This blog comes from a place of nothing else but gratitude it’s very personal and absolutely close to my heart.

One late evening I and my friend were chatting about something casual when the topic of what your earliest childhood memory popped up. He could remember everything vividly where as I could hardly remember anything other than the old house I lived in and some 5 to 6 memories of me as a child.

Before Getting Onboard On My Spiritual Journey

Those 5-6 memories are the ones imprinted in my mind very deeply but that’s all I know and remember as my earliest memories. I was that lost kind of kid. Always in my own world. I scored average and occassionely topped academically but was considered a bit weird by teachers.

Not to mention how toxic teachers my school had and how much trauma they gave me as a kid but school days were never fun for me. The only good part of school was my English teacher of a higher standard, I had her as my class teacher for 2 years.

She was the only one who loved me. She genuinely did. Never said but it was always in her behavior. She called me Saloni which meant beautiful and unique. The only person I consider my guru to date. This was my childhood.

I never profoundly believed in God. I come from a Hindu Brahmin family where I was made to pray and join hands in front of God. The most famous deity’s in our house were Ganpati Bappa and 2-3 others. I never felt connected to god as something divine. We had Ganpati at our house where I use to sneak in the middle of the night into the living room and touch Bappa’s feet in the Murti (sculpture) and talk to him as my friend.

Further, I had some Christian friends, I was fascinated by Christianism, more because I was opposed to and taunted by my family about it. I went to churches and prayed to Jesus Christ, today I look back and realize it was just me trying to be rebellious and never a devotee.

During 11th and 12th, my junior and only-college years I was very distant from all these things. Never prayed worshipped or was even connected to God. Tried to find scientific explanations for everything and anything when people tried to make me believe in them.

Entering My Spiritual Journey

Some incidents good and bad happened further when the inclination towards my spiritual journey began! Like most people around me I witnessed, I thought I had to go to God to ask for something and pray and cry and do all of it just to satisfy my worldly desires. I did several things for 2.5 years in the name of worship. When slowly I started to understand shiva.

That’s where my eyes closed. Yes, closed. Because With open eyes I had spent so much time, seeing only what was outside me. And once you look inside there’s no way you look outside in the same way, that’s what Shiva is for me. He surely is Adiyogi. The first guru and so much more but what he is actually derived from nothingness and is nothingness.

Where Krishna is the epitome of Love, Shiva is the clarity. The only truth I needed to know. Slowly moving forward with this clarity I gained so much. From a worldly point of view, I lost so much. Every desire, every deadly attachment, and my favorite toxic bridges were burnt down.

As I say, I learned more I started to realize I know so little.

Another truth which is my most important learning here to date, was longing for liberation to heaven to fade once you learn to make peace with life here.

But it made me think, what is heaven for us? Something we have been taught all our lives is that it’s a place where only happiness thrives. A place where there are good people, basically peace. Why do you crave peace? Because you are in discomfort.

For example, why would u want a painkiller? Because there is pain. When there’s something which is unpleasant, something that keeps you worried only then do you crave peace and liberation.

I don’t know much about reincarnation. Birth and death cycles. I mean I do believe there’s a life before this and there will be a life after this.

Also how karma plays a significant role, all that we think of karma is like a professor who will punish you if you do bad or some negative trash.

In this journey of mine, I have discovered so much yet so little about these inescapable factors of human life!

But once you learn detachment once you discover the true realms of life it all not only makes sense but fades away your longing for heaven or liberation. You can be here yet liberated. Freedom comes from within not from somewhere in outer space.

And From here my actual spiritual ascension begins…

Share your story if you too are on your spiritual journey and share your experiences. Don’t forget to check out our other blogs. Until the next, take care!