How Crossing Paths With Enlightenment Has Changed My Life
TLDR;
The following is a truthful account that compares where I was at in life physically/mentally/emotionally/spiritually about 12 years ago, prior to encountering an authentic school of enlightenment ~ versus where I am at now (2022).
What this is not:
- a long-winded flyer intended to recruit readers towards said “guru”
- an exaggeration
Group sunset meditation in Big Sur, 2014
Early 2009, the Fruitvale neighborhood of Oakland, California
The first African American president in U.S. history, Barack Obama, had just been inaugurated to his first term in office, Twilight ~ New Moon hadn’t quite begun filming yet, Amazon stock was around $65/share, and Jeff Bezos still had hair. I had just graduated from a Bachelor’s of Science program in one of the top colleges in the country. That is no easy feat for a lot of people, however it was particularly challenging for me because I had struggled for years with ADD (attention deficit disorder), and was unenthusiastically taking medication for it. Personal and family dramas around that time, which I need not get into for now, had also contributed towards a diagnosis of clinical depression, so I was also being prescribed medication for that. And resented it. I resented the side effects, but even more than that, I resented the prospect of having to pop pills for time indefinite in order to sustain a state of emotional and mental equilibrium that I believed ought to flow naturally and effortlessly**.
In spite of the four-year degree that I’d earned from a top university, I did not land a high-paying job right out of college. I settled for a meager wage job in a public sector lab that I had interned at one summer, as an undergraduate. I didn’t know how to market myself for better jobs, and I didn’t have the energy or sense of self-worth to motivate myself to push for more. Plus I had a weird, confused relationship with money in general, so low and behold, I didn’t have much of it. I was worst than flat broke in fact — as I was also mired in student loan debt from having gone to a four-year university, and I had a dash of credit card debt on top of it all. In the scarcity mindset that I was in, I went for an affordable housing option - renting an apartment in a not-so-great neighborhood in Oakland. That apartment was actually broken into at one point while I was away at work, but the would-be robbers didn’t even bother taking anything because, evidently, I didn’t own anything worth stealing.
I had a lot of friends, and got along with people alright — yet somehow felt alone, as though I hadn’t really found my “tribe” yet, so to speak. I almost always felt tired and depleted, despite having no detectable thyroid or other health problems that could directly impact my energy levels. I’d look around and see others being able to do so much, and didn’t understand why I just felt so scattered, sub-functional and drained more often than not.
Meanwhile, on the spiritual front, I had started to hear the inner call towards something greater and deeper than circumstances in life had thus far led me to. I considered myself agnostic at the time, open to exploring any mindfulness practice or technique that could help with the invisible suffering that I was all too well aware of. The book, “The Secret”, had been out for a couple of years by then, and the visualization technique of dream/vision boarding that it espoused struck me as something worth trying out, at least once. I recall that one of the images that I pasted up on my board was a minimalist figure of a Buddha — not that I was intending to literally attract a Buddha or Buddhism itself into my life. What the image represented to me at the time was serenity. It signified naturally reaching and sustaining a state of mental calm, peaceful concentration, and clarity to me — the opposite of what was going on in my head at the time. I eventually also started researching online about meditation, and began experimenting with different techniques to try out alone at home. One of the techniques that resonated the most with me was something called chakra meditation, whereby the focal point to attempt to train and still the mind upon is a chakra, or subtle physical energy center, within the body..
So there I was for the next several months, trying to keep up a daily individual meditation practice and gazing at my vision board for 5–10 minutes a day whenever I remembered to while working a low-income job by day and bussing my way back to the hood in the evenings, and determined to leave behind pill-popping for a better remedy for my mental health issues. It was a stable post-graduate existence, but I really wanted to change feeling stuck, low-powered, and altogether weighed down by the world. It was in September of that same year that I came across a flyer that led me to meet my meditation mentor and then ultimately, darshan (first meeting/meditation) with her teacher, Samvara, in San Francisco by mid-December 2009.
Setting intentions, 2009
Fast-forward to 2022, and being settled by the beautiful California coast.
I co-own/mortgage a house on a large, forested lot in a quiet (a.k.a. safe) neighborhood that is verging on a market valuation of $1M. I’ve come a long way in terms of sorting out my conscious and sub-conscious relationship with money, and my earning power at the time of publication is approximately 9 times as much as it was back in 2009. I have been able to travel to places that I had only dreamed of in my early twenties ~ tropical destinations, scenic national parks all around the country, multiple trips to Europe.. I thought that I would have to be paying down student loan debt well into my 40s, but I was able to pay those all off by my early 30s. I am no longer reliant on public transportation — I’ve been driving luxury-class sedan since late 2013. And all of these are just the material differences.
Isn’t some of this upward mobility simply attributable to better pay for more professional experience/seniority? Sure, some of it could be. But looking back, I know that I was not on the same trajectory in life that could’ve possible led me to where I am at now. And I certainly wasn’t getting very far on the spiritual transcendence side of things with my solo chakra meditation practice. I’ve met so many kind, fascinating, determined individuals along the way, from all sorts of backgrounds, and have had so many rewarding experiences, both tangible and entirely mystical — things that my logical mind cannot deny. The states of consciousness that I’ve been able to reach through persistent practice (and zero recreational drug use!) have been the result of steady, progressive practice, building up to higher and brighter awarenesses and experiences of being. It’s not only me either - I have friends who I’ve seen become happier, feel more free, more prosperous, and more spiritually balanced — overcoming things like depression, addictions, phobias, self-doubt and the like. It’s been a beautiful thing to observe.
The inner journey of self discovery has been just as impressive, and transformative, if not more so than the more obvious, quantifiable manifestations of outward improvement to my quality of life, mentioned above. Understanding my own aura/subtle physical energy body and why I had trouble focusing, etc, and how to strengthen it and cope with/improve my reactions to difficult circumstances has gone a long way for me. From everything that I’ve learned during my time as part of this sangha (spiritual community), applying myself to this school of enlightenment, I’m able to manage difficult emotions and situations in more balanced and elevated ways, a wellspring of peace and well-being grows deeper and stronger within me, and the world just makes a lot more sense to me now. I’ve experienced more satori(spontaneous insight), and learned more about life, love, overcoming obstacles in service of personal development, how to effectively help others, and how to maintain spiritual balance in the first four years of being part of Samvara’s sangha than I learned from going into debt for four years at a world-class university. And that’s even while not being an “A+” student here, which is by no means what I consider myself to be...
Make no mistake, choosing to be on this path, with this particular tribe of hardcore spiritual aspirants practicing disciplines that actually work well within the context of modern Western society, has not been easy. It’s not like you just get to hang out in the kundalini glow of a spiritually liberated being and don’t ever have to do anything. There is etiquette, and an appropriate way to work with a master of fill-in-the-blank - be that a master of meditation, of Shotokan karate, of anything. Folks in the Far East know this very well, but it’s seems to be something cultural that gets lost in transit with Westerners. Reverence is not required, but it’s essentially a teacher-student relationship, so you should at least be open-minded enough so as to be teachable. And if you ask me, cultivating a little humility doesn’t hurt either.
The past 10+ years of my life being voluntarily immersed in a multi-faceted practice has had a mystical, magical way of challenging ego pretty much all the time. Nothing in the program is mandatory, but if you aren’t participating in at last some of the disciplines of, for example, karma yoga (as it relates to career development), martial arts, compassion/tonglen, meditation and mindfulness, and the occasional SCUBA diving trip, you’ll most likely find that you are not able to keep up with the majority of practitioners who are constructively participating and applying themselves on a more consistent basis.
You could call it the merits of having accrued good karma from many spiritual past lives, or plain dumb luck if you don’t believe in those sorts of things, but to me, I consider crossing paths with the afore-mentioned meditation master to be one of the greatest blessings of my life; one that has empowered me to be able to co-create a life that has met and in some cases, surpassed the dreams and goals that I had pasted up on that dinky little vision board of mine from over a decade ago.(By the way, I have indeed been able to meet my personal goal of tapering down and staying prescription-free for over a decade too**)
Having observed the benefits of the school in multiple areas of my life first-hand, I for one remain a student of life and of this school, and will continue to honor the teachings and the teacher, someone who has been a true friend and ally to my spirit. I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to pay Samvara back in full for all that I’ve gotten out of his school and the esoteric dharma teachings of his lineage — my hope is that I am at at least in some small way paying it forward by sharing this candid before-and-after recap.
Encountering light, 2022
Enlightenment is real, and it is possible to reach and to integrate in a single lifetime. The path of self inquiry and inner work involves truly, bravely, ruthlessly facing your perceived limitations and patterns of self, and being willing to part with those patterns until ultimately, all habituations fall away. For the vast majority of humankind, rapid spiritual progress (i.e. awakening) is not just going to poof!, spontaneously explode inside of you if all that you’re choosing to do is to remain in your comfort zone, with the same fixed views about everything (including/especially about yourself) that you’ve always had. And it’s certainly not going to if you don’t have an earnest prayer or intention in your heart, for awakening.
Understandably, the path of most commitment/engagement in Samvara’s sangha, which I have elected for myself, and which I continue to renew my commitment to, is probably not for everyone. Some people may have different goals in mind, for example simply wishing to get better at meditation practice and nothing more. And that’s fine. There is a more relaxed, slower-paced tier plan for them. There’s also the exit door, which is alway available if folks feel that even the chill-path offering does not resonate with them.
Consider if you will a mountaineering metaphor. For every epic mountain summit, there are a multitude of hiking trails that one could choose from in order to reach it. There are also nice picnic areas and vista points along the way, and going no further than those is simply a matter of personal preference. Just being out there, making any forward progress on the mountain, is inarguably a happy, harmless and positive thing.
Lokah samastah sukinoh bhavantu.
May all beings everywhere be happy and free, and may the thoughts, words, and actions of my own life contribute in some way to that happiness and to that freedom for all.
** Legal Disclaimer — I am not a medical or mental health professional and this is not medical or health advice. The text above is intended for informational purposes only. It is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.**
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