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 It's endless because there is an endless number of people, companies, very, very eager to sell us their solution to the not enoughness.
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So we are just mired internally from our childhoods.
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And the only answer...
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 Welcome to the School of Greatness.
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My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur.
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And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness.
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Thanks for spending some time with me today.
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Now let the class begin.
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 Why do you think that so many people don't know how to love themselves or believe that they are whole and they need outside validation or they need to harm themselves or they need to do something externally to fill themselves up with this lack of wholeness?
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Beautiful.
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And interestingly, it goes right into my story in terms of
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 for me to give you something that isn't just theoretical in terms of what I know and how I know this.
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We are tragically in this culture.
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It's universal, and yet it's much more in the Western culture than it is in the East.
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I've lived in India now almost 26 years.
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And while they have a lot of other issues,
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 inability to see themselves as worthy, as full, as complete is not nearly as epidemic as it is here.
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And I think one of the reasons is that culturally here, we are really raised from early childhood to believe that who we are
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 is based on what we do.
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And it's, it's very innocuously seeming in the beginning.
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So for example, how many parents say to their kids, Oh, you're such a good boy.
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You cleaned up your room.
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You did your homework.
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You got an A on an exam.
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You did something that has made you a good boy.
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You didn't do it.
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Your room is a mess.
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 You are a bad boy, or even if it's not quite so verbal, you come home with an A on the exam.
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What do you get?
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Oh, come here, give mama a big hug and kiss.
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You get hugged, you sit on the lap, you're given milk and cookies or whatever, you know, food as love might, however that might manifest in your house, but you're given all of this love.
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 all of this embrace, all of this sense of you are worthy as a being.
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And then you come home with an F on an exam or an F on a report card.
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And even if you're fortunate enough not to live in a home where you get beaten,
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 or punished severely, you certainly don't get told, oh, come here, sit on mama's lap, you are wonderful.
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And so what we learn at a very, very young age, and then it just continues, is my value, my worthiness, my deservingness of love is based on what I do.
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And when I do it right,
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 I do it well, I succeed by whatever the standards are, I am worthy, worthy of love, worthy of occupying my place on mom's lap becomes planet Earth.
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I don't, I'm not worthy.
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So this ends up becoming this real,
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 dilemma that we face throughout our entire lives and of course then you bring in media and you bring in marketing and you bring in consumerism where it's entirely rooted in convincing you that who you are in the present moment
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 is not enough, and if you just owned the handbags that I produce, you too could feel and be whole and complete and worthy and see the way that this man or woman in my advertisement so fully embodies the fullness and completeness.
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And if you just had that handbag, that car,
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 you too could have that experience.
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But I first have to make you feel like you're not whole.
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You're not enough.
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You're lacking.
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You're lacking.
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Otherwise, why in the world would you spend your precious financial resources on yet another pair of jeans, car, handbag, mobile?
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So first, we get told, sometimes very subtly, sometimes not so subtly,
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 that we don't look right.
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We're not smart enough.
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We don't own the right things.
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We're not happy enough.
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Our relationships aren't good enough.
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We're not thin enough.
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We're not beautiful enough.
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We're not funny enough.
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We're not popular enough.
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We don't have enough followers on Facebook.
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It's endless because there is an endless number of people, companies, very, very eager to sell us their solution.
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 to the not enoughness.
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So we are just mired from internally from our childhoods, and then in this constant barrage from outside in not enoughness.
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And the only answer is to dive deeply.
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And this is the only thing that I found.
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I mean, when I came to India, and obviously we'll get more into the story later on,
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 When I came to India at the age of 25, I absolutely felt I was not enough, that there was something inherently wrong with me.
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Well, I had experienced sexual abuse as a child, and then abandonment, both by my biological father, and then severe eating disorders.
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So it's all rooted in, for me, there's something wrong with me.
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 I was abused, therefore I must have deserved it.
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It was sexual abuse, therefore my entire worthiness as a human being is rooted in this physical body.
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I was then abandoned by the same person, meaning not right, not enough.
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 And then the eating disorder is all about every minute.
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This physical body experience, sense of fullness or emptiness, depending on the moment, is not right and needs to be changed.
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It's empty, we need to fill it.
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Then it's full, we need to empty it.
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 Right.
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Not the right way though.
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Well, obviously not the right way.
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Nobody would say binging and purging is the right way to experience anything.
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It's not the natural processing of food, but the emptying of, yeah, the other way.
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But it was, it was the, the only way as a,
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 very privileged in so many ways, very blessed in so many ways, and deeply struggling in so many ways adolescent that I was.
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And by the time I went to India at 25, I had learned to manage this.
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So I had gotten to a point where I was managing my pain, managing the addiction, managing that.
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But it felt like I had to have
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 a very tight grip on it all.
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There was never a sense that I could trust myself, trust the universe.
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And so that was all rooted in this idea that who I was wasn't right, and that the universe wasn't right.
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Not only was I not right, it wasn't that there was this full hold.
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Everything's messed up, yeah.
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Everything was messed up.
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The universe is not a place I can trust, not a safe place, not a divine place.
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 I am not right physically, emotionally, psychologically, on any level, I'm not right.
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And then I had this experience of such powerful divine presence that was not separate from me.
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 but that was everywhere outside of me and in me and as me and there was no distinction between me and the outer world.
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And so it gave me in that moment and then over 25 years of continuing to experience it and do the work and deepen it, that awareness that the universe is perfect, is divine, and I am not separate from that.
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 And I think barring sitting around waiting for that type of spiritual experience, the only way for people to really have the awareness of how full they are is to stop identifying as the physical body in the story.
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It's the only way.
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What should we identify as?
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All of that which
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 is not constantly changing.
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So the physical body's constantly changing.
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Every minute, every moment.
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I mean, I'm sloughing skin cells all over your chair, your floor, your table.
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I mean, my body is just degenerating and regenerating in every moment.
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My thoughts, my emotions, my feelings, which are just
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 chemistry and electricity, patterns of chemical and electrical activity in my physical brain and the physical white and gray matter constantly changing.
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So if you say, well, what is it that's not changing?
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If I say, well, who I am cannot be that which is constantly changing.
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I cannot be the skin cells that have just dropped off onto your floor.
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 I cannot be the thought of anger or frustration that I had earlier today or a week ago because see, it's gone and I'm still here.
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What is it that isn't changing?
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And that's where we get to what is called soul, spirit, consciousness, love, truth, divinity.
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It doesn't matter what you call it.
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 But the experience of that, which isn't changing.
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There's a beautiful meditative practice called Niti Niti, which literally means not this, not this.
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And it's a practice where you literally close your eyes and you say, I am not the clothes that I'm wearing.
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Now, of course, everybody agrees with
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 Obviously we change our clothes.
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We don't change who we are.
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And then you go deeper.
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I'm not the skin beneath my clothes.
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Well, okay.
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I mean, we've all been sunburned and peeled and understood that who we are doesn't change when our skin peels.
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Well, I'm not the blood flowing beneath my skin because our blood cells regenerate.
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We donate blood.
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 We got blood transfusions and you just go deeper and deeper.
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I'm not my organs.
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Again, the cells of the organs regenerate, not every three minutes, but every seven, eight years.
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And then you get into, so you go through all the physical things that seem very clearly physical.
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 And as you go step by step, you don't let yourself go to the next step until fully there is a sense of yeah with every statement.
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So it's not just you say it because you watched this interview and I said that it's true.
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You wait until in you, you know it is true.
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And then you go to the next level.
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And then you go deeper.
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And then you get into what
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 we think of as not physical, but actually is, which again are our thoughts, our emotions.
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And you say, well, I'm not my anger because see, I still exist when I'm not angry.
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I'm not my thoughts because if I were my thoughts, then I would cease to exist at the end of each thought.
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And if I ceased to exist, then who would be the one having the next thought?
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 I'm not my feeling state.
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We now know neurologically, and they've done all kinds of fun experiments.
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I was a neuropsych student, so I love all the neuropsych research.
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They've done all of these studies where the brain doesn't actually have any pain sensors, so while you wouldn't remove someone's skull just for the fun of it,
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 If people are having their skull removed for some other purpose, having brain surgery or whatever, they can, exactly, they can do things where they literally with metal rods stimulate different parts of the brain and you can make people happy, sad, sexually excited, crying, angry, and we even know it
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 I mean, why is it that you feel differently when you are drunk or on drugs than you do when you're not?
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All that you've done is added chemicals.
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You haven't changed who you are.
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You've simply changed the chemistry of your brain.
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But your feeling state, your thoughts change because the chemistry
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 has changed.
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And all of that simply means, well, I'm not the chemistry in my brain.
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I mean, I am not the serotonin and norepinephrine and dopamine sitting in vesicles at the end of each neuron waiting to get ejected into a synapse, obviously.
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So if I'm not those, then I'm not my thoughts or my feelings or my emotions.
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 And you simply like peeling back the layers of an onion.
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I am not this, not this.
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And you finally reach a state where there is nothing left to not be.
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And it's a state that the Hindus refer to as everythingness.
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The Buddhists refer to as nothingness.
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But it's ultimately the same experience.
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 You could think about it as in, let's say that I had a glass jar of air.
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And then that glass jar broke.
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What do you have?
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Well... Everything or nothing.
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Exactly, right?
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So some people would say, well, oh my God, now I have nothing because I had this glass jar of air.
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It broke.
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Now I don't even have that.
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 Or you could say, well, you know, I used to only have the air in the jar.
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I have all of it, yeah.
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Now I've got it all either way.
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But you practice this, and it's such a powerful meditation because it reminds you, I'm not these things.
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Meaning, if I'm not my body, obviously I'm not my color, size, shape.
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 age, grey hair, wrinkles, bank account, career, relationships.
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I'm not any of that.
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And I think from my own personal experience and from what I've learned, immersed in spiritual India for 26 years, that that's actually the only way to really know
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 how worthy and full and whole you are is by realizing that there is no place that you end and the world begins.
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By recognizing that you are not separate from creation, that you are not separate from the universe.
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I mean, I can tell you things, but that's not actually going to benefit you.
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 unless you experience it yourself.
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It's like me reading off a menu or a recipe or telling you about lunch.
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It's not gonna benefit you till you eat it.
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So we have to have the actual experience of knowing.
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And the only way to really know that without judgment, I mean, otherwise if I say, well, I'm worthy, and you're like, well, I don't know, I'm not necessarily in agreement with that.
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The only way to really know it's true
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 is when you realize that you are one with the universe, with the divine, by whatever that means to you, however you conceive of the divine.
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By any religion, any spiritual tradition, path, concept, the divine has to be infinite.
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 I mean, if God lives in a box, then it's not God.
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It's something else that lives in a box.
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So to realize that you are not separate from that which is infinite.
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You know, the core mantra that's given so frequently to meditators is just so hum.
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So on the in-breath, hum on the out-breath.
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And it means I am that.
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 Capital T that, I am that.
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I am the creator, I am the creation, I am the universe, I am perfection, I am whole, I am that.
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That's beautiful.
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I think it's hard for people to
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 quiet themselves enough to even think that process, to practice that process of, I'm not my hair, I'm not my skin, I'm not this.
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I think most people are so concerned with the pressure or the stress of life or the responsibilities that a lot of people don't take that time, at least in this part of the world.
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 So what is something people can do if they don't live in India, if they have these stresses, to consistently remind themselves that they are infinite, that they are infinite love, life, truth?
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You've got to give it time.
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I mean, I'll give you also some practices throughout the day, but those only work when you've got a foundation.
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 And it takes some time, but here's the thing, Lewis, you, you know, we're all busy, but we are, we're running in the wrong direction.
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Mahatma Gandhi said so beautifully, he said, what is the point of running so fast when you're running in the wrong direction?
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We've got all of this speed, but we have no direction.
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I mean, it's like saying, I know I've got this broken leg.
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 but I don't have time to go to the hospital and actually get it set because I've got all these errands I have to do.
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You'd be like, well, you know, ultimately, in the long run, it's gonna be so much easier to run your errands when you can walk rather than be on crutches or with a walker or in a wheelchair.
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I mean, in the not so long term, not even talking about next life, talking about next month,
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 If you give it a few days now, you actually go to the hospital and you actually let them set the leg and you actually deal with maybe having a plaster on it for a little while or whatever it may be, what you're gonna find is that as you move through the rest of your life, everything is easier.
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But if you work yourself up into this illusion that you are too busy now,
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 to set that, like, you're just gonna suffer forever.
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So we've gotta devote some time, but it doesn't have to be, I'm not talking, I'm not saying you have to move to the caves or move to the Himalayas or go for a three-month silent retreat.
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I'm talking 15 minutes a day.
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I mean, really, 15 minutes a day.
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 Obviously, if you've got more, great.
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But it doesn't take that long.
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And the moment that you get a foundation, you know, when you build a house, it takes a long time to wire it.
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But once the house is wired, you don't have to rewire it.
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You just plug something in.
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Plug it on, yeah.
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Exactly.
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And that's what ends up happening.
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So I would say,
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 Make a commitment that you're gonna dedicate 15 minutes a day.
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If you can do it 15 minutes twice a day, nothing like it.
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And don't think of it as something that's really super complex, because I think that also scares people.
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They're like, well, until I've got time to go and to go to some meditation retreat for two weeks or three months and really learn, I'm not gonna start.
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 Meditation is an undoing of that which is not true.
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And it's really just a being with you.
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And it is, so it's not complex, it's not esoteric.
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It's just being with you, but you who is not your thoughts.
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 You who is not the constant fluctuation of what we call the mind stuff.
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And so, I mean, there's a million ways to do it, but the simplest and easiest way is just to watch the breath.
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Just sit.
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Just allow yourself to merge with your breath.
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Don't try to change it.
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Don't judge it.
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Don't analyze it.
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 Just become one with this flow of life force.
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And what happens that's so beautiful when you do that is you begin by realizing, okay, I am inhaling, I'm breathing in from outside into inside, and I'm exhaling from inside to outside.
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But as you do it, slowly, slowly,
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 That border and boundary between inside and outside dissolves.
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And there is no inner and there is no outer.
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And there just becomes breathing.
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And you've got this experience of that oneness.
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 with the world, and it may simply begin as losing the awareness of where your thigh ends and the pillow begins.
0
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It's not like you're gonna necessarily have that full experience on the first time, but simply being able to be present with the breath, and then using, for example, a mantra of just so hum, I am that.
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 Or it can be anything, doesn't matter, whatever works for you.
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It can be one, two.
0
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Nobody should feel like, well, I'm, you know, anti-religion, I'm anti Sanskrit, I'm anti everything.
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No problem.
0
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One, two.
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In, out.
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I mean, whatever you want to do, but just something to give the mind, something other than what's for breakfast, what am I going to wear?
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Who said what about whom?
0
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 And you just do it.
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And what it does is it connects you to a place within that isn't constantly changing.
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And then you do it again at the end of the day.
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And I like to think of it actually as a, as a putting on
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 of a wetsuit, because then of course the question becomes, well, OK, but then how do I live that through the day?
0
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So say you've got this deep, beautiful experience of meditation in the morning.
0
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But then you've got to go, and you've got to be the CEO of a company, or you've got to be the mail clerk, or you've got to be the window washer, or you've got to be someone's wife, or mother, or daughter-in-law, or whatever it may be.
0
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 you gotta play the role.
0
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And so I have a practice, a personal practice, and when I share, could call it the wetsuit practice.
0
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And it really is, it's a practice of putting on a wetsuit.
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Because what I love about wetsuits is they don't keep you dry.
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You're wet.
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You're wet.
0
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It allows in a tiny little bit of water that your body warms up
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 such that when you dive into the cold ocean you stay warm not because you are dry and disconnected from the ocean but because your energy has been able to not necessarily warm the entire ocean but warm enough of it that part which is inside your wetsuit
0
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 to enable you to stay warm in a cold ocean.
0
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And so I think about putting on a wetsuit in which your energetic being transmits love and peace into this wetsuit, and on days that you're feeling enervated,
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SPEAKER_04
 you know, not so full of energy, you may think of the wetsuit as really, really close to your body.
0
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And days that you're just feeling full of love and joy and peace and just this channel, well, you may think of the wetsuit as being, you know, 10 feet outside your body or 100 feet outside your body.
0
SPEAKER_04
But whatever it is, you move through the world with that such that
0
SPEAKER_04
 You've got a role that you're playing, you can think of it painted on the outside of your wetsuit, the CEO wetsuit, the policewoman wetsuit, the whatever it is wetsuit costume that you're wearing.
0
SPEAKER_04
And then at the end of the day, you take it off because you don't want to
1
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 You don't want to forget about who you are and what are the roles that you play.
1
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That you're not the CEO.
1
SPEAKER_00
You're not the window washer.
1
SPEAKER_00
It's a role you're playing.
1
SPEAKER_00
 It's the particular role that has been given to you at this particular... Season of life, yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
Exactly, exactly.
1
SPEAKER_00
This act in the play.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
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And so... It's not who you are, it's the role you're playing.
1
SPEAKER_00
Exactly, exactly.
1
SPEAKER_00
But you hold who you are in this wetsuit experience so that there is a costume, a role, recognized that you play it, but you don't forget
1
SPEAKER_00
 who you are.
1
SPEAKER_00
First, when you come home at night, then you take it off, you reconnect.
1
SPEAKER_00
Throughout the day, I love moments to remember.
1
SPEAKER_00
For example, before you eat anything, before you drink
1
SPEAKER_00
 before you go to the bathroom, before you do whatever it is that you may do a lot of times a day.
1
SPEAKER_00
Are you a chauffeur?
1
SPEAKER_00
Well, before you turn the key in the ignition, whatever you do, right before you do that, just take 30 seconds and reconnect.
1
SPEAKER_00
And whether you say it's a reconnection to gratitude, to love, to spirit, to the divine, whatever,
1
SPEAKER_00
 concept works for you, just reconnect.
1
SPEAKER_00
Tie it into things that you do all day long, and then just keep reconnecting.
1
SPEAKER_00
Reconnect.
1
SPEAKER_00
Set an alarm on your phone to buzz every half an hour, whatever it may be.
1
SPEAKER_00
But use the world
1
SPEAKER_00
 to remind you.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yes, reminders.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
It sounds like the first 25 years of your life, there was a lot of challenge, suffering, pain, adversity, masking to try to relieve the pain and not deal with the pain and suppressing of emotions, which turns into depression of emotions.
1
SPEAKER_01
Sounds like it.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
1
SPEAKER_01
When was the moment you realized you didn't have to suffer anymore?
1
SPEAKER_01
 And how long did that last for until you suffered again?
1
SPEAKER_00
What a great question.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I'll never forget being 19 years old and coming out of a hospital, actually it was on Olympic Boulevard,
1
SPEAKER_00
 And it was the second hospital I was in for bulimia.
1
SPEAKER_00
But I've never been someone who does anything half-heartedly.
1
SPEAKER_01
You were all in on it.
1
SPEAKER_00
So exactly.
1
SPEAKER_00
So if I was going to do bulimia.
1
SPEAKER_00
Extreme bulimia.
1
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
1
SPEAKER_00
Seriously.
1
SPEAKER_01
You were the champion of bulimics.
1
SPEAKER_00
 It was not about, I mean it began as about just you would eat and throw up, but it became for me actually about simply having something to throw up.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so I got to the point where I was literally drinking gallons of water a day just to have something to throw up.
1
SPEAKER_00
Really?
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
Wow.
1
SPEAKER_00
A lot of people think of bulimia as just sort of a
1
SPEAKER_00
 I eat and then I feel guilty or there's some complex about it and I don't want to gain weight and so I purge.
1
SPEAKER_00
For me, it was all about the getting out that which was inside.
1
SPEAKER_00
The idea that I somehow could get out pain and anger and fear and not enoughness on the ice cream or the cookies or whatever it was that I was throwing up.
1
SPEAKER_00
 And so I was in my second hospital.
1
SPEAKER_00
I ended up in three of them, but this was the second one.
1
SPEAKER_00
And it was a, it was actually an eating disorders unit.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I checked myself out after five, six days.
1
SPEAKER_00
And the director of the unit was adamant that I not leave.
1
SPEAKER_00
 And he, I remember sitting, I can still picture being there with him and my psychiatrist who agreed to let me out because the psychiatrist was a great guy who I just am so grateful for.
1
SPEAKER_00
Um, and so he enabled me to leave.
1
SPEAKER_00
I hated the place for a whole variety of reasons, but the head of the
1
SPEAKER_00
 center says to me as I'm signing myself out and literally saying things like, I realize this is against my best interests and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
1
SPEAKER_00
And he says, you will come crawling back here on your hands and knees.
1
SPEAKER_00
You are sick.
1
SPEAKER_00
You need help.
1
SPEAKER_00
And you will come crawling back on your hands and knees.
1
SPEAKER_02
Wow.
1
SPEAKER_00
 And I walked out 19 years old onto Olympic Boulevard knowing that there was no way in a million years I was ever going to crawl back there on my hands and knees, but also realizing I really needed help.
1
SPEAKER_01
And- It wasn't going to be there, but you needed help somewhere.
1
SPEAKER_00
Needed help deeply.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so over the next six years through a whole bunch of different
1
SPEAKER_00
 therapists, psychologists, an additional hospital, et cetera, et cetera.
1
SPEAKER_00
I had gotten to a point that I alluded to earlier where I was managing the situation.
1
SPEAKER_00
 I no longer was drinking gallons of water to have something to throw up.
1
SPEAKER_00
I had learned to keep my food down.
1
SPEAKER_00
But it was all about management.
1
SPEAKER_00
It was about planning, planning meals.
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean, there were whole systems of how you did this thing.
1
SPEAKER_00
Because what I was told was, this is always going to be on your shoulder.
1
SPEAKER_00
And this will be your thing.
1
SPEAKER_00
 always on your shoulder, you can learn to manage it, but you will always have this.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so I really believed that managing it was the very best that I was going to get to.
1
SPEAKER_00
And the truth was, everybody I knew was managing their lives.
1
SPEAKER_00
Not everyone was bulimic, but everyone had things that they were just managing.
1
SPEAKER_00
Whatever it was, people were just managing their lives.
1
SPEAKER_00
Some were managing better than others.
1
SPEAKER_00
 But the idea that you could actually be free, that that suffering could actually end, not simply be managed, was something that never occurred to me.
1
SPEAKER_01
Interesting.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
1
SPEAKER_00
With a death grip on my food, my relationships, my schoolwork, my mind, I could manage.
1
SPEAKER_00
But freedom?
1
SPEAKER_01
 Right.
1
SPEAKER_01
Obsessive control of our, yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean, there was no way in my mind that I actually could be free.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, life had to be controlled.
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean, it had to be controlled.
1
SPEAKER_00
And whether it was, you know, driving back home from halfway to my PhD program to make sure I had turned off the coffee pot, or whether it was my meals, or whether it was my relationship, life had to be controlled and managed because the universe couldn't be trusted.
1
SPEAKER_00
 because I couldn't be trusted.
1
SPEAKER_01
My parents couldn't be trusted, my friend, whatever.
1
SPEAKER_00
Whatever it was.
1
SPEAKER_00
What I had learned was from the abuse, from the abandonment, because it had happened at such a young, impressionable age, you know, my beloved friend, Dr. Bruce Lipton always talks about the first seven years of life being, you know, that the brainwaves are really
1
SPEAKER_00
 that as though you were under hypnosis.
1
SPEAKER_00
You were neurologically the most suggestible.
1
SPEAKER_00
So in those years, I had been told both indirectly as well as directly.
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean, when my father called and said he never wanted to see me again,
1
SPEAKER_00
 He literally, he spoke those words.
1
SPEAKER_00
I do not want to see you again.
1
SPEAKER_00
I never want to see you again.
1
SPEAKER_00
I had just turned eight.
1
SPEAKER_00
So what you learn from that is I'm not right and the universe can't be trusted.
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean, parents are those who are God, they're the universe.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so when they can't be trusted, they harm you, they abandon you.
1
SPEAKER_00
 Well, the universe couldn't be trusted.
1
SPEAKER_00
So to me, prior to going to India, suffering was just what life was, and you learned how to manage it.
1
SPEAKER_00
When I got to India and landed up in Rishikesh as the very first place we actually went, and I was standing on the banks of this river, the Ganga River,
1
SPEAKER_00
 here we call the Ganges, but the Ganga River.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I didn't even know that the river was holy.
1
SPEAKER_00
I didn't know anything.
1
SPEAKER_00
It was September 1996.
1
SPEAKER_00
There was no internet.
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean, we had email, but there was no Google.
1
SPEAKER_00
 We had a 500-page Lonely Planet guidebook that I opened in Delhi and said, Rishikesh.
1
SPEAKER_00
I can still picture it.
1
SPEAKER_00
I'd finally found a place that served actual filter coffee rather than Nescafe, for which I was feeling deeply excited.
1
SPEAKER_00
And sitting over a cup of filter coffee, open a 500-page book and say, Rishikesh, we got there.
1
SPEAKER_00
 And after putting bags down in the hotel, I said, I'm going to go put my feet in the river.
1
SPEAKER_00
I was always a nature person, mountains, forests, trees.
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I was never religious.
1
SPEAKER_00
I was never one of those who even say, well, I'm not religious, but I'm spiritual.
1
SPEAKER_00
 I was raised in a reformed Jewish family.
1
SPEAKER_00
I was bat mitzvahed, but it was much more about the culture, like it was about making my grandparents happy.
1
SPEAKER_00
It was never about God.
1
SPEAKER_00
It was about the ancestry, the history, my family.
1
SPEAKER_00
The rituals, yeah.
1
SPEAKER_03
Exactly.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I get down to this river because
1
SPEAKER_00
 I wanted to freshen up.
1
SPEAKER_00
I was hot, I was tired.
1
SPEAKER_00
We had traveled, it was hot, it was sweaty.
1
SPEAKER_00
We had had to carry all of our bags across the bridge because the driver had not told us there was a boat.
1
SPEAKER_00
He had just said, you cross bridge.
1
SPEAKER_00
Not mentioning, oh, there's this motor boat that actually will take you across.
1
SPEAKER_00
There's coolies, nothing.
1
SPEAKER_00
So we had carried our luggage all across the footbridge over the river.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I said, I'm gonna go put my feet in the river.
1
SPEAKER_00
 be with the river, be with the mountains, they had always been for me my place of spiritual refuge.
1
SPEAKER_00
And again, I never would have used those words because I never would have said I was a spiritual person.
1
SPEAKER_00
But when I was in the Bay Area, when I was at Stanford, when I was in Palo Alto,
1
SPEAKER_00
 Muir Woods, the Redwoods, the whole sort of span from Big Sur up to the Mendocino Coast was the only place you would find me on weekends and holidays.
1
SPEAKER_00
All I wanted to do was be in the forest.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I come down to the river and I get to the banks of this river, thinking I'm just going to take off my shoes and freshen up.
1
SPEAKER_00
 And suddenly it was like a veil was pulled off.
1
SPEAKER_00
Not only my eyes, but pulled off of every way of seeing and knowing that I had.
1
SPEAKER_00
I, I could see not just visually, but with every way of seeing and knowing that I had the presence of the divine.
1
SPEAKER_00
Everything I saw was divine.
1
SPEAKER_00
It began with the sacred river.
1
SPEAKER_00
 But then it stayed as I moved my head, and now I'm looking at steps, and I'm looking at children, and I'm looking at a telephone pole, and it didn't matter what I was looking at.
1
SPEAKER_00
The background kept changing.
1
SPEAKER_00
But the foreground of just this divine presence was in everything.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I was not separate from that.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I burst into tears.
1
SPEAKER_00
 I mean, just sobbing, sobbing, not tears of sadness, but also not tears of happiness.
1
SPEAKER_00
It wasn't like, oh my God, I'm so happy I'm crying.
1
SPEAKER_00
It was just tears of the truth.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I would say that was the first moment that I realized experientially
1
SPEAKER_00
 And intellectually, even though at the moment my entire intellect had been just turned to cream cheese.
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean, there was no intellect.
1
SPEAKER_00
I was nonverbal.
1
SPEAKER_00
I couldn't put together a sentence for weeks.
1
SPEAKER_00
Nonetheless, I was aware in whatever cognitive capacity that I had at that time that I was free.
1
SPEAKER_00
And then
1
SPEAKER_00
 You ask, and when did suffering again begin?
1
SPEAKER_00
In earnest, I mean, there were moments, but in earnest, it began about, I don't know, eight, nine, 12 months-ish later.
1
SPEAKER_00
I had already moved to India.
1
SPEAKER_01
You went home to the US, then came back.
1
SPEAKER_00
Exactly, exactly, exactly.
1
SPEAKER_00
 And I mean, I knew from that moment on the banks of the Ganga that that's where I was meant to stay.
1
SPEAKER_00
I was meant to be there.
1
SPEAKER_00
Why?
1
SPEAKER_00
How?
1
SPEAKER_00
Where?
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I didn't even know I was going to live at Paramarth Niketan Ashram where I now live.
1
SPEAKER_00
I had not even been in the ashram.
1
SPEAKER_00
I only discovered the ashram about a few days later when
1
SPEAKER_00
 I found it as a much nicer pathway to get from the hotel to the banks of the river.
1
SPEAKER_00
They had sent me, originally the guys at the hotel desk had sent me down this alleyway, which, you know, it's an Indian alleyway.
1
SPEAKER_00
It's not very aesthetically pleasing.
1
SPEAKER_01
Garden and temple.
1
SPEAKER_01
Exactly.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I discovered one day that there was this parallel path.
1
SPEAKER_00
 which was full of gardens and temples and it was exquisite and it was clean.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so Parmarth Nikathon became simply my pathway.
1
SPEAKER_00
And as I was walking through it one day, I heard a voice and the voice said, you must stay here.
1
SPEAKER_00
Now, I was not a mystic.
1
SPEAKER_00
 I was a scientist, I was an academic.
1
SPEAKER_00
I did not hear voices.
1
SPEAKER_00
The only people in my entire frame of reference who heard voices other than Joan of Arc were schizophrenics.
1
SPEAKER_00
And since I knew I wasn't Joan of Arc, and I really hoped I was not schizophrenic, I did what any self-respecting scientist would do, which was I ignored the voice.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I kept walking.
1
SPEAKER_00
 And about 30 seconds later, I heard it again.
1
SPEAKER_00
And again, I turned, and if there was a voice, somebody must have spoken.
1
SPEAKER_00
And there was no one, whole pathway, no one.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I was just about to ignore it for the second time when I remembered a vow that I had taken on the airplane.
1
SPEAKER_00
As we flew somewhere over Southeast Asia between
1
SPEAKER_00
 San Francisco and Delhi over the Pacific.
1
SPEAKER_00
I had a moment in which I said to myself, this makes no sense.
1
SPEAKER_00
I was on an airplane to India to a place I knew nothing about.
1
SPEAKER_00
I had no interest in going.
1
SPEAKER_00
My husband was on a spiritual quest.
1
SPEAKER_00
I was not.
1
SPEAKER_00
The only redeemable factor in my mind about India, the only thing I knew about
1
SPEAKER_00
 was that it made great vegetarian food.
1
SPEAKER_00
I was a staunch, ardent, what my friends called vegetarist.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so I knew that eating in India was gonna be really easy.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so I had agreed to go.
1
SPEAKER_00
But somewhere over, somewhere in Southeast Asia, I had this moment of, this makes no sense.
1
SPEAKER_00
I was never a wanderer.
1
SPEAKER_00
 when I was a straight-A student.
1
SPEAKER_00
I had gone through Stanford undergrad in three years instead of four years.
1
SPEAKER_00
I was taking 21 units a quarter instead of 15 in my PhD program.
1
SPEAKER_00
And acing it all.
1
SPEAKER_00
And acing it all, exactly.
1
SPEAKER_00
I was not an aimless wanderer.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so the idea that here I was going to a country
1
SPEAKER_00
 that I had no interest in going to simply because I could get good vegetarian food when I could get it on my corner.
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I was living in the San Francisco Bay Area.
1
SPEAKER_00
Every corner has good Indian vegetarian food.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so I said to myself, okay, there's a reason you're going and you just don't know what it is.
1
SPEAKER_00
 And even though I wasn't religious or spiritual, I always had had this very deep belief in what I used to call just the capital P planner.
1
SPEAKER_00
It seemed to me that the universe itself, the simply scientific workings of the universe, seeds becoming trees and caterpillars becoming butterflies and just everything doing its thing.
1
SPEAKER_00
 our bodies, the way that we digest, the way that we breathe.
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean, it just, it seemed to me too perfect to be random.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I always had believed in a capital P planner and therefore a capital P plan, like somebody, something knew how to make this whole digestive system thing work and knew how to make seeds become trees that then give us apples.
1
SPEAKER_00
 And so on the plane, I took this vow that I was just gonna keep my heart open.
1
SPEAKER_00
That there was a reason I was going, I didn't know what it was, the capital P planner knew, and if I just kept my heart open, it would reveal itself.
1
SPEAKER_00
So in that moment, when I had heard the voice for the second time, and I was just about to ignore it, I remembered my vow.
1
SPEAKER_01
 Keep your heart open.
1
SPEAKER_00
Keep my heart open.
1
SPEAKER_00
I thought, all right, so be it.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I went in and said, I want to stay.
1
SPEAKER_00
And it's a long story.
1
SPEAKER_00
I tell all of it in the book.
1
SPEAKER_00
But basically, I needed to wait a week.
1
SPEAKER_00
I needed to wait for Swamiji, the president of the ashram, to return.
1
SPEAKER_00
 and grant me permission to stay at the ashram.
1
SPEAKER_00
And a lot of things have changed in 25 years.
1
SPEAKER_00
Now you just send an email and you get a room.
1
SPEAKER_00
Literally, I mean, now you just fill out a form online and you get a room.
1
SPEAKER_00
But at that time, because it's a very traditional Vedic lineage, you didn't just wander in off the streets as a single foreign female and say, I want a room.
1
SPEAKER_00
I end up, finally,
1
SPEAKER_00
 staying.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I went back three months in.
1
SPEAKER_00
There's so much.
1
SPEAKER_00
We're doing the story in a very fun way.
1
SPEAKER_00
But I had all of these incredible experiences there of just ecstasy and expansion.
1
SPEAKER_00
But going back to the question of suffering, on the third or fourth day of being
1
SPEAKER_01
 after you came home, then come back.
1
SPEAKER_00
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
1
SPEAKER_00
Third or fourth day of being there in the very beginning.
1
SPEAKER_00
I wait a week.
1
SPEAKER_00
Swami Ji, the president, who I didn't know at the time, was this very renowned, very revered, majorly famous spiritual leader, master.
1
SPEAKER_00
He comes back and he, of course, gives me permission to stay.
1
SPEAKER_00
But when I meet him,
1
SPEAKER_00
 I was palpably aware that I was in the presence of a being who was different, energetically different than any being I'd ever been in their presence before.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I knew that that was where I was meant to stay.
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I had earlier known a week earlier that I was meant to be on the banks of the Ganga, but where, how, I didn't know anything.
1
SPEAKER_00
 Once I met him, I realized, oh, okay, it's here.
1
SPEAKER_00
It's in this ashram.
1
SPEAKER_00
It's with him that I meant to be.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I stay, my husband ends up traveling all over.
1
SPEAKER_00
He was.
1
SPEAKER_00
 not interest, much to my dismay actually, I thought I had found the right ashram and guru for him, but he was not interested in anything that I had found.
1
SPEAKER_00
So he needed to forge his own path.
1
SPEAKER_00
So he was off traveling and after a few days, I asked Swamiji about fear.
1
SPEAKER_00
 simply because it was the time of Darshan where he met people.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I was not, thankfully at that time, full of questions.
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I was still in this ecstasy.
1
SPEAKER_00
But here we were one day where there was still time left on his hour and people were done and had gone.
1
SPEAKER_00
And he turns to me and he says, yes.
1
SPEAKER_00
 And so I asked him about fear and he said, you fear because you don't trust.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I then gave him my story.
1
SPEAKER_00
It's a good story.
1
SPEAKER_00
Here's why I don't trust.
1
SPEAKER_00
I was abused.
1
SPEAKER_00
I was abandoned.
1
SPEAKER_00
Here's what happened to me.
1
SPEAKER_01
People let me down.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean, how can, how can I possibly trust when this is the very foundation of what I had experienced.
1
SPEAKER_00
 And it was a story that had always gotten me a lot of sympathy.
1
SPEAKER_00
Oh, you poor thing.
1
SPEAKER_00
You know, God, it's amazing that you're doing so well anyway.
1
SPEAKER_01
You're managing it so well.
1
SPEAKER_00
You're managing exactly, exactly.
1
SPEAKER_00
You're managing.
1
SPEAKER_00
You're doing so great.
1
SPEAKER_00
You're managing.
1
SPEAKER_00
And he looks at me and he says, are you going to take this to the grave?
1
SPEAKER_01
This pain, this story.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, the whole thing.
1
SPEAKER_00
Are you going to take it to the grave?
1
SPEAKER_00
 And I was like, no.
1
SPEAKER_00
He says, are you gonna let it go on your deathbed?
1
SPEAKER_00
Now remember, I was 25.
1
SPEAKER_00
I said, God, no.
1
SPEAKER_00
He said, how about a week before you die?
1
SPEAKER_00
How about a month before you die?
1
SPEAKER_00
And I said, God, no, Swamiji, I mean, I'm in therapy, I'm in process, I'm learning to,
1
SPEAKER_00
 He'll, and he looks at me and he says, you're waiting for someone to draw the line for you.
1
SPEAKER_00
You're waiting for someone to come in and say, you can be done.
1
SPEAKER_00
He said, no one will.
1
SPEAKER_00
He said, it's up to you.
1
SPEAKER_00
You can take this pain to the grave.
1
SPEAKER_00
You can let it go on your deathbed.
1
SPEAKER_00
 You can let it go a month or a week before you die, or you can let it go tonight.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, tonight?
1
SPEAKER_00
And he said, yeah, we have this beautiful lighting ceremony on the banks of the river.
1
SPEAKER_00
It's called the arati.
1
SPEAKER_00
He said, I'll have them give you one of the oil lamps.
1
SPEAKER_00
You wave the oil lamp.
1
SPEAKER_00
 And then he said, after the ceremony, I want you to go and stand in Ganga, stand in the river, hold water in your hands, and offer all of your pain into the water, and then offer that water back into the river.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I spent that entire afternoon
1
SPEAKER_00
 In this, I mean, it's so embarrassing to admit it almost 26 years later, but in this deeply arrogant, condescending, Western-centric, over-educated, over-indoctrinated mindset,
1
SPEAKER_00
 of, oh, just give it to the river, sure, sure.
1
SPEAKER_00
You know, just as though it were an apple core, rather than all of those- 25 years of trauma.
1
SPEAKER_00
Of pain, exactly.
1
SPEAKER_00
Suffering.
1
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
1
SPEAKER_01
I'll just- How can I just simply let it all go?
1
SPEAKER_00
I'll just give it to the river, sure.
1
SPEAKER_00
Isn't that quaint?
1
SPEAKER_00
Isn't that sweet?
1
SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I just, I mean, and I used to keep a journal.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I've actually got journal entries that are just,
1
SPEAKER_00
 mortifying to read because I was so mired in this arrogance.
1
SPEAKER_00
And around sunset time, I had a moment that I will be so grateful for forever in which I said, all right, look, obviously it's not going to work.
1
SPEAKER_00
Obviously rivers do not sweep away people's problems, but
1
SPEAKER_00
 You've got this whole network back at home.
1
SPEAKER_00
You've got people who understand process.
1
SPEAKER_00
You'll go back to it.
1
SPEAKER_00
Right now you're here.
1
SPEAKER_00
And simply out of respect for the being who gave you the instruction, a being who is revered.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
Give it a try.
1
SPEAKER_00
Just do it sincerely.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
 Sincerely was my adverb.
1
SPEAKER_00
It's not gonna work, but I'm just gonna do it sincerely.
1
SPEAKER_00
I will not mock it.
1
SPEAKER_00
I don't do things half-heartedly anyway.
1
SPEAKER_00
I'm just gonna try it.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so I do, and I stand in that river, and I pray, and I cry, and I pray, and I cry, and I pull
2
SPEAKER_02
 every memory that I had of pain, of trauma, and I offered it into the water that was in my hands until I could see my biological father's face in front of me and forgive him.
2
SPEAKER_02
 and see him as a haunted man rather than a monster.
2
SPEAKER_02
And I walked out of the river.
2
SPEAKER_02
I have no idea how long I stood there.
2
SPEAKER_02
It was a very, very, very long time.
2
SPEAKER_02
And what I didn't realize at the time, because it had not been part of the explicit instructions, although obviously Swamiji knew it, I just didn't realize it, was not only
2
SPEAKER_02
 had I given the pain to the river, but I had given the whole identification, you had used the word identification earlier.
2
SPEAKER_02
He hadn't said that, I hadn't thought that, but that was exactly what happened.
2
SPEAKER_00
The old identity.
2
SPEAKER_02
The whole idea of I am a victim of, or survivor of, this is my story,
2
SPEAKER_02
 that ended up being given as well.
2
SPEAKER_00
And... What happens when we hold on to the victim, pain, trauma story versus when we let the identity of victim, pain, trauma go?
2
SPEAKER_02
Well, that's the difference between being free and being stuck.
2
SPEAKER_02
If I've got an identity as one who was harmed,
2
SPEAKER_02
 Even if I say I'm no longer living in the emotional reality of pain and anger, but nonetheless, I've got the story of it, well then I can never be free.
2
SPEAKER_02
I mean, those are then the boundaries and the borders of what is possible in my life.
2
SPEAKER_02
I am the one who was harmed, betrayed, lied, cheated, got the short end of the stick, whatever our story may be.
2
SPEAKER_00
 So how do you tell your story now?
2
SPEAKER_00
So that it doesn't become something that you were identified as, but this was an older identity.
2
SPEAKER_00
How do you phrase it?
2
SPEAKER_00
Because language is powerful for the mind and the heart.
2
SPEAKER_00
How do you do that?
2
SPEAKER_02
 So that's really interesting because... So you tell your story in the book and you're sharing your story now.
2
SPEAKER_02
And for 25 years, I hadn't.
2
SPEAKER_02
I mean, that's why people who know me were so shocked to read the book because people were like, oh my God, I had no idea.
2
SPEAKER_02
And there were people who felt, felt as though I had been less than honest.
2
SPEAKER_00
 We're telling the full story.
2
SPEAKER_02
That I hadn't for 25 years said, oh, and by the way, this is what I had experienced.
2
SPEAKER_02
And the reason that I had not was it no longer was my story.
2
SPEAKER_02
 Now, I have to just go back for a moment, which was I spent many, many, many months after that happened, trying to find it again, because in the really interesting workings of my own brain and psyche, I was just convinced that there was no way that had happened and that I had simply repressed it, suppressed it, locked it off into some
2
SPEAKER_02
 corner of my dissociating mind and that it was still there.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, after you let it go in the river?
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_02
And I and I walked out in this experience of such freedom and such joy.
2
SPEAKER_02
And over the next several months, I found myself trying to evoke feelings of sadness and pain, anger, anger.
2
SPEAKER_02
And could I get myself to want to binge and purge?
2
SPEAKER_02
Could I feel like a victim?
2
SPEAKER_02
 and I couldn't do it.
2
SPEAKER_02
But it took months for me to finally stop trying to prove to my lowercase S self that I hadn't just locked away this pain.
2
SPEAKER_02
Because we're so indoctrinated, so indoctrinated into this is how it is, you are sick, you are a victim, you are an addict, you are,
2
SPEAKER_02
 suffering, that the idea of freedom was so inconceivable to me that I couldn't, you know, my lowercase S self couldn't easily accept that it had happened.
2
SPEAKER_02
And my capital S self was just full of such love and compassion.
2
SPEAKER_02
And I remember these internal experiences of sort of the,
2
SPEAKER_02
 uppercase S self in me being like, sure, no problem.
2
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, you want to remember that.
2
SPEAKER_02
Sure, sure.
2
SPEAKER_02
You will go there again.
2
SPEAKER_02
No problem.
2
SPEAKER_02
Cause like, if you need to do that to prove to yourself that it doesn't trigger you.
2
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
2
SPEAKER_00
So how do we tell our story?
2
SPEAKER_02
Right.
2
SPEAKER_02
So I hadn't told the story for 25 years.
2
SPEAKER_02
I finally told it through the book.
2
SPEAKER_02
 In a way in which it's a telling of a story, I did try to get back in touch with the emotion.
2
SPEAKER_02
Because see, even though it's no longer on a deep level, my emotion, empathically,
2
SPEAKER_02
 I can still connect to the young girl to whom that happened.
2
SPEAKER_02
It's not like she has ceased to exist.
2
SPEAKER_02
It's just, she's not me.
2
SPEAKER_00
You've outgrown her.
2
SPEAKER_00
But is she still inside of you?
2
SPEAKER_00
Is there a young 5, 7, 8, 10 year old inside of you that had an experience?
2
SPEAKER_02
Inside is such an interesting question because
2
SPEAKER_02
 When you say inside, can I, can I connect with her empathically, deeply in a way that enables me to write a book full of what she was feeling?
2
SPEAKER_02
Absolutely.
2
SPEAKER_02
Can I tap in tune in reconnect?
2
SPEAKER_02
Absolutely.
2
SPEAKER_02
It has not become unavailable to me, but it no longer is.
2
SPEAKER_02
 the way that I self-identify, the way I move through the world, it no longer is part of my experience of either lowercase S self or capital S self.
2
SPEAKER_02
So I tell the story as her, but then as her, as she who has morphed into me, exactly.
2
SPEAKER_02
And the reason that I did tell the story
2
SPEAKER_02
 finally was because I, and I did it very consciously because I realized, I mean, to me, if you had asked me 15 years ago, I would have said, or yeah, even 10 years ago before I started writing it, are you ever going to share this?
2
SPEAKER_02
I would have said, well, if someone ever specifically asked me, I've never lied about it, I would never lie.
2
SPEAKER_02
If someone were going through it and said, you know, have you ever, I certainly would open up and share.
2
SPEAKER_02
 because it's not how I identify, it's just not how I move through the world, and so it's not, hi, nice to meet you, I'm Sadhvi Bhagwati Saraswati, oh, and by the way, this is what happened in the first 10 years of my life.
2
SPEAKER_02
But I realized, I realized something really deep and important, which was that there seemed to be this divide between spirituality and humanity, and that those who are spiritual,
2
SPEAKER_02
 seemed to be expected to be not human, as in thou shalt not be hungry, thirsty, tired, upset, frustrated, sexually aroused, whatever it may be, angry.
2
SPEAKER_02
And those who are any of those things
2
SPEAKER_02
 are not yet really spiritual or worse, disqualified from being spiritual.
2
SPEAKER_02
And that yes, we have beings, my guru is one of them, who really came out of the womb like this.
2
SPEAKER_02
So there are beings like this and their stories.
2
SPEAKER_02
And of course, before I wrote my memoir,
2
SPEAKER_02
 I actually wrote his biography 10 years ago.
2
SPEAKER_02
And it's inspiring, and it's beautiful.
2
SPEAKER_02
But yet, what it doesn't do is make us feel like, oh, I can do that.
2
SPEAKER_02
He did it, so I can do it.
2
SPEAKER_02
It's awe-inspiring.
2
SPEAKER_02
It makes you want to bow at his feet and ask for blessings.
2
SPEAKER_02
 but it doesn't make you feel like, oh yeah, all right, all right, I can do that.
2
SPEAKER_02
And that it started to seem like we were in a place where I was having so many people preface their questions to me.
2
SPEAKER_02
I lead something called satsang, which is a, it literally means in the presence of truth.
2
SPEAKER_02
 but it manifests more as a spiritual question and answer session.
2
SPEAKER_02
People ask questions and I serve as a vehicle, a channel through which answers come.
2
SPEAKER_02
I'm acutely aware it's not my knowledge or my wisdom, but it's coming through me.
2
SPEAKER_02
And people started to preface questions with, well, I know that you would never think like this, but,
2
SPEAKER_02
 Or, I know I could never be as pure as you are, but... And I realized, oh my God, not only is this horribly incorrect, factually not true, but it's really detrimental to their spiritual paths that as long as they can
2
SPEAKER_02
 keep me on a pedestal and feel like I'm cut from some different cloth.
2
SPEAKER_02
It prevents them from having to step up to the plate of their own spiritual life.
2
SPEAKER_00
Their higher self, yeah.
2
SPEAKER_02
Exactly.
2
SPEAKER_02
And that I had a story that was not someone who came out of the womb enlightened, that was not someone who was not interested in boys or girls or sports or parties or
2
SPEAKER_02
 alcohol or drugs or sex or anything.
2
SPEAKER_02
And I realized that all of these people really had this vision of me as this sort of angel virgin who descended from the Stanford clouds onto the banks of Ganga.
2
SPEAKER_02
And that not only wasn't it true, but it was detrimental to their spiritual path because they needed to know
2
SPEAKER_02
 that if I did it, so could they.
2
SPEAKER_02
And that really became the whole point of the book is Hollywood to the Himalayas is physically my journey, but for all of the people reading it, it's not about you having to move from Hollywood to the Himalayas.
2
SPEAKER_02
It's about a shift in how you think from what I call the Hollywood way of thinking, which is,
2
SPEAKER_02
 You are a body.
2
SPEAKER_02
And this is the answer to the question of how do we let go of our stories.
2
SPEAKER_02
Our stories are this Hollywood way of thinking.
2
SPEAKER_02
You are your body.
2
SPEAKER_02
It's size, it's shape, it's color, it's age, it's race, it's religion, it's socioeconomic status, it's ethnic background, it's gender identity, it's sexual orientation, what's in its bank account.
2
SPEAKER_02
I mean, the whole shebang.
2
SPEAKER_02
 is the Hollywood way of thinking, which leads to suffering because then we are never enough.
2
SPEAKER_02
There's always some way in which we are not rich, successful, happy, funny, thin, healthy enough compared to
2
SPEAKER_02
 the visions we're being given on social media or marketing or those we see around us.
2
SPEAKER_02
So it's a constant sense of not enoughness, a constant sense of grabbing.
2
SPEAKER_02
I want more.
2
SPEAKER_02
I'm yearning.
2
SPEAKER_02
I'm never satisfied.
2
SPEAKER_02
 or pushing away, what in Sanskrit we speak about as rag and dwish, the likes and dislikes, that which I'm pulling toward me, that which I'm pushing away, the yearnings and aversions, you could say, in which we suffer.
2
SPEAKER_02
That's the Hollywood way of thinking.
2
SPEAKER_02
You are this story.
2
SPEAKER_02
And then there's the Himalayan way of thinking, which says, you've got a body.
2
SPEAKER_02
 And it's a temple.
2
SPEAKER_02
We say, it means your body is a temple.
2
SPEAKER_02
Take care of it.
2
SPEAKER_02
Love it.
2
SPEAKER_02
Honor it.
2
SPEAKER_02
Respect it.
2
SPEAKER_02
But you're not it.
2
SPEAKER_02
It's a vehicle.
2
SPEAKER_02
 And so when we shift that mindset, and that's what I, through telling my story and how I learn all of the lessons, because of course, after the moment of ecstasy, there's a lot of lessons left to learn.
2
SPEAKER_02
I actually stopped halfway through a story earlier somewhere on when the suffering had come back
2
SPEAKER_02
 where someone had said something that hurt my feelings.
2
SPEAKER_02
And I went into Swamiji all wrapped up in, I've been insulted and I've been hurt and who I am isn't right.
2
SPEAKER_02
And he looks at me and he says, you are the stupidest smart person I know.
2
SPEAKER_02
 stupidest smart person I know.
2
SPEAKER_02
He says, you know, how is it that someone as smart, as in you've been so educated, you've got these degrees from the best institutions, how can you be so stupid?
2
SPEAKER_02
And he didn't mean it in a derogatory, the core of who you are is wrong.
2
SPEAKER_02
 And I had been there long enough to know him and to take it as the slap awake rather than the slap of you are wrong.
2
SPEAKER_02
It was literally just a slap awake, like wake up, come back to self.
2
SPEAKER_02
Who is it who's hurt?
2
SPEAKER_02
 Who is it who has forgotten who you are that suddenly what this person in their ego, in their arrogance, in their karmic drama has said about you, suddenly that's your story?
2
SPEAKER_02
You stood in Ganga and you let go the anger and the pain.
2
SPEAKER_02
 of what had been done to you by your father's anger and ego and ignorance and karmic drama.
2
SPEAKER_02
And now here you are allowing yourself to get wrapped up in someone else's karmic drama.
2
SPEAKER_02
Here you are ready to sacrifice your freedom, your joy, your truth,
2
SPEAKER_02
 on the altar of someone else's karmic drama.
2
SPEAKER_02
They're angry, they're frustrated, they're jealous, they're in the midst of whatever karmic drama throws they are working through.
2
SPEAKER_00
You don't even take it on.
2
SPEAKER_02
Why would you take that on?
2
SPEAKER_02
Why would you offer your most precious thing, your freedom,
2
SPEAKER_02
 your truth on this altar of their suffering.
2
SPEAKER_02
Because of course people only bring suffering to others when they're suffering themselves.
2
SPEAKER_00
So how do you manage, I don't know if manage is the right word, but how do you navigate someone else's victim, suffering state of being or whatever drama, whatever you want to call it,
2
SPEAKER_00
 they're in a state of suffering or in a lack of higher self-ness and they're allowing the stresses of the world to consume them.
2
SPEAKER_00
How can we as individuals not take it on while also be present and have compassion and protect our energy, I guess, or our knowingness of who we are?
2
SPEAKER_02
 Beautiful.
2
SPEAKER_02
Well, it depends really on your relationship with that person.
2
SPEAKER_02
Because we have different duties, what we would call Dharma.
2
SPEAKER_02
We have different Dharmic responsibilities to different people.
2
SPEAKER_02
So, let's just take two different
2
SPEAKER_00
 A stranger maybe?
2
SPEAKER_02
Exactly.
2
SPEAKER_02
We'll call them those, well, exactly.
2
SPEAKER_00
Those that we know, those we don't know.
2
SPEAKER_02
Those I would say we have a choice about.
2
SPEAKER_02
Those we don't have a choice.
2
SPEAKER_02
And when I say don't have a choice, I mean we've already made a higher choice, which is I want to be married to you.
2
SPEAKER_02
 or I want to stay your friend.
2
SPEAKER_02
I've already made a higher choice that now renders me without a choice in the present moment because I'm not gonna divorce you over it.
2
SPEAKER_02
Compared to those we really do have a choice over, which is the person shouting on the other side of the road and I can just cross and walk on the other street.
2
SPEAKER_02
So for those with whom we do have a choice,
2
SPEAKER_02
 the equivalent of those who are just shouting.
2
SPEAKER_02
Send them love and compassion from afar.
2
SPEAKER_02
Protect your energy.
2
SPEAKER_02
Protect yourself.
2
SPEAKER_02
Say a prayer for them.
2
SPEAKER_02
Send them love from your heart.
2
SPEAKER_02
May they no longer suffer.
2
SPEAKER_02
May they find joy.
2
SPEAKER_02
May they find peace.
2
SPEAKER_02
May they find health.
2
SPEAKER_02
 But recognizing that in each of our individual very human capacities, we don't actually have the ability to take on the suffering of every single human being on the planet.
2
SPEAKER_02
And therefore we have to make choices.
2
SPEAKER_02
And so those about whom you have a choice,
2
SPEAKER_02
 Just let it go.
2
SPEAKER_02
You just let it go.
2
SPEAKER_02
You're not gonna take it home with you.
2
SPEAKER_02
The guy on the road who clearly was drunk on drugs, suffering a mental breakdown, screamed something at you, it's not gonna ruin your dinner.
2
SPEAKER_02
You're not gonna need therapy about it.
2
SPEAKER_02
Then it comes to those who are close to us.
2
SPEAKER_02
And depending on the relationship, several things happen.
2
SPEAKER_02
First of all, we tend to take it very personally.
2
SPEAKER_02
 We believe it.
2
SPEAKER_02
And so we get into a very defensive standpoint of I need to prove to you that what you have said is not true.
2
SPEAKER_02
We start arguing on merit.
2
SPEAKER_02
When merit has actually very little to do with it.
2
SPEAKER_02
We can only share that which we have.
2
SPEAKER_02
And if what I'm sharing is anger, misery, pain, suffering,
2
SPEAKER_02
 And you know that because if in my presence you are feeling pain and suffering, it means I'm sharing that with you in the moment.
2
SPEAKER_02
You need to realize that that's what that person's experiencing and not take it on as though it were an actual merit-based analysis of someone who had your highest
2
SPEAKER_02
 Being as their singular agenda in the moment, I mean, when someone is yelling and screaming at you or metaphorically vomiting their current state of dis-ease onto you, they're not doing it because they've got your highest good as their highest goal in the moment.
2
SPEAKER_02
 They're doing it because they are in a state of dis-ease in that moment.
2
SPEAKER_02
It's like, how do you deal with a loved one who's got COVID?
2
SPEAKER_02
Well, you don't divorce them, but you also don't crawl into bed with them.
2
SPEAKER_01
And you take care of them.
2
SPEAKER_02
 as fully as you possibly can while maintaining your social distance, while having a mask or doing whatever it is that you need to do.
2
SPEAKER_02
To protect your peace too.
2
SPEAKER_02
To realize, well, it's not gonna serve anybody if I end up sick also.
2
SPEAKER_00
If I end up carrying what you're carrying.
2
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
2
SPEAKER_00
Emotionally, physically, whatever it might be, right?
2
SPEAKER_02
Exactly.
2
SPEAKER_02
So we develop the equivalent of sort of metaphoric spiritual masks, which is an ability to
2
SPEAKER_02
 be in your presence to recognize that the coughing, the metaphoric coughing, sneezing, vomiting you're doing is not because of me.
2
SPEAKER_02
It's because in this moment, there is a dis-ease inside of you.
2
SPEAKER_02
So COVID, we could call an actual disease.
2
SPEAKER_02
You know, you could look at it molecularly, but my anger, my pain, my ego, my arrogance, my fear, my story, this is a sense of dis-ease.
2
SPEAKER_02
 And when I am living in that, suffering with that, I'm going to leak it onto all of those around me the same way that someone who's sick is gonna sneeze and cough, not because you're a bad person, but because they're sick.
2
SPEAKER_02
And so the first thing you do is realize this isn't about you.
2
SPEAKER_02
Not about you.
2
SPEAKER_02
 You have as much love and compassion for the person as you can.
2
SPEAKER_02
You do whatever you can to help ease them out of that moment.
2
SPEAKER_02
 without being the person who jumps into a raging river to save someone who's drowning when you can't really swim, and all that's gonna happen is you're both gonna drown.
2
SPEAKER_02
You figure out a more effective, efficient way how to send that person a lifeline that isn't gonna drag you down.
2
SPEAKER_02
 and you create what I call spiritual masks, which is not, I'm separate from you, but it's my meditation, it's my prayer, it's my yoga.
2
SPEAKER_02
 It's my way of anchoring and grounding in who I am.
2
SPEAKER_02
That even when you are leaking your dis-ease on me.
2
SPEAKER_00
It doesn't penetrate me.
2
SPEAKER_02
It doesn't penetrate.
2
SPEAKER_02
I don't take it personally and I'm able to just be with you in love and peace.
2
SPEAKER_00
 Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
I feel like I could talk for another three hours with you on these topics and dive in deeper.
2
SPEAKER_00
But I want to give people this to start with, and also to get your book, Hollywood to the Himalayas, A Journey of Healing and Transformation.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I think if anyone is
2
SPEAKER_00
 feeling like they are disconnected to peace, they're disconnected to relief, to their own spiritual truth, then this could be a powerful journey for them to go on and get this book.
2
SPEAKER_00
So make sure you guys get a copy or give it to a friend.
2
SPEAKER_00
 who might be struggling that can be inspired by this message and by your story.
2
SPEAKER_00
I think a lot of people can be inspired by your story, by you sharing an older identity, stories of an older identity that are no longer you, but by sharing the things that you had overcome.
2
SPEAKER_02
Well, thank you so much.
2
SPEAKER_02
It also, as it shares the last 26 years now in India,
2
SPEAKER_02
 It shares the challenges that I've been through in India.
2
SPEAKER_02
So yes, there is the aspect of the healing and transformation from the trauma and the addiction and the story into a being of freedom and joy.
2
SPEAKER_02
But that's only a part of the book.
2
SPEAKER_02
The rest of the book is the agony and the ecstasy of living in an ashram, in a spiritual world,
2
SPEAKER_02
 and all of the incredible spiritual ecstatic experiences.
2
SPEAKER_02
I try to give words to those experiences that are so wordless and what that really feels like.
2
SPEAKER_02
And also to walk people through
2
SPEAKER_02
 The challenges that I faced, for example, in taking vows of celibacy, what does that look like?
2
SPEAKER_02
Of being a woman in really a man's world, of having to make life choices like
2
SPEAKER_02
 The biology of my body is screaming, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby.
2
SPEAKER_02
And yet here I am a monastic renunciant.
2
SPEAKER_02
And how do you look at life path and life being not, as I say, a buffet where it's all about.
2
SPEAKER_02
 Oh, I'd like this and this and this and that, and I'd like to just mush up everything, but actually having to make conscious decisions about the package deals that we're gonna live in.
2
SPEAKER_02
And so I try to really walk people through both the agony of the decision-making fork in the road, how do you,
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 make these decisions, how do you deal with it when you are faced with these sorts of questions and traumas and new challenges?
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Like here you are in a
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 a woman's body and oh my God, it's a man's world.
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As people struggle with decisions in their life, challenges in their life, things that seem insurmountable or package deals they're trying to figure out how to merge and what to do, I really walk people through all of these decisions and challenges of how do you do it?
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 in a way that honors spirit, honors truth, honors love, and also honors the very unique and beautiful role that you are here to play in this particular incarnation with your gender and your ethnicity and your story and all of that.
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 how do you honor both of those?
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So I'm really excited for people to be helped by that aspect of it as well.
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Because I've certainly had my share of big challenges.
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Yeah, sure, that's great.
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I'm excited for people to get the book.
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HollywoodToTheHimalayas.com.
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And where do you spend time on social media?
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Where should we follow you or connect with you the best?
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 So I did also just want to say quickly, you and I have been saying Himalayas because that is the correct way to say it.
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For those of you who have not yet been initiated into the Sanskrit pronunciation of things, people call it the Himalayas, of course.
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Actually in India, they say the Himalayas.
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 in the same way that we say Ganga instead of the Ganges.
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But it also is Hollywood to the Himalayas.
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So either way is fine.
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But yeah, the website for the book is Hollywood to the Himalayas or Himalayas.com, where you can learn more about it, download some free chapters.
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But also even easier is just to go straight to Amazon or wherever you get your books and order it.
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 On social media, I am at Saadviji, that's S-A-D-H-V-I-J-I, at Saadviji on YouTube and also on Instagram.
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And my website is saadviji.org, so that's super easy.
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And on Facebook, I'm the full name, at Saadvi Bhagwati Saraswati.
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 Okay, perfect.
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We'll have it all linked up as well.
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Fantastic.
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And I want to acknowledge you, Savi, for your journey, for your journey of showing up for yourself, for your higher truth, for your mission to serve and to go on this experience, which was challenging, but also extremely powerful for you.
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So I really acknowledge you for everything you've been up to and the things that you've had to overcome and the people you've been able to serve because of this mission.
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Thank you.
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You're welcome.
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Thank you.
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 I feel so blessed to be able to be a vehicle, a vessel, a channel of healing for others.
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It's been so beautiful to heal, but to be able to
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 have that experience be one that brings healing and transformation to others is just such a double, triple, quadruple bonus.
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Yeah, it's beautiful.
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This is a question I ask everyone at the end.
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It's a hypothetical scenario.
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So imagine it's your last day on this physical world, Earth, many years away.
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You get to live as long as you want to live, but eventually it's that last day.
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 And imagine you get to be, see, do, be the channel for everything you want to do in your life, right?
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You accomplish things you want to accomplish, you're living your life the way you want to, you're of service, all the things, they all happen.
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 But for whatever reason, you gotta take all of your messages with you to the next place.
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Hypothetical.
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The book is gone, this conversation, it goes somewhere else, right?
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But you have three things you get to share with the world.
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Three lessons from all the life that you've experienced, all the life you're going to experience until that day, and these are the only lessons you could share and leave behind.
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Hypothetical.
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What would be those three truths for you that you would share?
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 You should send these in advance.
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I know.
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We'd like to get you on the spot though.
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We'd like to get you on the spot.
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It doesn't have to be perfect.
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You gotta let go of perfectionism here too, you know?
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No problem with perfectionism as long as your audience is good with a few moments of silence.
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Of course.
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The first is that grace does not discriminate.
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 that whoever you are, whatever you've experienced, whatever's happened to you, whatever you've done, grace is available for you, there for you, ready for you, waiting for you, flowing to you, through you, and all you've gotta do is open yourself.
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If you think about
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 Faucet.
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It's funny, it happens to me sometimes.
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I'm so used to speaking Hindi, I'm like, the null.
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Null.
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Null.
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Null.
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Null.
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Null is Hindi.
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English.
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Faucet.
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You think about the faucet being on, but you've got a bucket.
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In Hindi, everybody bathes with a bucket.
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So you turn on the faucet and the bucket fills with water.
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You think you've got the faucet on, but the bucket's upside down.
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 Well, that water is flowing, but you're not able to benefit from it because your bucket's upside down.
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Grace is flowing.
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It's there.
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No one doesn't have a bucket.
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There's no buckets with holes in them.
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All we've got to do is turn our bucket right side up, which doesn't require some very complex set of skills and abilities or training.
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 It just requires an open heart and a willingness to let yourself be filled.
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And the second message would be just love.
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Just love.
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Love is the highest truth, the deepest truth.
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 the most powerful, infinite presence on earth.
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And don't lose your ability to love because of the nonsense games of your own mind.
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So don't wrap love up in stories and expectations and dramas.
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And don't
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 Relegate love only to the very select few with whom you've actually chosen to spend your life.
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Love everyone.
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See that soul, that spirit, that being, that divine in all.
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Love trees.
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Love the flowers as they open their petals to the sun.
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 Just love, just allow your internal love manufacturing plant to be on 24 seven.
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And the third message is recognize that you are here as an instrument.
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 an instrument in the hands of the divine.
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It's like St.
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Francis of Assisi says, Oh Lord, make me an instrument of thy mercy.
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Where there is darkness, let me bring light.
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We are instruments.
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And that's critical for two reasons.
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Number one, because with an instrument, what matters is not how beautiful it is.
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 or how covered in gold it is, but actually how effective it is.
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If I say to you, oh my god, I've got this beautiful new hammer for you.
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You're just going to love it.
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It's covered with diamonds and gold.
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But every time you try to hammer something in, it squishes because it's made not of metal but of something else.
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Well, it doesn't matter how beautiful it is.
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It doesn't actually work.
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You need that hammer to be able to hammer in the nails.
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 And as instruments, we need to realize that we are here to be, not diamond bedacked.
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I mean, if you want to be, do it.
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There's certainly no problem with being covered in diamonds.
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But remember that that's not actually the highest goal.
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The highest goal is to be an effective instrument
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 of the divine flow here on earth.
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And there is nothing small, there is nothing big, there is nothing more important or less important.
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It's not about the what you do, it's about how you do it.
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And to realize that we are here to be
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 instruments, channels of love, of truth, of healing for the planet.
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And whether it's a smile, a hug, a sandwich, or a new school, or a whole new NGO, or whatever your way of serving the being near you in that moment may be,
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 Instead of asking yourself what for me, ask what through me.
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Because that's actually the path to the greatest joy, to the greatest meaning, to the greatest peace.
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It's not about what I can acquire and accumulate on my shelf.
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It's actually about my connection to myself.
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 as that exquisite, extraordinary, unique, divine instrument in the hands of the divine by however you conceive of that infinite perfection.
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This is beautiful.
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I've got one final question for you.
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What is your definition of greatness?
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 You, the fullest, most connected, courageous, creative you.
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Each of us is going to manifest greatness differently.
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The sun, if you put out eight billion
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 containers and they're different sizes and different shapes and different colors and some have water and some don't have water.
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Each of them is going to reflect the rays of the sun in a different way.
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You're going to have 8 billion different reflections of that light of the sun.
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Greatness is each of us as our
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 vehicle, vessel, instrument, in our unique size, shape, incarnation, being the reflection of the manifestation of that light.
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And it's going to manifest differently for every single being.
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But in order to manifest it, all we have to do is be connected.
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 to our true self, and in that connection, we develop courage.
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Because when I'm connected, then I know.
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You know, it's like the tree.
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I think about nature all the time, and you think, okay, well, so if you say, what is greatness in a tree?
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Well, in some trees, greatness is to grow 600 feet up.
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 But in some trees, greatness is to grow sideways because that tree knows my light is not up.
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Even though the light of every other tree around me is straight up, my light is over here.
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And by some amazing
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 amazing plan of the capital P planner.
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Even though trees are supposed to grow up, that tree knows how to grow horizontal to the ground until she finds her light.
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And so having that connection to yourself, to your truth, to have the courage to grow and to become and to be.
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 who you are in your light, and then all of the exquisite creativity that that then gives us of how to share that with the world.
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Yeah.
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Beautiful.
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Salvia, thank you so much for being here.
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I appreciate it.
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Well, thank you, Lewis, and thank you so much for bringing this greatness to the world, because out of all of your viewers and all of your community,
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 Every one of them is going to have a different way to manifest that greatness.
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And so beautiful that you dedicate your life to making sure that regardless of what language they speak, regardless of what walk of life they're from, regardless of what their characteristics or their inclinations may be, that you're going to provide something for everyone.
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 You know, we say frequently when we talk about the infinite nature of the divine, that it's like a mother who really only has the interest of her children eating their spinach.
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And for one child, she's got to bread it and then fry it.
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For another child, he likes it raw in a ranch-like dip.
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And a third child likes it just steamed, and she's gonna actually cook that spinach.
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 in five different ways for five different children with five different taste buds.
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Because all she cares about is they've got to eat their spinach.
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And it's like you're doing that.
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You're providing all of these different speakers and different teachings and different teachers and different channels of the same truth for all of your different people so that each of them can get it.
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 in the way that's most digestible and enjoyable for them.
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I appreciate it.
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Thank you so much.
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Doing my best.
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I appreciate it.
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Thank you very much.
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Thank you so much for listening.
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I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness.
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Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's show with all the important links.
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And also make sure to share this with a friend and subscribe over on Apple Podcasts as well.
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 I really love hearing feedback from you guys, so share a review over on Apple and let me know what part of this episode resonated with you the most.
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And if no one's told you lately, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter.
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And now it's time to go out there and do something great.