The Psychological Matrix

Years ago I was walking through the markets in Subiaco, Western Australia, when I noticed a sign for a psychic. Out of curiosity, I sat down for a reading. He began with quite an accurate summation of my character, which I thought was impressive, and then, in just a few minutes, came the drumroll. “You will have success, travel, recognition; people will respect you, and the perfect man is not far away. Just be careful not to become too absorbed in your work,” he said. “Leave room for leisurely hobbies.”

I remember sitting there thinking, this isn’t actually helpful; why did I even bother? And then, his true psychic gift spoke; he must have read my mind, and said: “There is nothing I can do to help you; here is your money back; you can leave now.”

It seemed he was telling me what he thought I wanted to hear, offering the hankering mind some temporary relief and reassurance that it would all work out.

There is nothing wrong with success, recognition, or fulfilling our desires. But if our happiness or peace depends on them, we become trapped by the fear that they may never happen, or we float in the anxious fantasy that they will.

Materialism begins when we make our possessions, appearance, achievements or comforts the source of our identity and happiness. By trying to feed our image, comforts and desires, we have engineered a trap: our minds are torn between who we truly are and who we think we are supposed to be.

My point is simply that we don’t bow down to our desires, or let them measure our peace of mind and self-worth. We don’t have to lose ourselves in the illusion of an outer appearance, or adopt a socially curated identity just to earn our place in the world.

The ancient traditions recognised this long before smartphones and social media existed. The sages understood that the human mind tends to project the promise of contentment onto objects, identities and experiences, and they taught that none of these things can provide lasting peace or happiness.

Spirituality is for the Brave-hearted

It is tempting to look at these problems individually, to blame technology, social media, our parents, politicians or the pace of modern life. While each of these has its place, none of them can fill the dark, empty hole we feel inside.

It is up to us to lift the fog clouding our minds and release the heaviness of this self-betrayal weighing on our hearts.

Truth and spirituality are for the brave-hearted. To question everything the world has told us we should be. To question what success is, what happiness is, what we should want, and who we are supposed to become.

Sovereignty is not a mass movement. It cannot be commercialised, turned into a trendy hashtag, or automated by an algorithm. It is ultimately an individual, vertical journey.

The force and momentum of the world keep us moving along with it, like a grinding machine that never stops. To step out of that momentum takes courage. To stop, turn around and question the direction everyone else is moving in.

If we have been feeding off a lie, and starving for truth, it helps to see that the very hand that we are feeding from is our own.

Out of many thousands, perhaps only a rare few will have the courage to turn around.

Life on earth is a physical, mystical and spiritual adventure. Perhaps it isn’t designed to give us what we think we want, or cater to societal norms. Each of us is unique, and our desires are mostly ruled by our conditioning, not our truth. Rather, life unfolds to give us the exact experiences we need to grow, evolve, and let go of the illusion that anything out there will ever make us feel what we already are: Whole.

Swami Keshava, global teacher and prominent leader within ISKCON, says, “If you tell a lie loud enough and long enough, that lie becomes a so-called truth, and if that truth is accepted by enough people it becomes a so-called culture, and if that culture perpetuates from one generation through to the next, it becomes a tradition”.

The hunger is real, and it serves a specific purpose: to guide us home, back to the Source, where our true nourishment lies. But we must look in the right direction.

The Nature of Truth

The soul is nourished by knowledge, not by worldly success or possessions. Knowledge is truth, and when knowledge touches our life, it becomes wisdom. Knowledge is not a throne to sit on, but a light to live by.

In the Gita, Sri Krishna speaks of the path of knowledge, Jnana Yoga, as the highest realisation: seeing through the world’s illusions to what is true and eternal.

Truth does not need controversy, opposition or dogma to establish itself. It has nothing to prove, nothing to defend and nothing to gain. It doesn’t always tell us what we want to hear, but it shows us what we need to see.

Truth is not something we can possess, nor is it reserved for a select few behind a paywall, a high-ticket price or a single authority. Truth that can be possessed is not truth at all; it is only opinion.

Truth is the foundation, the very ground of our existence. It is truth that holds us, guides us, and reveals itself when we are ready.

The path of knowledge is, in essence, a transformation of our hunger. We begin to lose our appetite for the things that once promised to make us Whole, and turn towards the nourishment that was never outside of us to begin with.

Everything in life is determined by what we hunger for.

If we hunger for recognition, we feed the ego.

If we hunger for pleasure, we feed desire.

If we hunger for power, we feed the personality.

If we hunger for God, we feed the soul.

And when the soul is fed, the truth naturally reveals itself.

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Exhale and Let Go

When we practise yoga asana, the teacher guides us into a posture, asks us to hold, and then, almost always, follows with the instruction:

Breathe. Relax. Let go.

To begin with, the mind resists. We feel the tension in the muscles, the effort required to hold the pose, and the instinct to move away from what begins to feel uncomfortable. But when we relax and breathe into it, the mind surrenders its resistance and the tension begins to release.

The inner life of yoga is a similar practice.

Inner tension shows up in subtle ways. It looks like procrastination, telling ourselves, “I’ll do that tomorrow”, or a persistent feeling that whatever we do is never good enough. It’s the conversation we want to have with someone we love, but when the time comes to speak, the words don’t arrive. It’s those difficult, repetitive thoughts, the voice inside your head, humming like background noise, draining our energy and natural joy.

We may not even recognise it as tension; we simply feel lethargic, insecure, or stuck. What yoga reveals is that many of these everyday experiences stem from the same root: blocked energy in the body.

The Subtle Highway of the Spine

Just as a light must have electricity to shine, our physical, mental, and emotional bodies need energy to function optimally.

Beneath the physical body lies an intricate web of energy channels called nadis, through which life force (prana) moves. The ancient Sages realised that there are seven primary locations along the spine where these pathways intersect and form major energy centres: the chakras.

Modern biology recognises that these major energy centres align directly with the primary nerve plexuses along the spine, where nerve bundles and endocrine glands interact to regulate our physical and emotional health.

Our energy centres are like power stations. Each centre fuels the organs around it, and more than that, each centre governs a different state of consciousness, from the base of the spine, our basic need for survival and safety, right through to our capacity to love, speak truth, and foster spiritual awakening.

As you breathe, energy flows with the breath, moving through these energy centres along the spine. At the heart centre, energy crosses the bridge from the physical domain into higher, more subtle states of awareness.

When energy moves freely, the body and mind function at their highest potential. When they are restricted, we feel this imbalance as friction and even turbulence in our daily lives.

How the Energy Centres Influence Our Daily Life

Each energy centre influences our physical body, psychology, and the way we experience daily life.

Muladhara — Root Centre

Muladhara is the centre of our physical foundation and safety. It governs our survival instinct. When it is blocked, life feels like we are walking on unstable ground. We become preoccupied with security and finances, and anxious about the future. We feel driven by a basic underlying fear that we don’t belong. As Muladhara opens, compulsive behaviours and addictions fall away. We discover an unshakeable inner stability, grounded in our own presence, like a tree with its many roots deeply embedded in the earth. Muladhara powers the excretory system, organs of elimination, and adrenal glands. It governs the base of the spine, perineum, legs, feet, bones, and colon.

Many Indigenous cultures have long understood that our wellbeing is inseparable from our connection to the earth. The land is not something we own, but something to which we belong. This deep sense of grounding and reverence reflects the quality of Muladhara. When we lose that connection, we can feel rootless, anxious, and disconnected from the natural world.

Svadhisthana — Sacral Centre

Svadhisthana reflects how we feel about ourselves. It represents our relationship to feeling, desire, and past experiences; it holds impressions of shame or self-criticism, and directly affects how much joy we can feel.

When blocked, we measure our self-worth through our achievements, appearance, or the approval of others, often feeling a step short of “good-enough.” As these holding patterns dissolve, joy is no longer something we seek, and it arises naturally from within, independent of external circumstances. Svadhisthana powers the reproductive organs, kidneys, and bodily fluids. It governs the lower abdomen, hips, and sacrum regions.

When one of my businesses came to an end, I realised how much of my identity had become wrapped up in what I did. When I didn’t know what to do next, I deeply questioned my own worth. Over time, I came to see that self-worth isn't something we earn through success or lose through failure. It is inherent in our true nature, remaining untouched by the changing circumstances and cycles of life.

Manipura — Solar Plexus

Manipura is the centre of fire, personal will and transformative power. Also known as the City of Jewels, it fuels the entire body and energy system.

When our inner fire is weak, ideas lie dormant, and we procrastinate, doubting our abilities and feeling that dull nervous energy that says, “Not now, I’ll do it tomorrow.” As Manipura awakens, the inner fire of dharma lights up, confidence comes alive, and we find the inner strength to follow through and take meaningful action. Manipura powers the digestive system, stomach, liver, gallbladder, intestines, appendix, and pancreas. It governs the lower back, core, and belly regions.

When I first started teaching yoga, I wasn’t used to standing in front of large groups. As the classes grew bigger, I recall feeling butterflies in my belly when I stepped onto the stage. “Manipura butterflies,” I thought. But as my confidence grew through practice, I could step into that space with genuine ease.

Anahata — Heart Centre

Anahata decides how freely we can love and what kind of connections we are able to build with others. When this centre is open, we naturally remain empathetic, generous, and open without expecting anything in return. When guarded, we carry emotional tightness across the chest, holding onto old grief or protecting ourselves from being hurt. As the heart opens, we stop defending our boundaries. Love is no longer a transaction and becomes our natural state of being. Anahata is the bridge between our worldly existence and our higher awareness. Anahata powers the heart, lungs and circulatory system, and governs the chest, ribs, shoulders, arms, and hands.

Soon after my brother passed away, when I returned to my yoga classes, I moved into Camel Pose—a heart-opening posture—and tears began to flow down my face. A wave of grief flooded my system as the pose opened my heart centre.

Vishuddhi — Throat Centre

Vishuddhi is the energy centre of purification and truthful expression. It is not only about speaking, it is about self expression and authentic alignment. When restricted, we swallow our words, fear conflict, enagage in gossip, use inappropriate language, verbally regurgitate, or say what we think others want to hear. As Vishuddhi opens, expression becomes honest and effortless. We speak the truth with kindness, listen without preparing a defence, and find the calm courage to say no when necessary. Vishuddhi powers the thyroid and parathyroid glands, larynx, epiglottis, and upper respiratory system. It governs the throat, neck, jaw, vocal cords, shoulders, and hearing.

In some cultures, particularly for women, there has been an expectation to remain quiet, defer to others, or avoid expressing their opinions for fear of disagreement. These messages can become deeply embedded, making it difficult to speak honestly even when the heart longs to. As Vishuddhi opens, we rediscover the confidence to express ourselves with clarity, free from the fear of judgement.

Ajna — Third Eye Centre

Perhaps the most important of all the energy centres. Ajna chakra decides how much clarity we have; it is the centre of higher awareness, concentration, and inner perception. When out of balance, we feel confused or mentally foggy. We have trouble making decisions, over-analyse, or second-guess ourselves.

As this centre comes into harmony, fresh ideas arise naturally, and intuition begins to complement logic. The mind begins to see beyond its immediate reactions. Memory and learning improve, and we see life with clear, direct understanding. Reason does not disappear; it becomes steady and works alongside intuitive perception. Ajna powers the pineal gland, central nervous system regulation, and intuition. It governs the brain, eyes, sleep, mood, reproduction, and circadian rhythms.

Many of the world's most successful innovations began as a single moment of clarity. When Steve Jobs envisioned a personal computer that was clean, beautiful, and intuitive for everyday people, he saw something that most people couldn't yet imagine. That flash of insight is the quality of Ajna. Insight alone, however, does nothing. It was the determination to act, persevere, and bring that vision into reality, the fire of Manipura, that made the idea a global reality.

Sahasrara — Crown Centre

Sahasrara is symbolised by the thousand-petalled lotus and represents our connection with the Divine. Where Ajna is the centre for intellectual mastery, Sahasrara is the centre for liberation. Unlike the lower centres, Sahasrara is not something we try to open or control through effort. It is the natural unfolding that occurs as the rest of our system comes into harmony and ease. Here, the boundary between the individual and the Whole dissolves, and awareness expands into the stillness of pure consciousness. Sahasrara powers our connection to universal consciousness: the pituitary gland and the release of oxytocin, which affects bonding, love, and service. It governs the cerebral cortex and upper brain.

When you watch a beautiful sunset, or feel a deep love for another being, you can become so completely absorbed in the experience that, for a few moments, the individual self dissolves. There is no separation between you and life. There is only the direct experience of beauty, love, and profound stillness. Sahasrara points us towards this state of unity.

Returning to the Source

How do we keep these energy centres unblocked so life force can move freely along the spine?

Through yoga asana and kriya practice, meditation, and conscious living.

Pranayama is the control and upward direction of energy through the spine to the brain, and the spiritual centre between the eyebrows. In the tradition of Kriya Yoga, Paramahansa Yogananda taught that when life force first creates the physical body in the womb, it works from the base of the brain, the medulla oblongata, down through the spine and into the nervous system. The spine is the literal foundation of our physical and subtle existence. The nervous system is the interface between our inner and outer worlds.

The more conscious we become of this energy and the subtle body of mind, intellect, and ego, the more conscious we become of life itself and our own expressions through it.

Whenever I roll out my yoga mat to practice now, I’m not thinking body or even breath; I’m thinking spine.

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The Feeling Heart and The Thinking Mind

As you look across the dining table at an empty chair, you feel a contraction in your heart, and thoughts begin to drop into your mind. Stephen has not arrived home from work yet. He seems so distant lately. What’s going on?

You reminisce about what it used to be like and start to ruminate on how often he’s home late from work. Even when he is at home, he seems so preoccupied.

The mind continues: Husbands should be home on time. Maybe mother was right about him.

Another memory streams by. Remember your friend Jacki? When she found out her husband was having an affair with his secretary? We never expected that. Poor Jacki. But Stephen is so strange lately; what if he...

The heart starts to heat up, the breath tightens, and the mind joins in once again.

I hate my job. Everything about my life right now is so miserable. He doesn’t really care about me anyway. I’ll confront him, and if he doesn’t have a truthful answer, I’ll leave him, take the savings, and start a new life. I’ve always wanted to travel. That’s it. I’ll tell him on Friday after work so we have the weekend to organise the final details.

Friday afternoon arrives. Stephen calls from the office and asks you to meet him at your once favourite restaurant at 6:00 pm.

You go along thinking: Maybe he can sense I’m not happy. He probably wants to tell me about his affair and try to smooth things over. No, he’s going to tell me he loves her and is leaving, but doesn’t want me to make a scene, so he’s taking me to a public place. Well, that’s fine. I’ll tell him first that I already know and I’m leaving.

Six o’clock arrives. The tension inside you feels thick, but not unfamiliar. Your mouth is dry with anxiety, and your heart feels heavy.

You enter the restaurant, look around and find him waiting for you. He welcomes you with a smile.

You sit down opposite him at the table. He asks you to bring your hands forward. You do, now wondering what he is up to. He places an envelope in your hands. Divorce papers! Your mind warns you.

You look at him. He seems to be smiling with a genuine sense of contentment. Something doesn’t feel right, the mind chimes.

As you slowly open the envelope, Stephen tells you that over the past six months he has worked incredibly hard and has finally earned the promotion he had been hoping for, so that you no longer have to endure a job you hate. In the envelope are two tickets for you both to take a long-awaited holiday to Hawaii together. Tonight’s dinner is a celebration.

The same mind that was planning the escape now says: See, I told you all along you married the right man; he is so wonderful.

What is Happening Inside Our Hearts and Minds

Does this sound familiar? Has your mind ever gripped a passing comment, a delayed message, an uncomfortable silence, or a sparked memory, and spun you into complete misery?

The heart feels disturbed, and automatically the mind begins its incessant commentary, capturing the direction of your attention. It can snowball towards the depths of despair, and then change streams in one single heartbeat.

That’s called the drama.

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Energy Wants To Flow

When we begin to observe the relationship between the heart and the mind, it can almost feel like a chicken-and-egg question. But when we look closely and stay present with ourselves, we see that life is always moving, flowing, changing, and interacting. Thoughts and feelings are forever in flux.

Inside you, everything is connected. A single stream of life energy moves through your body, your breath, and your mind. When it flows naturally, you feel open, spacious, and alive.

But when that flow becomes restricted, the entire system feels it. In the body, it may be experienced as tension, discomfort, and eventually disease. In the heart, it is experienced as emotional contraction and disturbance.

The moment the heart contracts, old survival patterns awaken, and the mind steps in with its conditioning. It tries to take charge and assert control, acting as though it “knows” how to protect you from ever feeling pain or hurt again.

The root of the mind is in the heart. The mind isn't responding to reality; it's responding to the feeling of blocked emotional energy.

The mind tries to avoid the discomfort. It searches memory, imagines the future, compares, judges, and creates stories in an attempt to regain a sense of safety.

As we know, it does a terrible job at this! It fabricates, misinterprets, spins untruths, and knows no shame when proven wrong. But once we see these mental patterns clearly, we recognise an ancient truth: the mind was never meant to be the master—only the servant.

The problem is not the stories the mind tells; the problem is that we believe them.

By staying present with the heart's feelings, we begin to realise that it wasn't Stephen’s working late that created the suffering; it was the old feeling of abandonment that his lateness touched.

It began with the familiar sense of, "Once again, I'm sitting at the dinner table all alone." That feeling reopens an old wound within the heart.

With presence, we may also see another possibility: "I'm dining alone tonight because my husband loves me so much and is working hard for our future." Or better yet, we see reality as it is, with no story at all. “I can see the story my mind is creating, and I will ask Stephen what's going on.”

Living With an Open Heart

The heart responds to the subtle vibrations and movements of life. It expands with love, gratitude, and joy, and contracts with fear, anger, grief, and disapproval. The moment the heart contracts, a restriction is created, and our inner energy no longer flows freely.

This creates inner disturbances, agitation in the breath, and reactivity in the mind.

The more aware we become of the subtle feelings within the heart, without immediately reacting to them, the freer we become from the mental drama.

The outer world will touch the heart in many different ways, but it does not have to govern our inner experience. As we remain open and present, the contraction relaxes, energy flows freely once again, and calm and clarity naturally return.

As we learn to navigate our inner world, we stop needing reality to be anything other than what it is. From that calm centre, we can respond to life with clarity—seeing what is truly needed rather than being clouded by a reactive mind.

This is how we keep the channel between heart and mind open, clear, and in harmony with the flow of life.

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Jenni M

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I'm Jenni Madison, and this is my publication, The Divine Way.

I’ve been writing on Substack for about five months now and it’s been a very interesting journey. It’s been a lot of learning. And a lot of connecting. And I’ve met some wonderful people. So thank you to all of you who have been joining me on Substack. I really appreciate it.

Grounded Spirituality

I live out here in the Noosa Hinterland. I practice yoga. I study Vedanta. I study yoga philosophy, which is an aspect of Vedanta. What I love about this path is the groundedness of spirituality. Referencing ancient wisdom and learning from masters and seers who have not just studied or had conversations about spirituality, but who speak, share and teach from direct experience. I sometimes liken it to grounded spirituality.

I live nearby a forest. I go out walking in the forest. Pretty much every day I share my home with several animals. It’s very peaceful, and it’s very quiet. A little bit isolated. I like that too. Although I still get to go out into the local community each week, twice a week, I teach yoga. And that’s really a lot of fun.

“Sometimes when I go out onto my forest walks, well, there are very few people. Really, I rarely see anyone. It’s very quiet. There’s obviously a lot of natural surrounds. It’s a great opportunity outside of meditation practice to observe the mind. I’ve noticed that if I have a lot of busy thoughts, if there’s something on my mind that’s ruminating, I can literally miss the beauty that is surrounding me.”

So it’s a great space because it always reminds me to come back to the self, come back to the heart. And if the mind is busy for whatever reason- it’s been triggered, it’s been reminded of something, it’s just feeling busy. Being out there, just like meditation does, it helps me to come back to the witness.

Witness Consciousness

And that’s something I wanted to mention today: witness consciousness, because it’s not something tangible, but it’s definitely experiential for all of us. All of us.

It’s the light of our awareness that is able to observe our inner experiences. In fact, it also observes the outer experiences, but it observes the outer world through the inner interpretations of the mind. So no matter what’s happening in the mind or the body, the witness remains steady, the steady light, the luminous light that in fact makes all experience possible because without that consciousness, without consciousness, we’re unable to experience.

I have found that the entire spiritual path is about resting in witness consciousness, that light of awareness, and seeing the mind for what it is without getting caught up and entangled.

It is one thing to become aware, and it’s one thing to do the practices, but most importantly is to integrate that into daily living because life continues to give us tests, challenges, ups and downs, however we want to view it.

We need to be strong and grounded and clear through those experiences in order not to get too caught up in our own identities, preferences, the little self.

Shining Light & The Gift of Presence

And begin to perhaps think of it like this: begin to shine light not only for ourselves so that we can experience higher levels of joy and well-being and clarity, but also to resonate, to emanate those vibrations around others. We can’t really do much more than that if we want to be a gift to the world, really.

“When we bring some light into the world, isn’t that the greatest gift we can give to another, the light of our own presence, whether that be through deep listening, through sharing wisdom, or simply being with an open heart, in a loving state.”

So this is what I write about a lot. Meditation, yoga, yes, and philosophy a little bit. But I try to intertwine philosophy into lived experience so that it can land a little better and appeal not just to the intellect or the intellectual mind but to direct experience because that’s truly where deeper realisation can come forth.

So thank you so much for being with me, for being with the publication and for your contribution, and I look forward to seeing you, hopefully to see you again soon.

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The Movements of Life

Each day I walk into the forest from my home on the Noosa Trail, right at the forest edge.

It’s a clear winter’s day. Cool, but with the sun shining, and the land feels alive. The lemon tree, thriving in the winter cold, is overflowing with fruit—reminding me not only of the natural cycles, but of the inherent abundance and nourishment surrounding us.

I notice a beautiful butterfly, gentle and colourful, delicately resting on a large tree branch. Its wings are spread wide, drying in the sunlight. I smile and feel that same warmth inside my own body. Taking a few moments to witness the gentle creature, I recognise that the same life beating through its tender heart is beating through my own. Observing this pure intelligence, I feel like I could stay here for hours, but my dog, Sasha, hurries me along, eager to move deeper into the trail.

The surrounding trees seem to emanate a presence, a strength born from years of silence and stillness. I meet them daily, and some have become like family—a Grandfather sage, a nurturing mother, a wondrous child. Today, the birds are happily singing their sunshine songs as they fly, squabble, and explore through the lush lands and open sky.

As I continue along the path, carrying the joy of the butterfly’s restfulness, a sudden jolt of energy floods my nervous system. A surge of adrenaline rushes through my veins.

My body stops instantly. The first thought comes: Thank goodness I saw it before taking another step. The next is to check on Sasha—a relief washes over me as I see she has safely moved ahead, though the subtle tension remains in my body.

Directly in front of me lies a large Eastern Brown Snake. In that moment, my mind begins recalling everything I’ve ever heard about them. It’s winter—I’m surprised to see a snake out at this time of year. This is the second most venomous snake in the world. Countless dogs die from a single bite. Unlike many other snakes, an Eastern Brown can be aggressive and even chase its target if provoked.

The thoughts kept moving, yet a deep peace remained in my heart—a calm space that recognised a fellow creature simply seeking comfort in the unusual warmth of a winter’s day. The snake was coiled loosely, relaxed as if in a deep sleep, completely unbothered by Sasha or me. Interested only in the warm rays of the sun. I felt a natural connection—a shared reverence for another being enjoying this beautiful day.

As I noticed the chatter of my mind, I even recalled an old dream where I accidentally stood on a brown snake, startled it, and was bitten on the face. Driving this mental noise was a pure, instinctive response to the potential threat lying in front of me.

Perhaps the emphasis here is the word potential.

My mind and nervous system kept signalling caution, but my heart noted a shared experience of nature. I saw the raw power of this coiled creature, but also its complete innocence. Truly, we were just two beings crossing paths whilst exploring the shared land. I gave my respects and blessings to the snake, quietly passed its body without disturbing its rest, and continued into the forest—making a mental note to take that same care on the way back.

As the stories settled, I saw something true. The snake was no longer “my danger” or even “the snake.” There was simply this living encounter. The warmth of the winter sun, the stillness of the forest, the alertness of my body, and the resting snake all belonged to the same unfolding moment. The apparent boundary between observer and observed unveiled itself. It no longer felt as though I was standing apart from nature, looking in. I was part of the very life I was witnessing.

The same life, the same air, moved effortlessly through the butterfly, the trees, Sasha, the snake, and this human body alike.

When The Mind Intervenes

Many will see a creature like a butterfly and marvel at its precision, grace, and beauty. Its very nature seems to evoke a feeling of relaxation, warmth, and awe. Yet seeing a snake might cause someone to freeze in place or reach for a weapon, terrified of what this powerful creature might do. Some might even avoid walking this same path ever again.

The snake itself didn’t create psychological fear. Its presence first evoked an intelligent, protective response from the nervous system—life preserving life with total clarity and respect. The physical jolt, the sudden stillness, the instinct to check where Sasha was—that was instinctive intelligence moving through the body before a single word formed in my mind.

Consider how a deer senses an approaching predator. Adrenaline surges, its body moves rapidly through its environment until it reaches safety, and moments later, it continues calmly eating its grass. There is nothing left behind to limit, control, or embellish its experience—no story carried in from the past or projected into the future. The biological cycle completes itself, and it returns entirely to the present moment.

While my body simply stood still on the path, my mind began firing off a cascade of stories: everything I knew about venom, memories of old dreams, other people losing their loved ones to snake bites, and images of excruciating pain. The nervous system had already done its job, but the mind kept building upon the experience. If obeyed, it could have easily ruined the entire day.

This is why the butterfly and the snake feel so completely different to us. It isn’t simply the creatures themselves—both were resting peacefully, soaking in the rare warmth of a clear winter’s day. The butterfly naturally invites the nervous system to soften and open. The snake naturally awakens an intelligent state of alertness. But then the mind adds another layer, weaving stories of danger, beauty, memory, preference, and fear.

I recall visiting a crowded waterfall many years ago, where a large python was resting peacefully on a sun-warmed rock. A crowd had gathered around the rock, as a young man was making his way towards it, eager to pick it up. I stopped him and asked, “What are you doing?” “I’m going to pick up the snake,” he replied confidently. My face must have said it all. He quickly assured me he wasn’t afraid, but I told him I wasn’t concerned about him—I was concerned about the python. “How would you feel if, while resting peacefully, a giant human suddenly picked you up?” He paused, stepped back, and as the crowd dispersed, the python quietly slipped into the bushes, returning to its solitude.

These creatures possess their own nervous systems, their own sensory realities, and their own desire for safety, comfort, and peace.

Every living being experiences the world through its own unique way of perceiving and responding to life. True empathy begins when we recognise that another being's experience is just as real and meaningful to them as ours is to us. Yet this is difficult while we remain absorbed in our own thoughts, fears, preferences, and stories. As resistance to the moment falls away, we become capable of genuinely meeting another life, whether human or animal, on its own terms.

Perhaps this is where true relationship with nature begins—not by observing life from the outside, but by recognising that every living being experiences the world from the centre of its own existence.

When we mistake the mind’s interpretation for reality itself, awareness becomes entangled in reaction. We panic, reach for a stick, or begin living in fear of a future that hasn’t happened.

But when we step back into the space of the Witness, experience deepens. We allow the nervous system to do its wise, protective work without allowing the mind to turn the moment into a drama. The tension begins to relax, the story gradually falls away, and what remains is simply reality: two living beings, sharing the same forest, and feeling the same warming rays of the winter sunshine.

The Unshakeable Witness

The butterfly arrived and fluttered away. The snake appeared coiled in the sun, then disappeared from view. The nervous system surged with adrenaline, then gradually settled. Thoughts rushed in like a sudden wave, then slowly faded.

Everything within experience was in constant motion—arising, changing, and passing.

Yet through every change, something remained completely untouched.

That is the Witnessing Awareness.

It requires no complex philosophy to recognise. You need only notice what is always present. There is awareness that knows the gentle warmth of the butterfly, the surge of adrenaline in the veins, the movement of thought, and the deep peace resting in the heart.

Awareness doesn’t panic, contract, or become frightened. It is aware of fear. Awareness doesn’t become tense. It is aware of tension.

Recognising the Witness is the doorway. It reveals that while every sensation and experience changes, the one who knows the experience never does.

One Field of Awareness

Standing there in the forest, it became difficult to know where "I" ended and nature began. The butterfly, the snake, the trees, Sasha, and this human body were each expressing life in different forms, yet the life itself felt indivisible.

When seen for what it truly is, nature is an ever-new stream of consciousness—beginning with an idea lying dormant, a seed sprouting, creation moving into form, and eventually a dissolving that makes way for the next cycle. We are not separate observers looking in, but an inseparable part of this living harmony, moving within the same seamless, dynamic flow of intelligence.

There is only One Life, expressing itself in countless forms.

The Seer, the Seen, and the Seeing become One.

Thank you for joining me here,

Jenni M

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Just Seeing

There is something beautiful about the wisdom of Zen. The tree is still, the flower is red, the eyes can see.

It’s like a breath of fresh air. There is nature, the eyes are open, and there is simply seeing and being; nothing more is added. But the human mind likes to build upon this simple experience. It creates a narrative, woven from past experience, memory, concepts, interpretation, and personal preference.

Yogananda said it perfectly: “We see not the world as it is, but as our mind interprets it.”

The question that naturally arises is: Am I looking at the tree, or are my eyes simply seeing?

It might seem obvious—of course I’m looking at a tree. But if we deepen this inquiry, we discover that seeing is far more nuanced than it first appears. What seems like a simple act of looking is, in fact, an extraordinary process through which the mind constructs our personal experience of the world.

It is only when we begin to recognise these layers of perception that are clouding reality that we discover the simple, unified awareness that is always present.

What is real?

We often dismiss the experience of dreams or imagination as unreal, simply because they are not tangible objects available to our conscious or physical perception.

Yet, when you are in a dream, it feels entirely real.

I recall a time when I was fasting on water alone for one week. As you can imagine, my body and brain became incredibly hungry. One night, I had a vivid dream about eating toasted cheese sandwiches. I could see them, taste them, and I even felt the satiated feeling in my belly. When I woke up, for a split second I felt a wave of guilt, believing I had broken my fast—and then I realised it was just a dream! But in my experience, I had eaten those cheese sandwiches!

When you are in a dream, it feels very real; it shows us how the mind not only renders perception of the outer world but can also fabricate an entire inner world. Because that inner world feels so convincing, it has an immediate, physical effect on the body. The mind creates the environment, and the body responds as though it were happening in real life.

The Theatre of Light

The eyes, and all other organs of perception, are extraordinary sensors. They gather information from the world around us and transmit it inward, where it is processed into experience through the mind.

The outer world is not simply “out there”—it is a continuous movement of information.

“But the tree is not inside of me,” you might say. “I am looking at the tree which is over there.”

So let’s look at what is actually happening between these inner and outer worlds.

The tree, the flower, your dog, the glass of water in your hand—they exist, and they have form. You can interact with them, and others can also confirm they are there. This is the shared world we all live in.

BUT—and this is the key—you never experience this world directly.

You experience your mind’s rendering of it.

You don’t see the tree directly. What is actually happening is that the tree is standing outside in the sun. Light streams down, strikes the tree, and bounces off it. Some of that reflected light enters your eyes, stimulating impulses through your nervous system.

The tree remains out there in the yard. What you are interacting with is a theatre of light playing out on the dark screen of your own mind. Your intellect adds the label—‘tree’—but you are simply witnessing vibrations of light.

The mind builds the entire show. What we call experience unfolds upon the screen of awareness.

The Yoga Sutras describe a similar process: the senses bring impressions, the mind forms a mental modification (vritti), and consciousness knows it.

From Perception to Projection

This process becomes a trap, like our own personal Matrix, when we constantly mistake our mental environment for reality itself.

Consider how easily this trap springs shut in our daily lives. You are driving, and in the distance, you see a man and a woman from behind, walking along a path and holding hands. Hold on, the mind whispers. That looks like Peter, my husband. Who is he walking with? Why is he holding her hand?

In a split second, what started as simply seeing two people becomes a highly personal, painful narrative. An unpleasant thought generates a heaviness in the heart, and you close down.

When Peter comes home from work, you can barely look at him, already convinced he has been cheating. You begin probing him with loaded questions: “So, how was your day today? What did you do?” When he responds casually, as he always does, the fire inside you builds stronger. You are entirely trapped in a reality your mind fabricated. Later, you realise he was in a closed workshop all day without his phone.

When we understand how perception works, we begin to see that we are not reacting to reality itself, but to our interpretation of reality. Every fear, judgement, label, attachment and preference is added by the mind. This recognition creates space between awareness and its projections, allowing us to perceive with greater clarity and freedom.

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The Miracle in a Glass of Water

I know, we’ve all heard the spiritual clichés about how we are all connected, and how the table in front of us isn’t actually solid. But when you are staring at a glass of water after seven days of drinking nothing else, you don’t care about metaphors. You see the sheer miracle of it.

If the mind can construct an entire, tangible reality out of nothing in a dream, what does that say about the solid “real world” we wake up to each day?

Let’s look at that glass of water. Is there water in the glass? Yes, as we know it. But science, through measured experiment and direct observation, shows us otherwise. Look more deeply, and we find H₂O molecules. Look more deeply still, and we discover those molecules are composed of atoms, which are themselves composed of subatomic particles—like tiny ripples arising from underlying quantum fields. What we experience is the mind's rendering of this remarkable physical reality.

At their core, the building blocks of everything we perceive as solid matter—including the water, the tree, the dog, and our own bodies—are not fixed objects, but an unfolding process. What appears solid and permanent is, at a deeper level, dynamic and ever-changing.

The yogic traditions have long described creation in this exact way: as an ongoing, cosmic dance of manifestation, sustenance, and dissolution. The Nataraja, the dance of Siva, isn’t simply Siva dancing in the universe; the dance itself symbolises the ceaseless movement of existence—the arising and passing of forms. This sits beautifully alongside the scientific observation that what appears permanent is, at a deeper level, dynamic and relational.

The Gold of Pure Being

Every great mystical tradition—the Tao, the Gita, the Bible, the Torah, the Kabbalah, and the Sufi teachings—ultimately points toward this same doorway, inviting us to see beyond the illusion of a separate self.

Science can describe the behaviour of matter with extraordinary precision. It can tell us about atoms, particles, and quantum fields. But it remains largely silent on the nature of consciousness itself.

Vedanta begins precisely where that question becomes unavoidable.

The body, too, is composed of atoms, molecules, and fields. Every cell of our being is part of the same physical universe we’ve been examining. If I reduce the tree to its underlying, dancing constituents, shouldn’t I be willing to do the same with myself? At what point do I arrive at the “I” who says, This is my body?

Imagine stepping into a jewellery shop and browsing a collection of lovely gold ornaments—rings, necklaces, and bracelets, all crafted from pure gold. Because they are pure gold, there is no real differentiation between the ring and the necklace at their essence. The only difference lies in their temporary shape and form. Strip away the design, melt them down, and the boundary vanishes. In essence, they are all entirely the same, pure gold.

The same is true for us. The mind looks at the world and sees a vast array of separate things—a tree, a glass of water, a dog, a person. But these are simply the temporary shapes and forms. When we look beneath the surface, the boundaries dissolve.

The gold never stopped being gold. Only its appearance changed.

Returning to Pure Seeing 

Modern spiritual circles often say that “we create our own reality.” But if we look closely at our direct experience, we aren’t actually creating anything. The mind interprets what comes in through the senses. The illusion begins when we mistake that interpretation for reality itself.

Perhaps this is why every great contemplative tradition ultimately invites us to stop adding, stop interpreting, and simply see.

The tree is still.

The flower is red.

The eyes can see.

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Thank you for joining me here,

Jenni M

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Author’s Note: Seeing reality is only half of the inquiry. Equally important is understanding why the same reality can produce such different experiences within each of us. That is where we’ll go next.

In the next article, we’ll explore the nature of experience—the nervous system, nature, the butterfly and the snake, and how meditation gradually shifts the centre of gravity from mind to awareness.

Who am I?

The renowned yogic sage, Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950), taught that to discover inner freedom, one must continuously ask the question “Who am I?” with sincerity.

He didn’t mean this as an intellectual inquiry but as an invitation to observe what is always present behind the mind's activity.

By asking:

Who am I?

Who perceives when I perceive?

Who hears when I hear?

Who is aware?

A doorway opens between the mind’s activity and the silence of Being. It invites us to step beyond the mind and know the one who has been watching all along. This is true Self-knowledge.

I’ve learnt to notice this gap, not only during meditation but throughout everyday life. It’s especially clear upon waking.

As awareness settles after sleep, the mind begins to reassemble: first reaching for the dream—what was that dream about? Trying to remember. Then, how was my sleep? Deciding how well I slept. Then the day ahead—it’s my workday; I should get up. Then come the familiar preferences: I want more sleep, the bed feels cosy. And gradually, the mind drifts back into its stream of stories, identities, and what must happen next.

In that split second before the first thought arrives, you are simply Being. A moment later, the “I” arrives to claim the day.

The Birth of the “I”

At around two years of age, a child begins to recognise itself as something separate from its environment. Passing a mirror, the mother points to the reflection and says, “That’s you.” The child responds, pointing at the glass, “That’s me.”

That moment is the birth of the objective self—the reflected “I.”

Psychology calls this the Mirror Stage. It is a vital developmental milestone necessary for survival in the world. But it also marks the start of a forgetting: the forgetting of our true nature as pure awareness, which cannot be objectified.

As life continues, conditioning patterns form around this objective “I”, and we call it our personality. We trade the vastness of pure awareness for a fixed image. We then spend decades grooming, protecting, and defending that image, forgetting that the reflection itself is temporary.

Take a moment to look at your own hand. You see the skin, the shape, the age of it—but who is the “you” that is looking?

Just as a knife cannot cut itself, and teeth cannot bite themselves, the true Self cannot be seen as an object or a reflection. It is not the image in the glass; it is the awareness that exists before the mother pointed at the mirror, before we were born—and that continues to exist, long after the reflection fades.

When the Mind Answers

Who am I? The mind rushes in to answer: “I am a mother, a teacher, a seeker. I am married, divorced, healthy, sick—I am this person.”

But these thoughts are merely “I-thoughts” within your awareness; you are the one aware of them. We have mistaken the jar labels for the contents of the jar.

From this “I-thought,” the ego-mind emerges. Desperate to control everything, it spends all day frantically rearranging the furniture of your life, trying to hide the parts of yourself it doesn't want anyone—including you—to see.

Born from the instinct to survive, the ego relentlessly defends a false persona. Its deepest fear is its own annihilation.

When we drop these false labels, what is left?

A traditional story captures this essence perfectly. Soon after his enlightenment, a traveller saw the Buddha walking down the road. Struck by his incredible presence, the traveller asked him:

“Are you a god?”

“No,” said the Buddha.

“Are you a celestial being?”

“No.”

“A wizard or a man?”

“No.”

“Then what are you?”

The Buddha replied: “I am awake.”

The Trickster Fighting the Silence

But let us be honest about this waking up: the ego-mind does not let go of its identities or attachments quietly. It fights this inquiry with everything it has. It doesn’t want to be seen; it wants to be someone. It resists the silence like a con artist whose cover has been blown, frantically shifting masks to keep the grift alive.

When you begin to observe the ego and its familiar “I, me, and mine,” it plays its ultimate card. It is a genius at its own survival. It tries to turn awareness into its newest project. It decides to become spiritual. This voice inside your head will gladly adopt the identity of the “spiritual one,” trying to build a new, subtle empire out of your meditation milestones and your intellectual insights.

It will mimic the language of silence just to keep you trapped inside the noise. It tells you that you are doing great at being aware and awakened, great at being the one who knows, instantly splitting you back into a “me” and “my progress.”

To navigate this terrain, we have to look past the ego-mind’s many disguises and trace our attention directly through the layers of our own identity.

Years ago, during one of my first visits to India, I sat in an evening group meditation at an ashram. I dropped into a state so deep that when I finally opened my eyes, the temple was mostly empty; the meditation had ended, and people had already left. I felt a surreal surge of surprise: Where had I been?

As I walked along the ashram path back to my room, the expansion remained. There was a body moving, but no “one” inside bound to it. Then, suddenly, a vacuum-like sensation occurred. It felt as though my consciousness was instantly snapped back into a tight bubble, and the familiar “me” returned with that sharp contraction.

These experiences are lovely tastes of truth, but they are not the goal. Glimpses come and go, but true realisation is abiding—it is the recognition that divinity is not just a fleeting state to be chased within ourselves, but the permanent reality present in all beings.

Layers of Identity

To experience this awakening directly, we can trace our attention inward by peeling back the layers of who and what we think we are.

We begin with the personal self—the body, the name, the history.

Notice the weight of your body against the chair, the rhythm of your breath, and the thoughts moving through your mind. Now, drop your attention out of your head and feel the vibrant reality of your physical body from the inside out.

In this immediate sensation, the spinning “I-thoughts” naturally settle. Notice how this physical instrument is in constant motion—breathing, beating, changing. You can feel this movement precisely because you are the stable, unchanging awareness, present in the background.

As your attention deepens, you naturally recognise the inner witness—a more subtle, neutral sense of self.

Who is the one observing your thoughts and emotions as they come and go? There is still a subtle sense of individuality here, but it is no longer confined to the body or identified with the movements of the mind. Awareness is present, letting the inner landscape move without being swept away by it. The recognition here is simple, clear, and steady: I am aware.

Stay in that stillness long enough, and even the subtle feeling of being a separate “witness” begins to fade. You begin to rest as pure awareness. Here, the boundaries of a separate self completely dissolve. Life doesn’t stop; it goes on, but events unfold naturally as a seamless happening—intimate, responsive, and alive. The rigid labels of your name and form fade away; the spacious presence remains.

One might call it emptiness, another fullness; either way, it is Oneness.

To the ego mind, this letting go can feel like a cold death or slipping into a lonely void. The mind cannot answer this question without referring to another “I am” identity, and so it experiences the inquiry as a threat to its own existence. But that is the panic of the ego.

The voice inside your head is the incessant “I, I, I” that is always trying to tell you what to do, how to behave, and what you need in order to feel okay. When this is observed without engagement, it naturally loses its volume. The mind becomes quiet, and a deeper clarity becomes present. The intellect can shine, intuition can land, and the mind is finally free to do what it was designed to do: think, create, solve problems, and respond intelligently to life, rather than becoming lost in worry, resistance, and self-absorbing rumination.

As the “I” recedes, you do not fall into a dark void; you drop into a natural, warm, spacious silence, a direct experience of your true nature.

Like the vast sea beneath the waves, this spacious awareness is inherently alive, bringing an unshakeable peace, a deep security, and a boundless love that has always been your true nature. You are not losing yourself; you are finally finding what is real and eternal.

What endures is what was there before the question “Who am I?” ever arose. Awareness resting, entirely aware of itself.

In the World, but Not of It

This often sparks a natural question: If I am not this central ‘I’, how do I decide what to have for lunch, or how to run my business?

The personal mind fears that without its constant steering, calculation, and control, life will fall into chaos. But the truth is entirely the opposite.

When the heavy weight of personal will steps aside, it is replaced by unforced intuition. You do not need an anxious ego to function; physical hunger naturally tells you when it is time to eat, and an innate intelligence tells you the exact next step to take in your work. You simply know what to do with the moment in front of you.

Life unfolds, and you respond to it, unburdened by psychological baggage and free from attachment to any outcome.

Decisions are no longer manufactured by a mind desperately trying to survive and perform. Instead, they arise spontaneously as a natural response to the present moment. You become a clear instrument through which action happens—efficiently, fluidly, and without the inner friction of self-doubt.

In the flow of daily life, this awareness doesn’t remove our responsibilities; it transforms our relationship to them. As we let go of the need to identify with the fleeting nature of things, we find ourselves approaching the world with a natural sense of joy, freedom, and a deepened, unwavering ease.

The search ends not because you found the answer to the question, but because the one asking the question finally ran out of disguises.

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If you truly want to know who you are, look inside and let the answer reveal itself.

Thank you for joining me here,

Jenni M

Has the question "Who am I?" ever shifted something in your own experience? I'd love to hear in the comments.

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The Arena of Consciousness

A fish swims and breathes in water, completely unaware of the fluid surrounding it.

Similarly, most of us humans live entirely trapped within our own minds, governed by conditioned thoughts and external narratives, completely unaware of what lies beyond. We rarely question the environment we are immersed in; we assume that our thoughts, fears, habits, reactions, and desires are who we are; we even give them a label, my personality.

We mistake our mental environment for reality itself.

Driven by a basic survival instinct, this personal mind runs on a loop, constantly asking:

What will bring me happiness, and what will reduce my suffering?

Listen closely, and you can hear its constant refrain: “I want... I want... I want...”

Consciousness becomes trapped inside this mental fishbowl. We desperately chase fleeting external fixes, hoping the next achievement or acquisition will finally heal our underlying sense of inadequacy, whilst completely missing the divine landscape that lies beyond.

“My father criticised me; therefore, I am not enough.”

“My relationship ends; therefore, I am unlovable.”

“I lost my job; therefore, I am a failure.”

“My body is aging; therefore, I have no value.”

“They are praising me; therefore, I am important.”

We mistake temporary physical states for our actual identity. When the body signals hunger, the mind interprets the need, and the ego immediately claims: “I am hungry.” A passing physical sensation instantly becomes a total, blinding identification.

As long as consciousness remains confined to the fishbowl, a subtle dissatisfaction accompanies it.

Everything changes the moment we realise that what we are searching for cannot be found inside the fishbowl. True wholeness lies beyond the personal self, in our unity with the Divine.

As the fishbowl begins to crack, the light of consciousness expands. And as we let go of these survival narratives and dismantle our false identities, the Five Warriors within begin to awaken.

Forces of Awakening

Within the human body, consciousness establishes itself in five distinct arenas. It is the science of our astral design—the subtle energetic blueprint that underlies and shapes our physical existence. This architecture is not unique to humans, but is shared by all living beings: the map of the soul’s journey as it experiences the world of name and form.

Consciousness is pure awareness, unencumbered by thought or the movements of the mind. It is the light of existence; it is what you are. You are aware. The mistake we have made is in the identification with what we become aware of.

But this human design is not a trap; it is a laboratory.

Within these five energy centres of the body, each stream of consciousness has an inherent wisdom. Beneath the layers of conditioning are five distinct, intelligent forces—the Warriors Within. They do not belong to the personal mind. They are the inner forces of your spiritual evolution, waiting in the shadows of your false identity until you become exhausted by the illusion.

Students of Yoga will recognise these as the qualities that awaken through the five chakras. Far more than centres of subtle energy, they form part of the blueprint of our spiritual evolution—the architecture through which consciousness rises, and gradually remembers its true nature.

These five centres lie along the subtle axis of the spine, from its base to the throat. Together, they form the inner pathway through which consciousness ascends toward wisdom.

The Pathless Path

I once travelled to iMfolozi in South Africa with a small group of women to immerse ourselves deeply in the wilderness. Standing in that landscape, I was deeply struck by the profound freedom of the wild animals. They carried nothing but their own bodies and what they required in the immediate moment.

Their immense power lay not just in their lack of material possessions, but in their pure energetic presence. They lived entirely in the present, unburdened by the heavy mental baggage of a dissatisfied ego.

This journey into the wild showed me how much I carry that I don’t need. To begin our ascent in consciousness, we must drop our material attachments and our mental baggage. Only then can we truly begin the climb.

In the Mahabharata, the great epic that contains the Bhagavad Gita, when the Pandavas began their ascent to heaven, Agni, the fire god, appears before Arjuna and says, “Return the Gandiva bow to me; its earthly purpose is now complete.”

This bow defined Arjuna’s whole life and his victory alongside Krishna in the great battle. With a deep sense of peace, Arjuna drops his ultimate earthly attachment right into the ocean. The greatest archer in the world is now totally unarmed.

The wild animals live in pure, unconditioned alignment with their nature. Fully established in presence, they carry nothing.

To remember who we truly are, we must let go of who we are not.

Each stage of the ascent asks us to relinquish a false identity. Every subtle egoic attachment—pride, bias, vanity, arrogance, and greed—weighs down the soul, hindering its ability to finish the climb. As each identity trap is released, consciousness naturally rises, and the soul becomes untethered.

Each warrior represents a natural stage in the awakening of consciousness.

Warrior I — Grounded Presence, The Wisdom of Earth

Overcoming Physical Fear

When we feel threatened, we instinctively protect what is “mine.” At our foundation, fear governs survival, and we routinely cling to the body as though it were our entire existence—obsessing over appearance, defending territory, and living beneath the shadow of mortality.

The first warrior teaches us to become deeply grounded in reality, remaining stable and unwavering like the earth beneath our feet. This stability provides the foundation upon which every higher quality rests.

True wisdom recognises that we are called to care for the body, but no longer worship it. Our true ground is not the physical form itself, but the life force that animates it. As groundedness is paired with humility, we remember that physical beauty inevitably fades, allowing us to release the pride attached to transient forms.

Warrior II Creative Wholeness — The Flow of Water

Overcoming the Illusion of Lack

Every one of us longs to express something unique about who we are. Like water, this energy moves, adapts, and creates, awakening individuality, creativity, and the capacity to relate. Yet as consciousness rises, we encounter the illusion of lack—the endless search for external validation, relationships, money, or achievement to manufacture an inner sense of wholeness. No outer arrangement can ever satisfy an inner emptiness.

Creative wholeness reminds us that although we are unique expressions of life, we are never separate from the whole. It awakens inspiration and beauty independent of worldly attachments, allowing our talents and abilities to be held lightly, recognised as expressions of the Whole rather than possessions of a separate self.

Warrior III Surrendered Will — The Energy of Fire

Overcoming Control and Personal Ambition

We all possess the capacity to direct our energy with purpose and determination. The third warrior ignites willpower, courage, and disciplined action—the fire that transforms intention into movement. Yet an underlying sense of unworthiness easily twists this fire into striving, ambition, proving, force, and control, leading us to believe that this isolated “I” must conquer life through its own effort.

The teaching here is to direct our energy toward what is true and noble rather than fleeting, selfish desires. The surrender is not of willpower, but of personal will. Action becomes an act of service, aligning our individual will with Divine Will and a higher purpose.

Warrior IV Radical Openness — The Air of Love

Overcoming Emotional Walls

The power of love within us has the capacity to rise above the illusion of separation.

The fourth warrior opens the heart, replacing self-protection with compassion, empathy, and love. The obstacle here is the instinct to hoard love, protect ourselves from vulnerability, or let personal bias and pride build walls around our true strength.

Love recognises its true flow in all when the heart opens into unity, revealing that our deepest strength is found not in separation but in oneness. The heart’s true power is not found behind a fortified wall, but in its openness, its equality, and its oneness with all of life.

Warrior V The Steady Witness — The Ether of Truth

Overcoming the Dualities of Life

Being unable to speak your truth or express how you feel is crushing for the soul.

The fifth warrior gives voice to truth. The centre becomes calm, discernment matures into higher wisdom, and what was once merely knowledge becomes lived experience.

Action, speech, and intention begin to align with a deeper intelligence as we rise above the dualities of the world. Here, truth becomes the steady witness, and calm becomes our natural baseline. We gradually let go of the tendency to be shaken by life’s inevitable joys and sorrows. Established in the witness, we align with dharma, allowing pure, unclouded Presence to shine through every aspect of life.

The Sage

Life continues to test the soul. Will it continue to rise beyond the lower centres of me, myself, and I, or will it return to the comfort of personal pleasure and momentary, fleeting gain?

With each test, we strengthen our resolve in truth, compassion, and service. When these shifts become established, our inner wisdom—the Buddhi, the charioteer of the purified intellect—takes charge and governs them all.

Seated in the centre of the true Self, the five warriors have found their ground. Dharma becomes action; selflessness and compassion reign supreme over any temptation of personal gain or reward.

Free from fear, ambition, desire, and wounded identity, Shakti is no longer trapped. The warrior is established in the Kingdom of Heaven within.

The warrior has become a sage.

Thank you for joining me here,

Jenni M

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Author’s Note

In the classical Vedic interpretation of the Mahabharata—beautifully expounded by teachers such as Paramahansa Yogananda and Swami Kriyananda—the five Pandava brothers do not just represent historical warriors, but also symbols of the five elements, the lower five chakras, and the upward evolution of consciousness.

This article draws on that symbolic interpretation. The entire Bhagavad Gita takes place on a physical battlefield, but it is the ultimate manual for the warrior becoming the sage. Arjuna arrives as a literal warrior (Kshatriya), paralysed by grief and conflict. Through Krishna’s teachings, Arjuna doesn’t stop being a warrior, but his understanding evolves. He learns Karma Yoga (action without attachment to the results) and Jnana Yoga (the wisdom of the true Self), essentially operating as a sage while performing his duties as a warrior.

If you’d like to explore the inner meaning of Arjuna, Krishna, and the battlefield in greater depth, you may enjoy my earlier article, Pick Up Your Bow and Fight: The Inner Battle of the Bhagavad Gita, where I explore how the warrior’s inner battle becomes the soul’s journey toward wisdom.

The Battlefield Within

I was practising yoga one day with my teacher, Deviji. As she guided me through the warrior poses and I stepped into Warrior I, she said, “Now we prepare for war. Cultivate your warrior energy from your core.”

As we transitioned into Warrior II, she said, “Now aim your bow. Concentrate as though your life depends on it—because it does.”

And in Warrior III: “Fire the arrow! Give it all of your strength, courage, and intention. Slay those demons of your mind!”

In yoga, she added, we don’t fight wars outside. We fight the inner battle of purifying the demons of habit, attachment, and distraction—those that rob us of our inner peace through endless wanting, clinging, and loyalty to what we have already outgrown.

The Bhagavad Gita is not just an incredible story that happened thousands of years ago. It is alive, right now, inside all of us.

The Inner Life

The Gita is an invitation to awaken our warrior nature. As we stand in the middle of our own internal war, between selfish and selfless action, between clarity and the conditioned mind, we are faced with a choice:

Do I speak the truth or avoid conflict?
Do I meditate or scroll?
Do I accept and let go, or keep the wound alive with resentment?
Do I act despite uncertainty, or stay paralysed by fear?

This is the war of the mind, a direct clash between our old programming and our next evolution, a battle between our mental citizens and the voice of the soul.

On one side stands the lower mind—the defensive warriors and their armies, each arguing their case.

Fear cries for safety.
Resentment screams for justice.
Desire craves fulfilment.
Comfort settles for mediocrity and temporary peace.

The rattles of these chariots disturb the mind and tug at the heart; each voice presents its case. And somewhere beneath the noise, the soul patiently waits to be heard.

On the other side stands the higher mind—the spiritual warriors and their armies, each in service to the greater good.

Here, truth and justice align.
The honour of unselfish action, a greater cause, rises.
The voice of Higher Wisdom guides.

These chariots move in harmony with Divine Will.

And here we stand, bow in hand, somewhere in the middle of these two mighty armies. Both are determined to win, but only one can be victorious.

Which force will govern your inner kingdom?

As you prepare for the inevitable battle, a heavy realisation sets in: this is not just an anonymous army. We are no longer reading a book or watching a movie. This real-life battle means facing the very parts of yourself that protected you dearly—the fears that guarded your painful past, the habits that gave you comfort over and over again, and the righteous conditioning passed down through many generations.

“But they are not your enemies,” a sunken voice whispers, like a tremor inside you. “They are my protectors, my teachers, the ones who showed me how to live and kept me safe when I was a child.”

How can you fight the very backbone of your identity, the forces that shaped your entire existence? What will people think of you? Why would life be worth living if these parts closest to you undeniably disagree and fight you for their very survival?

In the midst of the battlefield, you face a critical moment of choice: will you fight for the new or submit to the old? As the light begins to dawn, the real question emerges:

How do I outgrow the very patterns that helped me survive?

Isn’t it better to drop the bow and just let them thrive? I don’t need to win; I can keep quiet now. Surely it is better not to fight than to slay the ones who have loved me?

Suffocating beneath the weight of confusion and despair, the crushed soul sinks to the ground. It doesn’t know what to do, but it does know one thing: it can no longer remain buried in the darkness of limitation and past pain.

The soul longs for truth. It knows that it is time to face the battle, but it doesn’t yet know how, or even why.

It begins to stir.

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The Song of God Is Playing Within You

Knowing what must be done and being unable to do it is where we recognise our human limitations, and it is here that we begin to seek true strength.

As you stand in the middle of the two armies, the noise of the rattling chariots fades into absolute silence. The tears have run their course, and the heart begins to ache for truth. Suddenly, despair is no longer the enemy but the wake-up call:

I can’t see which way to turn.

I am confused, and I can’t decide what to do.

Please help me, tell me what to do.

Within that surrender, a deeper voice becomes present—an inner teacher, the Self awaiting your attention. For a moment, the inner battle pauses, and a new kind of listening begins.

The sound of the flute can be heard...

“This despair and confusion will not lead you anywhere, only to infamy and disgrace. This is not your personal battle to win; it is the rise of Truth and Dharma. The soul is eternal; it cannot die. Those who will be slain are already slain by Me.”

“Who are you?—this name and form? No. This string of identities, skills, and achievements? No. How can that which is transient be your real Self? How can that which has a beginning and an end be you? Your true Self has no beginning and no end. All that exists has always existed, and will always continue to exist.”

You listen, you feel, you recognise, and you remember why you were ever born at all. Clarity, strength, and Dharma now lead the way.

With this awakening of wisdom, what arises now is not just the skills and prowess of a warrior, but the courage and strength of a liberated soul—a soul that is untethered from the restraints of familiar conditioning.

The warrior stops listening to the mind and begins listening to the voice of Higher Wisdom.

Raising the ‘self’ with the Self

“Tell me,” the awakening warrior whispers into the quiet space between the two armies. “What does someone who has crossed this battlefield actually look like? How do they speak? How do they sit? How do they move through the world?”

While the untrained mind is dragged around by impulses—hooked by a craving, triggered by an insult—the one who has conquered this inner battlefield remains untouched. They feel the stormy waves of desire and fear, but they do not become the storm. Like the ocean, they remain still at their depths even as the turbulent rivers pour in.

Untouched by changing circumstances, this person is neither withdrawn from life nor a robot devoid of feeling. Even-minded in sorrow or joy, fully anchored in the Self, they move through the world with steady wisdom and sovereign grace.

“The mind is indeed restless,” the inner voice guides, “and more difficult to control than the wind. But it can be tamed through consistent practice, detachment, and the willingness to surrender.”

But how do I know what to do? You wonder. What is right action? When the opposing armies within pull me so strongly outward, confusing my duty, isn’t it best to do nothing?

“This is not possible,” the Voice replies. “Inaction is impossible for a living being. Even one sitting on a mountain in deep meditation continues to act. The chest rises, the lungs expand, and the heart continues its rhythm. Life itself is movement.”

Bound to this physical body, we are compelled to act. And this is exactly where we get stuck.

If we are born to act, what is driving our actions?

What is our highest duty?

Will personal will and selfish desires drive our choices—the conditioned patterns of past experiences? Or will the lower self be raised by the higher Self, guiding every action into an unwavering alignment with Truth?

Surrender Unto Me

When we look at the battlefield of our actual lives, we find ourselves completely trapped. We see the loops we are stuck in and the damage they cause, yet we feel totally powerless to break them.

“Alcohol is not good for me, I must stop, but I can’t.”

“Losing my temper is destroying my relationships, but I lose control.”

“I know I should meditate, but I don’t have enough time.”

“I want to start my own business, but I’m terrified I won’t manage the mortgage.”

“I know this relationship is no longer healthy for me, but I can't leave.”

“I know I need to have that difficult conversation, but I keep avoiding it.”

And life begins to feel defeated, an endless cycle of superficial highs and heavy lows. We feel paralysed because we think we must fix our entire past and future all at once. We want a guarantee that if we pick up the bow, we will win and never stumble again.

We become obsessed with the outcome, but doing nothing is not an option. We are alive, which means we are compelled to act and to choose in each moment. How do we do that when the opposing armies inside our heads are screaming so loudly?

You have a right to the action, the Gita reminds us, but you have no right to the fruits of your action.

Surrender the heavy burden of what comes next. Stop fighting for the ego’s perfect victory. Break the frantic bond with the results—whether you succeed or fail, whether others praise or criticise you. Remember, they have their own inner war to wage. You are responsible only for your own alignment.

Pour your heart and soul into the truth of the present moment, drop the heavy armour of control, and let the Divine handle the rest.

See the moment right in front of you. What is it asking of you?

Take the action. Let go of the outcome.

Now do your duty, pick up your bow and fight.

Thank you for joining me here,

Jenni M

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A note on language: Throughout this article, I use terms such as soul, Self, higher Self, Higher Wisdom, and higher mind. They each carry distinct meanings within the yogic tradition. Here, I’ve used them poetically to illuminate different aspects of our inner experience rather than to present a technical philosophical framework. I’ll explore each of these more deeply in future essays.

This essay explores the inner battlefield and how we learn to surrender our actions to Dharma, or a higher purpose. In my next article, The Five Warriors of Consciousness: Inner Forces That Guide Your Spiritual Evolution, I explore the inner map of these warriors and how their relationship to the energy centres along the spine.

Part of an ongoing series exploring the lives and teachings of Swami Vivekananda, Paramahansa Yogananda, Ramana Maharshi, Anandamayi Ma, and Neem Karoli Baba.

Read the introduction here.

Neem Karoli Baba (c.1900–1973)

Unlike typical spiritual leaders who describe a specific moment of dramatic transformation, Neem Karoli Baba (born Lakshman Narayan Sharma) did not have a classic “enlightenment” story. He did not sit under a tree for years waiting for a breakthrough; rather, he was a “born-awakened” mystic whose innate spiritual urge was present from childhood. His path to becoming the legendary saint unfolded through a fascinating blend of extreme asceticism and ordinary family life.

Born into a wealthy Brahmin family in Uttar Pradesh, India, he showed a profound indifference to material wealth very early on. Following the traditions of the time, his parents married him at the age of 11. Almost immediately after, driven by an overwhelming spiritual pull, he ran away from home to become a wandering sadhu. He spent his teenage years roaming barefoot across Northern India, practising intense meditation (tapasya) and living in caves.

It was during these nomadic years that a singular encounter on a railway line would give him the name by which the world would forever know him. He boarded a first-class train carriage without a ticket. When the British conductor pulled the emergency brakes and forced him off at a remote stop near the village of Neem Karoli, a strange thing happened: the steam engine completely locked up. Despite mechanics checking the train, it wouldn't budge an inch. It was only when the railway officials realised he was a holy man, apologised, and invited him back on board that the train magically started moving again. From that day forward, the locals—and eventually the world—knew him as Neem Karoli Baba.

He lived as a nomad for over a decade before his father tracked him down and begged him to return to a settled life. In a remarkable display of detachment, he agreed. He returned home, lived as a householder, and fathered two sons and one daughter. Even while raising a family, his internal spiritual state was already fully realised. He lived an ordinary outward life and an inwardly liberated life: a quiet family man to his village, but a deeply realised mystic who would occasionally disappear for days into the forest.

The Path of Love and Service

Maharaj-ji—as Neem Karoli Baba was lovingly called by his followers—did not teach philosophy, give lectures, or write books. His realisation was anchored entirely in Bhakti Yoga (the yoga of devotion), and he was widely regarded by his followers to be an avatar of Hanuman, the great monkey god who epitomises selfless service and absolute devotion. To Maharaj-ji, enlightenment wasn’t an intellectual state; it was a living, loving action.

I first came across this wonderful saint and spiritual master through the living transmissions of his disciples who walked after him, carrying the essence of his teachings into the world. These teachings were summarised simply as: love everyone, serve everyone, and always remember God.

It would be fair to say that Ram Dass and Krishna Das are the primary reasons Maharaj-ji is widely known in the West today. Ram Dass acted as the intellectual and philosophical bridge. His 1971 book Be Here Now became a counterculture bible, introducing Maharaj-ji’s image and teachings to millions of Westerners.

Krishna Das acted as the cultural and musical bridge. Through his decades of international touring, Krishna Das helped bring the devotional spirit of Maharaj-ji and the beauty of kirtan that he loved so deeply into the Western mainstream.

Truth Beyond Religion

While they are the most prominent, a few other Western disciples have also played massive roles in spreading the simplicity of his teachings, including Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence, and Mirabai Bush, an author and teacher who has helped bring his concept of “right livelihood” into Western corporate and social spaces.

When this wave of Western seekers arrived in India in the late 1960s and early 1970s, they were often trying to escape Western culture and traditional Western religion. Many of them were born Jewish or Christian but felt disconnected from those traditions. They travelled thousands of miles to learn deep Eastern mysticism, yoga, and meditation. Instead of pushing them into complex Hindu rituals, Maharaj-ji frequently shocked them by bringing the focus back to Jesus and the Bible, revealing his profound, non-sectarian nature.

In one of the most famous retellings, Ram Dass asked Maharaj-ji how a person should properly meditate. Maharaj-ji sat in silence, and tears began to roll down his face. He looked at the Westerners and whispered, “Meditate like Christ.” He lost himself completely in love.

Maharaj-ji would constantly tell his Western disciples, “Did you read his book?” or tell them to go back and read the Bible, to truly understand unconditional love.

For Krishna Das and Ram Dass, this was a massive paradigm shift. Maharaj-ji was teaching them that truth is universal and transcends geographic boundaries. They didn’t need to change their cultural identities or become “Indian” to find God.

This unyielding commitment to truth was a lesson Ram Dass learned in a striking way. He brought an early copy of Be Here Now to India. Maharaj-ji could not read or speak English, yet he pointed directly to two passages and flatly stated that an embellished story contained a lie that had to be deleted. Ram Dass panicked, explaining that a massive reprint of thirty thousand copies was actively on the presses in America, and stopping production would cause a massive financial loss.

Maharaj-ji simply replied, “Money and truth have nothing to do with each other. You can’t print lies.”

Ram Dass sent an urgent cable, only to discover an unexpected logistical delay had stopped the press. The printer reported that the master printing plate containing the photograph of Maharaj-ji’s face had inexplicably gone missing from the shop. Because production had ground to a halt while they searched for it, it created the perfect window of time to correct the text without losing a single dollar.

Krishna Das himself is a living example of this continuously expanding love. Tirelessly sharing his devotional songs with the world through global tours, he often shares that he never originally had a singing bone in his body. When his guru commanded him to return to the West to sing, Krishna Das was gripped by self-doubt, wondering how he could ever facilitate kirtan. Yet, through years of practice, he discovered that it was his devotion itself that became his voice.

The LSD Experiment

Ram Dass, on the other hand, was well known for his experiential research on psychoactive drugs. When he first travelled to India, he brought a supply of high-purity LSD. As a Harvard psychologist, he had experimented extensively with psychedelics, believing they could unlock higher states of consciousness. However, he was frustrated because the “high” always wore off. He wanted to know if an enlightened master could explain the phenomenon.

During his second trip to India, the guru unexpectedly asked him about the “medicine.” Ram Dass was shocked that this old man in a blanket knew about the hidden drugs in his bag. Maharaj-ji asked for the pills, and Ram Dass placed three high-dose tablets—about 900 micrograms total, an immense dose—into his hand.

To Ram Dass’s absolute horror, Maharaj-ji swallowed them all at once. Ram Dass watched him intently for hours, expecting a medical emergency. Instead, absolutely nothing happened. Maharaj-ji remained perfectly normal, laughing, talking, and mocking the “medicine,” proving to Ram Dass that his everyday state of awareness was already far beyond the chemical high.

When Ram Dass once asked him directly, “How do I get enlightened?”Maharaj-ji simply smiled and replied: “Feed people. Serve people. Remember God.”

Sanātana Dharma — The Eternal Religion

Looking around at the images of the Masters that surround my home, my sister once asked me, “Why are they all from India?”

The answer lies in a long, unbroken history and spiritual tradition. From the ancient Vedas and the Upanishads emerged a living stream of wisdom: inquiry into consciousness, devotion, liberation, God-realisation, and the nature of the Self. For thousands of years, this wisdom has been preserved, practised, and passed from teacher to student, creating a living tradition that continues to guide seekers around the world today.

Of course, great saints, mystics, and realised masters have appeared in every culture. The longing for truth is universal. Yet my own path has unfolded primarily through yoga and Vedantic wisdom, and so many of the teachers who have influenced my life come from that lineage.

These Masters embodied different expressions of yoga, yet all pointed toward the same ultimate union. Through wisdom, devotion, self-inquiry, surrender, meditation, love, and service, each revealed that the deepest purpose of human life is not accumulation, performance, or ambition, but the love of God and the dissolution of the separate self into union with something vast, eternal, and divine.

May you rest at the feet of these great masters.

First in this series was Swami Vivekananda, the fire of Vedanta; you can read that here.

Thank you for joining me here,

Jenni M

Part of an ongoing series exploring the lives and teachings of Swami Vivekananda, Paramahansa Yogananda, Ramana Maharshi, Anandamayi Ma, and Neem Karoli Baba.

Read the introduction here.

Anandamayi Ma (1896–1982)

Most often, though not always, a great Master will display some of the exalted qualities of enlightenment from a very young age, leaving people around them somewhat perplexed by their expressions.

Anandamayi Ma was one of those children.

From a very young age, people around her noticed something different. She moved, spoke and lived without a sense of a personal centre. She embodied Sahaja Samadhi—the natural, continuous state of cosmic-consciousness—and displayed spontaneous states of deep meditation and ecstasy from early childhood.

She lived in a state of absolute, effortless surrender, moving through the world with a gentle detachment that perfectly matched her lifelong refrain: “Whatever comes to pass, let it be.” A profound devotion to God flowed through her from infancy. Yet, her outer indifference and perpetually joyful demeanour baffled onlookers, leading some to mistake her cosmic simplicity for the mind of a simpleton.

When people asked her who she was, she often smiled with no response or answered in a way that dissolved the question itself.

In his book Autobiography of a Yogi, Yogananda describes his experience of meeting the renowned saint, who came to be known as The Blissful Mother.

His arrival was unexpected, and upon seeing Yogananda, she joyfully announced, “Father, you have come!” Yogananda described her recognition and affection as an extraordinary demonstration of a divine welcome.

The recognition of two saints is mutual.

Yogananda could see that she was in a high state of Samadhi, eternal bliss. Oblivious to her outward garb as a woman, she knew herself as the changeless soul: from that plane, she was joyously greeting another devotee of God.

When Yogananda asked her to share something about her life, she responded: “Father, there is little to tell.” She spread her graceful hands in a deprecatory gesture. “My consciousness has never associated itself with this temporary body. Before I came on this earth, Father, I was the same. As a little girl, I was the same. I grew into womanhood, but still, I was the same. When the family in which I had been born made arrangements to have this body married, I was the same.”

The Unconventional Marriage

Anandamayi Ma was married as a child, and at seventeen, went to live with her husband, Bholanath. But a conventional marriage was physically impossible. Whenever he approached her with physical desire, her body would spontaneously stiffen into a deep spiritual trance; at times, even delivering a sharp, literal electric shock if he tried to touch her. She referred to this simply as the automatic operating of divine will, guarding the purity of her form.

Biographical accounts specifically note that his thoughts of physical attraction were instantly halted because her form would intensely manifest the fierce, unapproachable power of the Goddess Kali, forcing him to back away in absolute awe.

Faced with an energy that overrode physical law, Bholanath came to recognise her true spiritual nature. He soon realised he was not living with a traditional housewife. He voluntarily accepted a life of celibacy, choosing to support her path. Surrendering his worldly expectations, he became her caretaker and first disciple. Their relationship evolved into a deeply spiritual partnership rather than a conventional marriage.

Bholanath and Anandamayi Ma moved to Dhaka, where her fame as a major spiritual figure grew. She was often absorbed in samadhi, and rumours about special healing powers and other phenomena began to circulate. She would become lost in deep ecstatic trances to the point where her devotees sometimes had to feed her with their hands.

She ate sparingly, often only once every second day, and undertook long fasts—not to attain anything, but because she said she did not require food to access the prana (life force) needed to sustain her body, the latter being accessed directly. In fact, she once remarked that she only consumed food to keep up appearances and not alarm her devotees.

The Embodiment of Wisdom

For many years, Anandamayi Ma followed her inspiration and travelled all over India, blessing seekers with her presence and joy, and staying in a single place for no more than a few days. She attracted thousands of disciples, including one of the most respected Sanskrit scholars of her time, Gopinath Kaviraj. Although Anandamayi Ma was practically illiterate, having only a few years of primary schooling, Kaviraj recognised her as the living embodiment of pure knowledge and dedicated his life to chronicling her wisdom.

Anandamayi Ma became one of India’s most revered saints—her very name translating to the Mother absorbed in bliss. This radiant, blissful presence inspired a vast array of prominent figures, including Paramahansa Yogananda (who featured her in Autobiography of a Yogi), Swami Sivananda, and Mahatma Gandhi.

Her luminous teachings continue to permeate this world, centred in her own realisation that “there is no question of attaining anything. One only realises what already is.”

Next in this series: Neem Karoli Baba and the Revolutionary Simplicity of Love and Service.

First in this series was Swami Vivekananda, the fire of Vedanta; you can read that here.

Jai Masters

Thank you for joining me here,

Jenni M

Part of an ongoing series exploring the lives and teachings of Swami Vivekananda, Paramahansa Yogananda, Ramana Maharshi, Anandamayi Ma, and Neem Karoli Baba.

Read the introduction here.

Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950)

Unlike Vivekananda and Yogananda, who navigated intense activity and travelled around the globe to establish monastic orders and global foundations, Ramana Maharshi took refuge on an isolated mountain and adopted the path of absolute stillness.

Ramana is by far the most radical of all the Masters in this series. His teachings are completely uncompromising in their focus on non-duality and self-inquiry.

While many spiritual paths offer ways to improve, heal, refine, or transform the individual, Ramana goes straight to the root and asks, “Who is the individual?” His teaching ultimately points to the fact that there is no separate self to improve, only the Self to realise.

Ramana shows that the Self is not individual but universal, and that it can be directly known through inner inquiry within what he called the Spiritual Heart.

The Spiritual Heart

Ramana’s teachings concentrate on the Spirit as the Heart itself—the source of the “I” thought, which can be directly experienced and known by silencing the mind.

He taught that when the "I" thought is traced back to its source, the mind subsides into silence.

The “Heart,” he said, is not the physical organ on the left side of the chest. Instead, it is the spiritual centre of pure consciousness or Spirit. He noted that when people say “I” or point to themselves, they point to the right side of the chest.

Born Venkataraman Iyer, he was a normal teenager—good at sports, lazy at school, and uninterested in religion. At the age of sixteen, a sudden and overpowering fear of death completely changed the trajectory of his life. Deliberately mimicking a dead body by lying stiff like a corpse, he turned his attention inward to investigate what death truly meant. In that flash of intense awareness, he realised that the body may die, but the deeper Self—the immortal Spirit—remains untouched.

Years later, in 1912, while living on the mountain, he experienced a physical trance that confirmed the location of the Spiritual Heart. He related that a sudden light erased his world-vision. His physical heart on the left stopped, and his body turned blue, causing his companion, Vasudeva Sastri, to weep over him. Yet, all the while, Ramana was aware that his spiritual Heart centre on the right remained unaffected and shining. After about fifteen to twenty minutes, something shot from his right side to the left like a rocket bursting in the air, restoring blood circulation, warmth, movement, and vitality to his body.

Who Am I?

The traditional Upanishadic texts state that the Atman (the Self) resides in the “cave of the heart,” describing it as the central seat of pure consciousness and life force (prana) where 101 nadis (subtle energy channels) converge. Grounded in his own direct experience, Ramana revealed that this spiritual Heart functions on the right side of the chest, bridging complex Vedic philosophy into one simple, universal question: “Who am I?” He taught that instead of trying to control the mind, you should trace the root of every thought back to the thinker. The very purpose of self-inquiry is to focus the mind at its source.

By constantly inquiring, “To whom do these thoughts arise? To me. Then, who am I?”, the ego, unable to locate a self, eventually dissolves into pure awareness.

His work encompasses the direct inquiry of “Who am I?”—a question that, when explored deeply, leads one beyond the outer physical identity, through the mind’s concepts, and directly into the spiritual Heart, free from identity and yet ever present.

“Though you pervade the whole body, still you admit of a centre from which all your thoughts start and wherein they subside.”

“The Heart is not merely the centre but the Self,” his teaching concludes, revealing that doubt only arises when we identify it with something tangible and physical.

Ramana never claimed to be a guru, never initiated an official organisation, and never travelled to preach. Yet, a massive global footprint formed entirely on its own around his presence.

After his awakening, he left everything behind and went straight to the sacred mountain, Arunachala, to live in total silence. He didn’t open his mouth to build a following—yet people from all walks of life began visiting him, discovering that simply sitting beside him in that absolute silence caused their frantic thoughts to evaporate.

The Perfected One

A siddha is known as the perfected one; he does not seek praise or criticism, as neither makes any difference to him. He is equally at peace with both.

Someone once wrote an article criticising Ramana Maharshi and sent him a copy. Ramana carefully read through it, corrected the spelling mistakes and grammar, and sent it back. When someone asked, “But he was criticising you,” Ramana’s answer was not a defence, an acceptance, or an attempt to rise above it. He simply said, “No, not at all. He is criticising some fellow called Ramana.”

So strong was his identity with the background Reality of existence-consciousness-bliss—the Self as pure awareness.

The Legacy of Self-Inquiry

Ramana spent the remaining 54 years of his life on that single mountain in rural Southern India, rarely leaving the slopes. He wrote no books, and yet some of the most powerful minds on Earth came to see him. He didn’t need to travel the world to find reality—he sat completely still and silent, and the world came to him.

Disciples like Papaji and later Arthur Osborne and David Godman found and embodied his raw transmissions.

Today, the lineage of his inquiry forms the very backbone of contemporary non-dual teachings—shaping the work of global figures like Mooji, Eckhart Tolle, and Rupert Spira.

Ramana’s life showed us that when a human being truly vanishes into the Source, the world will build a pathway to their door just to taste the silence.

Next in this series: We will discover Anandamayi Ma and the Path of Effortless Divine Union.

First in this series was Swami Vivekananda, the fire of Vedanta; you can read that here.

Jai Masters

Thank you for joining me here,

Jenni M

Part of an ongoing series exploring the lives and teachings of Swami Vivekananda, Paramahansa Yogananda, Ramana Maharshi, Anandamayi Ma, and Neem Karoli Baba.

Read the introduction here.

Paramahansa Yogananda (1893 - 1952)

One of Yogananda’s first and most influential public appearances in the United States was in 1926, at Carnegie Hall in New York. The week-long lecture series drew an unprecedented total crowd of over 9,000 people, packing the auditorium to its absolute limit—while thousands more were turned away at the door on the opening night.

At that time, there was no social media or internet to spread the word. He didn’t draw crowds because he was a clever marketer; this massive attraction was the very pull of his Shakti—his raw, magnetic life force that acted like a spiritual gravity. People packed the aisles and spread out onto the street. These souls were responding to a current of energy they may never have felt before.

Some may have looked at this powerful Indian man, wearing an orange cloth and a turban, as mere entertainment. But many couldn’t take their eyes off him as they absorbed the strength, the clarity, and the force of his presence.

At the end of the lecture, a questioner remarked, “You must be proud to see thousands of people coming to hear you speak.” Yogananda replied with deep introspection, “No, not proud. While my body is on the stage, the current is moving through me and forming words, whilst I simultaneously reach the astral worlds to help my Guru with his work there, and my consciousness continues to expand through the cosmos, stars, planets, and into infinity.”

Yogananda’s work centred around his lived example: you are not this body or this mind; you are infinite energy and life itself.

But this spiritual force did not emerge overnight. Decades before Yogananda touched the hearts of the West, his journey began with a fierce, unwavering longing for God as a child in India.

Born Mukunda into a large family that valued both material wealth and traditional heritage, his early faith in God was often ridiculed by his older brother. Driven by an unquenchable spiritual thirst, he fled home at a young age to seek his guru, eventually embracing the life of a monastic to immerse himself completely in his search for God. While his brother focused on the family inheritance, Yogananda looked toward his Heavenly Father’s inheritance—the Kingdom Within.

Having endured the painful, heartbreaking loss of his birth mother, at just eleven years old, he found solace in surrendering his love and life to the Divine Mother—the loving, cosmic presence of God.

The Magnetism of the Guru

Yogananda’s first encounter with his guru, Sri Yukteswar, was in the middle of the bustling streets of Benares. Yogananda was out on an errand with a priest from his hermitage. They navigated through the vibrant markets filled with housewives, guides, saints, and the ever-present holy cows. As they passed an inconspicuous lane, Mukunda’s attention was suddenly captivated. Yogananda recalls: “At the end of the lane stood a Christlike figure in ocher robes, a swami who seemed instantly familiar.” He tried to dismiss his feeling, but when he walked away, he described a sensation of numbness in his feet, as though they had turned to stone. When he turned around, his feet moved again. “The saint is magnetically drawing me to him.” With this thought, Mukunda rushed back to the lane, where the quiet figure continued to gaze steadily at him. A few moments later, he was at his Master’s feet.

He recognised the divine face as none other than the man of his thousands of visions, the one who would become his guru. “Oh my own, you have come to me, how many years I have waited for you,” Sri Yukteswar said. Yogananda knew, with a sense of irrefutable insight, that his guru knew God and would show him the way. There was a divine bond between them, one that only grew stronger with time.

Mukunda was in awe of his guru’s wisdom and humility, and didn’t want to return home. But Sri Yukteswar encouraged him to return, saying, “Why exclude relatives from your love for humanity?” He continued that there must be complete surrender and strict obedience to his training. Sri Yukteswar also knew that Yogananda would be the lineage’s messenger of Kriya Yoga to the world, and that completing his schooling and university was essential for intellectual credibility and respect.

This first meeting was not just an encounter, but a reunion of souls destined to bridge the gap between the Western teachings of Jesus and the Eastern wisdom of yoga—revealing that they are the very same path leading to inner communion with God, attainable through the practice and science of Kriya Yoga.

The Kriya lineage deeply revered the teachings of Jesus, and Yogananda taught that his eighteen missing years in the New Testament were spent travelling through India and Tibet, studying under Eastern masters. Yogananda dedicated much of his life to showing that East and West must unite, often teaching that a balanced world required both American practical efficiency and Indian spiritual wisdom. As he frequently observed: “The West is advanced in material pursuits, and the East in spiritual. For a balanced world, they must unite.”

The Legacy of the Lineage

Yogananda, too, was a saint of immense power and fortitude, saturated in devotion and love for God, whom he would call the Divine Mother.

His main message to the West was that God is not a belief or theological concept, but a direct inner reality that can be experienced.

He taught that the spine is the literal highway to the Divine. Through Kriya Yoga, practitioners learn to quiet the breath, consciously withdraw their life-force from the outer senses, and direct their awareness inward toward deep states of stillness and communion with the Divine.

A disciple once asked Yogananda, “How can I know God?” Yogananda responded, “He dwells behind your every thought.”

“Yoga is not a system of beliefs or dogmas, but a practical, repeatable method to master the mind and energy,” he would say. “True yoga begins when the breath becomes calm, and the mind grows still.”

Yogananda’s work and service began in India, with disciples gathering, both young and old. He looked at the traditional schooling systems and saw that they were feeding the intellect but starving the soul. In 1917, he founded his first ‘How-to-live’ school in Ranchi, India.

However, it was planned that Yogananda’s work would be primarily focused in the West. The lineage of Kriya Masters, from Mahavatar Babaji to Lahiri Mahasaya, entrusted Yogananda with the duty of taking Kriya Yoga to the West—utilising what Lahiri Mahasaya termed “the aeroplane route to God-Realisation”—to help awaken Western minds.

Yogananda’s legacy continues with his founding of the Self-Realisation Fellowship, and later, through his direct disciple, Swami Kriyananda, the founding of Ananda Village and global communities, expanding his universal Christ Consciousness and Kriya Yoga teachings.

His book, Autobiography of a Yogi, continues to spark revolutions in millions of souls decades after his passing.

Mahasamadhi

Yogananda’s Mahasamadhi (final liberation from the body) was the ultimate demonstration of his life-force and energy. His departure was no ordinary passing; according to the tradition, Yogananda consciously left his body at the moment of his choosing.

He often told his disciples that he would die speaking of God and Mother India. On March 7, 1952, at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, he was giving a speech honouring the Indian Ambassador. As he concluded the speech with his poem “My India,” he smiled, consciously released his life-force, and his body slid softly to the floor. For twenty-one days after his passing, mortuary officials kept his body under daily observation, noting that it remained entirely free from decay—a phenomenon the director stated was completely unparalleled in their experience. Many regarded this as a testament to his profound Shakti and mastery over his energy.

Vivekananda brought Vedanta to the global stage, while Yogananda gave the West the practical, scientific technology to actually experience it.

Whilst Vivekananda and Yogananda transformed the world through dynamic action and global movements, the Masters who follow—Ramana Maharshi, Anandamayi Ma, and Neem Karoli Baba—left their imprint through silence, presence, and deep devotion.

First in this series was Swami Vivekananda, the Fire of Vedanta; you can read that here.

Next in this series: Ramana Maharshi, the Silent Sage of Self-inquiry.

Jai Masters

Thank you for joining me here,

Jenni M

This is part one of an ongoing series exploring the lives and teachings of Swami Vivekananda, Paramahansa Yogananda, Ramana Maharshi, Anandamayi Ma, and Neem Karoli Baba.

Realised Masters and The Light They Brought to Humanity

Most of us will stumble through the many decades of life like scrolling through a TV channel, immersed in the personal realities of family, education, wealth, progeny, sickness, success, and failure. Around it goes, the ongoing recycling of the soul through birth and death.

The quality of our evolution greatly depends on recognising the unseen forces that bring creation into being, and our relationship to that Spirit.

And then, in accordance with dharma and the unfolding of destiny, come the great ones to help lift us out of the darkness.

These are the Masters.

Having mastered the futility of the cycle of birth and death, they walk a path where the One light removes all darkness.

True masters often display similar saintly qualities, such as humility, wisdom, compassion, love for God, and a selfless desire to serve humanity. They have total mastery of their mind, transcending the frail illusion of a separate self to find ultimate freedom.

They remain as individuals, functioning in perfect attunement with the truth. They walk the journey of life in accordance with its unique unfolding—while serving as a living guide to help others find that same freedom.

I myself, day after day, rest in awe at the greatness displayed by a true master—not just for their timeless wisdom and unwavering integrity, but also their courage in love and service, and the different ways in which they continue to manifest their qualities long after they leave the planet.

Until enlightenment, there is a goal—either worldly or spiritual. The enlightened master has no goal; the enlightened one simply is, and whatever actions manifest through that body and mind flow entirely from that realisation, free from personal striving.

The Spiritual Master doesn’t come with a personal mission or purpose; they land devoted entirely to service.

One may sit on a Himalayan mountain-top and hold a single, pure thought to uplift the collective consciousness. Another will start a local school where few may ever find him. Others will pioneer a spiritual revolution.

I have selected five exalted personalities, each representing a unique expression of divine love and wisdom. These are their enduring stories and legacies.

Let’s explore:

• Swami Vivekananda mastered Jñāna Yoga—the yoga of intellect and wisdom. With his fiery, pioneering intellect, he brought Vedanta to the West, fearlessly proclaiming the unity of all spiritual paths and the divinity within every soul.

• Paramahansa Yogananda mastered Rāja Yoga—the scientific technology of energy. With his dynamic magnetism, he brought the royal science of Kriya Yoga to the West, offering a direct path to Self-realisation.

• Ramana Maharshi mastered the yoga of self-inquiry—dissolving the false “I” into the ultimate union. His mountain-top silence and the introspective practice of “Who am I?” drew sincere seekers to his feet.

• Anandamayi Ma lived in a state of perpetual Sahaja Samadhi—an effortless state of unbroken absorption in the Divine, the ultimate Yoga. As a living embodiment of the Blissful Mother, her presence revealed the path of divine surrender and God-union.

• Neem Karoli Baba mastered Bhakti Yoga (the yoga of absolute devotion) and Karma Yoga (the yoga of selfless service). Wrapped in absolute humility and a blanket of unconditional love, he gave the world no lectures or books, but instead amplified the ultimate command: “Love everyone, feed everyone, remember God.”

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Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902)

As a young man, Narendra (later Swami Vivekananda) explored the Indian city of Calcutta in search of a true Master. From door to door, he visited the reputable Swamis and asked them, “Do you see God?” Some responded “no,” some said they’ve had visions of light, others said, “sometimes, in deep meditation, they may receive a glimpse.” But none of this quenched his thirst for truth until he met Sri Ramakrishna.

Upon first seeing Narendra, Ramakrishna said, “Finally, after so long, you have come.” This was no ordinary meeting; it was the moment when the Master recognised his chosen disciple, his future messenger to the world. He revealed to him that “he was born on Earth to remove the miseries of mankind.” But Narendra’s rationalist mind and sharp intellect momentarily regarded these words as nonsense coming from an insane person.

Ramakrishna was a very crystallised consciousness—a phenomenon. But at the same time, on the worldly level, he was totally uneducated, and his behaviour often demonstrated that of an uncontrolled child lost in heightened emotion. He would frequently enter spontaneous ecstatic trances (bhava samadhi) where he would lose all physical control. He would weep, laugh, dance, or need to be physically held and protected by those around him so he wouldn’t injure himself.

“Sir,” Narendra asked the Master, “Have you seen God?” Without a moment’s hesitation, he replied, “Yes, I have seen God. I see Him as I see you here in front of me, only much more clearly. But who cares to see God? People cry for their children, wives, wealth and property. When man weeps for God, he will surely see Him.”

Narendra was astounded. He was standing in front of a man who had asserted that he had seen God, and for the first time, he was hearing that God can be seen. He could feel that Sri Ramakrishna’s words were uttered from the depths of an inner experience. He had no doubt; still, he could not reconcile those words with his previous behaviour, and yet he felt an inexplicable sense of inner peace.

This profound transformation eventually led Narendra to become Swami Vivekananda, the great spiritual leader who carried his Master’s message across the world. Swami Vivekananda founded the Ramakrishna Monastic Order to promote spiritual realisation and humanitarian service, establishing Western branches across the Americas and Europe, which we today know as the Vedanta Society.

The Light of Vedanta

Vivekananda captivated the West with pure Vedantic insight; he wasn’t just leading key engagements at global religious conferences or building schools and hospitals, he poured his Master’s undiluted light directly into the physical framework of human suffering and religious division.

Yet, on the night after his historic address at the World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago, Vivekananda wept alone, realising that his quiet life as an anonymous monk was permanently over. He was now a recognisable public figure.

By declaring that all different spiritual paths lead to the same ultimate truth, he introduced Ramakrishna’s core message of harmony to a fragmented religious world. His brilliance inspired many of the era's leading minds, including Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla, who attended his lectures and explored how Vedantic philosophy aligned with modern science. His teachings continue to inspire millions worldwide through the ongoing lineage of the Ramakrishna Order.

Vivekananda’s discussions with Nikola Tesla explored the relationship between matter, energy, and consciousness through the lens of Vedantic cosmology. Tesla was deeply intrigued by the possibility that matter and force could ultimately be reduced to energy. Although he never fully completed the mathematical proof before Vivekananda passed away, Einstein’s later theory of mass-energy equivalence revealed a striking resemblance to the same underlying insight.

Vivekananda brought the message of Vedanta, the ancient Eastern philosophy of spiritual unity, to the global stage.

With a sharp intellect and a tender compassion, he reminded us that “never should the tears of a widow be left unwiped.” And yet, he never softened the laws of reality: “good, good, bad, bad, none escape the law; whosoever wears a form, wears the chains of karma too, but far beyond name and form is Atman (the Self) ever free, know thou art that sannyasi bold, say Om Tat Sat Om.”

Disciples and contemporaries frequently recounted Vivekananda dropping into deep states of Samadhi for an hour or more, completely unresponsive to the outside world.

His entire message and sharp intellect became an alarm clock for a sleeping world, leaving us with a command that continues to move across centuries:

“Arise! Awake! And stop not till the goal is reached.”

Preparing for Death

Swami Vivekananda attained Mahasamadhi (a conscious, yogic departure from the body) at just 39 years old, fulfilling his own prophecy that he would not live to see the age of forty.

Upon hearing this, one disciple said to him, “But Swami, Buddha did not do his great work until between forty and eighty.”

Swamiji replied, “I have delivered my message, and I must go.”

“Why go?” the disciple asked.

Swamiji answered, “The shadow of a big tree will not let the smaller trees grow. I must go to make room.”

He described that a great tapasya (penance) had come upon him, and that he was preparing for death. He said he would cast off his body like a worn-out garment, but would not cease to work.

“I shall inspire men everywhere until the whole world shall know that it is one with God.”

“Nature, body, mind, go to death, not we. We neither go nor come. The man Vivekananda is in nature, is born and dies; but the Self we see as Vivekananda is never born and never dies. It is the eternal and unchangeable Reality.”

On the day before his final breath, when asked a question, Swamiji answered:

“Perhaps you are right, but my mind is given to other things. I am preparing for death.”

Next in this series: Paramahansa Yogananda and the Science of Self-Realisation.

Jai Masters

Thank you for joining me here,

Jenni M

Trusting Life at the Edge of Change

At this stage of life, I’ve come to see that thresholds are not rare moments.

At 55, after many endings, beginnings, and changes of direction, it feels as though much of life is lived at this edge — between what has been and what is still becoming.

Perhaps there is only one true threshold after all: birth and death, and everything in between is learning how to stand there.

I’ve moved house more times than I can count, lived through relationships that began and ended, followed three distinct career paths, and several others in between. As an entrepreneur, I’ve grown and sold two businesses and watched some brilliant ideas completely dissolve, as they were never meant to take shape. There have been heartbreaks and losses, moments of success and joy, and periods of inner awakening that deeply shifted the way I see everything.

Over time, I’ve come to see that life itself is not a sequence of stable chapters, but an ongoing act of standing in the moment, as time continues to move and life naturally unfolds.

A threshold is the moment when change has taken place, when you can’t go back, and yet you can’t quite see ahead either. You can only be with what is now.

It can feel like a wobble at the edge, leaning reluctantly into the unknown.

It’s like looking out at the mountain top horizon at dawn. Behind you, the shadows of what’s ending; before you, the soft light of what’s waiting to begin.

But the threshold is not always a peaceful sunrise. Often, it feels like a cold sweat that wakes you up at 2 am, when the old safety net has dissolved. A momentary glimpse of terror as the ego loses its grip on reality, with your feet not yet touching the new ground.

It’s a sacred pause—uncomfortable at times, luminous at others — where life intuitively asks: “Will you cling, or will you trust?”

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Are You Standing at a Threshold?

We all meet these thresholds when a chapter closes, a role shifts, a loved one departs, or an identity dismantles. The outer change may look like loss or uncertainty, but inwardly, it’s a call to awaken.

The mind wants to fix or decide; it is desperate for control. But the soul whispers:
“Stay. Listen. Let life unfold. I know more than you think I do. I know why I am here.”

It’s like being mid-air between two trapeze bars. You’ve let go of the first one, but the second hasn’t yet swung into reach. You are completely suspended. Your only real task in that moment is not to force the next movement, but to trust the momentum of life itself.

When we listen to the stillness between the movements, the inner grip, the fear of the unknown, begins to let go of the ropes. And when we do, we realise that there is no fall, but rather, we begin to move with the tides of life.

The tight edges of resistance loosen, and clarity emerges. A new horizon of possibility appears, unencumbered by the past, free from desire, and filled with the fresh breath of the present moment.

From this space, creativity flows again. New ideas, opportunities, and inspired actions arise in harmony with life. Joy, awe, and freedom become the inner currents of intuition that guide the process.

Trust the Invitation

Every true threshold — whether it’s change, letting go, or stepping into the unknown — is an invitation to turn inward and notice the current of life. When seen with awareness, it becomes a doorway rather than a wall.

Through meditation and the inner life, that doorway opens inward, deeper into being and seeing. We begin to realise that the threshold was never outside of us. It’s the meeting place between the familiar self and the deeper Self, the silence where lasting transformation begins.

We are broken open at the threshold so that more of the world can fit inside our hearts.

Our own uncertainty becomes the bridge of empathy.

Every threshold is an ending and a beginning. Meditation teaches us to remain centred in the unknown, and to navigate the storms of life with courage—calm, clear, and open—as life rearranges itself around our new way of being.

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Thank you for joining me here,

Jenni M

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Yoga Beyond the Body

Yoga means union. Etymologically, it is connected to the English word “yoke”. It is the direct union of the little, ego-self with the divine Self—the merging of our limited human awareness into the infinite Spirit.

Most people in the West, and many in India today, confuse yoga with Hatha Yoga, the system of bodily postures. But yoga is primarily a spiritual discipline.

This is not to belittle the physical postures. Hatha Yoga is a wonderful and necessary system. The body is an integral part of our human nature, and it must be kept healthy and balanced so that physical discomfort doesn’t obstruct our spiritual efforts. As anyone who has sat to meditate knows, a restless body creates a restless mind.

However, the seeker who is entirely committed to realising the Divine places far less importance on the postures alone. Nor is it even necessary to master advanced physical poses to find spiritual freedom.

You can contort your body into a perfect lotus pose for many hours—but if your mind is still chasing desires or holding onto resentment, you aren't practising yoga—you are just doing mental gymnastics in a meditative posture.

Hatha Yoga is simply the outer, physical branch of Raja Yoga—the true, royal science of the soul. Raja Yoga is a systematic map of meditation techniques, and a way of living designed to harmonise human consciousness with the absolute Divine.

The Science and the Art

Yoga is both an art and a science.

The science offers practical, repeatable methods to master the mind. But the art requires you to practice intuitively from the heart—otherwise, the techniques yield only mechanical results.

Yoga is not a rigid system of beliefs or dogmas. It is a living experiment that takes into account the direct, reciprocal influence of body, energy and mind, bringing them into perfect mutual harmony.

So often, the mind cannot concentrate simply because tension or illness locks the energy in the body, preventing it from flowing freely upward toward the brain. Likewise, the life-force in the body becomes drained when the inner will is dispirited, heavy, or paralysed by harmful emotions.

Yoga works primarily with this underlying energy through the science of pranayama—the conscious direction of life-force.

Prana translates as both energy and breath. Yoga shows us how, through the bridge of the breath, we can learn to still the vacillating mind and naturally slide into higher states of awareness—not as an achievement or experience to brag about, but as the expansive dissolution of the 'me' that wants to be special.

The highest teachings of yoga take us far beyond mere techniques. They show the yogi how to direct their concentration so intensely that the boundary between the seeker and the divine completely dissolves. You move past the relative world and merge your individual consciousness into the Infinite.

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The Universal Path of the Saints

Yoga is a very ancient science, thousands of years old. The deep perceptions derived from its practice form the very backbone of India’s spiritual greatness. But the truths espoused in these teachings are not limited to one country, nor to only those who consciously practice Eastern techniques.

Mystics and saints across all centuries and religions—including many Christian saints—have independently discovered the exact same inner pathways. They were, in the truest sense, great yogis. They were not delicate or precious, hiding behind stained glass; they were spiritual rebels who dared to transcend their separate identities.

• They raised their energy from body-attachment to soul-identity.

• They discovered the secret of directing the heart’s feeling upward in pure devotion, rather than letting it spill outward into worldly distractions and reactions.

• They discovered the portal of divine vision at the point between the eyebrows—the spiritual eye—through which the soul passes to realise Christ consciousness.

• They discovered the secrets of absolute breathlessness, realising that when the breath becomes completely still, awareness can soar to spiritual heights.

• They discovered the state of mystical marriage, where the separate identity vanishes, and the soul remembers its unity with the Divine.

Yoga completes the timeless biblical commandment: to love the Lord with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.

But let’s be clear about what strength means—it simply means energy, life-force.

The ordinary person’s energy is locked in the lower body, trapped by physical attachments and outward desires. Because that energy is trapped and unavailable to the will, it is impossible to love the Divine one-pointedly.

Only when the life-force is consciously withdrawn from the outer senses and directed upward in deep meditation does true inner communion become possible.

This is how we step off the battlefield of life’s tests and arrows. We rise above the circling wheels of karma. We stop drowning in the movements of the mind and the struggle of survival, and we finally rest—unmoved, untouched—as the unchanging witness.

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This piece is deeply inspired by the timeless, universal teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda and the line of Kriya Yoga masters who brought this sacred science to the world.

Thank you for joining me here,

Jenni M

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How alive am I willing to be?

It hurts to be fully alive; it means removing the armour of protection and performance.

It requires a willingness to be real and human with people, to take off the mask.

Why does it hurt?

The heart flutters as the truth pulses in the throat, forming its words. Then comes the choke, the inner judgement that asks: how will this be received?

It’s a sunken moment when the mask wins and the truth changes its clothes before leaving the mouth.

Why? Because we are raised to perform, not to be real.

We are raised to be impressive rather than impactful—trading our truth for a seat at the table where everyone is speaking the same mumble, trying to be seen and heard.

We try to be popular with the cool ones; we try to get others to like us, a futile task, chasing for even a few crumbs of respect.

We look to a virtual authority to grade us, and in so doing, we give away our own power—an inner authority that knows what’s true.

And through this mirage, we continue to sleep, seeking a personal imitation of satisfaction, one that fits neatly inside the comfort mould.

We are moving up and down the ranks and going nowhere because this kind of movement is a horizontal flat line.

When you look up, you wake up.

Free yourself from the cravings and patterns of your own mind. The mind that looks outside for its validation, its worth, and its contentment.

When you look up, you look to Source. You look to your own true nature, behind the mask.

True clarity does not need a costume.

You look to a higher authority, one that is alive in the deepest part of your heart.

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Thank you for joining me here,

Jenni M

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Part 3 of a 3-part series.

Read Part 1 here.

Read Part 2 here.

The Spiritual Quest

One morning, shortly after our crack-of-dawn meditation, as I was making breakfast in the kitchen, he asked me a question. I didn’t realise it then, but it was a question that would change both of our destinies forever.

“How long will it take me to become a Yogi?”

His innate ambition had shifted somewhat from his lifelong material pursuits to the God-centred life of a Yogi. Something in him had begun to turn.

After reading Autobiography of a Yogi, he was mesmerised by the possibility of a world full of healing miracles, yet grounded in truth—the profound, intelligent power of the spirit when allowed to flow freely without intervention. He spoke about it often.

The fire in his belly, his ambitious nature, had begun to turn away from the material world's desires toward something deeper.

He started speaking differently—about buying land with organic vegetable gardens, deeper healing journeys, and making his own home a peaceful sanctuary. He was adamant that he would never go back to Melbourne to live; that bridge was burnt.

The Turning Point

Life, however, had different plans for him. Family demands began to intervene in his new Yogic dreamscape, and tumours began to take charge of his body, resting in his spine and putting him back in a wheelchair, immobile once again.

Integrative health, natural health, and Western medicine interventions were now being used, but nothing could stop the ongoing progression of his disease.

His naturopath, Katrina, suggested he visit a more specialised integrative health clinic in Thailand. Offering treatments that Australia could not provide. “Will you come with me?” he asked. Although I felt reluctant to travel at this time, I said yes; I could feel that this trip was not going to be easy.

Soon after we landed in Bangkok, he was in the integrative health care clinic, water fasting and undergoing a fully integrated, low-dose chemotherapy approach. There was a structured and detailed plan in place, with a multitude of therapies that would span over a period of months.

Almost one week into the new routine, he told me that his wife and another family friend would be joining him soon, and that they would take over some of the caregiving duties. I arranged my flight home on the morning of the day of their arrival.

As I took the train to the airport that day, I felt a deep sadness in my heart; I felt that this might be the last time I would see my brother again, with the usual boundless spirit of joy and enthusiasm radiating from his face.

He had made his choices; however, his wife was now on her way, and I was required to leave.

I cried.

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The Return and the Unravelling

Soon after, I heard amongst the family noise that he had been moved away from the integrative health care clinic and into a local hospital. He was back in palliative care and back on the morphine.

Still, his spirit never gave up. I received emails where he continued sharing ideas with me for the next best healing modality—natural healing cancer centres in Mexico, Germany, and the USA. He kept searching; he wasn’t giving up on his new life.

I received a call, and once again, he was gasping for breath, barely able to speak. This must have been the effects of high-dose morphine. In between gasps, with excitement in his voice, he told me he had been online and ordered a stack of books on Amazon, specifically for his healing journey. “You will love them,” he said. “They are books on fasting, spirituality, natural health and healing. They are on their way to your place right now.”

His wife arranged an ambulance flight from the Bangkok hospital to the Gold Coast, where he was admitted back into palliative care. Family members started to arrive as she notified them of his final days.

My mother told me he kept saying, “Mum, I’m going back to Jen’s place.”

Alongside the books that were on their way, he had stocked up on some new coffee enema kits, ready to continue his healing journey where he left off.

Relatives, family friends, and even business partners continued to arrive, filling up his room—the very same people he had told me he was trying to get away from.

How to give up on someone who could not give up on himself was something I couldn’t understand.

At one point, they told him that he was no longer able to stay at my home—that I would not allow it. I was grateful to be able to rectify this and let him know, directly, that he was always welcome.

The Family Meeting

My other brother suggested I speak with Danny’s wife. I didn’t want to, as I didn’t think it would change anything—but I agreed to, based on his request, with the condition that he would be there with me. I wanted him to see for himself what I had already been witnessing.

We arranged a meeting, but as she was busy with their visiting family and business associates, it took two days before I could see her. By then, my brother had returned to Melbourne. My mother and sister were present.

I asked her to allow him to leave, perhaps back to the ICU, where at least he would receive hydration and other support. I told her he hadn’t given up, that he was still fighting and wanted to go home to continue his healing.

She dismissed it.

“I’ve had enough of all of this,” she said, “and I have the power of attorney.”

Her words landed heavily in the room.

Danny was unwilling to give in to the system, but his wife saw it differently. The tone of it felt cold. My sister later described it as calculated. I wasn’t surprised by her response, but I was sorry that my mother had to hear it.

We watched a powerful man lose his dignity.

It seemed to me like anyone in the room who tried to push back against the system was labelled with an inability to face life’s inevitable ending: death.

As they continued to increase the morphine, explaining that it was to keep him comfortable, my clever young niece resisted. “No,” she said, “it’s to make you and everyone else more comfortable.”

Whilst seated in the open waiting area of the hospital, my niece—now well overdue with her baby—and I shared a thought: that if only we could kidnap him out of the hospital and take him to the ocean so he could at least pass with some dignity, surrounded by the waters he loved. It was a moment born out of helpless desperation.

The last time I leaned in, close to his face, his mouth dry and breath gurgling with liquid on the lungs, his mind clouded by the consistent dosing of morphine, I couldn’t believe what he said to me.

“How are you? Are you okay?”

I could still feel the spark of love and life alive in his heart, and the genuine care in his question.

“Yes, Danny, I am fine,” I said quietly. “I’m not the one in a hospital bed.”

The screaming tears on the night of his death did not release the weight of helplessness I felt in my gut. I knew something in the family line would continue repeating until it was met with truth.

At that time, I didn’t know I would ever be sitting at this keyboard writing; it was only recently that I felt compelled to share this story.

The Cycle and the Legacy

Upon receiving a group message from the siblings and his wife detailing Danny's funeral, I requested permission to speak at the funeral; I wanted to offer my respects and condolences. I was met with a response—that if I were to go anywhere near her children, I would be hearing from her lawyers—I took that as the answer “no” to my actual question. No one else took heed of this response.

A few weeks after Danny’s passing, I was walking along the beach with his eldest daughter. She had been the powerhouse behind everything we did to help him during those final months, all while caring for her own young daughter and heavily pregnant with the baby she now held in her arms.

We spoke about the timing of it all—the inexplicable reality that she had given birth to her son at 5:00 am on the morning of the day her father died at 7:10 pm. During those final hours, they were in the same hospital, only one level apart. One soul arriving as the other left. We looked at each other, our faces reflecting the sheer weight of it, and all I could say was, “What the fuck?”

“Yeah, right,” she responded. “What the fuck.”

One day, as I was speaking to a friend about my sadness and loss, and how he had turned toward something deeper in those final months, she said, “But Jenni, he will take that desire for spirituality with him into his next life.”

This gave me some comfort.

The Amazon books he ordered finally arrived—two big boxes full—and I created a bookshelf dedicated to my late brother. Amongst them were books on organic gardening, the intelligence of plants, healing herbs, spiritual awakening, and ancient scriptures, including The Bhagavad Gita and Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras.

I didn’t just inherit “books”; I inherited the unfulfilled longing of a soul.

In time, I began to read through them myself. While he had sought a blueprint for a new life on the land, I had found the maps and devotion for my own inner journey.

It was The Autobiography of a Yogi, The Yoga Sutras and The Bhagavad Gita that truly took hold.

I had begun to walk the path that he was searching for.

The life of a Yogi.

The Completion of a Three- Part Series.

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Jenni M

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Part 2 of a 3-part series.

Read Part 1 here.

The Crash of Two Worlds

The amount of wealth, status and prestige that my dear brother had accumulated was beyond my comprehension. We truly lived in two different worlds.

One evening, as we were enjoying a meal, I asked him, “Danny, you have a family that loves you, a 13 million dollar home on the most prestigious ocean shores of Melbourne city, a multi million dollar lifestyle business that caters to everything a man could ask for in hobbies, cars, Harley Davidson bikes, and even private aeroplanes, why did you come here, to stay in the simple spare bedroom of my rental home?”

Although he was looking right at me, it was as though his big dark brown eyes were gazing deeply into his own heart, and he said,” Peace, I just wanted peace. They were all looking at me as if I were a dying man, and I’m not dying,” he asserted.

In addition, he told me, with a finality that chilled me, that he would never go back to Melbourne. He wasn’t just taking time to rest and recuperate; I thought to myself, he was staging an exodus. He was leaving that life behind to find something deeper.

Danny resigned as CEO of his multinational company, and I took leave from my coconut business, leaving my partner in charge, so that I could care for my brother.

When he first stepped out of that hospital, he looked like a Jewish man coming out of Auschwitz in 1945—an image that lived somewhere in our family’s Jewish heritage. There was nothing to him, his body was weak, cut, burned and depleted, he needed a wheelchair to get around.

After the first few weeks of rest and good food, he was mobile once again and started joining me for my morning meditations on the beach. We sat on the dunes, under a tree, and his first attempt to meditate was similar to most.

“I can’t”, he said. “Thoughts keep firing all over the place,” I remember his hand gesture waving through the cool early morning air.

“Never mind the roaming thoughts, Danny,” I said. “See that sun peeking through the horizon? Just stay with that. The sky above remains still while the sun shines and the clouds pass. Those clouds are your thoughts. Let them pass; feel the sun’s radiance.”

I overheard him on the phone with our mother one afternoon. “She gets me up every morning at the crack of dawn to meditate,” he told her. It became a cornerstone of our time together, a ritual alongside the cycle of care, healing, and hopeful recovery.

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While he was still mobile, he would never miss a morning. He learned to sit quietly in the stillness, held between the ocean waves and the first light. He would open his eyes for the sunrise, sometimes giving me a gentle nudge when the moment was right for a sun-gaze.

One day, while his daughter and I were shopping at the local organic food store, she spotted a book by a local naturopath, Katrina Ellis—Shattering the Cancer Myth: A Positive Guide to Beating Cancer. She read it cover to cover, and encouraged that we try to make an appointment for Danny. I had crossed paths with Katrina before, as we both worked in the health field, but getting an appointment was no easy feat. Her booking times were full for many months, so I requested a call should a cancellation open up.

Danny’s wife was focused on a new, specialised chemotherapy—one that was available only on selective occasions. She flew up for the weekend, and they had an appointment at Brisbane Hospital on Tuesday morning to see the specialists. It was a new experimental and expensive treatment: $20,000 per dose.

Late on that Tuesday morning, my phone rang. It was my niece, his eldest daughter, who lived near me at that time. Although pregnant, she had been assisting us daily with his care. Her voice was frantic with desperation. “You have to do something,” she demanded.

“What do you mean? What’s going on?”

“He’s back in palliative care. He’s gone back in, Jenni. He’s going to die. They told him he had two choices: palliative care, where he would die, or the treatment, where he would also likely die. Do something!” she cried, her heart shaking through her words.

“What can I do?”

“Speak to him! Call him! Just do something!”

The timing was uncanny. A week earlier, I had received a call from Katrina Ellis’s clinic letting me know that a Tuesday afternoon appointment had opened up.

Knowing my brother, I thought that if I could spark his sense of challenge and determination, he would do whatever it took to get there.

I called him immediately. "I heard they’ve put you in palliative care and gave you two options that lead to the same end. I have a third option. We don’t know where it leads, but it’s a chance. There’s an appointment at 1:15 pm today with the cancer-specialist naturopath. It’s a rare window, Danny—you’d better get moving now so you can make it on time."

It worked.

He stopped the nurses and doctors in their tracks. “Turn me around,” he ordered. “I have an appointment on the Gold Coast.”

They were a 75-minute drive from the clinic, so he ordered a taxi. His wife was beside herself with worry; the doctors had warned her that he wouldn’t even be alive by the time the cab arrived at the clinic.

He made it.

I met him at the clinic, and Katrina immediately started him on an intense healing protocol. It was a complete overhaul: medicinal foods, herbs, and daily integrative therapies ranging from coffee enemas to intravenous curcumin and vitamin C.

As the months grew cooler and his body a little stronger, our morning meditations extended into short walks along the shore. One morning, he decided to go for a swim. I sat on the sand watching him, praying that his adventurous muscle memory—of surfing the Pipeline in Hawaii and climbing Kilimanjaro—would settle long enough for him to remember that his body was no longer what it once was.

The waves crashed around him as though he were a feather in a strong wind. I sat there, genuinely concerned I would have to call home and report that Danny hadn't died of cancer, but had been taken out by a wave.

The next three to four months were some of the most challenging times of our lives. His healing protocol was intensive and laborious, requiring everything we had, yet within that struggle, we also shared some very happy moments.

There was a depth between us at that time; everything felt riddled with uncertainty, sacred in its own way, and yet strangely joyful.

Continued in Part Three.

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Thank you for joining me here,

Jenni M

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Part 1 of a 3-part series.

When Ambition Turns Toward Spirit

“How long will it take me to become a Yogi?” My older brother Danny asked me, his face beaming with energy and enthusiasm despite his weakened physical condition.

“I don’t know,” I said, as an image of a well-respected book on Yoga drifted to my awareness. It was orange and had the face of a remarkable sage on it, one that looked like he could conquer the world, an angel and a warrior, woven into one. It was the kind of strength Danny understood.

“I think that the journey is as important as the destination. You should read the book Autobiography of a Yogi,” I continued. “Sure,” he nodded. That afternoon, I jumped online to order a copy. I had not read the book myself, but I somehow knew that it would answer his question.

What I didn’t know was that I, too, craved the answer, and that this question would eventually release old wounds and change everything I thought I knew about life.

I couldn’t yet see the depth of what it was pointing to, but I just felt an opening in my own heart, as though there was a song waiting to be sung.

My life was simple and quiet on the ocean shores of Casuarina, NSW, where I was living at that time. A small coastal town, still untouched by development and large crowds. Each morning, I would sit on the dunes to meditate, enjoying the warmth of the sunlight on my face and the sound of the waves rolling in and out. Rarely did I see another soul there.

A Spontaneous Visit

I got a call from Danny, asking if I would pick him up from the local aeroplane hangar and if he could stay the night at my place. It was a Friday night, I remember it clearly, he often did that type of spontaneous arrival. He was like a flash of light burning from here to there, around the country and the world, always filled with energy and enthusiasm.

He was not just loved by all, good-looking and charismatic by nature, but he was also gifted with a brilliant mind for business. A well-respected, self-made millionaire and CEO of a multi-national fashion brand, with over 100 retail stores. Danny’s lifestyle involved flying his private plane to visit his store managers nationwide, and from time to time, he would drop in to see me.

Although he looked well—fit and as lean as a young mother cheetah chasing her prey, he told me he was unwell, struggling with intense pain, and taking high doses of steroids to function. I was astonished at the layout of medicines before me when he showed me what he was taking just to get by. He said that he just needed to get through these next three months, as the business needed him, and then he would take time to heal. The best doctors in the world had failed, so far, to diagnose him.

As I showed him to his room—the spare room at the front of my house, with its old double bed, overflowing bookshelves, and the faint sound of street traffic—he looked around the room, the bed, and the bookshelves, and he gasped a big sigh of relief, as though he hadn’t taken a full, deep, long breath in a very long time.

I could feel the relief in his chest, muscles and bones, as though it were my own exhale. For a moment, something in him seemed to let go.

The next morning, he said to me, “I’d like to come back soon. I’ll come and stay for a while, maybe a few weeks or a month. Will that be okay?” “Yes,” I said, “of course. Anytime, you’re always welcome.”

Over the years, Danny’s lifestyle was very busy with business, first-class travel, and family. Although we were close in kinship, I didn’t see him too often. I travelled a lot, too, and there would be these spontaneous visits, or surprise linkages, either at our respective hometowns, or our paths crossing around the world.

As his health continued to decline rapidly, his desire to visit us again was deferred by medical appointments and the ongoing pressures of life and work.

The Cancer Diagnosis

It had been about three months since that visit—the one where he let out the deep sigh of relief—when I received a call from his wife. He had been diagnosed with Anaplastic Large-Cell Lymphoma, stage four cancer, a rare and aggressive kind. The pain throughout his body was from multiple tumours growing rampant.

Soon after this news, I spoke with Danny again; he could barely catch his breath to talk, and yet, his zest for life remained strong. We spoke about the cancer and what life after cancer might be like. “I’m coming to see you again soon,” he said. “I’ll stay at your place, I’ve just had some delays.” Then, with all sincerity, he asked me, how are you?

For a moment, I wondered if he had realised that he was the one with the diagnosis, not me. “I’m fine,” I answered. “I’m just worried about you.” I felt his energy draw back a little, like a fading of his light, and I added, “All I can do is pray for you, Danny. I pray that you will have the strength to make it through this.” His energy lifted again, and he confirmed once more, I’ll be up to stay with you soon.

He went in for his first round of chemotherapy a few days later.

At times like this, I told myself, it was better not to think too much and to let things unfold. I had the urge to go and see him in Melbourne, but something inside me said to wait. He was going in for chemotherapy. All I could really do was continue to pray.

I knew he was scared, and I knew he was confused, as were the circles of people around him. So I stayed back. I didn’t want to be another thorn in an already crowded bush.

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The Hospital Escape

For the next three weeks, our conversations were sparse and brief. I was mostly receiving updates from his wife and daughter. His white blood cells were now destroyed, and a gut infection during the chemotherapy put him into the ICU for almost three full weeks. I was getting ready to book my flights to visit, anticipating he would be out of the ICU soon.

I heard of his upcoming discharge, and I booked my flight for Monday morning. That weekend, I went to Byron Bay for an Ayahuasca medicine journey—I was looking for my own clarity and healing.

These ceremonies have rules for our protection and well-being. One of them is that we don’t use our phones or leave the land until 12 pm the following day, allowing time for the medicine to finish its work.

It was around 9 am, and I couldn’t help myself; given the circumstances, I wanted to check my phone. I snuck into my room, turned it on, and in that moment, phone in hand, it rang, Danny’s name on the screen.

“Hello,” I quietly responded.

He was gasping for air once again, trying to speak. “I’m out of the ICU. I heard you’re coming next week. Can I come back with you and stay at your place?”

“Yes, of course,” I responded.

He continued speaking. “As the nurse was moving me out of the ICU, she said that she was surprised I made it out alive. With how I responded to the chemotherapy and the infection I developed, she said, no one makes it out. If I stay for the second round,” he said, “I’m sure it will kill me.”

I had booked to stay in Melbourne for only a few days, but his discharge was delayed, and I missed my flight home.

On the day the doctor finally arrived, Danny told her he was leaving. His middle daughter and I were in the room. She was shocked and warned him, rather fiercely, that he was being irresponsible and would not survive without ongoing treatment. Despite her skilful persuasion, Danny wouldn't budge. He spoke with an unshakeable strength and held his ground until he had found his way out.

The moment the doctor left the room, he was on his laptop booking flights. His daughter asked if she could also come up for a few weeks to help. He booked the three tickets to the Gold Coast airport, QLD, near my home, just over the NSW border.

We packed my hire car with his belongings. I dropped the two of them off at their home and returned to my mother’s place. Later that evening, I received a message that I was to meet them at the airport in the morning, as his wife wanted to drive them there.

An Unspoken Divide

On arrival at the airport, I met Danny in his wheelchair, alongside two of his daughters, his son, and his wife. He had two daughters and a son living in Melbourne; his eldest daughter was living on the Gold Coast.

The air was as thick as clay, heavy with unspoken words, and only he and the daughter travelling with us acknowledged my presence.

His wife proceeded to the service counter to upgrade her husband’s and daughter’s seating to first class, leaving me in economy.

I smiled inwardly and felt happy to be going home.

I didn’t yet realise the depth of that divide.

Continued in Part Two.

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Thank you for joining me here,

Jenni M