Blissperience

Experience Bliss

Why Did Shirdi Sai Baba Push Me Away?

For those of you who personally know me or who have read a few of my articles would know that I always share my experiences, miracles, interactions (dream and awake) especially about Shridi Sai Baba.

I was raised in a very religious family. The temple in our house looked like a shop where we displayed all the deities as statues, pictures, and calendars, along with their holy books. As a young child this was extremely confusing for me, as I did not know whom to pray to. So, I was taught that I should pray to all of them. Like an obedient child after my shower every morning, I paid my respects by touching the pictures without any intention, simply not to disrespect any of the deities.

Once I started encountering challenges in life, I was encouraged to pray more. Chanting, singing, reading the holy texts, and visiting temples became mandatory, because I must please the deities, and in turn they would bless me and “forgive” my sins.

However, this did not satisfy me because I did not feel the blessings pouring down upon me. And when I would ask my parents or Gurus why not, they would say have faith and patience. It seemed to me that they did not know the answer, and were just stalling me. So, I wanted to talk to God directly. No one in my family had ever communicated with God directly, it was always through some deity or Guru. I felt a resonance with Shirdi Sai Baba, so I figured that He would be my bridge to God.

This was the first time in my life I felt that I was communicating with God. I did not chant His name or read His scriptures back to Him. All I did was talk to Him as if I was speaking with my father or my best friend. I poured my heart out to Him, and questioned every belief that I was raised with. It was only a matter of days later that I started receiving my answers. The biggest misconception I had was that I was being punished for my partial vision loss. I was visited in a dream by Krishna and Shirdi Sai Baba, and was told that I had to go through these challenges, and that they were holding my hand at every step of the way. This was extremely comforting and insightful. Since then, I have had numerous interactions with beings of higher consciousness and gained insights that have transformed my life.

However, today I want to share with you something a little different, although, this may not resonate with the belief system that you were raised with. Therefore, please understand that my intention is never to change your belief, but to simply offer you another perspective.

Even though my connection with Shirdi Sai Baba is very strong, for a short period of time, I felt that he was pushing me away from him. I could not understand why. Without a doubt he was always on my mind, but I did not get any attractions of cravings to read his Holy text or to chant his name. Although, I would always bow down in front of his statue, there wasn’t a feeling that I was bowing down to God. It was more like greeting my best friend or father. In fact, very few people know this, but I even have a nickname for him, I refer to him as “Babz”.

Initially, my parents would become upset about this because I was so called “dis-respecting” their Shirdi Sai Baba, or should I say my “Babz”. But, consider this for a moment, don’t we have nicknames for the friends and family that we love? Overtime, I guess they realized this, and now my mom also sometimes calls Shridi Sai Baba, Babz, our Babz.

So, why was my “Babz” pushing me away from him, or was this only my perception? After all, who could answer that question besides my Babz? As I meditated on this, the answer I received was “Don’t seek me outside of you.”

Now, many of us believe or say that we believe that God is within us? But allow me to ask you this question, do you truly believe that in every part of your being, or is in just in your head? For me, at that time, “God is within me” was only cognitive, meaning just in my head.

I realized that this was the reason that Shirdi Sai Baba, or my Babz was pushing me away. He wanted me to discover him within myself, truly within my being, not simply in my head. As this happened, I remembered one of his quotes which said “either I AM in you, or you are in you”. This gave me another realization that if I wanted to fully experience Shridi Sai Baba, “I” or who I believe “I” am must get out of the way.

From that day onwards, the way I started to pray was completely different. I would not pray for blessings or grace to come from outside of me, or any higher power. Instead, I would pray for the strength to get out of the way and be receptive to guidance. Now, I feel that I’m becoming a better instrument of the Divine each day, while allowing the music to play through me. Of course, although the musician (the Divine) is perfect, this instrument (myself) isn’t. This means that I have a tremendous amount of inner work to do, in order to become a graceful instrument for the Divine.

As I discussed earlier in this article, my intention is not to change your belief. However, I invite you to discover this level of consciousness for yourself. If you continue to believe that God is outside of you, then you will also believe that happiness, peace, and grace our outside of you. When you believe that God or Divinity is within you, then everything that you believe that the Divine represents, such as bliss, grace, forgiveness, etc. will be created from within you.

So, Shirdi Sai Baba did push me away, but it was for me to discover Him within myself. Today he is so deep within me there is absolutely no separation. This has offered me so much inner peace, clarity, strength, and courage to speak the truth regardless of what people may think of me. This feeling is what I truly call Freedom.

“Lord, make me an instrument of your peace; where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy.” – St. Francis of Assisi

The Gratitude Walk

One of the greatest benefits of being a Mind Transformation Coach is that in order to help my clients transform their lives I must have the courage to transform my own life first. This means that I must explore the depths within my being and test out any tools and techniques on myself before sharing them.

I am silently, yet constantly exploring these depths, and I’ve noticed that the deeper I go, the more fascinated I become about myself. Instead of this leading to arrogance of knowledge, it leads to humility, and a sense of wonder. Because the more I learn, the more I realize how little I know, and this sets me off on an even deeper journey of self-discovery and exploration.

I do not share many of these insights in my articles because they are fairly deep, although I do share the simple ones, which the readers can adopt into their lives.

Recently, my dreams have been guiding me towards exploring the idea of oneness. I do not know the reason for this, but whenever I get a message in my dreams, I always follow it. So, as I set off on my early morning walk, I set my intention on oneness, even though I had no idea what it was. I simply walked with my highest level of mindfulness or awareness for three days. That’s for about an hour each day, I did not walk for three days straight.

By the third day, as I embodied the sense of mindful walking, it triggered a sense of gratitude and oneness for all that I could perceive. I noticed that my level of awareness was raised to such a point, which would be so difficult to describe in words. The only way I could express it is through the words of the Persian poet Rumi where he writes, “witness the blessing dropping their blossoms around you”.

This experience was so wonderful that I simply wanted to hold on to it as my consciousness kept on shifting from the experiencer to the experience and back. Whenever I would experience 100% presence, my mind would jump back into experiencer-mode. For example, as I looked at the blade of grass near the bench I was about to sit on, I felt a sense of oneness with the grass, there seemed to be no separation. I realized that the grass, air, earth, sunshine, the people passing by, the singing of the birds, the sounds of the traffic, and everything else that was happening at that very moment was one with me. The moment that I acknowledge this oneness with creation, I bounced out of experience-mode to experiencer-mode, where I was now the witness of this creation. I started to enjoy this fascination and started to play around with this idea of experiencer and experience.

This was very similar to my experiences of meditation and lucid dreaming where I am a witness to my thoughts, emotions, body, and dream interactions. This is why witnessing is expressed in terms of the meditator being the sky, and the thoughts and emotions being the clouds. The meditator experiences oneself as the sky, simply without judgment observing the clouds passing by. However, the difference is that now, I was not experiencing this in a state of meditation or dreams, but in wakefulness, or could I say almost full-wakefulness?

I would like to share a technique that you could easily adopt so that you can experience a sense of oneness that is right for you. For the next three days, I would like to invite you to make a commitment to yourself – it’s called the “Gratitude Walk”.

Set aside 15-20 minutes for the next three days, preferably at the same time each day. Also choose to walk down the same road each day. Before you start your walk, set an intention that you will walk with “absolute gratitude and mindfulness”. This intention will program your mind to focus on your intention for the next 15-20 minutes. As you walk, observe life around you with a sense of wonder and gratitude. You will suddenly notice objects, places, trees, etc. that you’ve never noticed before, even though you’ve walked on that path many times.

For example, as I walked with mindfulness and gratitude, I noticed fire hydrants that I had never seen. As I passed by these fire hydrants, I felt a sense of gratitude. After all, if there is ever a fire in a building; the fire hydrant would be responsible for saving so many lives. All I could say was “Thank you fire hydrant”. In the same manner, there was so much more that I noticed during this walk, which I was never grateful for before.

Ultimately, whether you experience a similar sense of oneness like I did or not, you will benefit from the positive energy that you gain from the Gratitude Walk. Although, I am sure that if you continue this practice of the Gratitude Walk for a few weeks, you will have an experience that is far beyond your imagination, yet just right for you.

Finally, I would like to empower you with the powerful words of Rumi – “wear gratitude like a cloak, and it will feed every corner of your life”.


Passion & Purpose Talk

It was an honor to be invited to the English Speech Contest of the University students in Taiwan, which was hosted by the Rotary Club of Taipei at the Taipei European School. 

I gave a 40-minute inspirational talk to the students and guests about how to “Create a Life of Passion & Purpose”. I had a wonderful time presenting my talk as well as a thought-provoking Q&A session with the audience.






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