am!”)

• I have a contract with the other members of the Upbuild team to validate me when I do something valuable, but to always keep the expression of validation short and sweet, or risk exposing my neediness for the validation. 

• I have a contract with anyone who brings a baby on an airplane to sit at least 10 rows away from me. 

• When I’m feeling low energy and not in the mood to interact in meaningful ways, I have a contract with the people that love me to pick up on all the nonverbal cues and act accordingly.

• When I’m feeling high energy and start playing the part of the MC hype man for a group of friends, I expect the others in the group to match me and raise their energy levels, but still let me play the part of the MC hype man without taking on that role themselves. 

• I have a contract with all customer service representatives to agree to any request that I make.

• When I am giving my full heart to something, I have a contract with other stakeholders to give at least 80% of their heart to the same endeavor.  

• I have a contract with my soon-to-be-born son to be able to have a baseball catch with me by the time he is three years old.

Just to put this in writing brings up so much shame. My ego and my neediness in black ink for my fellow humans to see. 

And yet, I am not alone. The experience of holding people to agreements that they never agreed to is one we are doing all the time. For most of us, it might even be our default way of operating. 

When others breach our unilateral contracts, we experience all sorts of unhelpful emotions. Envy, shame, fear, and judgment are some of the most common. We also have lots of mechanisms for punishing those who break our contracts. As examples:

• we may act out in frustration (e.g., as I sometimes do with customer service representatives).

• we may express passive-aggressive disappointment in others (e.g. as I sometimes do when others don’t give their full effort to mutually undertaken endeavors).

• we may behave with resentment as a result of arrogance (e.g., as I sometimes do with the TSA).

• we may get grumpy (e.g., as I sometimes do with loved ones who are supposed to detect my mood swings).

Depending on the particular situation, we may also engage in gossip, withhold our love and attention from others, discredit others, or use sarcasm, among many other behaviors, knowingly or unknowingly, in order to punish the unsuspecting people in our lives for breach of contract. 

Given these unhelpful emotions and mechanisms for punishment, it’s not hard to see why these contracts are wreaking havoc on our lives and in our relationships. 

These contracts are also delusional. They are not based in reality. Can you imagine actually asking someone to formally agree to one of these contracts?

An abridged version of these agreements might be written as follows:

Johnny, by signing this contract, you hereby agree to never again post a Forbes article naming you to their list of ‘40 under 40’ on Facebook, LinkedIn, or any other social media platform that Michael might be trolling. You also agree to make sure that something good has happened to Michael in the last 24 hours before ever telling him any good news about yourself.

Or 

World, by signing below, you hereby agree that in any situation where Michael is pretending to be an expert in front of a group of people, you will ask him lots of questions that he can answer in order to further prove his expertise, but you will refrain, in all circumstances, from asking questions that he doesn’t know the answer to.  

We likely don’t even realize how ridiculous these contracts are until we think about actually writing them or saying them out loud. And even if we’ve had a conversation with another person or group of people about a particular agreement, are the terms of the agreement actually clear to our counterpart? Are they even clear to us? Is there fine print?

So why? Why do we create these contracts if they are based in delusion and they are wreaking havoc on our lives?

Well it’s not actually us who is creating these contracts. It is our egos - our false identities of who we think we should be. And they are creating them for the perpetuation of their existence. For without delusion and havoc, our egos would cease to exist. As Hari Prasada often reminds us, we want to identify our egos so that we can take responsibility for them, but once we have done that with sincerity, then we don’t need to identify WITH them. In other words, we are separate from our egos. 

With regard to  our unilateral contracts, we need to be very honest about which ones our egos have created and the associated methods of enforcement. We also need to be honest about the desires and fears of our egos that have driven the creation of these contracts, and we need to be able to tap into truths that go deeper than the ego. 

In the case of the social media post, it was my ego’s fear of not being valuable that drove the creation of the contract. When I am not in touch with my inherent self-worth, which is a pretty consistent experience for me, my ego has a tendency to measure my own worth against the worth of others. And because my ego links worth very tightly to achievement, it is constantly monitoring other peoples’ achievements to see how I stack up. So when it sensed that someone else was achieving more than I was, as it did when I saw the post, the fear of not being valuable got triggered, which triggered the cascade of emotions from envy to disappointment to shame, and finally, to anger at my successful friend for breaking our contract.

Said another way, the contract was my ego’s way of protecting me from feeling worthless, but because it was based in delusion and triggered deflating emotions, it did more harm than good. 

If I had, instead, been able to tap into the truth that I have worth independent of what my mind or body is able to accomplish, I wouldn’t have felt threatened or looked at worth as something relative, and I likely would have experienced a more empowering reaction.

In Glengarry Glen Ross, a film about a bunch of struggling real estate salesmen that we often screen during Upbuild workshops, Alec Baldwin’s very macho and highly ambitious character proclaims, “Only one thing counts in this life. GET THEM TO SIGN ON THE LINE THAT IS DOTTED.” That might be sound advice in the real estate business, but in the business of being who we truly are, before asking anyone to sign anything, we need to be able to differentiate the needs of our ego from the true self. This takes honesty and courage, but once we more clearly see the needs of the ego, and even better if we can share authentically about these needs with others, we can start ripping up the old contracts that are based on false identities. And we can start living sans contracts and with the freedom that comes from alignment with our core values and a deeper sense of who we actually are.

How to Create Space Between Stimulus and Response

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” 

-Victor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

I loved this quote the instant I first read it. It immediately struck me as coming from a place of deep wisdom and personal realization. Maybe even the answer to much of life’s suffering. And over the years I’ve referenced this quote in conversations and coaching sessions whenever it felt relevant. 

But the complication was that I didn’t really know how to do it. To expand the space. Or even to identify any daylight at all between stimulus and response. For me, the two have always been like strong magnets with opposite poles; one shows up, the other gets stuck to it, and I’m unable to pry them apart. I wholeheartedly believed in the idea, but it also felt like just that: an idea. A desired state, but a distant one.

A few months ago I was talking with my coach Mary about a situation in which I lost my cool with our kids. Again. I was sad that I couldn’t seem to change certain behavioral patterns that I wanted to change, and I mentioned that I can’t seem to find any space between stimulus and response. And she said, well, between stimulus and response are a set of beliefs. Wait. What did you say? Did she just casually drop some major wisdom on me that I hadn’t realized? I felt as if she may have been giving me the missing key I had been pining for to this equation. She carried on to say there are beliefs about the situation and the other person, and beliefs about myself. 

She suggested we take the situation I shared with her and replay it in slow motion. It was around bedtime and I was helping my daughter Asha brush her teeth and we were both being silly and laughing a lot (my state was joyful and relaxed). My son Dhruv (Asha’s twin brother) was just outside of the bathroom and getting increasingly agitated. I didn’t understand what Dhruv was upset about so I went to see, and I quickly learned that he thought he had heard something that made him think Asha was making fun of him. That wasn’t the case at all, and I tried to clarify that with Dhruv but he was still angry, and he stomped to their bedroom and slammed the door shut. I went back to Asha and a few seconds later I heard a crash. Immediately I knew that Dhruv had thrown something that Asha had made by hand earlier that day. And his continuing anger brought me to the point of rage. I ran into the room, grabbed Dhruv tightly by the arm, and yelled at him for being destructive. I told him he needed to control his anger. Yes, the irony. Stimulus, and response. 

So, Mary and I rewound the tape a bit to the place where I heard the crash and saw what had happened. We paused it there. What were my beliefs about the situation and about Dhruv in that moment? It took me a minute to discern my beliefs. As I started listing the first few in my head, before I spoke anything out loud, a smile overtook my face… 

• I believed that Dhruv should have known Asha (and I) weren’t making fun of him

• I believed that even if Dhruv did think Asha was making fun of him, it’s not appropriate for him to destroy her things as a consequence

• I believed that it’s not appropriate for Dhruv to express his anger by throwing things

• I believed that my 6-year-old son should know better

I actually started laughing as I registered this last belief. This 44-year-old often doesn’t know better! But I sure do expect a lot from a 6-year-old. The crazy thing was, do I actually believe all of these beliefs? No. Not really. But I was certainly acting on them. Revelation.

And what were my beliefs about myself?

• Dhruv’s response is a reflection of my parenting

• It’s my job to control the chaos

• I am failing

So then Mary asked me to swap out/in any new beliefs I wanted. Well, I started with the belief that when someone thinks they’re being made fun of, that feels really bad, and can easily make that person angry (sometimes covering sadness), at any age, what to speak of a 6-year-old. With each find and replace, I introduced more beliefs that I actually believed. And I discovered more compassion. 

Having swapped my beliefs, we unpaused the tape and I couldn’t even conjure up my previous response. With a new set of beliefs automatically came a new response. I actually wanted to hug and hold my son. I felt a lot more patience. (And just to be clear this is not to say that I think there’s no place for discipline in raising children.)

I’m still a neophyte practicing a new skill but this question: “What are my beliefs right now?” has been helpful for me to create space between stimulus and response. And tolerance. When I experience a trigger...when I feel angry or ashamed or frustrated or afraid, I try to remember to ask myself what are my beliefs right now? It slows me down. I get curious. I swap 1-2 beliefs. And then I proceed. I’m only successful a small percentage of the time right now, but I figure if I’m able to keep moving in that direction I’ll be a different person in a few years. Please hold me to that.

Three weeks ago Hari Prasada’s guru and one of my own spiritual guides, Sacinandana Swami, spoke at an Upbuild program. He shared a moving story about the existential crisis he faced 20 years into his monastic life. At the end of his talk, he offered us a tool that has helped him tremendously on his journey. One tool from 50 years of being a monk. You know what it was? He called it the Emotional Traffic Light:

1. When something overwhelming or upsetting happens: STOP! (red)

2. Watch what’s happening from a distance and prepare a mature response as opposed to just reacting. What could be a better way to deal with this? This is where you’d think about your beliefs (yellow) 

3. Apply the insights, keep in mind what is beneficial for all of the people involved and in this particular situation, and then proceed (green)

It strikes me that Sacinandana Swami offered this singular tool from his 50 years as a monk, and Victor Frankl called this the key to freedom. What I’ve been thinking about is that maybe this isn’t just one tool in my toolbox but THE tool. And what if I were to concentrate all of my self-development efforts in this one practice. Writing this reflection has been clarifying for me. I will do it. And while I’m practicing I share this with you in the hope that you may benefit from it as well. I think of it as the how to create space between stimulus and response.

The Antidote to Envy

“Always remember that envy gives the strength to excel!” These were my aunt’s parting remarks during the summer of 1986, as I boarded a train back to my hometown just before the start of a new school year. Even as a third grader, those words left a lasting impact on my consciousness.

Year after year, the medals piled up and the accolades filled several folders — one of the main driving forces behind it all was that one statement my aunt made. It gave me the strength to compete with the best and either equal or excel them. But along with it also came subtle, powerful and deeply imprinted “side-effects” that I, only later in life, recognized were disempowering and distortive to my reality.

Envy is a universal experience. It pervades our culture — from schools to corporations to family life — but is rarely addressed openly or easily recognized. Rather, it masks itself under different, more palatable terms such as “competitive spirit” or “drive”.

In plain terms, it is best defined as an emotion that occurs when a person lacks another person’s perceived superior quality, achievement, or possession and desires to possess it, wishes that the other lacked it, or both.

Psychologists have suggested that envy can be classified into two types — malicious and benign. They claim that benign envy can be used as a positive motivational force in achieving one’s goals. However, there is a fine line between the two and often we quickly and unconsciously degenerate into the shadow side. In such situations, it can be easy to forgo everything — even close relationships — to acquire what we obsess over.

Dr. Richard Smith, a professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky, states that much of the economic crisis of 2008 may well have been fueled by runaway envy, as financiers competed to avoid the shame of being a “mere” millionaire.

The Bhagavata Purana, one of India’s classics on yoga and spiritual wisdom, describes envy as the older brother of hatred. It states that envy corrodes all virtues — a poisonous venom that dries out all gratitude, love and compassion, so that others’ misfortune and downfall can taste like honey.

In 2005, while I was a student at Cornell University’s business school, my friend and classmate Vishal and I applied for a covetous position at a large investment bank. We were both excited about the prospect and exchanged ideas and information on our individual applications. Eventually, we both got selected to the final round of interviews.

Slowly, our mutual sharing and joy started to disappear. I started avoiding his phone calls. In class, we played subtle mind games. We would talk about the various deals in the financial markets simply to prove that each knew more than the other.

As the interview day approached, I started to lose sleep — not because of the interview, but the possibility that Vishal would get the job and I wouldn’t. Deep inside I feared that he was smarter than I was. Yet, I could not admit that to myself. To compensate I sat up all night practicing my interview questions to make sure I would ace them.

As fate would have it, Vishal got the offer and I did not. The pain of reality could not have been more bitter. As email congratulations flowed for Vishal, I could feel my heart pounding in rage and hatred. While having lunch at the atrium, I saw a relaxed Vishal happily chatting with friends. I interpreted that as him showing off and instinctively convinced myself that he was simply happy at my misery.

That evening as I sat with a few friends studying for a finance exam, I started to talk about how Vishal had deliberately not helped me with certain interview questions. Unconsciously, I began to assassinate his character. There were things about his past that he had shared with me in confidence that I started to make public. I felt “satisfied”.

As I walked back home, I felt that I had lost something deep inside. I tried to distract myself by watching a movie, but the feeling only got heavier. As I explored it further, I realized what had happened. It was hard to accept at first, but denying it felt like a bigger burden.

I realized that envy is the most unfortunate aspect of human nature. Not only is the envious person rendered unhappy by his or her envy, but they also wish to inflict misfortune on others. Envy makes it hard to appreciate all of the good things we have received in the moment, because the one who envies is too busy worrying about how he or she is perceived. I resolved to put an end to this.

The next day, I approached Vishal and openly expressed my feelings to him. Tears filled my eyes as I sincerely apologized for my behavior. I told him that I truly felt that he was the better candidate to receive the offer. I felt the pain of the honest appreciation pass through every pore of my body.

To my surprise, Vishal was touched, which further humbled and embarrassed me. For the first time, I was able to appreciate his softhearted and forgiving nature. I felt grateful to have my friend back again.

The next day, I hosted a dinner at my house for Vishal and a few friends to celebrate his accomplishment. As I personally cooked and served everyone, I felt renewed, invigorated and cured of a chronic disease. I felt free.

That evening I understood the true purport of yet another statement from the Bhagavata Purana which states that envy is nothing but appreciation that is corrupted by a strong obsession to exclusively possess what we value. Envy results from a deep-seated desire to be the lord and master of all that we survey. It is the strongest weapon of the ego in its relentless pursuit for self-aggrandizement.

If we can strip away the desire to possess and control what we appreciate or value in others, we can experience the true beauty of the traits, recognizing that they have been given to a particular individual for its best possible use.

Celebrating the success of another helps us recognize the qualifications of the individual who has been given certain gifts, and it helps us to be inspired by his or her qualities. Such celebration is the perfect antidote to the poison of envy.

The Suffering That Ends All Suffering

The ego is made up of designations. There’s a Sanskrit word upadhi which means – designations. Identities within the overarching identity. In our search for self-worth, we attach ourselves to all these upadhis or designations. We have innumerable mini-identities.

I’m a good father, a great athlete, I’m someone who keeps in shape, I’m a calm person, a reliable friend, I’m handsome, I’m sexy, I’m sharp as a knife, I’m a team player, I’m this, I’m that. We grasp after whatever we can to stay afloat, so we have something to hold onto, something that makes us feel like we’re somebody.

The problem is we are not our upadhis. We never are. Just as we’re not our egos, we can never be the role we play or the specific projection of who we think we should be. 

The self craves to be released from those coverings which suffocate it. It’s almost as if we’re trying to suffocate the self so we never have to deal with its painful cries again. That’s the extent to which we run after and stick to our upadhis.

Interestingly, I became a monk to try to liberate my suffering soul from all these upadhis. I gave up being a writer, a filmmaker, a creative visionary, a doer, a dynamic force, a leader, a romantic, a hopeful attractor of the opposite sex. 

It was so hard… I really felt my ego pining to make me stop. Give me some sustenance, it seemed to yell at me from within. Almost sympathetically.

Perhaps the worst thing was starving myself from being a writer. I purposely neglected my foremost identity and sense of dharma in the world. I did this not to be masochistic, and not for forever, but to allow myself a chance to try to be free of all upadhis.

It was a training ground – to let go, and know I could survive. I knew I’d reclaim these roles when I’d matured to the point of not needing them for my sense of identity. I would take up being a writer again – without the upadhi of being a writer… Those are very distinct, and we fail to recognize the difference.

The challenge is that even when we miraculously do recognize the difference, the ego is so desperate, and so tricky, that it subtly presents us with the designations under the radar of our conscious mind. And so, unconsciously, the designation gets stickier and stickier.

I passed my own test as a monk. I waited for years before being a writer again. And I survived. That was formative for me and very powerful.

But what I wasn’t as aware of is that the ego still needs something to grasp. So I was a monk. That was my upadhi!

The ego will chase us to the ends of the earth. And some upadhis are more innocent than others. Some upadhis can bring us closer to who we are. But the moment we think it’s us, we’re in trouble. Then what happens when it falls away?

I’m no longer a monk… That was an identity crisis! 

I’m not always a good emailer… Identity crisis!

I’m not always a good garbage-man for the home… Identity crisis!

I’m not always a good this or that… Identity crisis!

The only identity that actually works is the identity of the self. For there is never a time when I am not my self. Throughout eternity, and even after death, this simply cannot change. It is the only thing about me that is unchanging. Nothing else…

Just this past week, I found myself unable to sleep one night. I’d gotten an email that made me question the upadhi that stuck closest to me since I was five years old and first put crayon to poster paper to scribble ghost stories… I felt my capability as a writer was in question. Identity crisis!

It was excruciating. It stayed with me all week, writhing within me. The ego screaming in the form of self-doubt and malaise.

I got another message that made me think one of my clients wasn’t enthused by our work together. Suddenly, I’m not a good coach. I relived that pain again and again, uncontrollably. I’m pouring my heart and soul into this and it’s not making the impact? How can it be? I guess I’m not a good coach. Identity crisis…

But then I realized something that brought me back in time. Into the history of my spiritual journey. Something within whispered to me: 

Remember the upadhis you were trying to avoid as a monk, dear Hari Prasada? They may have crept back in surreptitiously…

A revelation! I understood that I must be even more on my toes to see what is so painful to see, but what is even more painful to not see. 

These upadhis are suffocating the soul. My ego clings to them, but at the cost of the soul’s very life. That cannot continue.

And yet, if it were so easy to just give up all designations the moment I willed it, I’d have become self-realized 14 years ago! So what to do?!

The only thing we can do is be aware of them, and then not feed them. Just like the ego itself – for all the mini-identities our egos continuously grasp at, we must treat them the same way. Be aware of them. Look within. Be fearless as you can be. And don’t feed them…

Then the self gets a little oxygen. The ego still screams its needy anthems at us. But the soul can move a little freer inside. In course of time, when the ego has no more food to sustain itself, and the soul is nourished by spiritual practice, the soul becomes strong enough to break free. To outlive the ego. Then we become truly alive. And our only identity is the self. A pure, free, humble, happy, loving servant of all living beings, always.

Now, my new anthem to quiet the ego’s noisy one: You’re right, I’m not a writer. I’m not a coach. I’m a servant. What a relief!

Trading Derivatives and the Shame-Based Fear of Being Ordinary

It is November 2010 on the Goldman Sachs trading floor in New York City. It is just two years removed from the depths of the Global Financial Crisis, but you would never know it. The stock market has nearly doubled in the last 18 months, the Federal Reserve has just announced its second round of Quantitative Easing, and it feels like one big party on Wall Street.

It’s 9:31am on this November morning, and the stock market has been open for exactly 60 seconds. There are lots of green numbers flashing across my five computer screens, indicating that today is yet another positive day for the market. 

“Sloy-Dog pick up line 1,” John shouts over the trading floor’s loudspeaker system (John has added the word “Dog” to the first syllable of my last name as a term of endearment; the extent of the endearment is debatable).

I reach for the blinking button flashing for line 1 on my giant phone dashboard system. “Yea,” I say into my phone in as terse a way as I could possibly manage. A two syllable word, such as “hello,” would be unthinkable on the trading floor. 

“I need an offer on 2000 S&P March 1300 calls,” John shouts into the phone. “And I need it A-S-A-P.” John is an equity derivatives salesperson at Goldman, and he is asking me (the trader) to show him a price at which his hedge fund client can buy 2000 units of a derivative linked to the price of the S&P 500 index. The tone of his voice makes me think he hasn’t had his morning coffee yet. Or maybe he’s had three, and he is just about ready for his fourth. Either way, his sense of urgency gives me a feeling of energy and power. Adrenaline shoots through my system. It’s my first hit of validation for the day.  

I do a quick scan of my five screens in an attempt to make sense of what happened during the overnight session in Asia. The market has been very volatile in the last 24 hours, which makes this trade even riskier than it normally would be. I start to contemplate the risk/reward of the different prices I might show. If I show him too good (i.e., too low) of an offer, I might lose a lot of money before I have had a chance to neutralize my risk. If I show him too high of an offer, John’s client would likely trade with a competitor instead and possibly put John in the penalty box for a week. The “penalty box” is Wall Street lingo meaning that a client has decided not to do business with you for a certain period of time. John and his team won’t be happy with me if we get put in the penalty box. 

Twenty-two seconds have now passed since John originally called for me. I do one last calculation in my head. As I reach for line 1 to give John his price, Julie’s voice bellows over the loudspeaker. “Sloyer, pick up line 2.” Julie is also a salesperson. She is John’s boss and covers some of the most important clients for the firm. She is not into the use of the word “Dog” as a term of endearment.  

I reach for line 2 and get connected to Julie through my second phone. I now have phones to both my ears. During my two years on the job, I have become quite dextrous with the phone’s mute buttons. I can seamlessly carry on two different conversations with two different phones at the same time without confusion. 

“Give me 15 seconds, Jules, I’m just finishing up with John.” 

“No,” she barks back. “This is super important.”

“Too bad,” I say, feeling a rush of validation from knowing that everyone around me just heard me tell one of the most important people on our floor that she needs to wait.  

“Sloy-Dog I need that price,” I hear John shout over the loudspeaker. We are still connected 1:1 through the internal phone system on line 1, but John wants to make sure that all 600 people on the trading floor, which covers the size of a football field, don’t forget how important his client (and thus he) is for the firm. I secretly appreciate that John has done this. Now 600 people know how important I am. This is my third rush of validation. 

I push the button for line 1, “I am $36 offer, John.” This means that I would be willing to sell this derivative to John’s client for $36. 

Without waiting for a response, I hit line 2. “Jules, what do ya need?”

“I need an offer on 4000 S&P March 1300 calls. It’s for Joe.” Joe is Julie’s biggest client. 

I scan the screens again. Julie’s trade is the same as John’s, except it is even bigger. And thus riskier. 

“You’re done!” I hear John scream (“you’re done” is Wall Street lingo meaning that the client has agreed to the price and the trade is now completed). Another rush comes over me. Doing a trade means more risk, but more impactfully for me in that moment, it means more validation and a greater sense of transient importance.  

“Sloyer, don’t forget about me,” Julie’s voice echoes again over the loudspeaker. More adrenaline for the system. 

How could I forget about Julie? She practically owns this place. 

I do a quick scan of my five screens followed by more calculations as I contemplate what price to show Julie. 

It’s now 9:36am. 

The day will continue on like this for 6.5 more hours... 

I am exhausted, but I would never know it. I feel alive. I feel energized. I feel validated. I feel like I could do this for another 10 years.

The Seduction of Validation

Despite the risk, all the stress, and all the overstimulation, according to my 24-year old self, this was the perfect job for me. For those of you familiar with the Enneagram personality framework, I am a Type 3 (“The Achiever”) with a 2 Wing (“The Helper”). My dominant need is to be seen as successful. My secondary need is to be needed. Being a trader at an investment bank, where salespeople relied on me to make prices for their clients and my bosses relied on me to generate revenue by trading (during a time when you didn’t need a PhD in rocket science to be a successful trader), allowed me to get both. Validation is a seductive drug. And my addiction was not only socially acceptable, it was actually societally encouraged. 

To say that I suffered from a lack of humility during this time would be an understatement. Brené Brown defines narcissism as “the shame-based fear of being ordinary.” With that definition, I was a textbook case.

Part I: The Shame-Based Fear...

Despite being very confident on the outside, I was carrying around bucket loads of shame. Well, it was more like truckloads. Some of the shame I was aware of. Most of it I wasn’t really aware of. The thing about shame is regardless of how aware you are of it, it’s a really unpleasant emotion to feel. In my own experience, the consequences of shame have been anger (so I don’t have to feel the shame), a withdrawal from self-expression and vulnerability (so I don’t get “found out” for not being who I say I am), and hypocritical judgment of others (so my ego can see itself as different from people who have the same undesirable characteristics that it possesses).   

Here are a few specific examples of where I felt shame during my time working at the bank...

• I walked onto the trading floor almost everyday fearing that I would get “found out” for not being worthy of the job. My role required quantitative knowledge, and despite doing it for 11 years, there was one particular mathematical formula that is essential to understanding equity derivatives (the Black Scholes formula) that I never understood. Regardless of any positive feedback or promotions I received over the years, I felt like an imposter. I felt like I had tricked my bosses and co-workers into thinking that I was a lot more competent than I was. The effect was that I was constantly and inauthentically trying to prove myself, which was exhausting for me and everyone else around me. 

• In addition to the part of me that told me that I did not deserve to be there, there was another part of me that felt shame when others didn’t recognize me for my value. It was like my internal voice was saying: “you don’t deserve this” and my external voice was like “hey, why can’t you see how much I deserve this?” It was a very painful paradox.

• Just like in many work environments, there was a certain amount of greed, materialism, and self-promotion that existed in the culture. I judged others for being this way, and yet deep down, I knew that many of my actions and ways of thinking were right up there with the worst of them. 

• I carried around shame because of anxiety with respect to money. Again, there was a paradox. I feared that not having enough would lead to less peace of mind, and even when I had enough, I still worried about it and thus never really had that peace of mind that the money was supposed to solve in the first place. 

• I felt shame for my hypocrisy. There was one particular example when I remember getting upset with interns because they didn’t understand the same important formula that I didn’t understand. 

• I was carrying around shame for my anger, which was ironically often a by-product of the shame from not feeling like I was enough. At the time, I had been studying Buddhism and some of the other Eastern religious philosophies which clearly warn against the dangers of anger. I saw myself as a pretty self-aware guy, and despite this knowledge, I would sometimes lose my sh*t when things didn’t go my way. The Buddha said anger has a “honeyed tip” and a “poisoned root.” And I was a sucker for the honey one too many times.

Part II: ...Fear of Being Ordinary

I wanted to be anything but ordinary. Ordinary was perhaps the biggest insult you could have thrown at me. Although I never would have admitted it, I think I probably would have preferred to have failed because at least I would have a good comeback story to write about in my memoir one day. But deep down, more than just wanting the negation of ordinary, I feared I would never be enough. I feared I would never be extraordinary enough. 

When we think of humility at Upbuild, we think of it as both the intellectual and deeply emotional understanding that: 

1. Nothing that I have is really mine

2. Anything that I am is mostly due to my teachers

3. I can’t figure it out on my own, and 

4. It’s not about me. 

It’s crazy how little humility there was in my desire to be extraordinary. I didn’t know it at the time, but looking back on it, I can see how my very loosely held definition of extraordinary was ungrounded. It was not based on a true desire to serve or be in meaningful connection with others. It was based on flimsy notions like getting recognition and being liked by others. And so the desire to be extraordinary ran in direct opposition to having humility because: 

1. I believed most everything that I had was mine

2. I believed I was where I was mostly because of my hard work 

3. I believed I could figure out pretty much anything on my own, and

4. I was at the center of my universe.  

10 Years Later

So now that I work for Upbuild, has all of this “shame-based fear of being ordinary” gone away? Unfortunately, that has not been my journey of personal development.

Many of these behaviors and tendencies have been with me since childhood, and even though I am now more clear on why they don’t serve me, they are also what I have been relying on to keep me safe, get me praise (and thus feel accepted), and push me towards my potential. They have been my armor and taking them off feels ridiculously scary and vulnerable.

In my current life, the external circumstances surrounding the shame are different: there is no longer a PA system, I have three co-workers instead of 30,000, we use Zoom instead of the Bloomberg Application, I have one screen instead of five, and no one calls me Sloy-Dog. But many of the same flavors of shame are still there. I still fear being “found out” for not being empathetic and competent enough as a coach. I still wake up most days hoping someone will see value in me that they didn’t see yesterday. And I feel hypocritical when I get angry with my own loved ones even as I am working with my coaching clients to help them work through their anger. 

Real Humility

I was having a conversation with Rasanath a few months back. We were discussing how humility was a key point of focus for me this year in terms of my own psychological and spiritual growth. I told him how I was committed to reducing my need for validation in order to more beneficially serve the needs of others. While my heart was very much in the right place, I was still a little off in my approach. With one of his classic “wisdom bombs,” he reminded me of something he had picked up from his reading of the American Trappist monk and theologian Thomas Merton: real humility comes when we actually realize how much validation we need. It comes when we can truly experience our own shame and suffering that results from looking externally for our sense of self-worth. And real humility is a paradox because as soon as we start thinking “hey I’m getting good at this humility thing,” by definition, we are no longer humble.

For me, the last few years and in particular the last few months, including the writing of the reflection that you are reading right now, have been very much about seeing how much validation I need. They have also been about the sitting with the discomfort that has come from the shame of being so dependent on the validation. And while it might be nostalgic to relive my trading floor experiences from a decade ago, it was not an enjoyable experience to relive the tucked away shame that was present in those experiences.

As our team members at Upbuild often remind one another, the work of personal growth is not supposed to be fun. And it’s certainly not supposed to be easy. And if it ever does feel pleasant for an extended period of time, it is likely a clue that it has become an intellectual exercise meant to provide us with temporary relief from our pain, rather than a sincere effort to make progress. So, for now, I am sitting with my discomfort. I am sitting with the suffering. I am doing my best to resist the typical numbing mechanisms. And I am constantly reminding myself of the pillars of humility: nothing that I have is really mine, anything that I am is mostly due to my teachers, I can’t figure it out on my own, and it’s not about me. I am just a vessel for love, wisdom, and hope to flow through. 

**the names from the scene on the trading floor are not the names of real people

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We Are Not Our Bodies

I experienced racism as an Indian kid growing up in a predominantly white community. I experienced it in the comments about my parents’ accents, in the questions about the smells in our house, and in the mean jokes that are not worth repeating. Many of these experiences made me feel small. And most made me wish I were white so that I could blend in with everyone else. Ever since those early experiences, racism has been the one issue that would spark an explosion of shame and anger in me. And perhaps because it was such an emotional experience I felt like I understood racism. But my experience doesn’t come close to approximating the prejudice, discrimination and antagonism directed against black people in this country, and I’ve come to realize how little I understand that experience despite the fact that I’ve had a distinct taste of what racism feels like.

A couple of weeks ago I was attending a four-hour class with a cohort of amazing people I’ve been with for the past nine months and whom I feel extraordinarily close to. It’s also one of the most racially diverse communities I’ve been fortunate to be a part of. The class started with the instructors checking in on how everyone was doing (in the context of the death of George Floyd and the movement against racism and police violence that was rising across the world). After a pause, one woman had the courage to share what was in her heart. She spoke so calmly and so vulnerably for almost ten minutes about the depth of her anger, her pain and her despair. And that opened the door for others to share as well. Stories of what it’s been like for them to live in black bodies in America, and to live in fear of what could happen to their adult sons everyday. A couple of women also expressed that they were tired of taking on the burden of educating white people. I could understand this sentiment and it also made me self-conscious about speaking up…afraid to expose my ignorance; for each time someone spoke I was learning something, awakening more and more to the reality that I thought I had understood but that was becoming much more personal and piercing.

I wear two bracelets on my right wrist. On one of them is written NOT THIS BODY to help remind me of my spiritual reality…that I’m not this body, I’m not this mind, I’m not this ego…that I am the soul, I am spirit, I am consciousness. As I was listening to the intense sharing that was happening in class, I kept looking down at my bracelet and thinking, we may not be these bodies, but these bodies cause us so much suffering. The Bhagavad Gita explains that the root of all suffering is our misidentification with the body, and that is partially what I was thinking about. What I was also thinking about is how whether I’m born in a black body, or a white body, or a brown body is the cause of so much additional suffering in this world. How can the message that we’re not these bodies resonate with anyone for whom the color of their bodies has determined so much? The understanding that we are not these bodies is not meant to make us indifferent to the suffering and injustice that’s been going on for so long, nor to free us from the responsibility to do something about it. 

On the other bracelet I wear is written NIMITTA MATRAM (except the last M was left off), which means “just become an instrument” in Sanskrit. All four of us at Upbuild wear this same bracelet because it represents our aspiration to be instruments of Krishna, instruments of service. I believe in service, I believe in the goodness of people, I believe in dignity for all people, and I believe in justice. As I was listening in class, I was also feeling a strong determination to act on my values and beliefs. It’s been too easy for me in the past to feel enraged and then simply revert back to remaining comfortable in my own bubble over time. I don’t know right now what the full extent of my actions will look like but it has started with helping to fund some of the organizations that are working to support the black community and this movement right now; investing time teaching our 6-year-old twins about George Floyd, racism, protests and justice; and educating myself (dramatically expanding my social media sources, constructing a new reading list, forming an anti-racist group at our kids’ school, marching in our neighborhood protest, and discussing everything). I know there’s a lot more. But it starts with seeing my own biases more clearly. I have a lot of work to do.

The Bhagavad Gita describes that the spirit in each of us originates from the same source, and therefore we are all brothers and sisters no matter what the color of our bodies. We must serve each other with this understanding in mind. And in the midst of everything that’s going on right now, let us not forget the Gita’s foundational instruction that we are much more than these bodies we occupy. Because as long as we continue to live from a material, bodily perspective, we will eternally be subjected to one type of suffering or another.

I didn’t have the benefit of being exposed to these teachings (especially the latter) as a child, and it’s a daily battle to try to unlearn 40 years of conditioning. So I’ve been exposing my children to these teachings since they could speak in the hopes that they grow up with an obligation to help create a world where people don’t experience unnecessary suffering because of the color of their bodies, and simultaneously that my children’s understanding that we are not these bodies is more self-evident so that their actions spring from a place that is powerful and contagious.

Tolerating Provoking Situations

Two weeks ago, my very dear teacher and mentor, Sacinandana Swami, opened his talk to an online audience with a quote from Wayne Dyer, “When there is pressure, what comes out is a sign of what is inside. When a lemon is squeezed, we get lemon juice. When a mango is squeezed, we get mango juice.” It was confronting. Just a few minutes before, I had made a distastefully sarcastic comment to my wife, having lost my patience on something trivial. 

I was stressed, and I was suffering. We were going into week 7 of the quarantine. The situation in NYC was quite depressing, and the news left me with very little to bank on. Days had begun to merge; my coaching sessions had been relentless and emotionally draining. And just the week before, our 10-month old daughter had developed a high fever that had left us on edge. Her sleep patterns were changing as well, leaving us without much sleep at night. On top of all that, I was internally battling negative memories from an old relationship with a then dear friend and colleague that to-date has not been resolved.  

In the broader scheme of things, my suffering was insignificant. And yet, it had enough of an effect on my consciousness to create self-absorption. What came out was bitter and leaked out on my wife, who was also going through her own stresses. I had reasons for commenting the way I did, and perhaps they were justified. But my behavior ended up creating more suffering. 

Our egos are fragile. Especially when things are so out of control as they are now, the ego’s need for control is challenged in unprecedented ways. It causes enormous stress and suffering.  In a culture where rugged individualism and self-expression is strongly encouraged, we have had very limited training on tolerance and patience. And while during normal times, this lack of training may go relatively unnoticed, these trying times are stark reminders of how our fragile egos have never been prepared for walking through our stresses with grace. 

Tolerance and patience help us not to perpetrate our suffering. They train our fragile egos to hold our suffering, take full responsibility for it, humbly ask for help, and transform our suffering into strength of character. When we don’t learn how to do this, our egos redirect this stress to others around us, willingly or unwillingly. As one of my favorite authors, Richard Rohr, a Franciscan friar, quotes in his book Falling Upward, “What does not get transformed, will definitely get transmitted.” 

Tolerance is not pleasant. It does not let us escape, nor does it let us react. Instead, it creates much-needed space between stimulus and response, and forces us to look at things within us that we don’t want to fully own. It makes us feel weak at the time it is being applied. Many times, tolerance is confused with being passive. Naturally, we avoid applying the principle of tolerance. 

But it has consequences – small and large. On a small scale, we become short-tempered and say things we later regret (but justify!). On a large scale, our ego goes unchecked, becomes progressively entitled, relinquishes its sense of responsibility, and looks for other people to serve its endless needs. Both the small- and large-scale effects of the unchecked ego create suffering for others. As Richard Rohr puts it in Falling Upward, “In the process of avoiding our necessary suffering, we create a lot of unnecessary suffering”. We are all too familiar with this, especially in our current political environment. That potential to create the unnecessary suffering exists in all of us, if we don’t learn how to tolerate the stresses we experience. 

We are at a time of transition, and transitions are never easy. My personal experience of transitions has taught me one important thing – how we walk the time of transition is what creates the new “normal” on the other side. As we look towards a new “normal”, I personally want to bring the capacity of more tolerance in my daily life. The great Bhakti yoga teacher, Swami Prabhupada, who is credited with bringing the Bhakti tradition to the West, writes, “The greatness of a person is demonstrated by how the person can tolerate provoking situations.” I sincerely want to strive for that definition of greatness.

The Spiritual Dilemma Within a Pandemic

I told myself, I don’t want to write another contribution to the cacophony of coronavirus consciousness. We’ve got 7.8 billion perspectives out there, as virtually every single human being is suddenly faced with the same situation. There are plenty of thoughts recorded at this stage, and there are going to be more and more and more, even after the crisis subsides. It’s an overwhelming inundation. Why add to it? 

But it’s a bit awkward to speak of anything unrelated to Covid-19 at this bizarre moment in history. Frankly, it’s as much on my mind as anyone else’s. There’s so much that requires processing. My aspiration here is to change our orientation from one steeped in the clear and present danger outside to one that helps us transcend the fear, not only with Covid-19, but the fear that is always near, buried within us. Therefore I sincerely pray that what I say here is somehow most constructive and genuinely addresses our needs at this time, and far beyond.

The Battle for Consciousness

As a spiritualist and former monk who knows the necessity of sanctity, I’m torn between two worlds. There’s the world of my inner convictions, and the world I’m exposed to mercilessly every day. The former demands I shut out the world I’m exposed to externally to a very large extent. For my convictions lie in a life that is internal; richer than the eye can see. But the latter, the world I’m exposed to, does not let me do so, for it would be callous to reject the senseless suffering of so many souls. It breaks my heart to no end. How then, can I simply concentrate on the self, the life within, when there is so much pain outside?

I, like you, am constantly bombarded by the news of the outside world. I’ve been advised by mentors who are very self-realized that I must be careful what news I consume, for it will soon consume me. I agree. Yet, uncharacteristically, since Friday, March 6th, I’ve been endlessly trying to understand what the hell is happening to us with the outbreak of Covid-19. It was on that day, at the last second, we did not board our flight to Atlanta where we were to conduct an Upbuild workshop. Inconceivably, we stayed home. 

From that day forward, I’ve found myself unable to stop reading and hearing about this terrible disease and its myriad consequences. This is a new experience for me since monastic life. For days and days on end, I’ve been on a quest to grasp the world around me and what is my responsibility so that I gain a clearer outlook and can orient accordingly. 

I find that the reactions to our current situation can be divided into another kind of bi-partisan lines - the optimists and the realists. From the optimists, we get hope. And from the realists, we understand severity. When you understand the severity, it’s hard to be positive! And when you’re positive, it’s hard to stay with severity! 

The self is both positive and realistic. Those who are able to intelligently integrate the two are rare. If we manage to strike this delicate balance, we’re primed to take prodigious steps in our lives, without leaving the world behind. Rather, we invite the world into a better state of being. 

This has been true since time immemorial. 

It is sure that to be lost in the sea of endless information and fear will disrupt our connection within. I’ve experienced it firsthand throughout this ordeal. Following the waves of the media hardly benefits the people or situations reported on. And shutting out the news does not shut out our care for the world. 

Turning off the TV or closing our browser should never mean turning off or closing our hearts. To turn on a distraction or to live in make-believe happier times cannot address the need for realism. Neither can drowning in society’s sorrows serve anyone, disconnected from the need for positivity. Whatever our coping mechanisms, while human and maybe even needed at times, they’re thoroughly insufficient to the self.

I’m ashamed that I currently feel closer to the world out there than to my own self. In earnestly trying to make sense of the outside world, which is natural and often necessary, I must still be aware of the unintended side-effects which can quickly become a most terrible cost. In fixing my attention externally, I’ve ever so subtly loosened my attention on the reality within. Then the experience of the world immediately becomes more real than the experience of the self.  

But there’s everything to be gained by reclaiming the self. That is the highest example we can set for anyone else. And it’s actually selfless, for that is the core quality of the self. 

Even now, during this time of blatant suffering, we must recognize and remember that by focusing on the self, we are selfless, and therefore can actually be of greatest service.

Being Who We Are in Pandemonium

Before we can come to the point of reclaiming who we are, our real selves, we’re forever faced with immediate impositions from the world. It should not come as a surprise to us, for that is the nature of this world. What does it mean practically to seek the self in chaos? I’ll give you a little picture from my own vantage.

I’m currently on full lockdown. I haven’t stepped outside my building in exactly a week. That was for a 15 minute walk with my wife, Radha Bhakti, across the street around Court Square Park. Before that, it was many days I’d been holed away. We order all our groceries online now and we wipe them down with a patently rigorous routine. We disinfect doorknobs and keys and hands and bag-handles and clothes and anything we can cleverly think up. I can’t remember the last time I spoke to someone in the flesh other than my wife, without a barrier between us.

I understand this to be the need of the hour now, but it took a lot to get me there.

My first reaction was to pray for the Chinese and presume the disease likely won’t make it to our country. Then I thought the news to be sensationalist in terms of the implications on a global scale, and heard from doctor friends that it was something like a mountain out of a molehill. 

Then, an Upbuild workshop in Milan canceled. Then California was hit. Then Seattle. New York could be next. 

Suddenly, we didn’t board for Atlanta in a torrent of perplexity and emotions, with continuous debate that lasted from early morning till late night. Then a last hurrah to the Catskills for quality time with my wife, who had actually planned for it to be a surprise weekend in Paris; European travel, accommodations, and events all canceled. My hunger to understand grew. 

I read and read, careful about the sources. Italy became a tragedy on the world stage and a warning sign to every nation. I had horrific nightmares several nights in a row. It’s all a “true nightmare,” as a client expressed, after having to fire his entire staff and wind down 25 years worth of work and dreams. Our leaders stood and watched helplessly or heartlessly. I lived in fear, doing the best I could to navigate the tension of inner and outer worlds.

Researching like anything to the detriment of my soul’s need for positivity, I felt I crossed the hump when I came upon a very pragmatic, yet visionary piece my brother-in-law shared that went viral: Tomas Pueyo’s “The Hammer and The Dance.” Many insights and intuitions affirmed by this essay, questions answered, and action points underscored, I determined that from this point forward, I know what I need to know. I won’t barricade myself from media, as I have from physical proximity with others, but I will be extremely conscientious to curate what I take in and when. Knowledge will still come to bear, and I’m no one to reject what’s helpful in an ever-changing situation. 

But with my quest for understanding satisfied externally, the real work must now continue with all the more rigor internally. To not be swept away by the tide of time and all that goes on around us at any given moment, we need an anchor. When we are our true selves, we are not flung around by all of life’s unpredictable circumstances. The lesson for me keeps coming – I need to anchor much more to who I am, so I can better withstand the waves of the world and be a solid instrument in the service of others.

If we close off from vital information, we act foolishly. And if we open ourselves up to the onslaught of purportedly vital information, we act fearfully. Both are foreign to who we are deep down. No one wants to be foolish and no one wants to be fearful. We intuitively feel some vague sense – that’s not who I am. I should be solid, not wracked with fear. I should be intelligent, not prone to recklessness.

My own journey has been fraught with so much struggle trying to walk the line since the outset of this month. What I recognized is that I need to know what we’re up against. I need to know how to protect myself, and – most surreal – how to protect others from me. I need to understand reality as it stands presently to our limited perception. But I also need to understand that I – the real ‘I’ – don’t fit into this version of reality. No one does.

When There’s So Much to Lose, Let Us Not Lose Our Selves

All wisdom traditions share with us that the nature of the self is to be connected with other selves. “No man is an island.” We see we’re not the only subject in this world. The ego constantly sees everyone and everything as object. That’s all it knows to do. Sartre therefore talked about “The Look” as the core experience to everyone. The Look is what we all do to all that we see – objectify. We don’t know how to see another subject. Once we see, what we see is already outside of me. And it’s of lesser value to me. But the real me sees all living beings, including animals, as subjects. My selfish desires don’t dictate my vision. Nor does the capacity of the other.

When we are ourselves, we recognize that we’re all in this together. We cannot divorce ourselves from anyone else. We are all a unit. We see that every living being has intrinsic value, and that we are all made of the same stuff. We are all brothers and sisters on this planet. Our every thought, word, and deed must reflect this.

When we are ourselves, we can’t ignore that we are one family. We can’t imagine a life disconnected from reality. And reality means ultimate unity.

With so much selfishness and so much suffering, we owe it to the world to be our selves.

I learned from Rasanath’s wife, Vrin, that the new cliché is making its way: “When you can’t go outside, go inside.” And perhaps it’s a good sign. But that still can sound selfish or sentimental if we don’t define what it is to go within. We don’t want to be in our ivory towers pontificating on how this can be good for us while our health care professionals are out risking their lives every day to serve others. That would be ludicrous to the true self, who has a heart!

Crisis can catapult us closer to our real selves than we could have imagined, if our desire is strong, we’re receptive, and we ask the pivotal question: 

What is the real me?

The outside world will compete for our attention, but when we bring our attention to the self, we find tremendous strength. Imagine approaching the world with that strength of connection to who we are. Clear, grounded, and full of compassion, with an unstoppable spirit to serve others. That is what the self is made of, and only by becoming aware of who we are, keeping that vision with us, can we can step up to live it. That is what’s at stake.

Caring for the physical body is critical and urgent. We feel this deeply in a pandemic. But that does not heal the root of our suffering, and the body was made to end soon. The life of the self is the less perceptible, but equally urgent need.

The sacred text of the Bhagavad-Gita that first inspired our monastic lives as well as the work of Upbuild, continues to be our guiding light to this very day. And it makes the hidden reality of the self unmistakable.

“The soul can never be cut to pieces by any weapon, nor burned by fire, nor moistened by water, nor withered by the wind.”

-Bhagavad-Gita 2.23

In other words, what we see of this body is not the full picture. As Socrates said when sentenced to drink the hemlock, “How can they kill me? First they have to find me.”

The body is a vehicle that transports the driver – the self, or the soul – in this lifetime. We must take good care of that vehicle, but when we mistake the vehicle for the driver, that is a wild travesty!

When we spend all our time and all our mental and emotional energy worrying and planning for and identifying with the vehicle, and we neglect the driver, the loss here cannot be emphasized enough. The soul longs for contact. The soul longs to be received. To be freed from the imprisonment of the ego. Eternally, not temporarily.

Unlocking the Strength of the Self

The attempt to reach our true self, the soul, gets instantly shrouded every time we focus exclusively on the ephemeral world of the mind and body. The information we take in from outside affects our consciousness more than we know. It all reinforces identification with the ego – the persona of who we think we should be, linked to the mind and body. That’s the hall of mirrors that is our world. It makes the soul a myth.

For example, now that we are in our “new normal,” many people have found their sense of self to be shaken, because the very things they identify with are being taken away from them, well beyond their control. Jobs are being lost, wealth reduced, prestige and status becoming irrelevant, sickness and death thrust in our faces brutally. And the fear… 

This is not only a health crisis, an economic crisis, and emotional crisis – it’s an identity crisis.  

There’s so much anxiety. Naturally. It’s in the ether, and it’s in our hearts. Because I’m identified with something temporary that will come to an end. Painfully, no matter how we slice it. And it’s so foreign for the self to think of an end to selfhood. It doesn’t make sense.

Our anxiety clouds clarity and contentment. It impairs our perception and action, even by the standards of the external world, what to speak of spiritually. We need the right amount of fear to be responsible, but when we’re responsible, we don’t need to fear. 

Living the Life of the Soul

What’s instructive about Covid-19 is that it presents us unavoidably with the sufferings of this world that we do everything to avoid, ignore, shut out. Why? Because it’s fearful, and that interferes with our pursuit of happiness. It confronts us with the crying of humanity in a way that makes it difficult to turn away. It creates compassion in those who truly stare it in the eye. And it reveals the nature of the world around us, which is ruthless, and will be so, because there is always misfortune and death. 

The more we stay present to the pain of the world, the more we’re compelled to seek answers. When we recognize suffering to be existential – it calls our very existence into question. Hence that pivotal question – What is the real me? I must know… Who am I? Why am I here? How am I related to the outside world? Am I my mind and body with which I currently identify?

Mistaking the self for the mind and body is the cause of all anxiety and pain; those who identify with the self do not suffer, even in situations of deepest pain and loss. Those who identify with the self give up fear. Saints and sages throughout the ages have been sharing this lesson through their own realization. My guru’s guru, Srila Prabhupada, was once asked by a reporter what is the experience of self-realization. In a word, he said, “fearlessness.”

After suffering a slew of near-death experiences and horrid reversals, this was not theoretical for him.** There are countless examples in history.

Srivasa Thakura was a self-realized soul in medieval India, threatened with torture and death for reciting sacred mantras against the orders of a totalitarian dictatorship. He marched through the streets of Bengal with hundreds of thousands who followed his lead. And he selflessly shared his mantras for the awakening of all to self-realization. Even thieves, who went out just to steal from the homes of the marchers, became enchanted by the purity they felt all around them. They joined the march. Spiritual sound billowed throughout the town and inspired countless persons to reconnect with the self. In a time of terror, people felt free. Completely and lastingly. Srivasa Thakura walked through his own fear to offer fearlessness to others, just as Srila Prabhupada did. They sought only to serve others, both physically and spiritually.

What happens when we identify, not with the mind and body – the ego mechanism, the vehicle – but with the driver, the self? What happens when we engage with the world from that place? 

It’s the most powerful thing we can do. By seeing everyone as subjects, we make all others feel understood. This is the greatest service, the burning human need. And we do so at the level of the soul. Where people are seen and felt, in a dramatically different way than they’re used to, or even knew they needed. We perpetually step into the shoes of others, feeling for them. Unfathomably connected as divine family. And when attuned, everyone can receive the unspoken embrace of our spiritual vision. It’s something I’ve experienced as a recipient of the love of great souls, and it has fundamentally changed me. It awakened in me a heartfelt desire to reach the self. It spurred my passionate entry into a monastery. It led to the creation of Upbuild, in order for us to try to repay the matchless gift which we can never actually do justice to.

And we cannot be of that service to others until we look after our real selves – through study of the self, meditation, and association with like-minded people. It is not selfish to look after our real selves – because only then can we be of greatest service to others, which is more needed today than perhaps ever before in our lifetimes. To go beyond the world of fear. 

If we’re not in touch with the fear, think what it would be if our conditions changed. If we lost our job, our money, our prestige, our love, our health, or our life. Everything is vulnerable in this world. And everything ultimately breaks. The fear is simply being present to this fact. 

It’s fearsome now or fearsome later. There’s never a time without danger to ourselves and our loved ones. It only takes presence to feel that fear. But the fear keeps brewing in our unconscious. Constantly. With varying effects on our lives. See Ernest Becker’s The Denial of Death, and all the work of Freud that is one massive exposé on the fragility of the human condition, outside our recognition, but affecting every one of us – severely).

So to best serve others in a world of fear, we must seek the strength of the self. Before a flight, we’re told that in the event of a change in cabin pressure, we must put on our oxygen mask before assisting another. It feels selfish and maybe even counterintuitive, but it is paramount to our very survival. 

A driver must take care of her car, but if she doesn’t take care of herself, she won’t be able to drive the car – which is a vehicle to get her to her desired destination.

We must cater to the soul (the driver) more urgently than the body (the vehicle) to reach our desired destination – self-realization. When we do that, we become our selves. We become para duhkha duhkhi, the Sanskrit term for someone who becomes happy at the happiness of others and miserable at the misery of others. So heartfelt, so connected, so empathic and compassionate. Simply desiring to serve, seeing we are all brothers and sisters here.

Even as we go through the complexities of this life, with the world that pulls us outward into its immediate demands, impositions, necessities, and fears, we can connect with who we are, and engage from there. 

What is the step we can take? We need a spiritual vision. To see ourselves and all others as our selves. Souls. To have, at heart, the desire to lovingly serve all souls as family on this planet. 

And how do we keep fresh and sharpen that spiritual vision? Through practice. If you develop a daily practice, you cannot lose sight of what’s most important. You cannot lose yourself, as we do throughout our day-to-day. For you always come right back to who you are. And that transforms a person over the course of time. Beyond our wildest imagination… This I share from my world of conviction, and from my own personal experience, though I’ve only reached a fraction of the potential therein.

Jesus taught us to be in this world, but not of it. That’s a tall order. And one I fail at miserably. But because we miss the target doesn’t mean we should cease to take aim or give up our shooting altogether. That is selling ourselves short to no end.

In our Bhagavad-Gita classes, we screen the film The Shawshank Redemption as a metaphor to illustrate principles of the sacred text. There’s one particularly poignant scene we use as an analogy for what can be achieved internally, in the face of utmost adversity: 

The protagonist in a prison, Andy Dufresne (played by Tim Robbins), comes out of solitary confinement. And somehow, he’s miraculously cheerful. After undergoing the cruelest experience, which the United Nations Committee Against Torture claims is unacceptable, the other inmates around him are shocked. It’s as if he’s lost his mind. He can’t fit into their world. He exists among them in prison, undergoing the same terrible experiences, but his being is fundamentally different. He shares with them at this moment, “There’s something inside that they can’t get to... They can’t touch... It’s yours.” 

That is the hope we dare to cultivate. It comes only through repeated genuine connection with the self. Through practice. Every day. Come what may.

So let us remember who we are now, and serve all souls with all our hearts. Let us make a commitment to our selves that we will practice connecting with this sacred vision that calls us. By spiritual practice, we overcome identification with the ego by constant reinforcement of being who we are – the soul. The more we live in that space, the more it becomes us, and the more others are touched by our vision of reality.

There are innumerable ways to develop a practice of living the soul-life, and there is no time to waste in so doing! We must continually strengthen our practice. If there’s one thing this new strain of corona is meant to teach, it’s to not waste another moment. Let us close with one potent spiritual practice together.

The following is a set of compassion prayers from India that are thousands of years old, spoken by many self-realized souls. Since this crisis began, we’ve been offering these prayers as an Upbuild Team each time we come together. Radha Bhakti and I have been doing so as well for some years. But if, like me up to my early 20s, you don’t believe or have confidence there’s someone to receive such prayers, the nature of positive intent is that your own consciousness receives it, transforms your thinking, your being, and affects others subtly, but very deeply... I see this time and again in my own life.

Finally, thank you so much for considering this plea to break free from the world of ego and invest in the self. I’m so grateful for the opportunity to work through my own dilemma and endeavor to make spiritual advancement in this writing. I’m praying with my whole heart that, by some grace, this impassioned plea may become a precious gift for you too. It is coming from all the wise and loving souls who have affected me, so anything good that comes is only to their credit.

Sincerely,

Hari Prasada Das

**Age 69, onboard a cargo ship from India to the U.S., he was struck with two heart attacks and understood it was a miracle he somehow survived. He was gored by a bull, plagued with a stroke, violently attacked by a drug addict, victim of thievery for a sacred manuscript that was his only possession and life’s work. He walked the streets of the Bowery in New York City alone and penniless, not knowing anyone, not knowing the culture, checking periodically to see when would be the next boat back to his home of India that he missed so dearly. But with the determination to spread the fearless life of the soul worldwide, he soon succeeded in a manner unprecedented. With centers that span the globe and books that sold in many millions – he became author of the best-selling Bhagavad-Gita translation and commentary to date. He continued to translate with crystal clarity and determination on his deathbed when the doctors said his body felt it was on fire.

Compassion Prayers

May all be happy!

May everyone be free of diseases!

May everyone see all good everywhere!

May there be no distress for anyone!

Let there be auspiciousness for the universe.

May the wicked be pleased, not angry!

May all beings together meditate intelligently on cooperation!

May the mind become free of attachment!

May our minds without motivation be absorbed in the Supreme Lord!

May the entire Universe be blessed with peace and hope.

May everyone, driven by envy and enmity, become pacified and  reconciled.

May all living beings develop abiding concern for the welfare of others.

May our own hearts and minds be filled with purity and serenity.

May all these blessings flow naturally from this supreme benediction: 

May our attention become spontaneously absorbed in the rapture of pure love unto the transcendent Lord.

Loneliness and the Meanings We Make of It

Am I alone? A question loaded with implications and one that has plagued me for as long as I remember. It has plagued me through the best of times and the worst of times. It has plagued me through my most intimate relationships and through prolonged periods of singleness. It has plagued me while traveling alone and while surrounded by large groups of people. It has plagued me in the seconds before I fall asleep and in the moments just after I wake. And it is plaguing me now as the arbitrary existence of nation-states and red-tape bureaucracy is forcing me to live 7000 miles from my wife. 

But before I attempt to answer the question, why is it important? Why does the mere thought, “Am I alone,” incite such anxiety within us? We humans are pretty rational creatures, so there must be some rational explanation for why we have this great fear that the answer might, in fact, be “yes.”  

First of all, we know from experience that many of our most fulfilling moments in life have been in the presence of another person. We have experienced feelings of true emotional and physical connection with another, we have been supported and provided support in times of need, and we have shared experiences with others that simply would not have been the same if we had been alone.

Secondly, we understand that life often works better when we have others around us. It sometimes feels as if the world is made for couples with the ubiquitous 2 for 1 specials and Costco-esque shopping opportunities. After all, no sane individual can eat three pounds of blueberries before they go rotten no matter how many cancer-fighting antioxidants they might have. Our jokes are funnier when others are around to laugh at them. Activities like eating out at a restaurant or going to the cinema can be more comfortable in the presence of another. Taxis are cheaper when we share them with others. We can comfortably fall asleep in the lap of another while waiting at the departure gate for our plane to take off, and if we need to use the bathroom, we don’t have to lug all of our luggage with us across the airport.

From a pure Darwinian survival of the fittest perspective, our chances of continued existence on this earth are greatly increased if we have another. If we get sick or have an accident, having a companion can be the difference between life and death. A friend or partner can give us CPR, call an ambulance, and literally or figuratively talk us back from the edge.

Emotional well being, lower stress levels, and lower heart rates may all be associated with having a companion. Similar to having a dog, being in the presence of another can remove us from the stresses of being in our own head. From life experience, I know that caring more about others is much more rewarding and stress mitigating than caring about myself, even if I don’t always act like I know it. Being in love has taught me this. And of course, there is the ability of the other to comfort us during difficult situations. Even if the other person is unable to change the circumstances of a situation, simply being told “everything is okay” or being on the receiving end of a gigantic hug can be all the difference.

And finally, there is that good old procreation thing. It has been in our nature since our early ancestors appeared on earth 1-2 million years ago to be adamant about passing on our genes to the next generation before we die. Whether it be for reasons of the ego or because we have some unselfish inclination to help the species extend its existence, I will never be sure. But having a partner makes that process a bit more seamless and socially acceptable.

So yea, it seems pretty reasonable that the question, “Am I alone in this world?” might bring on the kind of anxiety that it does.

But loneliness is not all bad. In fact, some pretty smart people have advised me that it is the gateway to personal growth. Being alone can give us the space we need to experience peace of mind. It can give us the freedom to be creative. It can liberate us from feelings of envy, greed, and lust that we often experience when we closely observe the situations of our fellow human beings. It can liberate us from distractions so we can think, process, and reflect. It can give us an incentive to go out of our comfort zone and truly experience the world through our own eyes. 

So now on to the matter at hand...“Am I alone in the world?” 

The way I see it, this question can be answered in six different ways.

1. Literally: Am I in the presence of at least one other human being right now? Yes = not alone. No = alone.

2. Status: What is my relationship status? Serious relationship or married = not alone. Everyone else = alone.

3. Theoretical:I may be physically alone right now, but if I so desired, could I have company, either physically or virtually? Would someone pick up my call to talk to me? Would someone answer my text if I sent one? Yes = not alone. No = alone.

4. Connection: Do I feel emotionally connected to another? Can I show affection for another and have it be returned. Do others respond to my “emotional bids” (i.e. either explicit or implicit calls for love and support) and do I respond to others? Yes = not alone. Not = alone.

5. Understanding: Do the people around me and in my life see me as I truly am? Do they see me for the real me? Have they experienced my vulnerability? Do they see past my song-and-dance and the barriers that my ego puts up? Do they see through to the loving, generous, fun-loving individual that is underneath? Yes = not alone. No = alone.

This one is particularly tricky because sometimes we don’t even know who we truly are. And for me personally, this one is intensely complicated because even in my most vulnerable moments, I find that my ego still holds something back. It is almost like a controlled vulnerability, as I read the other person to determine how I should be vulnerable, instead of just actually being vulnerable in the true sense of the world. I don’t believe it is manipulative as it sounds, but I do believe other people can sometimes sense this, and it can prevent them from feeling truly close to me and from fully seeing me for who I am.

6. Acceptance: Do I truly accept others for the way they are and do they accept me for the way I am? Do I love others in my life unconditionally and do others love me unconditionally? No = alone. Yes = not alone.

Another very tricky one because other than a parents love for a child (which I have not yet experienced myself from a parent’s perspective), I can’t think of any love that is truly unconditional. In my own experience, there always seems to be conditions on love with Condition #1 being I won’t love you unless you love me 

So, for most of us, the question “Am I alone?” is difficult to answer with any sort of conviction because the answers to the questions above are not binary and are constantly changing. One minute, we may feel incredibly connected to and understood by those around us, and the next minute, we may feel that there is not a single other soul out there who can even begin to grasp what we are going through. Even if external circumstances don’t necessarily change, our brain chemistry is such that consistent answers to these questions are very hard to come by.

And for me personally, I find the loneliest times to be when the answers above point to contradicting conclusions. Specifically, I feel the most lonely when I feel lonely IN SPITE OF being surrounded by a ton of friends or having a romantic partner. When I am physically alone, it is easy to understand why I feel lonely. But when I am not physically alone, and I still feel alone, it throws me off my rocker. It is extremely disconcerting, and only serves to strengthen the discomfort of this emotion we call loneliness.

So, as I have gotten older and experienced a few more things in life, it has become clear to me that the quality of “aloneness” has nothing to do with the number of people around. It might have something to do with the quality of the people around. Or maybe more accurately, it reflects the quality of our relationships. I feel way less alone knowing there is a friend across the world who “gets it” and “gets me” than a guy standing next to me who cannot even begin to understand what I am going through. Carl Jung said, “Loneliness doesn’t come from having no one around you, but from being unable to communicate the things that are important to you.”

So...now REALLY on to the matter at hand...“Am I alone in this world?”

Yes and no. Yes, because factually, I am an individual. I am alone in the physical space that I occupy. And when I go to bed at night and close my eyes, even if there is someone lying next to me, the fact remains that I am alone in my mind and in the darkness that my eyes can see. And no. No, because I am not going it alone in this world. I share the planet with 7 billion other humans, and if I can humbly attempt to shed the layers of my ego, I can serve as pillars of support for many of them, and in turn be served myself. I have access to the infinite love of others and by being truly vulnerable (not just pretend vulnerable like I have a tendency to do), I can be truly “gotten.”

Paul Tillich put it nicely when he said, “Our language has wisely sensed these two sides of man’s being alone. It has created the word "loneliness" to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word "solitude" to express the glory of being alone.” Although we don’t want to re-frame the emotion just for the sake of avoiding the emotion, this quote is meaningful in that it reminds us that there are two sides of every coin. And with loneliness, the other side represents tremendous opportunities for growth to become truer and more fully expressed versions of ourselves. 

The Truth about Non-Truth Shall Set You Free

They say the truth shall set you free. From what, you might ask. Maybe it is from others, maybe it is from delusion, maybe it is from ourselves. I am not exactly sure. But what I have become more present to as I have gotten older is the feeling I get when there is real truth happening.

Truth can happen in an endless variety of forms: an insight, a conversation, a criticism, a thought, a discovery about the nature of myself, a discovery about the nature of reality, or just the simple truth of the present moment.

There are lots of ways to feel good, but I find it hard to beat the feeling I get when I discover truth for myself or have truth bestowed upon me by others. For the latter, however, even if the insight comes from someone else, I have to get fully present to the truth for myself for that feeling to exist.

So why? Why do we feel good when we experience truth? Truth is light. Pretense and delusion are heavy. Truth is easy. Pretense and delusion are complicated. They are full of gray areas. With truth, there is nothing to hide and nothing to cover up. No effort needs to be made to disguise truth from the world. Secrets can take on an entire life of their own. Once we are hiding something from ourselves or from others (even if we are not aware of the fact that we are hiding it), we become slaves to the secret. It may feel as if our survival depends on the maintenance of this secret. We lose our freedom to operate with love, creativity, and empathy in the world.

The high from truth is akin is to the high from an “A-Ha” moment. Chemicals are literally released in our brain. We rid ourselves of the proverbial “monkey on our back.” The world becomes our oyster.

And isn’t it interesting how real truth is the exception rather than the rule? We have to work hard to discover real truth. We don’t have to work very hard to discover delusion. The hard work and lack of freedom comes from the maintenance of the delusion, rather than the discovery itself.

In my almost daily existential quest to discover why I am here and what I should be doing while I am here, I think a lot about the delusions that are running, and potentially ruining, my life. One of these pretenses is the notion that “I got this” and “I can do it on my own.” Very much related is the impossibly high standard I sometimes hold others to, even when I am not close to upholding this standard myself. These notions are made even more exhausting and heavy by the fact that I am not aware that I am carrying them around with me most of the time. I do things like pretend I have heard of that famous actor when I have no idea who he is, pretend that it doesn’t bother me when some friends made plans without me, or that I don’t always need the love and support of the people who care about me. I do things like pretend that answers are obvious even when they are not and give others a hard time for making mistakes. Ideas like perfection and “I can do it all on my own” are not truths. They are my delusions. They are my pretenses. And they make life a whole lot more sub-optimal than it has the potential to be.

The complicated part about all of this is that pretense and facades are often pretenses and facades for a reason. It is not that we are malicious or ill-intentioned people when we have them. We can’t necessarily see them ourselves. And almost by definition, they have a gray area, so there is often truth embedded within them. They often serve a purpose. They fuel our voracious egos. They make us feel protected from the difficulties of the world. They are our defense mechanisms. They are how we have always dealt with our insecurities. They run deep. They are engrained within us. And if we let go of them, we would be letting go of parts of us that we might feel we could not live without.

And in discovering these for myself, I come face to face with the truth of just how much of my life is lived in pretense, delusion, and a pho-reality. But herein lies the silver lining, which is that one of the "truest truths" comes in the form of telling the truth about not telling the truth, from being authentic about being inauthentic. Once we peel the layers of the ego and admit to ourselves and others what is really happening, then we are immediately living in a world of truth. The heaviness, the complications, and the exhaustion all begin to fade away. We become unfettered from the shackles of delusion. Light and liberty prevail. The truth about non-truth has indeed set us free.

A Takeaway for 2019: Challenge of Solitude

My dear Upbuild community,

I wrote to you last year of the blur that is this life and the inability to manage through all the madness of it, save for a solitary aspiration urged on by my guru – to create space between myself and my experience of life. As yet another year comes to a close and a new one makes its hurried way, I find unsurprisingly that the very same problem persists! In my defense, I had shared that it’s a life-long project to make progress at separating myself from my experiences!
 
Sometimes I wonder if I’m making any progress at all… In my best moments, I know and can see with clarity how far I’ve come and where I’m headed – toward the life of the true self. In the rest of the moments, I feel I can’t really see at all, for the ego is blind and the self still awaits discovery.
 
I’m trying and I’m failing, as my guru’s guru, Srila Prabhupada, would say in his own humble prayers. I’m trying and I’m failing… If you are ever feeling this way too, please know that you are not alone.
 
But should we just throw in the towel? To realize our self is too difficult? Too ethereal? Too impractical? Or not enough fun? Should we lower our lofty expectations and simply work hard for our tangible material aspirations? When it comes to transcendent possibilities, are we better to live as Kim desperately and depressedly proposes after being displaced from his home upon a terrible sewage flood in the Korean film, Parasite:
 
“You know what kind of plan never fails? No plan. No plan at all. You know why? Because life cannot be planned. Look around you. Did you think these people made a plan to sleep in the sports hall with you? But here we are now, sleeping together on the floor. So, there's no need for a plan. You can't go wrong with no plans. We don't need to make a plan for anything. It doesn't matter what will happen next…”
 
Nobody plans to get divorced when they marry. Nobody plans to do a dead-end job for the rest of their lives. Nobody plans the unfortunate happenings that come of their own power. And life can really feel like a flood of unplanned experiences that displace us from our real self, mostly because there’s truth to this! So what can be done if we don’t want to resign our self to mediocrity and entropy?
 
There are many things which yet give me hope. I will outline three of them here with the aim that you can feel this hope too and deeply invest it. We’ll briefly touch on the first two and spend the fullest extent of our time here on the third.
 
Firstly, the fact that you who are reading this exist and care is hugely hope-giving to me personally! I don’t know what I’d do with myself if you were not here on this lonely little planet with me. I am so moved to have met you, those whom I know, and I think about you with heartfelt prayers more than you know. I really miss you when time does its expert job of creating constraints… Those whom I don’t know, I wish to know you, and even if that’s not meant to be in this life, I am so grateful for the medium of self-work that puts us in connection on a much deeper, and more important level than the limited realm of physicality. Thank you each for being with me on this path and for your sincerity which motivates me and touches others, especially the more you are in contact with working on yourself and supported by persons of the same rare spirit.
 
Secondly, I’ve found that documenting my own realizations gives not only the feeling of progress but evidences the reality of it. I’ve been blessed this year to have gained numerous insights that mean the world to me and which I’ve tried to capture the best I could in writing. That becomes my solace amidst the inevitable storms. It’s my light at the end of the tunnel because I know there’s much much more where these gems of clarity came from! Something so simple as taking a moment to reflect and being receptive can make all the difference. We will do well to incessantly ask the question – what am I meant to learn from the experiences of life (that are not me but are teaching me)?
 
This leads us to our third hope-giving anchor. In spite of my best efforts to realize my self as separate from the temporary phenomena of this world not yet yielding the ripened fruit, and in spite of my increasing fear of aging as time relentlessly pushes forward (which I’ll perhaps share more about another time), something else lives in me as of late. Just the other day, I caught myself indulging in some giddiness about a prospect that I wish to share with you as my main takeaway here for 2019. That is the idea of retreat.
 
My guru, Sacinandana Maharaja, writes in a beautiful essay entitled The Gifts of Retreat:
 
When withdrawing into solitude and silence, one can encounter the greater person within, who is far superior to the forever insecure small person we know so well, always struggling for ego-centered gains. In spiritual practice, one can nourish that "greater person" - the soul - and make it strong so that it reaches beyond all limitations into the world of the spirit. When one returns from such inner depths, he or she has changed. Now, such a changed person brings the sacred world with him or her into daily life; occupied in "busy leisure" and resting in "tranquil activity," as one monk from my neighbouring monastery expressed. With such spiritual empowerment, things seem to happen on their own accord, or by the strength of a different orchestrator…Almost effortlessly, one is in the flow.
 
Every year, I endeavor to create a little barrier between the year that leaves us and the year that knocks on our door afresh. I aim to spend more time cultivating the inner life and leaving the outer life for later. I have had varying levels of success here (mostly mild!), despite the nice intention. But something new came over me recently. I recognized that I have an opportunity to actually carve out time if I truly value it enough – in other words, that it’s possible. And then I recognized that it’s essential.
 
Our partner, Vipin, inspired me by the way he planned his sabbatical this summer, and the effects it had on him were quite encouraging. To close off email for six weeks and head into nature with the aim of rejuvenation helped set a cultural precedent for us at Upbuild. I always face too much guilt and fear to make good on my cravings to get away from the day to day.
 
By some special grace, from time to time, I have the privilege to study with my guru, visit sacred places, and get quality time with my wife. I eagerly seize these whenever and however possible, as each are tremendously nourishing and much needed. To date, they’ve also always been tremendously fast-paced! What I’ve really sorely missed – even neglected – is the time in solitude.
 
While I was sitting for my morning meditation the other day, it came to me, that I must rekindle that flame of solitude, and answer the call I feel from within. It spoke loudly and clearly. So I sheepishly began to investigate the possibility, afraid of shirking any responsibility or distancing, much less abandoning, those I love.
 
I was grateful to meet with support on all sides and the sense that a path is being paved for this crucial time to manifest. The giddiness grew in me as I began to think about making this an annual tradition. Renewal must be renewed regularly!
 
I really wish to make good on this and I share with you to hold myself accountable, as well as to ardently invite you to join me in going within. I can’t think of anything more valuable than to seek the treasures that are not made of matter and do not disappear with all the fleeting phenomena, including our own bodies and minds. There’s so much at stake we miss when we make the mistake of seeing only with our eyes.
 
In this vein, I have grand plans to return to the most wonderful monastic habits of awakening before dawn for my morning meditation and spiritual reading. Catching up on backlogs of messages and to dos that embarrass me. Reading my realizations from the year that’s passed and many other years past. Writing new realizations that have been yearning to be written without the time or space to offer them a safe passageway onto the page. And much much more.
 
Why should I let backlogs into my sacred retreat? Ideally, I would not! But then ideally I would also not have them! And while they continue to pursue me, I want to honor them and serve from a peaceful state of consciousness, in closer touch with the self by dint of spiritual absorption. I can never think that people’s messages don’t matter or are low priority. I never wish for my own feebleness and inabilities to come at the cost of anyone else who has reached out or who I could perhaps somehow benefit. Therefore, I am always pursued by the backlogs of what’s left undone. And I truly hope to live freer by addressing them if that’s at all possible. And I pray that this is just the beginning. In coming years, I may get better at keeping full focus on my solitary service.
 
I also know to keep my expectations in check because things don’t typically go as planned (established earlier by our movie character, Kim!). I must try my best but be happy with what I can offer in this sincere endeavor towards solitude.
 
In future years, it can also help to go away, but this year, I start small, realistic, and with another objective. I love the idea of living my best life in the place where I actually live… Imagine living so connected with yourself, with your best habits that you can muster, and your inner wealth firmly developing, all in the place where you always reside. Suddenly, what could be as day to day snaps into focus, and not merely some wild yearly anomaly.
 
Already, I’m hearing from others, “I should do the same!” That warms my heart. We have a direct impact on one another by how we show up, usually far more than we consider. And what could be more important than investing in the real me, beyond my usual ego thoughts and habits? Why not carve out the time to cultivate the self? Offering that to yourself is the greatest gift. But you’ll also be offering it to everyone in your life by how you show up nourished from within and by how you set an example.
 
May 2020 serve as a launching pad for a life possessed of purpose – not just the buzzy word we hear about constantly now, but the purpose of the self that eagerly awaits us in silence. 
 
I want to wish you the most wonderful close to 2019, opening to 2020, and gateway to a lifetime of joyful realization in utmost hopeful enthusiasm! I will close with the fitting words of my guru:

In the beginning, being in solitude can be a daunting challenge. At first, we miss the excitement of our busy lives. But if we persist, our heart turns into a vibrant temple…

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.

Intellectualizing vs. Feeling Deeply

As I begin my journey into the world of coaching, I can’t help but think this is an opportunity to reconnect with my emotions. But, to be honest, I am scared. I am scared not that I won’t be a decent coach. That may be true, but what I am scared of is that I don’t have enough capacity to truly feel deeply the pain and suffering of what others experience in their lives. I have a fear of failure in my emotional range...in being able to experience true empathy and compassion. In a life where I have been successful in different arenas, I can’t really say the same thing about the emotional arena.

Whether it be with good friends who might be going through a tough moment in their lives or with complete strangers who are less fortunate in terms of being able to afford life's necessities, it is often not my first or my natural instinct to feel their pain. And naturally, if I can’t feel their pain, it is almost impossible to be with their pain and be there for them emotionally in the way that they may need it. And I feel ashamed about this.

To be clear, true empathy is different than doing good for others and trying to make the world a better place. Taking action, being involved in philanthropy, and being a champion for the underserved, have always been important to me. Once a need is articulated, and I find myself with the motivation and resources to take it on, I am quick to serve others. But this is precisely not what I am talking about.  

In fact, my fear of failure when it comes to my own empathy is only exacerbated by the fact that I do indeed "do good" in this world. How could I be a champion for those whom I have never met, but I often can’t meet the emotional needs of my close family and friends? Am I an emotional fraud?  Do I have a heart of stone to be able to look someone in the eye and ask them to donate to a cause when I don’t feel the feelings at that exact moment that most people probably do when they are doing acts of kindness? Could I only be doing it to satisfy the needs of my own ego or to quench my thirst for external validation? Or am I just hoping to fake it until I make it? Maybe if I do enough good, I will start to feel the same feelings that most “good” people usually do? Yes, lots of cognitive dissonance and issues regarding identity going on here. My actions paint one picture of me. My internal feelings another. And it eats me up inside.

I would be too hard on myself if I said that I never experienced empathy. I do have my moments. When my proverbial cup is full (when I feel supported and loved and my ego has been validated), I can more easily feel what others are going through. During these moments, I really get it. I deeply feel it. And it is often from these fleeting moments that my longer lasting desire to serve comes from. After feeling the feeling once, even only if for a split second, I can “intellectualize” the feeling, “storing” and “preserving” it so I can talk about it and take action based on it. The feeling may be gone, but somehow, the inspiration remains. 

It would represent a big step on my journey of emotional growth (and in my journey to become a coach) if I can somehow find a way to reconnect more frequently and more deeply with the original feelings that got me here in the first place.

So maybe that is what this coaching journey is all about. A chance to un-intellectualize and re-emotionalize my emotions. A chance to drop the ego, a chance to drop the talk about how much good we have done or might be able to do...a chance to finally be there with the people who need a smile and to be listened to more than anything else.

Our Nationwide Wake-Up Call

My Dear United States of America,

We've gotten our wake-up call. A nation obsessed with being the best and made up of rugged individuals striving to win doesn't work forever. There are serious repercussions. There are always losers. And in the end, we all lose. We lose ourselves.

I'm not happy with what is taking place around me. It's difficult to think about anything else. But I do sincerely pray, this is only what's needed to wake us up from our slumber. Our sense of false security. Our illusion that if our own quality of life is not terribly affected, then what happens out in the world is disconnected from us.

When our government is influenced by greedy lobbying powers who are apathetic to our potentially calamitous climate change and cater to corporate agendas that significantly benefit the 1% and violently disenfranchise large masses of the population... When our government regularly engages in mischief-making all over the world to spread democracy that turns into wars we engage in out of self-interest while we proclaim ourselves heroes of the world... When our government fails to see how much people are hurting but instead protects itself rather than the people it vows to protect and for which it exists in the first place... When we hail this sad state of government as by the people and for the people, something is absolutely upside-down. This is the "banality of evil." Right under our noses.

Can we somehow come to our senses? Can we give up our own greed that is systemic in our culture? We now are face-to-face with a leader who appears not to care for us, who has no history of governmental leadership but a rich history of lying, cheating, and stealing, while denouncing diversity. He threatens to put us in grave danger as he proclaims himself our ultimate protector. He inspires those who hate. If this alarm doesn't wake us, I don't know what will.

I didn't think I'd live in this world. I liked my own false sense of security, I guess. But I want to change. I want to see a population that is ready to rise up. I want to be part of not just a protest rally (I’ve done those before), but a deep inner rising. The rising of conscience. The rising of introspection. The rising of responsibility. And the rising of spirit.

I could easily be fueled by my anger about the incidents of harassment that keep popping up across the country. And I know what it is to be harassed for my spiritual tradition. When I was a monk, I distributed sacred literature on the streets and subways of New York. I hated feeling ignored, as I understand now a vast proportion of this country feels. I remember vividly how years ago in front of the Dean and Deluca on Prince and Broadway, I offered a copy of the Bhagavad-Gita to a man. With ice-cold eyes, he turned to me and said, “Are you kidding me? I kill people for less than what you’re doing.” Another time, I was on the platform of the Broadway-Lafayette subway stop and innocently greeted a man. He suddenly screamed obscenities at me with such venom that I feared for my life.

I never forgot the looks of these men. It was the closest I’ve come to being the butt of pure hatred. And it haunted me. In the past, I’d have reacted with rage. A boy once made fun of me when I was on vacation with my parents in New Hampshire. He called me names and insulted my masculinity. I promptly fantasized about pummeling him; instead, I settled on writing a story about our fictional altercation where I would strip him of all self-worth through the wit of my words. I hadn’t been made fun of many times, but any time it happened or I felt something unfair, my mind would go to crushing the other person, either physically or intellectually.

By the time I met these two frighteningly hateful people in New York City, my values had shifted. Being a humble servant of society in monastic garb goes a long way… We were taught to be welfare workers for people who would not see any need, who would ignore us, and make us feel lesser. But we had to feel for them and not worry about our feeling lowly. We even had to embrace feeling lowly to begin to let our egos leave us and become truly selfless. It’s further taught me the essential truth that we can all let go of our vindictiveness. We have this choice. It’s accessible. More so than we think.

The key to this powerful freedom – a freedom where no one can control us – is in identifying our own ego. Our ego? But we’re the victims! To experience freedom, I had to actually not feel that I was better than the person who threatened me on the street or in the subway. It’s the very reason we’re in the stark situation of this nation. We think we’re better than other people. Consciously or unconsciously. And people don’t like that. It’s also not true.

But how to realize this? I genuinely thought throughout my life that I was better than most people I met, and obviously better than those who caused me pain or caused anyone else pain. The truth is, if I introspect, I can see I’ve done a lot to hurt others as well. Moreover, I have incredible potential to do worse... I choose to resist that potential. But I can feel how if not for the fortune of having resources and care all my life, I wouldn’t be fit or even want to resist my darker potential. It’s very clear to me that those who don’t have the fortune, knowledge, or love to resist their baser urges are not worse than we are. They’re worthy of compassion. They're suffering terribly and that's all they have to give to others. Suffering.

Today, instead of feeling anger at the state of our nation, I can see my own humanity and the humanity of my fellow-pain-givers that make up our world. What can I really do to help? Vow to stop giving pain the best I can. Be proactive, not reactive. Don’t indulge in hatred or fear, even if I’m righteously upset or realistically frightened. Let a light shine within me without my thinking how bright a light I am.

As Gabor Mate shares at the end of his poignant TED Talk, “The Power of Addiction and The Addiction of Power,” it's high time we stopped looking for a leader to set things right for our world. To get to the position of influence our leaders wield most often requires exceptional hunger for power and exceptional willingness to compromise on values. It’s up to us to become responsible and not shift the responsibility to someone above. We must set the example…

An external act or policy will come and go. A change from within will never leave. May we act on our best desires and rise up in a way that has immediate and lasting impact.

How will you let go of the brewing pain and anger? How will you think wisely and act compassionately? What will you do for the people who cross your path, friendly or otherwise? And what will you not do to further fuel the divide in our country?

One Moment of Empathy

I was walking up the stairs from the F train platform at 2nd Ave., when a young woman skirted down past the throngs of us ascending.

As she squeezed by, I promptly heard a guttural “Ugggh!” and saw exactly the face I imagined to accompany.

The woman brushed by this commuter turned around to face the rushing culprit who’d just invaded her sacred space.

And she evidently wanted to ensure that the offender was not in too much of a rush to see the full extent of her facial wrath, in case she could have possibly missed the auditory displeasure.

At that time, I felt an ache in my heart.

Could we not have one moment of empathy?

Who has not been in the situation of great pressure in needing to catch a train?

When the train is about to leave the station, the urge grips you to make a run for it.

When others are obstructing your path to making that train, it’s every bit as aggravating as being bumped in the process.

The hurried woman who made the bump was not particularly tactful, agreed.

But if we were to put ourselves in her shoes for but a moment, it would be difficult to download our frustration onto her and twist the proverbial knife.

Moreover, our hurried woman did not strike me as carrying an apathetic air, but rather a sympathetic air, which truly takes a moment of presence to perceive.

Later that night, over dinner with Rasanath and another friend, I shared my experience from the subway – it still bothered me…

I expressed the idea of a moment’s empathy and gained the following response from our friend:

“You see, that’s why you’re ENLIGHTENED and others are not!”

Hardly, I replied, I simply try.

And this is really doable!

Then another friend ran into us and sat for a little while.

Without the context of our conversation, she proceeded to unapologetically declare:

“I just go ahead and shove people in the subway…whoever stands in my way…”

She said she did so today…

Rasanath and I both looked at each other and laughter took over us.

It was almost mystical!

She spontaneously needed to get the pressing issue off of her chest…

But because the lady is a wonderful soul, I could empathize with the side of frustration too.

And certainly, I have my myriad failings on the empathy front.

When we’re in need, we don’t have the emotional space to consider the needs of the other.

I rigorously endeavor to create that space for the natural empathy which flows between conscious compatriots on this planet.

And at the close of the day, I could only wish that we would not miss what’s really at stake when we invest in but a moment of empathy or what’s really at stake when we don’t…

Our world is made up of these little gaps in empathy that grow into gulfs.

These tiny gaps that rapidly morph into gulfs are the root of our universal sufferings.

And suffering only breeds more suffering in this way.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

When we empathize, we experience compassion, the soothing balm of receiving and being received.

Compassion comes from the Latin – ‘Com’ meaning ‘with’ and ‘passion’ meaning suffering.

Compassion, etymologically, means ‘to suffer with.’

And that suffering together is actually healing.

When we’re heard and understood, but most of all felt, we heal.

We all suffer less, when we suffer with.

And it diffuses the frustration of others as well as ourselves.

It bridges the gaps between us.

Can we afford to spare but a moment of empathy?

At the very least, we must ask, what is the price of our not doing so?

It’s not unnatural to empathize.

It just requires that we give ourselves a moment to understand situations and people.

A moment.