Three Life Lessons I Learnt in 2021
By Sindhujaa Kumar - Published in The Pioneer (national edition)
Nuggets of timeless wisdom – that were driven deeper into me this year.
1.Know what’s yours
In work. In play. In the people you choose to be in your life. In the battles you choose to fight.
Love is not a strategy. It’s a quality of soul, a gift of the heart’s essence. When you harness it to an agenda, to risk analytics, to people’s opinions – robotically promoting your offers, growing your networks – you disconnect from the deepest sources of inner nourishment. The real danger isn’t lack of algebraic success- its suffering caused by disconnection – with your deepest self and with what is meant for you.
Wise decisions aren’t entirely an intellectual exercise. They are not led by data and fact-banks. It’s an inside-out process. You hear what the mind has to say, but the heart has to lead, because the heart knows more. The heart hears whispers of wisdom and destiny-moments that the mind can never comprehend. Logic is always fragmented.
In solving algebraic equations, we work with known variables to find the unknown variable. All well up to an extent. But we belong to a world which science once considered flat, not round. We belong to a logical trajectory where mercury, widely known as a poisonous substance today, was once being used as ‘medicine’ by early doctors, while knowledge was still developing. Even today, as intelligent as we are, logic-data-knowledge – are all evolving aspects. While our brain is significant, it’s still limited. The heart can see beyond the obvious world in front of our eyes. Even science is now beginning to recognize ‘heart-intelligence’.
It’s no coincidence that all ancient cultures from Greece to China looked to the heart as the primary source of intelligence, intuition and power. There is modern research that proves that electromagnetic signals radiated by the heart – connects us to other people and other creatures on Earth. There’s an energy field here, which perceives more than what our mind does. The heart generates the largest electromagnetic field in the body - as measured in an electrocardiogram (ECG) is about 60 times greater in amplitude than the brain waves recorded in an electroencephalogram (EEG).
You want to be seen, felt, heard. You want to trust your Yeses and No’s.
When you start referring to your Higher Self for guidance, you can navigate higher vibration states with more assuredness. So often we just forget to ask OURSELVES for the answer. Especially when we’re frantic or in pain.
Everything worthwhile starts with a heart impulse. Everything.
Love has no barriers – the barriers come from the false fears and external voices that are drowning out your own inner wisdom. Love isn’t ‘duty-bound’; it knows only tenderness, only the desire to nurture beauty, connection and joy – to see the beloved (person/ project) flourish, body, life and soul.
If you truly knew that the Sacred sings in every cell of your body, how would you change your life?
Rule YOUR world with wisdom and power.
Be whole, sovereign and free.
This is why you have been granted with a powerful heart-centre, which is home to your divine intelligence.
Know what’s NOT yours. If you cannot digest it, let it go. No matter how shiny, how lusciously tempting, if you cannot digest it, it will poison you. And know what’s yours – it’s worth taking on the world for what has a place in your heart.
2.Dislodge that one crucial boulder in the stream, and the power you liberate will sweep away all lesser obstacles, opening the way for unobstructed creation.
That loose thread in the fabric of your life, in the fabric of your business – the one that snags on your fingernail time and time again? That action you’ve known you need to take, but haven’t yet taken – because it feels daunting, uncomfortable, uncertain, so you put it off for another day? Or worse, ‘wait’ for things to change when all along the lever was in your own hands and you just needed to pull it? Act on that today!
3.The messenger is more important than the message.
In choosing teachers and guides, I believe it’s important to discern how deeply the person embodies their message - and how authentically he or she expresses that idea. And out of these two, embodiment is more important. Because without embodiment, there is no integrity.
Talk means nothing if it isn’t followed by action and lived experience.
As I grow older and wiser, I’ve learned to be more careful about who I learn from. Plenty of people have inspiring messages, but few actually practice what they preach. It’s also ONE thing to let people have a say in things, and another thing to hand over decision-making powers of your life to them.
So if you’re hiring a business coach and if you were to look under the hood, does that coach actually have a business you greatly admire? Is the personal trainer you’re working with not only in good shape, but also holistically healthy? Does the relationship counselor you’re investing in actually have a healthy relationship or marriage? Is your spiritual Guru truly self-realized?
On writing the last statement, an interesting piece I read very recently comes to mind. The difference between ‘Gurus’ and teachers, by Ramdass. None can explain in better terms:
“There are a lot of people that present themselves as gurus, and that has nothing to do with whether they’re gurus or not, in the real sense of the term.
The ‘guru’ is a cooked goose, all their seeds are burned and they’re free, so when you’re with them, they are a clean mirror, so you only see your own stuff; that’s all you see, you don’t see your stuff mixed with their stuff, because they don’t have any stuff. With the ‘teacher’, you never know what you’re getting, because part of what you see is their stuff, and part of it is your stuff. (stuff here is karmas, traumas, burdens, bogs, imperfect belief systems etc.)
You can certainly pick very high teachers, but the only way you know if a particular teaching or interpretation is for you or not is by your intuitive heart. The only thing you owe a ‘teacher’ is for you to get yourself free and redirected to your own inner wisdom. You don’t owe a teacher ‘unquestioned loyalty and self-surrender’, as with divine, self-realized Gurus. I think you should take what you can from every teacher, and then go on.
If you focus on ‘teachers’ rather than ‘teachings’, you will spend all your time becoming a connoisseur of clay feet. When I need a teaching of some sort, I go towards somebody who’s teaching that, and I take the teaching, and I keep taking the part of that which feels intuitively right with my own heart; I do not take any teaching that goes against my own heart. Every time I have done that, there has been a karmic cost to that, because only intuitively do I know what I need, and I must trust that more than I must trust somebody else telling me what I need. They will not bear my karmic burdens, as the ‘Gurus’ of old did. A true ‘Guru’ – who is purity and divinity incarnate – is Himself the path, the absolute. A ‘teacher’, who is grappling with their own karmas and cannot answer for yours – can show you numerous paths. But it is ‘YOU’ and only you, in agreement with the divine within you, who can choose among those paths.” - Ramdass
This is also explained in the Bhagvatgita as ‘Niyat’ and ‘Aniyat’ teachers. I get that none of us are perfect. And that it’s our past struggles, mistakes and learnings that make us the best possible teachers. Just make sure you get curious about the messenger, not just the message, and where they are on their journey. Discernment.
These three themes have dominated my life this year!
Last words: Your future is not out there, in some Mystical Beyond. Its right here within you, waiting for YOU to claim it.
Sindhujaa Kumar is a Holistic Wellness Expert and Head of PR & Communications at The/Nudge Foundation.