“30 cups of clarity”: Cup 9: You Must Keep Becoming

There is something deeply seductive about building a life that works.

A stable income. A solid reputation. A defined role. A well-designed routine. People who respect you. A rhythm that protects you from chaos.

And yet, over thousands of hours of working with individuals one-on-one, I have seen something unsettling.

Many people do not suffer because their life is broken.

They suffer because their life is too rigid.

They built a fortress to protect themselves from uncertainty… and now they are trapped inside it.

In the previous cups, we spoke about shadow. We spoke about desire. We spoke about integration. About how contradictions that are left unattended begin to shape your life in ways you do not consciously choose.

Today’s truth is connected to that.

You must keep transforming.

Not dramatically. Not theatrically. But consistently.

A little chiseling here. A little refinement there.

Self-improvement is not about chasing perfection. It is about ensuring that the life you are building does not outgrow the person you are becoming — or worse, shrink the person you could become.

Here is the danger.

You can optimize one area of your life so intensely that everything else becomes neglected. Career. Security. Status. Validation. Safety.

You don’t consistently need to guard against that happening, just prioritize living at a frequency that is never happens.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs becomes distorted when one level is overcompensated for.

Consider Genghis Khan.

A child cast out. A family without food. Without security. Without clan protection. That early imprint did not disappear when he grew powerful. It metastasized. It became conquest. Domination. Relentless expansion.

Was it purely cruelty? Or was it an unintegrated hunger for security that never found balance?

When one unmet need becomes your entire identity, you may build empires — but you remain psychologically stuck at the point of deprivation.

Now most of us will not become conquerors. But the mechanism is the same.

Unmet needs create fixation.
Fixation creates imbalance.
Imbalance creates distortion.

I have seen founders who built spectacular companies yet were emotionally underdeveloped. I have seen professionals who achieved financial stability but never evolved socially or spiritually. I have seen individuals who prioritized family security so intensely that they forgot how to grow as individuals.

The life became more important than the self.

And that is the inversion you must avoid.

The life you build should never become more important than the person you are becoming within it.

So how do you avoid this trap?

You learn daily.

You challenge your own ways of thinking.

You invite disagreement without feeling threatened.

You cultivate friendships and partnerships where differing perspectives are not perceived as attacks but as refinement.

You examine parts of your personality that are not directly linked to your primary ambition.

You ask yourself: What am I neglecting because it feels inconvenient?

Transformation does not require you to abandon what works.

It requires you to remain flexible within it.

When you stop refining yourself, stagnation sets in. And stagnation does not announce itself loudly. It creeps in. It becomes addiction. It becomes irritability. It becomes quiet dissatisfaction. It becomes secret resentment.

It becomes the feeling of being locked inside a life that once felt like salvation.

Continuous transformation is the antidote.

Not dramatic reinvention. But micro-evolution.

A little more emotional maturity.
A little more physical discipline.
A little more intellectual curiosity.
A little more spiritual grounding.

You do not need to demolish your fortress.

You simply need to ensure it has doors and windows.

You must be able to step outside it.

You must be able to reshape it.

You must be able to leave if necessary.

Because the goal is not to build a life that looks perfect from the outside.

The goal is to become a person who remains alive, adaptable, integrated, and expansive within whatever structure they inhabit.

Keep becoming.

Hari Om.
– Jay

Over the years, I’ve consistently built and completed long-form challenges and series as a way of creating structured portals for personal transformation. From posting every single day on YouTube for a full year, to the How to Rebuild Your Life series, the 7-Day Entrepreneur Motivation series, the How To Communicate Effectively series and now the upcoming 4 Dham Yatra documentation—each of these wasn’t content for content’s sake, but a deliberately designed container for inner and outer change. I’ve seen firsthand how showing up daily, inside a defined arc, quietly reshapes clarity, discipline, and identity.

The 10-day Chetana Jeevanam program is designed with that same philosophy. It is a short, immersive portal for personal growth and conscious recalibration—built around daily structure, reflection, and inner alignment. If this series resonates with you, you may want to join the waiting list for the upcoming batch of Chetana Jeevanam, where this work is taken deeper, together.

“30 cups of clarity”: Cup 8: Desire is not the enemy. It is the compass.

Desire is not the problem.

Your inability to sit with it is.

Over thousands of hours of working with individuals across very different life stages — students, founders, professionals, parents, people in transition — I have observed something that repeats itself with almost mechanical precision.

The unhappiest individuals are not those who desire too much.

They are those who do not know what to do with their desire.

In the Vedic framework, Kama — desire — is one of the four purusharthas: Dharma, Artha, Kama, Moksha. It is not an afterthought. It is not a moral blemish. It is a pillar of human life.

Desire is what keeps you moving. Desire is Rahu. It points you forward. It stretches your horizon. It tells you there is something more, something yet to be experienced, built, expressed.

Without desire, there is stagnation.

But here is where it becomes interesting.

Desire only becomes destructive when you either try to pretend it does not exist, or when you become incapable of containing it.

Both extremes are dangerous.

History has warned us.

Take the story of Vishwamitra and Menaka. Vishwamitra believed he had conquered desire. He believed he had transcended it. Yet the very belief that he had overcome it created the blind spot through which he was undone. Desire does not disappear because you declare victory over it. It waits. It watches. It returns.

Or consider a modern example: Tiger Woods.

A prodigy. A champion. A man whose childhood was almost entirely engineered toward greatness. Discipline. Focus. Perfection. Victory.

But what happens when a human being becomes only one dimension of himself?

In one of the Chetana Jeevanam batches, I discussed Tiger Woods as a case study. When desire is overcompressed, when you do not admit to yourself that there are other longings within you — for connection, for spontaneity, for emotional expansion — those longings do not evaporate. They leak.

They surface in distorted ways.

Affairs. Impulses. Controversies.

Was it immorality alone? Or was it mismanaged desire?

Eventually, he cleaned up his act. He recalibrated. He came back. Not as the same man, but as a more integrated one.

That is the key word: integrated.

Yesterday, I spoke about the shadow self — the parts of you that drive you far more than your conscious declarations ever will. Desire functions in a similar way. If you deny it, it does not disappear. It sinks below the surface and begins shaping your life from the dark.

You will sabotage opportunities. You will pick unnecessary fights. You will seek validation in unhealthy places. You will suddenly feel “burnt out” for no reason.

Why?

Because something within you has been unacknowledged.

Now, acknowledging desire does not mean acting on every desire.

It means recognizing it.

Seeing it.

Naming it.

Understanding its place in your life.

Some desires must be pursued. Some must be refined. Some must be outgrown. Some must simply be witnessed without indulgence.

Containment is not suppression.

Containment is conscious channeling.

When you learn to see yourself past your desire — to know that you are larger than the urge — you gain freedom. When you learn to release certain desires without drama, you gain clarity. When you learn to pursue certain desires without shame, you gain vitality.

The problem was never desire.

The problem was your relationship with it.

A life without desire is lifeless. A life ruled blindly by desire is chaotic. A life that recognizes desire and places it in alignment with Dharma — that is powerful.

If you do not build an honest relationship with your desires, your life will eventually reorganize itself in ways that feel like betrayal.

And it will not be life that betrayed you.

It will be you, avoiding yourself.

Hari Om!

–Jay

Over the years, I’ve consistently built and completed long-form challenges and series as a way of creating structured portals for personal transformation. From posting every single day on YouTube for a full year, to the How to Rebuild Your Life series, the 7-Day Entrepreneur Motivation series, the How To Communicate Effectively series and now the upcoming 4 Dham Yatra documentation—each of these wasn’t content for content’s sake, but a deliberately designed container for inner and outer change. I’ve seen firsthand how showing up daily, inside a defined arc, quietly reshapes clarity, discipline, and identity.

The 10-day Chetana Jeevanam program is designed with that same philosophy. It is a short, immersive portal for personal growth and conscious recalibration—built around daily structure, reflection, and inner alignment. If this series resonates with you, you may want to join the waiting list for the upcoming batch of Chetana Jeevanam, where this work is taken deeper, together.

“30 cups of clarity”: Cup 7: Your magic hides in your ‘shadow’

Have you watched “Frankenstein”? Or read it maybe? It’s a renowned classic from 1818. In fact that is what makes it very interesting and unique.

In this story, Victor Frankenstein is a child born to a perfectionistic but gifted surgeon father who disliked his child because he was too much of what he refused to see in himself or express.

Victor’s father had married for dowry and security not out of love; he was a reserved calculative and intellectual man. His wife was more the emotional one and in the movie she is described even visually so with ‘warmer features’ and ‘dark hair’ compared to Victor’s father who is pale and cold as if as much on the outside as within.

Victor however, resembles his mother a lot more and is deeply emotionally bonded to her and reliant on her for emotional security. When finally Victor’s mother dies one day finally, Victor thinks perhaps his father had ‘let her die’.

Victor’s father simply states factually that as a surgeon he had done his best but cannot fully control life.

Stay with me here this is where it gets interesting.

This flips Victor’s ‘switch’ so to speak.

This turns him into a person who looks as people just as ‘bodies’ and ‘machines’ to be fixed, worked and if need be, replaced.. as if they were mere robotic components.

This passion or infatuation, perhaps emanating from the wound of being unable to ‘save’ his mother, ironically turns Victor into the exact archetype that he loathed in his father:

The uncaring, cold intellectual devoid of or suppressing feelings and connections completely.

Victor is able to rise to a height as a surgeon and scientist that he is able to piece together ‘remains’ of soldiers from a war and turn them into a ‘whole’- an experiment but paradoxically a ‘super-human’.

Victor’s motivations to do so are purely technical and cold: He is only doing this to ‘overcome’ death. To ‘humiliate’ death and his father’s cold-distance.. as surpass able and small.

Yet the creation is a strange-looking, kind and compassionate being who Victor dismisses as his ‘monster’.

Victor fails to understand his creation properly, resents how ‘it’ didn’t turn out as Victor had intended. How the being is not ‘intellectually superior’ as Victor had intended to be but ‘strange’-different.

The being carried more compassion, innocence and wonder than Victor had thought possible. The being reflected back to Victor his own suppressed emotions and need for connection with himself and the world.

Victor is the cause of his own creation’s distress, dismissal and pain.

Ultimately Victor Frankenstein’s ‘monster’ begins to hunt Victor down and keep punishing him for the condemned life that he had brought the being into.

A life devoid of connection, emotion or love.

All his creations asks of him is understanding, embrace and love, acceptance.

It is not until he is at his death bed that he finally makes peace with his creation and accepts it as his ‘son’.

The deeper lesson here?

Maybe this is what it is like with the side of ourselves that we refuse to accept and refuse to acknowledge: It will create patterns and hunt us down until we make the unconscious, conscious.

In the end isn’t that what it is all about? The ability to see ourselves?

To embrace the hurt, unseen and suppressed part of who we are because it ‘isn’t’ what we want to be.. who we want to be?

Haha

That is the game isn’t it?

My iced latte says so.

You can ice it or have it piping hot, a latte is a latte.

Meaning?

You can actively integrate it and even then it will be challenging and difficult.

Or you can let it dictate your life and keep you perennially clogged with dysfunction.

Choice is yours.

Who you are afraid of admitting you are, who you hide from the world, who you judge and you are scared of being seen for.. that is the most special part of you.

Integrate it!

That’s where the work is.

Hari Om!

–Jay

Over the years, I’ve consistently built and completed long-form challenges and series as a way of creating structured portals for personal transformation. From posting every single day on YouTube for a full year, to the How to Rebuild Your Life series, the 7-Day Entrepreneur Motivation series, the How To Communicate Effectively series and now the upcoming 4 Dham Yatra documentation—each of these wasn’t content for content’s sake, but a deliberately designed container for inner and outer change. I’ve seen firsthand how showing up daily, inside a defined arc, quietly reshapes clarity, discipline, and identity.

The 10-day Chetana Jeevanam program is designed with that same philosophy. It is a short, immersive portal for personal growth and conscious recalibration—built around daily structure, reflection, and inner alignment. If this series resonates with you, you may want to join the waiting list for the upcoming batch of Chetana Jeevanam, where this work is taken deeper, together.

“30 cups of clarity”: Cup 6: Dealing with betrayal

In my entire experience since I quit being who I used to be and became the person who actually helps others become a truer version of themselves..

This journey of slowly graduating from a naïve teenager who thought following the rules laid by authority ensures success and stability..

To the weathered and tempered man at the edge of 30 realizing people, institutions, authority and even your loved ones, don’t always mean what you think they do..

To the Life Coach working with thousands of individuals around the globe, their own stories, their history, life paths and trajectories..

I think I finally have the secret formula, that single piece of clarity you need to make sense of it all. To make sense of being betrayed, make sense of being left out in the cold and to make sense of being lied to.

You know what it is?

It’s the grown-up realization that quite often people aren’t actively lying about who they are or what you mean to them.

They don’t know it fully themselves.

People often don’t fully understand, don’t fully realize what a friendship, what a relationship, what a responsibility, what a connection or role truly means to them, until they’re cornered or squeezed by life.

And so to quote Robert De Niro from Heat, haha.. people don’t realize if you’re expendable inside 30 seconds for them if they feel the heat around the corner… until they actually do.

That’s all you need to know to release and free yourself from the people who hurt you, let you down or lied to you.

People, especially the ‘majority’.. is unfortunately quite weak and focused on comfort and convenience.

The true extent of their weakness, addiction to comfort and aversion to discomfort, dawns upon them too when they must take a decision and find themselves deciding against you.

They may push that feeling down.

They may brush it off like it wasn’t anything but trust me, they know.

Most people know how much they hurt you. They know what they caused in your life. They know exactly what impact it had.

Here’s the thing though.

They’re never going to be able to apologize to you fully. They’re never going to be able to own up to their actions possibly ever.

Why?

Because of what it says about what they value, who they value and who they really are.. even.. what they really are.

It breaks their version of who they believed they were.

It upsets the balance of what they thought they were stronger than or able to hold their ground against.

If you want balance however, you’ll have to find it by making a mental note of this moving forward.

A mental note not to be distrustful of others.

A mental note not to not believe what others say.

A mental note not to not need anyone else.

A mental note simply to not place you in situations and circumstances where people have to find themselves come up short about you.

Avoid forcing people to choose.

But then also.. avoid making it easy for them either.

Avoid living as anyone who shrinks or blooms on the basis of others’ convenience or support.

Become self contained and self blooming.

Build a life so damn solid within itself that people know exactly the ‘cover charge’ required to ‘get in that club’ haha.

They know exactly what is at stake here, what they stand to lose if they mess up and what they’d be lucky to get a piece of if they can hold themselves together.

That will only happen when you stop judging yourself over the people who left you, betrayed your or didn’t fight you..

And start taking that as gentle feedback on what protocols to define about people entering and leaving.

If someone must leave, must be let go of and just plain ditches you.. send them away with love.

No sadness, no hurt, just blessings and a note to yourself: Now ‘this person’ doesn’t get to come back in.

They may well encounter themselves truly and undergo a transformation and not be the same person anymore and maybe your paths cross sometime down the line..

But it won’t ever be with the same person again.

The version of you people walk away from should be dead to them.

It’s not about hurt.

It’s about calculated withdrawal of value.

It’s about understanding that what you bring to the table will probably never always be valued and may sometimes be abused by a few, that’s okay.

It just means you need to guard that value better and ensure people who walk away from it or don’t value it, no longer get to be in a position ever again to be able to ‘value’ it but accept what that value is defined as today.

The response my friend isn’t about who you are as a person. It’s about the rates of value exchange defined by you.

Raise your value and guard your value.

Anyone who ever ‘left’ you, did so because they had never truly done the math of how ‘valuable’ you really ever were to them.

Why? Because they most probably hadn’t fully evaluated what their ‘value’ was.

These people shift their value in response to life and its triggers and when faced with a difficult choice, they let go of connections, things, people who they can’t ‘place’ inside that fuzzy value system.

That’s not your problem.

Raise your value. Guard your value.

Smile and release whoever wants to walk away.. into the world.. with peace.

Hari Om!

–Jay

Over the years, I’ve consistently built and completed long-form challenges and series as a way of creating structured portals for personal transformation. From posting every single day on YouTube for a full year, to the How to Rebuild Your Life series, the 7-Day Entrepreneur Motivation series, the How To Communicate Effectively series and now the upcoming 4 Dham Yatra documentation—each of these wasn’t content for content’s sake, but a deliberately designed container for inner and outer change. I’ve seen firsthand how showing up daily, inside a defined arc, quietly reshapes clarity, discipline, and identity.

The 10-day Chetana Jeevanam program is designed with that same philosophy. It is a short, immersive portal for personal growth and conscious recalibration—built around daily structure, reflection, and inner alignment. If this series resonates with you, you may want to join the waiting list for the upcoming batch of Chetana Jeevanam, where this work is taken deeper, together.

“30 cups of clarity”: Cup 5: Learn to be a good sport!

I’ve seen over the years that the individuals most capable of self regulating their emotions are often those who engage in some kind of ‘sport’ on a regular basis.

Now solo sports like cycling, bodybuilding, swimming, yoga and long distance running etc. are also definitely ‘sport’. Provided you do them rigorously with tangible targets aimed for.

So you will often see individuals who run long distances or work hard day in and out in perfecting their physique can derive much of the same benefits.

Why is that?

That’s because sport teaches you on a regular basis all the things necessary for mastering day to day life.

There’s rejection, adaptation, pushing oneself to the limits, learning how long one can safely hold themselves to their limits before they break..

There’s a lot that you learn unconsciously about managing your emotions and your limitations, about ‘showing up’ quite often when you don’t ‘feel like it’ and still outperforming your expectations.. that pours into other things you do in your life.

That last part especially always gets me.

It’s humbling really.

Anyone who has played any sport for a reasonable period of time, will agree with me when I say that quite often your best performances come not on the days you had expected them to come through, but days you were actually not feeling your best but showed up any way without expectations.

That kind of resonates a lot with life don’t you think?

Sometimes it’s not your actions or the lack of adequate actions that prevent your initiatives from ‘landing’. Sometimes it’s just that the environment is ‘off’. The timing is ‘off’.

Sometimes it’s just not your time. You gotta learn to roll with the punches and losses nevertheless.

Other times, you may not be at your best but just because you’re showing up.. you are present to collect what that day has to offer.

I believe that’s the single biggest thing sport teaches you.

That no victory is sealed until the last bout, last ball, last pitch, last minute, last move, last shot.. whatever you wish.

No loss is truly sealed in either until the very last minute.

Why?

Because life is not just one game man.

It’s a season.

It’s a season of seasons in fact.

Every game doesn’t have to be perfect, the season has to look decent when you’re done with it.

Even if it doesn’t, there will be another season if you know how to preserve yourself for it.

That’s why even in games where you know that there is no way you can cover the deficit in the time you have and will most certainly ‘lose’, you still have immense opportunity and room for experimentation and growth.

As long as you can do that and as long as you are doing that with the longer arc in mind, you are aiming for the championship. You are learning to aim for the championship. You are learning to pace yourself to align with something bigger that just temporary wins and losses.

That’s what sport teaches you more than anything else.

At least as much as I have observed with many of my clients who’ve built great routines, great rituals and great things over the years.

I’ve observed that being engaged in sport is what kept these top achievers and performers grounded through times there was havoc in other areas of their lives.

Committing to and playing a sport regularly can be a great addition to your life.

In fact, I have leveraged the power of sport to bring about amazing changes in clients.

Picking up something that is challenging and outside your comfort zone; as long as it doesn’t aggravate any health conditions you may have (always make sure of that)..

Can unlock a completely different personality for you my friend.

You will have to change, control, transform and mange aspects of yourself to stay devoted to honing your skills when it comes to a sport you pick even if for a few seasons as a ‘challenge’ to yourself.

Within that is such a powerful lesson that most people will never learn it even with years of so called spiritual practices that were meant to deliver them to such a change.

You never take all of you when you ascend a level of proficiency in anything. Something within you will have to be left behind and something else that comes up will have to be embraced. That’s what sport is about.

You just can’t drink and eat heavy tonight even if it’s your birthday, major life event etc. if you have a tennis match the next morning.

You can’t just keep having foods that inflame your joints if you want to continue to make progress with golf let’s say.

You can’t skip meals or not rest if you want your body to grow and look a certain way as a bodybuilder.

Get me?

Sport teaches you regulation at a physical level with direct consequence..

In a way few other things ever will.

So if you’ve been struggling to find the right balance in your life and wondering what to do and how.. where to start.. maybe picking up a sport or returning to a sport you really liked once upon a time.. could be a great idea.

You know why?

Because man, who you are shows up most when things are not going your way. When things are going your way, that’s just the ‘you’ that is comfortable to be most of the time.

Building consciousness and mastery over that man.. who you are when you’re not in the most comfortable of situations but have showed up to ‘play’ any way.. that is what will allow you to master the rest of your life.

Hari Om!

–Jay

Over the years, I’ve consistently built and completed long-form challenges and series as a way of creating structured portals for personal transformation. From posting every single day on YouTube for a full year, to the How to Rebuild Your Life series, the 7-Day Entrepreneur Motivation series, the How To Communicate Effectively series and now the upcoming 4 Dham Yatra documentation—each of these wasn’t content for content’s sake, but a deliberately designed container for inner and outer change. I’ve seen firsthand how showing up daily, inside a defined arc, quietly reshapes clarity, discipline, and identity.

The 10-day Chetana Jeevanam program is designed with that same philosophy. It is a short, immersive portal for personal growth and conscious recalibration—built around daily structure, reflection, and inner alignment. If this series resonates with you, you may want to join the waiting list for the upcoming batch of Chetana Jeevanam, where this work is taken deeper, together.

“30 cups of clarity” Cup 4: Cultivating Joy

Do whatever you gotta do in life man.. with a sense of JOY.

No, don’t let them fool you into thinking that this constitutes ‘toxic positivity’.

On the contrary, if you really hold yourself accountable to this ritual, this little ‘agreement’ between you and your inner child, your true self..

Everything that is ‘toxic’ and ‘unhappy’ will reveal itself to you.

Bright as day.

Over the last 8 years this is the recurrent theme that has come up for me talking to hundreds and thousands of individuals, individually.

What is the theme?

That ‘happiness’ and ‘joy’ won’t show up in your life consistently if you don’t make them a priority.

It’s simple as that.

You can have all the money in the world, a house, a job to ‘kill for’ and yet be deeply dissatisfied and unhappy inside.

That’s where the world is doing a very good job of masking their pain and enabling toxic behaviours that feed back into the same loop.

What are those?

It’s those popular memes and sayings that I’ve been listening to growing up and now see floating around as memes so I’m definitely sure a lot of you who are reading this would be aware.

Things like “Money can’t buy you happiness but it’s better to cry in a Mercedes than a fiat.”

Things like “Money means loneliness. There’s a reason a Lamborghini only has 2 seats and a van has 6. “

First of all, I have had clients who have called me crying from their Mercedes, parked in the driveway because they couldn’t go home with their problems, couldn’t have their family see them like it and had no other ‘safe space’ to have a call with me.

You can’t even begin to understand how f’d up this assumption is that crying in an expensive car is somehow better or nobler or more pacifying.

Second, I’ve only seen people become more surrounded by a community, by people who care for them and are invested in them, the more you go up the ladder and become more successful and abundant.

Yes, the core strategic decision making becomes centralized because beyond a point you don’t fully rely on the new entrants and their agendas or motivations. You learn to fully rely only on yourself or max a ‘co-pilot’ like a trusted second in command or spouse maybe.

Buffet had Munger, Jobs had Woz, Modi has Shah. There’s nothing dysfunctional there but ‘design’ of power.

Look at the massive massive community around these figures though?

Would they be who they are if they didn’t consciously take the community along with them?

No.

So the point is my friend, don’t trade your happiness for hard ‘money’. It’s not worth it.

Prioritize your happiness and just about the right amount of wealth, opportunities and connections will show up.

Just remember true happiness is never in ‘in-action’. True happiness is always in creativity.

When you are happy you create.

When you are living in survival mode, you shrink and become calculative and distrustful of your own abilities to transform, build and change the world around you as you envision it.

When you hold yourself accountable to showing up with joy every day, in time the things, people, situations and circumstances that challenge and rob your joy will reveal themselves to you.

That’s where your true work begins.

I was not a big fan of dark roasted coffee but my god it hits a different note even if I need more sugar with it.

See you tomorrow.

Hari Om!

–Jay

Over the years, I’ve consistently built and completed long-form challenges and series as a way of creating structured portals for personal transformation. From posting every single day on YouTube for a full year, to the How to Rebuild Your Life series, the 7-Day Entrepreneur Motivation series, the How To Communicate Effectively series and now the upcoming 4 Dham Yatra documentation—each of these wasn’t content for content’s sake, but a deliberately designed container for inner and outer change. I’ve seen firsthand how showing up daily, inside a defined arc, quietly reshapes clarity, discipline, and identity.

The 10-day Chetana Jeevanam program is designed with that same philosophy. It is a short, immersive portal for personal growth and conscious recalibration—built around daily structure, reflection, and inner alignment. If this series resonates with you, you may want to join the waiting list for the upcoming batch of Chetana Jeevanam, where this work is taken deeper, together.

“30 cups of clarity” Cup 3: Honoring your inner child

Remember when you thought you could take the world on and win?

When you were so naïve you thought all you need to succeed in the world is a little bit of support or luck and you with your natural talents and pure intention.. were going to take-the-world-on.. and win big?

Some people have never had the good fortune of knowing this version of themselves.

Why?

You grow up in abusive chaotic homes where even the basic support and security is denied to you and you grow up like a ‘hollow being’.. unaware of your true strengths and weaknesses.

You just keep moving through life doing what is ‘expected’ of you never truly finding out what you want or are uniquely capable of.

Others, were born precious (like we all are), grew up and retained that preciousness about them.. until they stepped out into the ‘real world’ one day..

And blended in without a sound.

Just another number, just another data point for large advertising and  marketing companies.

Just another face in the crowd, just another suit in the subway, just another car in traffic..

Every day who knows how many hundreds, thousands or hundreds of thousands of individuals are being ‘lost’ to the ‘other side’… this large faceless cynical, pessimistic, machine which is the modern capitalistic consciousness that reduces everyone and everything to another ‘number’.

There’s nothing wrong about that. The world evolves and our place in it evolves too.

What’s wrong is how it seems so ‘normal’ to everyone.

Human beings have an interesting ability to normalize whatever is done at a large enough scale. Morality becomes subjective and this is one of the things Neitzche talks about in his book Higher man and the heard.. (I’m paraphrasing a tad) ‘Morality’ is whatever happens at scale, approved at ‘scale’ and normalized through widespread participation.

‘Normality’ is her sister.

What is normal?

Who defines which one of my dreams are too lofty?

Who defines which one of my ideals are too utopian?

Who defines which one of my tastes are too purist?

Who the hell is sitting behind the curtains of it all normalizing how I can or cannot live my life?

Who-the-hell… when all my inner child every wanted was to move through the world with wonder, respect and peace?

My inner child.. your inner child.. had no clue that there’s so much politics and red tape and process, procedure and ‘acceptance’- ‘rejection’ cycles involved in building and living the kind of life one is naturally drawn to.

And yet at some point we surrender our natural gifts for safety of the heard and trade ‘what if’ with ‘this is how its always been’.

Truth is this is not how it always was.

It became this way when you began to normalize it en masse.

It started somewhere though..

What did?

Everything that you see around you that you do not approve of.

Everything that you ‘deal with’ everyday but feel weighed down and drained accepting.

All of life and living that you see around you.. began somewhere.. by someone..

Someone.. unwilling to compromise on their world view.

These people.. these ‘someones’.. may have built what they built through brokenness or respect for the inner child.

The third category is the vast army of faces and numbers negotiating balance between both polarities and making ‘peace’ with life.

Only.. and this is what I have come to realize working with 2000+ individuals across 12 time zones, 6 continents and 5000+ hours, 8 years while completing PGs, certifications, books, articles, research, travels and videos side by side…

Only…

There is no ‘making peace’ with what directly challenges and seeks to destroy what is sacred about you.

Can there be any negotiation of peace with someone who harms your child? Or someone who harms any child for that matter?

What ‘peace’ or ‘balance’ do you mistakenly believe can be negotiated with those who wouldn’t even pause to think, if the ‘numbers’ justified killing, enslaving and subjugating any number of children, women or people?

Well that’s precisely what the ‘majority’ has been engaged in for a long long time.

Pull up history.

Slavery was ‘normal’ once upon a time because the masses normalized it.

Child labour is normal in a lot of countries around the world making your shoes, your clothes, your products.. and earning trillions of dollars for their GDP.. because the ‘numbers’ normalize it.

Look at the world for a second.

I challenge you to find ‘humanity’ unblemished, unadulterated, uncontorted.. existing purely as it should.. in service to the world.. nothing more.. nothing less..

And you will not find it where the ‘numbers’ live. At least not in the purest sense. No.

You will find it in the innocent experiments by newcomers to naïve to anticipate the VCs will probably say no to their pitch and build a legally accepted version of that idea themselves behind their back.

You will find it in the indie coffee place around the corner where writers sit and write what they couldn’t elsewhere.

You will find it in the paintings of children convinced they have created a masterpiece with their fingers dipped in paint.

You will find it in a group of wild horses racing each other through the mountains to the horizon.

The college student who believes he or she could solve a real world problem and sets about building it, dropping out with no backup, relying just on talent and freelance gigs.

The gardener who shows up without fail to maintain the beautiful flowerbed even when the AQI is hitting 400 and people are glued to their air filters for a gasp of fresh air.

True happiness does not come from ‘blending in’.

If that were so, communism would have won long ago and with many years and countries to spare.

No.

The need to individuate is far greater.

The need for me to be who I am and live as who I am with my unique choices, my unique mistakes, misconceptions and naivety but also innovation and genius.. is far greater.

It’s not about the pursuit of happiness ladies and gentlemen. It’s about the happiness of the pursuit.

And you can’t fake it and convince yourself about being happy with a pursuit that is not truly ‘yours’.

You have to honor the essence of your inner child before anything else.

Okay I’m over a 1000 words now. My Irish cream flavored cappuccino from Barista is finished too. Let’s continue this conversation tomorrow.

Hari Om!

–Jay

Over the years, I’ve consistently built and completed long-form challenges and series as a way of creating structured portals for personal transformation. From posting every single day on YouTube for a full year, to the How to Rebuild Your Life series, the 7-Day Entrepreneur Motivation series, the How To Communicate Effectively series and now the upcoming 4 Dham Yatra documentation—each of these wasn’t content for content’s sake, but a deliberately designed container for inner and outer change. I’ve seen firsthand how showing up daily, inside a defined arc, quietly reshapes clarity, discipline, and identity.

The 10-day Chetana Jeevanam program is designed with that same philosophy. It is a short, immersive portal for personal growth and conscious recalibration—built around daily structure, reflection, and inner alignment. If this series resonates with you, you may want to join the waiting list for the upcoming batch of Chetana Jeevanam, where this work is taken deeper, together.

“30 cups of clarity” Cup 2: Recalling Your Power

One of the most important things to understand about creating change and any sort of change.. in your life.. in your self.. is to first of all understand that your energy is limited.

If you are going to ‘level up’, then it is going to require a little more energy than the current state is running on.

Think of yourself like an electron orbiting around the nucleus of an atom. Or think of yourself as a satellite orbiting a planet. To ‘escape’ the orbit, you need a little more energy that helps you ‘rise’ up in energetic level to the point that can ultimately help you ‘detach’ and ‘escape’ from the pull of whatever your life is currently orbiting.

What this means is, if you’ve been feeling stuck at the current level for a while and feel a deep need to ‘raise your game’, you need to begin by taking back your energy from places, people and tasks that may be unconsciously draining you.

‘Draining’ seems like a strong word and we usually associate that with anxiety, distress and financial abandon as well maybe.

In reality, ‘draining’ is a lot more subtle than that.

Energy vital to your growth and upliftment seldom leaks all at once if you are careful enough.

Quite often it’s the small harmless interruptions throughout the day that drain you.

A little longer on the phone with a friend when you know you should be getting back to work.

A little longer scrolling on your phone while on your tea or coffee break when you know you need to get back and get down to business with your tasks.

A little longer lounging in your comfortable chair or couch after you’re back from the gym or a workout, when you know you need to get into the shower, ice bath or something; fix yourself a meal, change and relax properly so that even if you feel drowsy, you pull up the covers and just go to sleep..

Get what I mean?

We’ve been made to believe that oversleeping by an hour is somehow cataclysmic, that “winners are always people who sleep less” etc etc.

The reality is that even if you slept a little longer on a particular day, it’s okay. That’s a little more rest than you needed ‘held in reserve’. Look at it like that.

Now just get up get dressed and go full intensity between now and night when it’s bed time again.

Waste less time during the day on useless stuff and pour all of that energy mindfully into whatever you need to do.

It’s the ‘small’, ‘harmless’ interruptions that go on longer than they should have throughout the day that drain you of peak cognition state and cognition is like a sharp blade. It’s sharpest when you wake up and then with each careless task that takes up space and energy, it keeps getting blunt and blunt to the point it needs to be resharpened.

Your mental bandwidth is like that.

Obviously if you have sick/old/dependent parents, young children and a spouse and siblings, they will need you and they will call you and need your attention.

You however need to fix rules around your availability in a way that makes your presence and availability, your energy predictable and dependable.

Fix a good 90-120 minutes only for family and maybe also friends who you include as part of your family, at a specific time during the day.

For your spouse, a dedicated 60 minutes maybe after you’ve both retired to your bedroom for the night; slowly winding up the day, catching up about intimate stuff in all sense of the word and maybe a nice 20 mins of chat and coffee/tea in the morning.

Even if you sleep a full 8hours, and commute 2 hrs and toilet bathroom time is 2 hrs, this leaves you with a full 9 hours non stop that you can pour into deep focus work.

Anyone who calls throughout the day, in the beginning you will have to be a little ‘tough’ in setting boundaries by saying “I am busy in these hours until X date and if it’s urgent please tell me otherwise let’s catch up in the evening.”

With time people will get it.

This is only for those critical time periods of your life when you need to ‘level up’.

‘Levelling up’ requires you to withdraw all of your energy from the world and leave only as much as is most essential to keep your life running.

All this ‘collected’ energy needs to be channeled into raising your vibration to the next level.

Then when you have reached the next level, whether by hitting a financial goal, personal goal or spiritual, physical, material goal, you can share the roadmap to get there with others around you.

You can share the bounty in fact with the ones who were the closest most supportive and understanding.

But let me tell you honestly, there is no way to get to the next level without making up for the ‘energy deficit’ between this level and the next one.

So that begs a question: “What do I do Jay if people around me aren’t mindful or adjusting of the work I need to put in to get to the ‘next level’ ?”

That’s a real question. Let me elaborate on that tomorrow.

For today, just run a mindful audit on the many places you may be wasting your energy without realizing. That way when we discuss this question tomorrow, you will have enough data to make sense of what’s actually happening!

My Almond milk hazelnut cappuccino from Koby’s is empty as I read the wordcount on this article and wrap this up. I made a pact with myself today to not go over 1000. You see that’s the kind of little boundary setting necessary.

Hari Om!

–Jay

Over the years, I’ve consistently built and completed long-form challenges and series as a way of creating structured portals for personal transformation. From posting every single day on YouTube for a full year, to the How to Rebuild Your Life series, the 7-Day Entrepreneur Motivation series, the How To Communicate Effectively series and now the upcoming 4 Dham Yatra documentation—each of these wasn’t content for content’s sake, but a deliberately designed container for inner and outer change. I’ve seen firsthand how showing up daily, inside a defined arc, quietly reshapes clarity, discipline, and identity.

The 10-day Chetana Jeevanam program is designed with that same philosophy. It is a short, immersive portal for personal growth and conscious recalibration—built around daily structure, reflection, and inner alignment. If this series resonates with you, you may want to join the waiting list for the upcoming batch of Chetana Jeevanam, where this work is taken deeper, together.

“30 cups of clarity” Cup 1: Rest is nothing without ‘Re-Set’.

The beauty of life is that it gives you a fresh beginning every day.

It may not be completely fresh though. Every morning may still remember something from the evening past. Every evening may still remember something from years gone by.

Life is like a walk in a Zen garden.

The path turns and twists through varied terrain. Sometimes it takes you through a pond, other times through a dense bush. Almond blossoms, bamboo patches, stone walks et all.

The key to enjoying life is knowing how to push ‘reset’ every morning and showing up as a new you. A ‘you’ that refuses to reduce the game of living, the experience of living to ‘win’ or ‘loss’, ‘struggle’ or ‘ease’.

But a ‘you’ that chooses to approach every single day, as it is.

Sometimes that means turning off your emotions for a while and being engaged in hard labor. Other times it means allowing yourself to feel everything as deeply as it can be felt.

No one tells you how to do any of these things. They are self calibrated. Self regulated. Self learned.

No one can teach you ‘emotional regulation’. They can tell you what it is but not really the how. As a life coach and as an individual who has been through a healthy variety of life circumstances I can tell you that when it counts the most, you will often find yourself alone.

In the most important moments of your life, as you step up to receive what life had been building quietly towards for a long time.. as you step up to claim finally what was always meant to be yours..

There will always be a test involved. A test that you must go through alone. Not necessarily physically alone by emotionally alone.

No one can master your emotions for you. That’s the most important thing that no one teaches you. Whether or not you F up in a moment, whether or not you lose your cool in a moment, whether or not… you scramble.. the opportunity of your life… depends only and only on YOU.

So what do you do?

Well you learn to build rituals around every day.

A ritual that allows you to reset every morning.

A ritual that is healthy enough that you don’t worry about another problem to be solved emanating from said ritual.

A ritual that is workable and practical enough that it can be performed every day.

A ritual that first of all tells you as you start your day, that “this is a fresh start”.

Everything should start after that.

Your day should begin after that ritual. That ritual should signal  to your brain and body that okay, yesterday is gone. Here we go again.

For me, amongst the many rituals I have built my life and routine around, the ‘reset ritual’ every morning is built on a nice rich cup of coffee coupled with reading/writing.

This series, “30 cups of clarity”, is just me sharing 30 of the many many drafts I’ve written and compiled over the years. Some are new. Some are old. Some are just impromptu, a byproduct of the flavor of coffee that day or the angle of sunlight hitting my window that morning.

In my journey as a coach, as a solopreneur in the last 8 years, there is a lot I have learnt that I think I am ready to share now.

Why now?

Because this identity has reached its maxima.

I’ve pretty much done what I wanted to do as a coach and I’ve done how I wanted to do it. I am moving now to a new role that I must take up. A role that will involve me taking more of a back seat when it comes to operations but a front seat when it comes to interacting with a much larger audience through the coaching lens.

There are hundreds of photos from my travels across India. Hundreds of photos capturing the essence of my work and snapshots of my evolution through this journey.

This series is an attempt to share that and maybe enable others who venture on this path to make sense of doing things that way.

Every day, every post will culminate into something meaningful that I can share with you that can help you come a step closer to personal growth and transformation.

Today’s post invites you to build a meaningful, sustainable, pleasurable (but restrained, not toxic or addictive) daily ‘reset’ ritual.

This needs to be the first ritual that you start each working day with.. fresh.

As for me, well the signature dark roast cappuccino from Blue Tokai that I’ve picked for today’s post, truly has me energized and ready to hit a hundred tasks lined up today.

There’s an important announcement coming soon.

See you tomorrow!

–Jay

Over the years, I’ve consistently built and completed long-form challenges and series as a way of creating structured portals for personal transformation. From posting every single day on YouTube for a full year, to the How to Rebuild Your Life series, the 7-Day Entrepreneur Motivation series, the How To Communicate Effectively series and now the upcoming 4 Dham Yatra documentation—each of these wasn’t content for content’s sake, but a deliberately designed container for inner and outer change. I’ve seen firsthand how showing up daily, inside a defined arc, quietly reshapes clarity, discipline, and identity.

The 10-day Chetana Jeevanam program is designed with that same philosophy. It is a short, immersive portal for personal growth and conscious recalibration—built around daily structure, reflection, and inner alignment. If this series resonates with you, you may want to join the waiting list for the upcoming batch of Chetana Jeevanam, where this work is taken deeper, together.

‘Tantra’ and ‘Vedic’ astrology part 1

Chakras & Planets: The Tantric Bridge in Vedic Astrology

Hari Om Namo Narayana!

For a long time the knowledge of ‘tantra’ had been limited to a select few who often practiced it for less than ethical reasons.

This is one of the biggest taboos associated with this science. The fact that it deals with pure energy and pure energy as you know, is free form. It can heal if directed well but it can also cause massive harm.

For example nuclear power. If harnessed with the focus of providing energy, it can perhaps power a whole city with less material than a fourth of the daily consumption of coal in a geothermal plant. Maybe even less, lot less.

If targeted at an enemy nation in the form of a nuclear bomb, a small bomb the size of a hatchback is enough to blow up half a city.

‘Tantric’ practitioners often practiced this art in seclusion. Away from the eyes of the common folk and even the religious folk. ‘Tantric’ practitioners found their dwellings in secluded caves deep in the forests where even wild animals would rarely venture.

What’s the reason?

Well, one reason is absolutely the taboo aspect of it. The other is that when you practice ‘tantra’, a huge amount of energy is released in your surroundings. This energy is quite often not all positive. It isn’t all negative either and in this respect ‘Tantra’ resembles the practice of ‘Alchemy’ in the west.

The only difference is that alchemists may or may not have been able to synthesize gold from regular metals but ‘tantric’ practitioners were able to synthesize massive amounts of energy from the body’s ‘chakra’ system.

See ‘tantra’ is not about external energy but it is rather the manipulation of energy that exists within your body.

Your body has a magnetic field and this is a scientific proven fact.

I can even illustrate the manipulations caused in this magnetic field after the chanting of specific mantras and you can try it yourself as well.

Sit to meditate with iron shavings placed around you in a circle and go on chanting ‘tantric’ ‘mantras’ for a specific period of time.

After a while you will notice a subtle change in the patterns of the shavings.

You can test the same with water and lots of other things in fact.

There are a lot of meditation teachers out there who teach meditation with the 5 elements and you can actually notice your body’s interactions with these elements changes in the practice of these meditation techniques.

Now, in the same way, you need to realise that how in the example of using a nuclear reactor to power a whole city holds true for the benefits of nuclear power, there are other similarities as well.

For example, you can’t just set up a nuclear power plant without the proper specifications.

A nuclear power plant needs to be engineered and structured according to a very specific plan.

You need heavy water, cadmium rods and uranium or plutonium synthesized to very specific quantities and calculations.

A little disturbance in this and you see that the consequences will be massively destructive like the famous Chernobyl incident where nuclear fallout resulted in an entire city being abandoned.

Same it is for your body now.

If you have not been practicing ‘yoga’ and following some other principles of self control, self awareness etc, at the very least, practicing ‘tantra’ can drive you crazy.

The average ‘tantric’ mantra for a goddess of a specific planet or ‘chakra’ in your body, will first and foremost attack the negative or shadow aspects of these energies within you.

So a ‘tantra’ practitioner does well to spend a lot of time cleansing and ridding the body of these impurities through ‘pranayama’, ‘kriya yoga’ and ‘mantra saadhna’.

Now, comes the main point.

If ‘tantra’ practice is so dangerous why engage in it at all?

Because ‘tantra’ has the power to heal your chart.

Yes!

‘Tantra’ can heal let’s say an extremely badly placed Moon in your chart permanently.

See people do these remedies and ‘pujas’ and say that you need to do this and that to heal a planet.

Quite often most astrologers will ask you do the ‘shanti’ for a planet creating problems.

However, that only heals the problems in the present.

It is like kicking the can down the road.

See these planets are outside but they are within you as well.

Each ‘chakra’ in your body corresponds to the energy of a particular planet.

These are as under:

  1. ‘Mooladhara’: Saturn
  2. ‘Svadhishtana’: Jupiter
  3. ‘Manipura’: Mars
  4. ‘Anahata’: Venus
  5. ‘Vissudha’: Mercury
  6. ‘Ajna’: Sun and Moon
  7. ‘Sahasrara’: ‘Rahu’ and ‘Ketu’

So let’s say you have a badly placed Mars in your chart. This shows that you will suffer from problems indicated by the ‘chakra’ ruled by Mars in your body as well as the placed where this Mars is situated.

Example?

Mars in Cancer.

Such a person may suffer from indigestion or lack of confidence which are connotations of the Solar Plexus or the ‘Manipura chakra’.

This person will also face issues with focusing on a task and probably also headaches and predicting the consequences of their actions. These are all now significances of the ‘Ajna chakra’. Which is ruled by Moon and Sun.

So now in this way, and please do not start practicing these on your own. Build this knowledge first and build a deeper understanding first. Then we can come to the practicing part. That will be done through ‘kriya yoga’.

What is ‘kriya yoga’? We will discuss that also in subsequent posts on this topic.

Main thing is to understand here in the first post that ‘tantra’ can heal your ‘karma’ and your planet in the chart. You can do it yourself.

That’s the thing and for this I am so grateful to god for granting me this knowledge. ‘Tantra’ is an action oriented science which can help you, the native, heal yourself by cleansing and empowering your own body’s energy system.

Hari Om Namo Narayana!

Essence of Tantra, Siddhi & the Occult: Secrets of Divine Power

Hari Om Namo Narayana!

‘Tantra’ is easily the most misunderstood of all the Hindu doctrines.

(Photo of ‘Tantric’ goddess ‘Matangi’, a secret form of ‘Saraswati’.)

The reason is that ‘Tantra’ isn’t confined to a single document or has any proper sources from where it is derived. All we know is that it originated from the ‘Shakti’ tradition. The documents are very difficult to be found and are heavily guarded by the keepers of this knowledge.

We are lucky today that to some extent, this knowledge has become more available as the internet revolution came around. Otherwise 50 years ago, you’d have to leave everything and go live in a an obscure cave somewhere with the people who could give you this knowledge.

  • ‘Tantra’ in India is imagined to be a tool restricted to ‘tantriks’ clad in black living in caves, wearing strange clothes and performing some magical ‘yajna’ where they go ‘Hum Phat Swaaha’ every few minutes.
    • I squarely blame Bollywood movies for this incorrectness!
  • In fact, it’s saddening to see this representation of a field of mysticism that is deeply celebrated and profoundly understood in ‘Vajrayana’ Buddhism.
  • Yes, Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism especially has the origins of ‘Vajrayana’ Buddhism that is a distinct field of what is known to us as ‘Tantra’.
    • In ‘Vajrayana’ Buddhism, ‘Tantra’ is accepted as a way of life and ‘Tantric’ deities are painted with gold dust in an extremely rare form of art called the ‘Thangka’.
  • Now similarly in the west, the understanding of ‘Tantra’ is all but limited ‘Tantric’ sex. There are courses on Udemy about this topic in fact and there’s a whole thriving industry of sexual wellness on this topic.
    • Just type ‘tantra’ in YouTube and you are more likely to come across these videos rather than their religious counterpart that has its roots in Hinduism.
    • ‘Tantric’ sex explores the concept of achieving complete union with your partner and attaining transcendental states together through conscious sexual union. ‘Shiva’ and his consort ‘Parvati’ are the first ‘tantric’ couple.
    • It involves a lot of intricacies of breath work, mindfulness etc.

So which of these representations is true?

  • The right answer is both. ‘Tantra’ is energy and it represents more specifically the energy of your body, your energetic system that has been subdivided into ‘chakras’.
  • There is the divine masculine and the divine feminine and these polarities are within each one of us. It’s in our energy. It’s the nature of this universe as described in ‘Vedic’ texts in fact, as ‘purusha’ and ‘prakriti’.
  • The purpose of ‘tantra’ is very profound and you are encouraged to read my other answers on the topic and also my book where I detail ‘Tantra’ at length; the purpose of ‘tantra’ is to reconcile two seemingly irreconcilable ends of the human consciousness.
  • It is centered in the idea that you have the power within you to manipulate your energy to an extent that you gain complete control over your energy.
  • Once you can do that, you can control everything on this planet from that particular frequency. Let’s say for example, you gain mastery over the ‘Earth’ element in your body, you can master all Earthly matters such as money, security, strength etc. You can master both the positive and the negative, the ‘yin’ and ‘yang’ connotations of this energy.

What does that mean?

It means you can enjoy pleasure in the same way you enjoy aloofness from ‘maaya’. ‘Tantra’ neither looks down upon sex, nor intoxication or even what you eat. This is unlike ‘Vaishnavism’ and ‘Shaivism’, where you have to maintain strict adherence to a ‘Sattvic’ lifestyle and some specific other rules.

‘Tantra’ understands that the entire world and your experience of it is illusionary. To break free from this illusion is to learn to immerse yourself in it and withdraw at will.

This process of being able to immerse yourself into the world and withdraw at will, is likened to the process of intercourse and that is why conscious intercourse is not frowned upon but in fact, forms an integral part of the practice for couples who seek to go down this path together.

The idea is to experience ‘Maaya’ but not be lost in it.

Use your experience in fact, to raise your consciousness higher.

For if you immerse into it and lose yourself, it has power over you.

If you are always at an arm’s distance from it, means it still has power over you because you don’t trust yourself enough to allow it to be one with you.

Now, ‘Siddhi’, black magic and occult practices are all related to ‘tantra’.

However, Alchemy comes from the west and deals with a rather mundane pursuit in my opinion, of converting any metal to gold.

  • The functional area of ‘tantra’ is much wider than that.
  • ‘Tantra’ is much like Morpheus teaching Neo how to see through the matrix.
  • Alchemy is much like a group of gifted hackers wanting to hack into the mainframe of Google.
  • In other words, Alchemy is impossible to achieve.
  • ‘Tantra’ on the other hand is the path to ‘Kundalini’ awakening. We have evidence of it. We have no evidence of Alchemy having worked.
    • Those of you who have read “The Alchemist” may disagree and I’ll tell you that what is described in the book, at the point where the boy taps into the universal consciousness and causes the wind to flow at his will, that is ‘Tantra’.

So what is ‘Siddhi’?

  • To understand this you must first understand in brief, the ‘mahavidyas’.

(‘Sati’ splits into the ‘mahavidyas’ at ‘Daksha’s yajna’)

  • So, the story goes that ‘Sati’, the wife of Shiva, was one of the daughters of ‘Daksha Prajapati’. ‘Daksha’ was one of the sons of ‘Brahma’. He didn’t like ‘Shiva’ very much because he misunderstood ‘Shiva’s’ detached nature as being arrogant and uncouth.
  • ‘Shiva’ being ‘Shiva’, hardly cared. So on the day that ‘Daksha’ was due to perform one of the biggest ‘yajnas’ in the universe that would make him the ruler of all three worlds, he omitted his daughter and son in law from the list of guests.
  • This hurt ‘Sati’ very much and she insisted upon showing up uninvited.
  • ‘Shiva’ forbade her from going. “Sati that ‘yajna’ will be the cause of your death. Do not go there.” he told her.
  • However, the divine feminine is extremely powerful and boundless in energy. When she is imbalanced, nothing can stop her from wrecking havoc.
  • So ‘Sati’ and ‘Shiva’ turn up there and as was expected, ‘Daksha’ treated ‘Shiva’ poorly. ‘Shiva’, unperturbed, decided to leave the place as he was neither interested in fighting back nor interested in engaging ‘Daksha’.
  • Enraged at the sheer inaction of ‘Shiva’ and her father’s ignorance, ‘Sati’s’ energy burst into 10 forms.
  • 10 forms of the divine feminine, each for one direction of the universe: North, North West, East and so on. These are known as the 10 ‘mahavidyas’.
  • These 10 forms were magical and extremely powerful and they forbade ‘Shiva’ to leave the scene.
  • Ensuring his presence at the place to witness what she was about to do, ‘Sati’ self immolated herself by jumping into ‘Daksha’s’ ‘yajna’ thereby destroying it piety and enraging ‘Shiva’.
    • The divine masculine when he springs to action from an immovable force becomes death himself.
  • ‘Shiva’ plucked out a strand of hair and smashed it to the ground into two with his feet. From the two strands emerged powerful ‘tantric’ forces of ‘Virbhadra’ and ‘Bhadrakali’.
    • He ordered them to kill ‘Daksha’ and destroy the ‘yajna’.
  • In ‘Vedic’ astrology and ‘tantra’ , this is who the 10 ‘mahavidyas’ are and these are what energies they command:
  1. ‘Bhairavi’: Rules the ascendant
  2. ‘Shodashi’: Rules Mercury
  3. ‘Matangi’: Rules Sun
  4. ‘Bhuvaneshwari’: Rules Moon
  5. ‘Baglamukhi’: Rules Mars
  6. ‘Kaali’: Rules Saturn
  7. ‘Chinnamasta’:Rules ‘Rahu’
  8. ‘Dhumavati’: Rules ‘Ketu’
  9. ‘Taara’: Rules Jupiter
  10. ‘Kamala’: Rules Venus
  • Their worship is secret, their forms are secret and it is said that even our depictions of them are vastly inaccurate as they reveal the form they want, to the seeker they choose.

Fascinating isn’t it?

A ‘siddhi’ is a complete unlocking of the power of one of these deities in your body.

How do you do this?

  • You do it under the guidance of a guru only and it involves extreme discipline and pin point accuracy in the process. If the rules of a particular deity are to sleep on floor only without a blanket during the ‘siddhi’ time period, you will do so.
  • If you don’t there are grave consequences possible.

Why is that?

  • Because you are manipulating the very basics of your body’s energetic system.
  • It’s similar to how nuclear energy is. In the right hands, with the right process, you can build a reactor and harness it to fuel a city. However, misused or mishandled, it has the power to cause mass destruction.
  • ‘Tantric’ deities are ready to give you power as long as you have done the ‘siddhi’ correctly. You can acquire both ‘sattvic’ as well as ‘tamsic’ powers. Processes of the ‘siddhis’ are different for both and so are the ‘mantras’.

(In the ‘Ramayana’, the source of ‘Indrajit’s’ power was derived from his ‘Siddhi’ of ‘Nikumbhala Devi’, consort of ‘Vishnu’s’ ‘Narsimha avatar’.)

  • Now, how a ‘siddhi’ works is, for example, you have done ‘Matangi’ ‘siddhi’, using her ‘mantra’. ‘Matangi’ corresponds to the 3rd eye and the Sun.
    • Wherever Sun is placed in your chart or even if you don’t know where it is placed, you will embody the power of the Sun himself through ‘Matangi’s’ ‘siddhi’.
  • This means, fame, recognition, power and supreme expression and life purpose.
    • Every great sage had done at least one ‘siddhi’. For example ‘Durvasa’ was invincible because of ‘Dhumavati’ ‘siddhi’.

What is black magic?

  • So, ‘black magic’ is done in many areas in the world. You may have heard of ‘Voodo’ etc. Black Magic is made up of a different field of study wherein all the deities that the practitioners invoke are of a ‘tamsic’ nature and are called upon for their negative traits to invoke harm.
  • In India, Hindu philosophy doesn’t have the concept of ‘The Devil’. It is illustrated in the ‘puranas’ that every deity or entity has negative as well as positive traits. The concept of cause and effect is held paramount and practitioners of dark magic or ‘dark tantra’ are said to reap the results of dabbling with these powers and therefore face many tragedies in their life which are referred to as ‘sacrifices’ for the practice or ‘bali’.
    • We don’t know much documentation wise of dark magic practice in India. However, we know that there is a cult in the East i.e. followers of a form of ‘Kali’ who have expertise in black magic.

What is it?

  • Black magic is utilization of ‘tantric’ powers for wrong purposes. Quite often these aren’t even ‘tantric’ deities but departed souls, lost souls and demonic energies, knowledge of control of who is also documented and passed down like the knowledge of ‘tantra’.
  • There are ‘tamsic’ forms of the 10 ‘mahavidyas’ too who can grant a person immense power that helps me manipulate their aura to effect outcomes.

Now, what are occult practices?

  • There’s a whole variety of them and anything as simple as the ‘ouija’ board to as advanced as a full blown ‘tantric’ ‘yajna’ could be considered and occult practice.
  • In Hindu philosophy, they are mentioned in detail in the ‘Atharva Veda’.
  • Some are based in logic and deep study such as ‘tantra’. Some are more inclined towards harm such as ‘black magic’ and some have to do with what is very common in India i.e. ‘Yantra’.

(The ‘Shree Yantra’ is commonly found in the offices of businessmen in India and is considered auspicious.

  • Engaging in these fields comes under the ambit of ‘occult’.
  • So ‘Vastu Shastra’ can also be considered ‘occult’ to people especially outside India. ‘Jyotisha’ and numerolgoy, ‘prashna vidya’ are also occult.

Now, I hope you understand that you can spend an entire life time researching each one of these fields.

It’s deeper than the ocean trust me and once you dive in, you will be blown away by how common patterns emerge across cultures, time periods and religious philosophies.

For example:

  • ‘Taara’ is represented in many distinct forms in ‘Vajrayana’ Buddhism.
  • Each form has a different color and a different power.

(In ‘Vajrayana’ Buddhism, Red ‘Taara’ is the goddess of passion and sexuality.)

  • In the same way, there are goddesses in Africa who are very similar in nature and legend.

(‘Oshun’ is the African goddess of fertility and sensuality)

  • In the ‘Markandeya Purana’, Devi ‘Durga’ laughs at the demons as they protest ‘shaktis’ of other gods joining the fight, and says:
    • “You fools, they are not separate from me. They are me. There is only one feminine in the universe and I am her. There is no other feminine but me.”
  • The ‘tantric’ interpretation of this statement further corroborates ‘Tantric’ philosophy that seeks to tap into the energy of the divine mother, by tapping in deeper to your body’s energy system.
  • ‘Tantra’ is taboo because ‘tantra’ is based on the philosophy that within you is all the power you need to live, enjoy and experience life, whichever way you wish and you only have to awaken it.

I could go on and on and on but as far as the scope of this question is concerned, I hope I have done justice to the answer.

Hope this helps.

Hari Om Namo Narayana!

Ketu Mahadasha: Meaning, Life Lessons & Spiritual Rewards

Hari Om Namo Narayana!

Remember what your earliest vision about your life was when you were young? Remember how hopeful and happy it made you feel to imagine your future along those lines of possibilites?

(Depicted headless to represent separation, ‘Ketu’ corresponds to Vishnu’s ‘Matsya avatar’)

  • We all start our lives with some dream we had. A dream that was unclear but still clear enough that we could dream it, see it and feel it.
  • Then comes life and all its challenges and you become more and more estranged from your heart’s calling.
  • See deep down we all know what we came here to do it’s just our security constructs of what is ‘safe’ and what isn’t, what is ‘logical’ to aim for and what isn’t, that takes away our power bit by bit.
  • Anyone who is 47 or 48 will be able to tell you a lot about what the realization of this feeling is that you could have got what you wanted all along, if you had only learnt to take action despite the fear of failing.
  • You could have got everything you wanted exactly how you wanted if you had trusted your heart more and not gotten caught up in the idea of what you are ‘supposed to do’.

Why will people this age be able to tell you this?

  1. Because of the age factor itself
  2. Because this is the age ‘Ketu’ matures.

Some people say there is nothing more powerful than a strong ‘Ketu mahadasha’.

It was in this period that the legendary Amitabh Bachchan, after getting into tons of debt, returned with a bang but on the small screen.

He then made the world of Tv his own by following his purpose. He had wanted to retire from acting and take the more logical next step after enjoying stellar success as an actor, by getting into politics and business.

That failed.

You know why?

Because ‘Ketu’ will just take away what is obstructing your purpose. (AB has ‘Ketu’ in his ascendant)

Just like that.

Saturn delays, ‘Rahu’ confuses, ‘Ketu’ simply takes away. Bam! Gone.

Now what are you going to do?

Will you still find the courage to follow your heart or are you still going to keep holding yourself back justifying your lack of action, your lack of ‘karma’ by sticking to your ideas of security and logic?

‘Ketu’ calls upon you to take the leap into the unknown, as long as it is in the pursuit of your highest ‘dharma’.

When you do that, a magical thing happens.

‘Ketu’ suddenly rewards you.

Suddenly.

Out of the blue.

You find gold lying on the street and no one for miles coming back to look for it, claim it or anything. You might even ask someone if it is theirs and they will unnaturally say no and move on.

That’s the power of ‘Ketu’.

So when you are in your ‘Ketu mahadasha’, irrespective of wherever ‘Ketu’ is in your chart, here are the general themes of what you are going to encounter:

  1. Past ‘karma’:
    1. Do you want to treat your life patterns in the same way or do you want to change how you react?
    2. Do you want to remain a victim of your mentality or do you want to accept fate and keep following your ‘dharma’?
  2. Spiritual development:
    1. You would be foolish to think that spiritual progress cannot come from material accomplishments.
    2. If it is your purpose to create a multi billion dollar company, that is what will give you spiritual progress.
    3. If your highest ‘karma’ is to weave the best baskets in the world and this what your soul came here to do, nothing except that will give you peace or grant you self knowledge and liberation.
      1. You will continue to wander through the time space continuum, incarnating, reincarnating and never fully merging with the divine consciousness. Never fully discovering your own divine essence.
      2. ‘Ketu’ can’t let you do that. ‘Ketu’s’ job is to guide you to ‘moksha’. That will only come when you complete your journey for which you received this flesh body.
    4. As ‘Krishna’ says in the ‘Bhagwada Gita’, the power of ‘karma’ and execution of duty in itself is the path to ‘moksha’.
  3. Letting go:
    1. Like it or not, to become the best version of yourself and to achieve the progress that your soul had targeted before receiving this body, you have to let everything go that is in the way of your purpose.
    2. The purpose of life is ‘moksha’.
      1. To achieve ‘moksha’ you must perform ‘karma’.
      2. Right ‘karma’ is completely consistent with your ‘dharma’.
      3. To execute your ‘dharma’ you need to let some things go.
      4. If you do not let them go consciously, ‘Ketu’ will simply take them away.

A deeper analysis in these areas can only be done after studying the chart in detail.

Hope this helps.

Hari Om Namo Narayana!

Go Deeper Into Exploring This Topic:

Rahu & Ketu: Understanding the Axis of Karma

Are you alone and happy about it?

Hari Om Namo Narayana!

“The capacity to be alone is the capacity to love. If you cannot be comfortable and happy in your own company, you cannot be happy with anyone else in the world.” -Osho

The ‘Lotus Mudra’ is a yogic ‘mudra’ that is said to help in building a deeper connection with the self and others. It can help cope better with being on your own as well as with people and understanding the importance of this duality.

Now, loneliness is a topic that has been written about so much that the biggest paradox is that great masterpieces that inspire millions are often created far away from society’s constructs.

Van Gough created masterpieces in the French countryside, even though his solitude was to the detriment of his mental health to a great extent.

‘Yogis’ would meditate deep in seclusion for long periods of time, to build a deeper wisdom about life, themselves and consciousness.

Nietzsche writes about it in his book “The higher man and the herd” from a perspective of achievement and doing your best work.

Aristotle compares a man’s comfort with loneliness to two extremes.

“Whoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.” he says.

You then look at accomplished athletes, fighters and martial artists who have had to be alone to work on their craft, work to master themselves.

On the other hand, Britain has a dedicated ministry for Loneliness.https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/17/world/europe/uk-britain-loneliness.html

It was deliberated by the parliament that the perils of being lonely in a growing capitalist economy was weighing down on the mental health of its citizens and affecting national happiness and productivity.

We are living in times where people are further and further disconnected from each others’ realities while living under the same roof and working for the same company.

The movie “Joker” really paints an interesting picture about the struggle to balance your mental health while living alone trying to earn a decent living, working hard.

(A scene from Joaquim Phoenix’s “Joker” where the protagonist writes about his struggles in his diary)

Not only its impact on your mental health, being lonely exposes people living in big cities to many risks such as burglary and stalking.

Well, lot of people are more stoic mentally and loneliness doesn’t go about wrecking havoc to their minds, pulling out long unresolved issues from under the carpet.

For the people who have faced trauma, be it war, loss or failure, loneliness is tough to be comfortable with as it brings out a lot of issues that will perhaps take a lifetime to resolve and release fully.

And since the awareness how to tackle it is so thin, since its not taught at school and is a taboo, most people resort to substance abuse to ‘escape’ this feeling.

So what is the right answer is here?

The right answer for everyone should be that being alone should feel as natural as being surrounded by people in a marketplace.

That is when you can say for sure that your mind is working well and you are acting naturally.

If you don’t feel this way, no need to push yourself to the deep end at one go, but accept and slowly begin to increase your awareness and level of self dependence.

Yes there are many different types of personalities. Some are naturally introverted, some extroverted but human beings have evolved enough over time to be able to adjust to both extremes.

And let me tell you that as long as you feel balanced by other people and imbalanced on your own, you will continue to have imbalanced relationships.

No matter what your past was like, what experiences you’ve had. How good or bad your childhood was, to be able to push yourself to go beyond what feels comfortable, you will have to learn to be okay with solitude.

Solitude is where you work on your flaws.

Relationships enrich you and bring awareness into your life about yourself and your connection with the world.

Solitude however, is where you sit down with yourself and work on releasing hurt, questioning yourself, setting goals, personal boundaries and gaining a deeper awareness of what the experience of life is, really.

Many of us are just ‘stumbling’ through life, without a conscious understanding of why we are where we are and why we are headed where we are.

It’s as if, stopping and slowing down to go in wards will distort our experience of what truly is.

What if what really is, isn’t how you want it to be?

And what if you realise how far you’ve come in the wrong direction upon such a deliberation?

What then? What does it mean for your life as you know it?

These are some questions to ask yourself.

Chances are you can’t even nearly begin to truly dig deep into how you feel about them until you can sit with no one but yourself.

That’s how soldiers prepared themselves for a new day. Sharpening their sword, fixing their armor, tending to their injuries and fixing their gear.

That’s what loneliness does; it sharpens you, stitches your cuts shut, bandages your wounds and shows you where the healing needs to occur.

Of course, it means nothing if you’re not going out to interact again, in the world. However, wouldn’t a soldier fight better in the battlefield, with a better idea of his strengths, weaknesses and present condition of body, weapons and armor?

That’s how it is. Work done alone translates into meaningful interactions with the world.

Hope this helps.

Hari Om Namo Narayana!

What’s the best thing to do to get out of one-sided love?

Hari Om Dear friend!

You know how they say it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all?

I too didn’t get it.

I really didn’t.

Heartbreak is something that everybody has experienced in some way or another.

It’s not always losing the person you love because they don’t love you back, it’s many ways.

Your heart gets broken when your plans don’t work out and you have to ask for help from the people you really never ever wanted to ask for help.

When you give all of yourself to an idea, a business or a relationship and it doesn’t work out and you lose yourself and your dreams, self belief and confidence, that is heart break.

When you wait your entire life to be able to earn enough to bring your parents joy and when you finally do and your parents are no longer there.. that is heartbreak.

Look around you, we are all heartbroken.

None of us is shielded from the vagaries of life.

Everyone is carrying some pain within them and working through it and healing through it. You know what?

The more we open our heart and inculcate compassion, the more we heal and grow. The more we realise that at the end of the day, the purpose of the journey was the journey.

The purpose of loving and not being loved back, was to understand that love is not a contract, it isn’t an agreement, it is an expression.

Love flows out from deep within you like rivers flow down from the mountains.

Like flowers bloom,

Like sun rays scatter through the clouds.

Love flows out from within you because you have the capacity to love. It happens naturally.

You have the capacity to love because you have the capacity to feel, to express and to be vulnerable and allow yourself to be hurt if need be.

This means you have courage. This means you have strength.

Most people go through life never fully opening their hearts to the things, people and ideas that call out to the deepest parts of their soul, because they are afraid of being shot down. They are afraid of being rejected.

Don’t be.

“Your heart must continue to break until it opens”

~Rumi

What does this mean?

It means you don’t need to be loved back by someone to feel love.

You and the love you feel is complete within itself.

Your love doesn’t need to be validated by being ‘chosen’ by someone or being showered with affection and reciprocation.

Your love, as you feel it, as it is, is complete.

It is complete like the love of a person towards a beautiful rose in the meadow.

He doesn’t pluck it and leave it to wither thereafter, he allows the beauty to fill up his heart, to experience it within the moment and yet, allow it to be free.

True love is not to possess, it is not to have, or not have.

True love is to feel, let go and set free.

So don’t despair if you loved someone truly and they didn’t love you back.

For you have all the love that you created within you and within you it is complete.

Give yourself this love now so that you may attract someone who responds to your vibration.

Fill yourself with so much love that you are free from any traces of heartbreak.

So that you are free from any need to direct your love to anyone and seek it back.

Know that you can give all of this love to yourself with compassion and at the same time, continue to love the person who doesn’t feel love for you.

Continue to open your heart to people, plants, animals, life around you.

Continue to allow yourself to feel what you feel.

The more you do that, the more you allow your heart to be open and love with abandon without the fear of getting hurt or the fear of being rejected, the more attractive you become.

And as you become attractive you will become a vessel of love.

Trust me.

You will become so radiant and so beautiful and peaceful within yourself that nothing but love will flow from you and towards you.

You will just attract people, relationships, friendships and companions who want to co create more love with you.

How can you do that now? ‘Practically’ speaking?

  1. Start a meditation routine.
    1. I know it will be very tough at first but think of meditation as self therapy.
    2. Meditation will allow you to feel and work through your emotions.
    3. Remember you will go through the 5 stages of grief and you have to step by step, allow yourself to go through these stages ‘consciously’:
      1. Denial
      2. Anger
      3. Bargaining
      4. Depression
      5. Acceptance
    4. I’m including a link here of ‘heart chakra’ meditation that will help you heal your heart and release pain and sadness. The point is to not let the hurt close your heart lest you alienate and distance the people who want to and are willing to give you love.

2. Maintain a journal

  • I know, the last thing you want to do is write when you practically feel like crap all day and maybe don’t even feel like moving or sometimes, god bless you… breathing!
  • However, all journaling is not ‘written’.
    • The point is to record your progress and this journey.
    • You will find love after this I promise.
    • You will get through this. I promise.
    • And when you get through this, and you are stronger because of it, I want you to be able to look back at how you made it and through what you made it so that you become stronger and grow through this experience not merely go through it.
  • Just record every day.
    • Write, blog, voice record, video record, blog, vlog, whatever you feel like!
    • Allow yourself to feel what you feel and transmute that pain into creativity.
    • This will help you make a routine and ensure that you don’t completely fall into the abyss of inaction.
    • You need something to keep pushing you to improve and move ahead each day. Journaling will help you do that.

3. Strengthen yourself

  • Workout, eat better, enroll for a course you always wanted to enroll in. Dancing, cooking, art, I don’t know man! Whatever you always wanted to do. Go do that!
  • I would highly suggest making a workout routine and sticking to it even if you feel like crap.
  • Get your friends to hold you accountable or ask you to workout with them.
  • If you can’t get friends to do that, get a personal coach or life coach to keep you on track and motivate you.
  • Transmute this pain into progress.
    • Feel it.
    • Direct it. (Towards some activity such as working out)
    • Release it. (At the end of the activity, consciously tap into the feeling again and let it go by taking deep breaths)

4. Don’t block!

  • Blocking, getting rid of old stuff, destroying photos, this is all for weak people.
  • I know it is painful, I know it.
  • Blocking, deleting all of this will just block your heart.
  • Respect the other person’s choice and realise that you deserve better. Realize that you deserve more.
  • By harboring resentment you are basically putting the message out in the universe that there is no one else out there who will love you as much as you deserve to be loved.
    • There is!
    • There is someone out there who will love you exactly the way you love and you will be so lucky to meet them when the time is right.
    • If you harbor resentment for this current person, you will not be able to raise your energetic vibration high enough to be able to attract the love you deserve, into your life.
    • So rise above these things. Keep your heart clear and continue to allow yourself the space to feel love.

5. Get help

  • It’s important to talk to someone about how you feel.
  • Not everyone wants this but sure as hell everyone needs this.
  • Take your time but know that talking to someone, like a life coach, therapist, tarot reader, astrologer, whatever rocks your boat man. Whatever you feel drawn to.
  • Getting help will ensure that you don’t feel isolated with pain and you don’t bottle up your emotions and continue to get hopeless.
  • Bottled up emotions can be really harmful for immune system and mental health.
  • Don’t bottle it up. Talk. Get some help.

6. Solo travel

  • I can’t honestly think of anything more empowering and refreshing than solo traveling.
  • The biggest thing that solo traveling does is that it forces you to get our of your comfort zone and adapt to a new scenery, a new setting.
  • Meeting new people, going through new experiences, trying new food, sleeping in a new bed, living in a different place, it all has a very healing effect on you.
  • I understand sometimes in life we may not have the money to travel and in times of Covid, maybe traveling isn’t possible.
  • However, you can still go the best park, garden or monument in your city as a day outing and go for an outing two or three days in a row.
    • Get what I mean?
    • If you don’t have the money, just explore your own city like a tourist would. Make a 3 day itinerary and hit all the great spots in the city and bring a new wave of freshness into your life.
  • Please don’t go an a solo trip looking to hookup with someone to get over your heartbreak. That’s running from yourself. Don’t do that.
  • The point of traveling solo is to become more rooted in your power and comfortable in your company. Have new experiences and allow your mind to relax and change your perspective to things.

7. Get closure

  • How do you get closure?
  • This is going to be the single most difficult most rewarding step in this entire cycle and you have to aim to reach here.
  • If you reach this step and are able to do what I’m going to tell you, then you will rid yourself completely of any pain whatsoever.
  • What is it?
    • When you’re finally healed and feeling confident, strong and radiant within, have a normal conversation with the person you were in love with, just like friends.
    • Keep your boundaries in this meeting or call, even if they want to over step them.
    • Even if they say they’ve changed their mind or just miss you being crazy after them, maintain your boundaries and have a friendly chat where you talk about general things and wrap the call up with a normal friendly statement like “Good talking to you, see you soon!”
    • This will give you the closure that you need to put the stamp of healing over this entire episode.
    • Give yourself as much time as you want but understand, this should be the final step.
  1. The beginning of your next relationship starts with how this one ends.
  2. Even if this one was a one sided relationship, it doesn’t matter because for you it was indeed a relationship.
  3. So you have to ensure that this ‘separation’ and ‘release’ is ‘conscious’ and that you are able to keep an open heart through it.
  4. This is what will lead you to the person you are meant for. This is what will help you attract your soulmate into your life.

Hope this helps.

Hari Om!

What is the worst house for Jupiter in vedic astrology?

Hari Om Namo Narayana!

Jupiter, the ‘guru’, the great benefic, is a an embodiment you may say, of knowledge and discipline.

I know, not many people associate Jupiter with discipline but glance for a second on the ‘nakshatras’ that it rules and you will immediately get an idea:

  1. ‘Punarvasu’
  2. ‘Vishakha’
  3. ‘Purvabhadrapada’

These 3 ‘nakshatras’ are the most energetic as well as the most difficult ‘nakshatras’ to deal with if you make the mistake of straying off your ‘dharma’.

The second and third ‘nakshatras’ here have a powerful shadow energy accompanying them and the first one is signified with the boomerang. The boomerang meaning that ‘karma’ sent out circles back to you.

Now, look at the houses Jupiter rules:

  1. Ninth house of higher knowledge
  2. Twelfth house of ‘moksha’ and liberation.

You see these houses and then these ‘nakshatras’ and you realise that Jupiter is a planet who is the hard taskmaster when it comes to advancing spiritually to a higher energetic level on this physical plane.

Therefore, the best alignment for Jupiter’s energy, ideally speaking, would be the following houses:

  1. 9th and 12th house:
    1. Because they correspond to the natural placements corresponding to Jupiter’s ruled signs in the zodiac, Sagittarius and Pisces.
  2. 5th house:
    1. The house of ‘purva punya bhava’ i.e. blessings from past lives.
    2. Jupiter here is in the natural placement of a friend i.e Sun as the 5th house energy corresponds to the energy of the sing of Leo which is the 5th sign.
    3. Also, the 5th house is the house that shows to a huge extent, the native’s ability to improve their living circumstances and grow.
      1. This is because the 5ht house is 9th from the 9th.
      2. Therefore the 5th house is also the true essence of the chart, signifying ‘bhagya’.
  3. 4th house:
    1. This house corresponds to the natural house of Cancer and is therefore Jupiter’s original exalted position.
  4. 10th and 11th house:
    1. Although ruled by Saturn, corresponding to the signs of Capricorn and Aquarius, these are good houses.
      1. Why?
      2. Because the 10th house is the mid heaven and this is where a planet is most visible in the sky.
      3. So any planet placed here even if it doesn’t acquire ‘dig-bala’ is placed at a position where it gains a lot of ‘status’.
      4. Similarly with the 11th house, it is 2nd from the 10th house and is an ‘upachya’ house.
      5. Planets placed in the 11th house generally always give good results because naturally, it is the house of incoming gains, recognition and highest of hopes and wishes.
      6. Plus, it grows over time.
      7. Also, as I pointed our earlier, Saturn’s agenda is not too far removed from Jupiter’s disciplinarian nature.
      8. So the native is actually able to leverage Jupiter’s qualities well to ‘expand’ their gains, network circles and public persona.
  5. 1st and 8th house:
    1. These are houses ruled by Jupiter’s friend Mars.
    2. Mars is a fiery planet much like Jupiter and Sun.
    3. Jupiter in the first house lends a lot of morality, discipline and benefic values to the native and life path.
    4. Any planet in the ascendant is very important for the native’s life.
    5. A benefic planet in the ascendant is obviously a little better especially if placed in good dignity, as it makes the individual struggle less in life and get things a little easier.
    6. In the 8th house, Jupiter does well as a protector and even though the native may encounter ups and downs and sudden events in life,
      1. Jupiter in the 8th blessed the married life of the native.
      2. Jupiter blessed the assets created after marriage for the native and also grants natural knowledge of the occult.
  6. 3rd and 6th house:
    1. Many people say that Jupiter placed in the 3rd is especially weak since you have taken a philosophical planet of higher knowledge and put it at a place where only the mundane is required.
      1. That may be true however, being under utilized and being bad by virtue of placement are two different things.
      2. Yes the native with Jupiter in the 3rd house may not be tapping into the energy of Jupiter as much however, Jupiter here isn’t harming the native in any way either.
      3. In fact if anything, Jupiter in the 3rd usually gives a large set of relatives and cousins, siblings. It also is great for the sibling and occupations like writing.
    2. In the 6th, Jupiter protects once more like it does in the 8th.
      1. However, yes, Jupiter’s energy here translates into a workaholic.
      2. Seriously, these people work even more than Saturn in sixth house people many times.
      3. Jupiter here shows that the individual has considerable ‘karmic’ debt to burn off however by virtue of Jupiter’s placement here, there is help in burning off that debt.
      4. So Jupiter in the 6th is mildly problematic but tbh, it’s still a lot better than if any other benefic was placed here.
      5. Yes, it is still however mildly problematic but it saves you most of the time from enemies, debts, conflicts and diseases by translating that energy into a lot of work.
  7. 2nd and 7th house
    1. Second house is good for Jupiter and that’s because it’s the house of lineage, assets, family values, values and accumulated wealth.
    2. Jupiter here expands the individual’s assets and fixed wealth as well as blesses the family.
    3. 7th house for Jupiter is not that great at all. In my opinion and as per the charts and cases I have studied, Jupiter here causes more problems than it fixes. Anytime that happens, you can say that a particular placement is bad for the planet.
      1. Jupiter in the 7th house makes a person a bit too naïve in terms of dealings and negotiations.
      2. The person has a tendency to give a lot more than hold up their interests and protect themselves where necessary.
      3. They aren’t ‘objective’ about negotiation and business.
      4. Jupiter here also tends to cause more than one marriage.
      5. The reason is, Jupiter is not the planet for relationships and marriage and in the natural position of Libra, ruled by Venus, it is way out of depth here and the energies are not properly directed.
      6. See, mythologically, Jupiter is said to have been so involved in conducting ‘homas’ and ‘yajnas’ for the gods that he would neglect his wife. His wife was wooed by ‘Chandra’ and she eloped with him as life with Jupiter was too lonesome for her.
      7. ‘Pushya’ is a ‘nakshatra’ of which Jupiter is the deity and this ‘nakshatra’ is considered most auspicious for every activity except marriage.
      8. ‘Punarvasu’ is a ‘nakshatra’ ruled by Jupiter and it is another ‘nakshatra’ that isn’t considered the best for marriage. Best example for this is Lord Rama who had his Moon in ‘Punarvasu’.
    4. Therefore, unless placed in its own signs and has some ‘benefic’ aspects of Saturn subduing its energy, Jupiter placement in the 7th house is the worst placement for this amazing benefic planet.
    5. If you really think about it, makes a lot of sense too.
      1. Marriage, partnerships, dealings in the ‘market place’, contracts, negotiations, all activities that the 7th house govern, are in no way the natural domain of philosophy, higher wisdom or abstract ideas.
      2. These are very practical, very grounded areas of life that need a very practical, grounded manner of dealing and work.
      3. Saturn and Venus do pretty well here.
      4. In fact, Mars, Sun, Jupiter, all 3 fiery planets are ill placed in this position.
      5. Even so, you would be surprised to know that there have been individuals in history who have actually taken the Jupitarian approach and dealt with negotiations, conflict and upheavals with empathy and love. They just didn’t have much of a married life though. That’s a fact.

Notable examples:

  1. Mahatma Gandhi
  • Mahatma Gandhi is often criticized even to this day for the loss of Pakistan during the separation.
  • Although blessed with a devoted wife, he didn’t really have much of a married life as most of his life was spent in struggle.

2. Nelson Mandela

  • Mandela had 2 marriages and spent a long time in separation from his second wife because he was imprisoned in the freedom struggle.
  • Even after coming out of prison, he was faced with his wife as his rival in politics as she favored a violent route over his preferred route of non violence.

3. German Chancellor Angela Merkel

  • Angela Merkel was widely criticized by here own people for opening the borders to the refugee crisis as a result of the Syrian conflict.
  • She has also been criticized many times for being ‘soft’ on dealings with the UK in the ‘Brexit’ negotiations.
  • Like Mandela, Angela Merkel also has been married twice.

Their details for your reference:

  1. Gandhi:
    1. Oct 2, 1869
    2. 7:08 AM
    3. Porbandar, India
  2. Mandela:
    1. July 18, 1918
    2. 14:54
    3. Mvezo, South Africa
  3. Merkel:
    1. July 17, 1954
    2. 18:00
    3. Hamburg, Germany

Note:

In case you look up their charts and get confused wrt Jupiter placement, always remember that:

  1. Look at house placement from the ‘Chalit’ chart.
  2. Alternatively you may use the Placidus House system.

As always, do remember, just one placement can’t be used to judge the entire chart, ever. You can’t make a proper prediction or estimation based on just one placement by any means. You need to analyze the complete chart.

Hope this helps.

Hari Om Namo Narayana!

Saturn in the 8th House: Meaning, Karma & Transformation

Hari Om Namo Narayana!

I just wrote an answer about exalted planets in ‘dushthana’ houses. Do check that out if you can. It gives an idea about how malefic and benefic planets interact differently in ‘dushthana’ houses and the underlying energies.https://qr.ae/pG3US4

  • Now, coming to this placement, Saturn is well placed in the 8th house actually and does quite well.
  • It is frustrating, yes, but it’s better than Mars or ‘Rahu’ in the 8th who can cause accidents and violent altercations. (Not all the time. Relax!)
  • See, Saturn is the planet of longevity and Saturn actually is also the planet of ‘greatness’.
  • Sun is fame and recognition, Mars is valor and dominance, Saturn is greatness.

If you would just look at Saturn ruled ‘nakshatras’ for a moment you’d get the idea:

  1. ‘Pushya’
    1. This is considered one of the most regal ‘nakshatras’ and in fact even the most regal of all ‘nakshatras’.
  2. ‘Anuradha’
    1. Once again, this is the ‘nakshatra’ of brilliance and you will often see heads of state and great leaders with placements in this ‘nakshatra’
  3. ‘Uttarabhadrapada’
    1. This is the ‘nakshatra’ of the ‘shesha naaga’ himself. This ‘nakshatra’ is one of foundations and deep spiritual knowledge.
  • Also, Saturn rules the sign of Capricorn and Aquarius, that correspond to the natural 10th and 11th house of the chart.
    • So Saturn basically rules both the ‘karma sthana’ and the ‘labha sthana’. (Damn!)
  • Saturn practically rules everything important in the chart if you talk about success on the material plane.
    • Think about it for a second, Warren Buffet, Ratan Tata, Mukesh Ambani and Bill Gates; all very different people but everyone has one thing in common. what’s that?
    • They’re all way over 60.
    • You don’t get to leave behind a legacy or gain respect in your field unless you’ve slowly made your way to the top and stayed there.
    • That’s the thing. (Time).
    • Saturn is time.
  • Saturn teaches you that if you want to build something valuable it will take time. If you want to be of value, it will take time. If you want to stay at the top after you’ve reached there, it will take constant effort. That’s Saturn!
  • No wonder actually that the ‘ishta devata’ of Saturn is ‘Vishnu’ the preserver.
  • So when Saturn is in the 8th house, Saturn’s biggest lesson is teaching the individual the importance of time and constant work.
    • From the 3rd and 10th aspect which are its strongest, Saturn aspects the 10th house and 5th house.
    • These aren’t easy aspects but very rewarding in the long run.
    • See, with the 3rd aspect, Saturn is making the native strive hard in the workplace.
    • With the 10th aspect on the 5th house, Saturn is making the process of improving life circumstances difficult by delaying reaping the benefits of good ‘karma’ from past life, which is what the 5th house represents.
      • The individual is forced to address and fix their emotional issues and hang-ups. This is what Saturn placed in the 8th house does.
    • It suppresses sudden events and it frustrates the individual quite a bit since marriage and partnerships take a long time to prosper or materialize.
    • For people with Saturn in the 8th, married life is usually delayed.
      • It’s because of the sheer delay and suppression in the development of the individual’s awareness about their personal power and personal expression.
  • The individual spends a long time questioning and understanding what they really are, who they really are. This may be accompanied by a confusion and lack of clarity in terms of sexual orientation and sexual identity.
    • In some cases, this placement may even show an individual who grew up being body shamed, ridiculed or suppressing their sexual identity to fit in with others.
    • Quite often these can be women who like to hang out more with men and dress up and express themselves in more masculine ways and vice versa.
  • Saturn in the 8th house ultimately pushes the individual to search for meaning through research.
    • These people are great at research and quite often can be equally good at science and occult even great sexologists and ‘tantra’ practitioners.
  • The lesson of Saturn everywhere is that it never denies only delays.
    • So the individual is forced to search for meaning and identity via the work they do and less through relationships or by acts of heroism and risk.
    • Risk is forbidden to them yet these individuals may well turn into people who are not afraid of risk at all.
    • They know exactly where to draw the line and they know exactly how far to push it. It’s because Saturn, being the hard taskmaster that he is, pushes the native to work through uncomfortable situations and navigate through unpredictable life events.
  • Death and rebirth are concepts known instinctively from childhood itself to natives with this placement.
    • It is quite possible that the death of an important family member caused them to take up important responsibility in the family or that the death of close friend, relative or sibling, maybe even a partner, had a profound impact on their life and lead them to a transformation.
    • Saturn in the 8th frustrates the individual by keeping them stuck in an identity that they cannot shake off.
      • This is the person who for example, went to law school because his parents asked him to and after working as a lawyer and saving up a lot of money when he decides to follow his passion and stop practicing, some family emergency makes him go back to the job and work for the next 20 years.
      • This is the person who is stuck in an identity that he didn’t even actively build. This frustrates the individual until the second part of life when they slowly become comfortable with the nature of life and focus on defining themselves more on the basis of the work they can do rather than softer more artistic aspects like who they are and what their purpose is.
    • Other times, Saturn will force the individual to undergo a transformation to execute their responsibilities in the material plane.
      • Example would be that of an individual forced to give up their dreams to take over and run the family business after their father dies, to be able to support the family.
  • The 7th aspect of Saturn in 8th to the 2nd house, mostly pans out in some sort of responsibility towards the family and lineage.
    • The native has ‘karma’ entangled with the family lineage that calls upon them to carry forward the work left incomplete by previous generations.
    • Most of all, it’s the ‘knowing’ of leaving behind a ‘legacy’ or a body of work that sustains even after death.
    • As that’s the whole point of the 8th house, death and rebirth.
      • How do you then become immortal?
      • Well, by never being forgotten!

Some notable examples:

  1. Civil Rights Activist Martin Luther King Jr.
  • MLK was the chief proponent of America’s Civil rights movement and worked hard for the inclusivity of afro Americans into mainstream society, jobs and work culture.
  • He fought against the racial segregation of black Americans and did so peacefully.
  • He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.

2. Renowned psychologist Sigmund Freud

  • Freud was instrumental in the development of the field of psychology in modern times.
  • The invention and development of psycho-analytics is attributed to him. His psycho-analytic theories explained mental illness, motivation and the structure of the subconscious.

3. Actor Dwayne Johnson (“The Rock”)

  • Dwayne comes from a long line of wrestlers. His dad and his grandad were wrestlers before him.
  • As a kid, Dwayne and his family were forced to leave Hawaii because they couldn’t afford rent. That experience stayed with him throughout his life and even later, he had to face a lot of problems to become financially stable.
  • Today he is worth more than $400 million!

Their details for your reference and study:

  • MLK
    • Jan 15, 1929
    • 12:00 PM
    • Atlanta, USA
  • Sigmund Freud
    • May 6, 1856
    • 18:30
    • Freiberg, Czech Republic
  • Dwayne Johnson
    • May 2, 1972
    • 18:02
    • San Leandro, USA

As always, please note:

  1. Planetary house placements should be viewed from the ‘chalit’ chart. Alternatively you may use the Placidus house system.
  2. Just one placement cannot dictate events. You need to analyze the entire chart to gain more details about the native’s life.

Hope this helps.

Hari Om Namo Narayana!

Rahu–Ketu Theory Explained: Karma, Shadow & Liberation

Hari Om!

This quote by famous psychologist Carl Jung pretty much sums up the concept of ‘Rahu-Ketu’. You will understand what I mean as you read on, however keep this at the back of your mind now as you read further.

Yeah and by the way, Jung is rumored to have used astrology as one of his tools to understand his patients’ minds better.

Now, I have written, by god’s grace, extensively on the topic of ‘Rahu-Ketu’ and you encouraged to check out my answers on this topic. Here’s one of my earliest answers that sums up this concept pretty well for someone new to the topic.

In my book I have gone into a lot of details about this topic over 4 chapters that span some inter disciplinary and allied fields of ‘Vedic’ study.https://qr.ae/pG3ZJN

So, here’s what it is for the un-initiated:

  1. ‘Rahu’ and ‘Ketu’ are eclipse points.
    1. Basically, these aren’t ‘planets’ but mathematical points of intersection of the Moon’s orbital path and the ecliptic.

2. ‘Rahu’ and ‘Ketu’ represent areas of our lives where the soul needs to grow and has pending ‘karma’ respectively.

  • So, ‘Rahu ji’ shows us, on the basis of his placement in the chart, where the lessons are for growth of our soul in this lifetime.
  • These are areas that haven’t been explored yet by our consciousness to the point that the soul can grow to any reasonable degree so that the ‘jeeva’ may fulfill his purpose and the ‘aatman’ may get ‘moksha’.
  • ‘Ketu maharaj’ shows us, by virtue of his placement in the chart, where our soul has gone through sufficient cycles of growth in previous lifetimes and where we can now, look to release control over as well as learn to trust on in our pursuit for self realization.
  • Get it?
    • Think of it this way:
      • If your soul is undergoing a course in a particular subject, say enlightenment, ‘Ketu’ represents that exercises on the book that the soul has mastered.
      • ‘Rahu’ represents the exercises in the book that the soul has yet to attempt but needs to in order to complete the syllabus and get a certificate.
    • Quite naturally, we are averse to doing the things we don’t know how to and try instinctively, to stick with things that we know well.
    • This is where all the problems arise. Well, that and planetary time periods that mess up this dynamic.

3. ‘Rahu’ conjunct a planet means you are yet to develop the qualities of that planet in this lifetime. ‘Ketu’ conjunct a planet means you need to now release the qualities of that planet since you have mastered them. All in all, ‘Rahu-Ketu’ point towards a conscious ‘integration’ of the extremes of your psyche.

  • This is very important both from the perspective of transits and natal conjunctions.
  • People fall prey to all sorts of misunderstandings and above all, fear about ‘Rahu’ ‘Ketu’ placements as most astrologers tend not to look at these entities with respect.
  • I hate it how people do not show respect at all two the most important entities in the chart. ‘Rahu ji’ and ‘Ketu maharaj’.
  • ‘Vishnu’ himself is the reason that they came into existence and were allowed to expand the ‘maaya’ ‘loka’ that is this planet.
  • So, long story short, don’t talk about ‘Rahu-Ketu’ as if they are ‘evil’ and ‘ghastly’, which is how a lot of people tend to view them and it comes without surprise that this is why they have so many problems with these entities.
  • Even the holiest person you know, if they are in ‘grihasta jeevan’ and not a ‘brahmachari’, are not, by the virtue of their way of life, a celibate.
    • So what do you do? You stop respecting them? Just because they are mortals like the rest of us?
    • Does that mean they are ‘impure’ or not as wise? How do you account for the mundane in the lives of seemingly transcendental individuals?
    • Surely you must know, they are still human and do have some human vices?
  • Wait wait before you cringe at this sentence, there is an entire episode wherein ‘Shankaracharaya’, during a debate with a married woman, was stumped, since she picked up a topic about marital life and happiness and he had no clue obviously how to respond, since he was a celibate.
  • It is said therefore, that he let go of his body for a while and experienced this knowledge in another body and then returned to his own body to resume the debate.
  • What does that tell you now?
  • It tells you that not to judge first of all haha. No seriously, don’t judge a person because you don’t know how spiritual they may have been in a previous lifetime but their soul maybe didn’t experience the ‘maaya’ enough to be able to get liberated.
  • You see people running after money and assets and doing all kinds of things and your ‘holier than thou’ attitude takes over and you judge them for being ‘lost’ but that’s not it. Their ‘Rahu’ is pointing them in the direction of what their soul needs to experience in this lifetime in order to grow.
    • Obviously, shooting yourself with drugs, being a menace to society and causing harm, is not done.
    • But see, these are negative or ‘shadow’ attributes of the energy of ‘Rahu’ that will engulf you if you don’t consciously understand and integrate this energy within you.
    • ‘Rahu-Ketu’ is a very deep concept that with the right understanding, can help you transcend this material plane and progress on the path towards enlightenment.
  • Understand please.
    • We all have a shadow side and a ‘conscious side’.
    • When you fail to integrate these sides, what happens is that havoc begins to let loose on your life.
    • All of the universe is energy and you are here in this lifetime, to consciously integrate two seemingly irreconcilable ends of your personality and consciousness and align them towards the path of self realization and ‘moksha’.

4. ‘Rahu-Ketu’ ‘mahadashas’ may not be coming in everyone’s lifetime but their ‘antardashas’ certainly will and will ask you important questions at that.

  • ‘Rahu’ and ‘Ketu’ periods are periods of extensive spiritual development.
  • What you need to understand is ‘Rahu’ is just as spiritual as ‘Ketu’. ‘Ketu’ disconnects you from ‘maaya’ to see the futility of everything. ‘Rahu’ shows you that without experiencing and conquering ‘maaya’ consciously, you can never complete these cycles of development.

So, long story short, the ‘Rahu-Ketu’ concept is analyzing a chart and using their positioning to gain a deeper knowledge about how the individual needs to grow, what they need to release and which ‘shadow’ elements of themselves they need to become more conscious of.

The story differs from chart to chart but some general themes can be analyzed and predicted however even if their planetary time periods aren’t currently active, on the background, they are always at work.

Hope this helps.

Hari Om!

Go Deeper Into Exploring This Topic:

Rahu & Ketu: Understanding the Axis of Karma

Is It Ever Too Late to Change? The Truth About Growth

Hari Om!

Is it ever too late for you un-learn what you have learnt over the years and hasn’t been helping you?

Yes it is.

But it’s not impossible.

It’s just that the process of change involves ‘letting go’ to a huge extent and it makes people very uncomfortable and very scared.

You see, in order to get to a place other than where you find yourself right now, the first thing to understand is that is no one else but you who brought yourself here.

That’s where it begins.

You know all these programs of rehabilitation of drug abusers and alcoholics?

It all starts with the person accepting first of all that they do have a problem.

Unless you accept that you need to change, you can’t change.

To change, you will need to accept that you need to let go of things that no longer serve you.

You don’t have to ‘push them away’ just detach. That’s it.

If they are at the same energetic level as you, they will continue to be at your side. If they are not, they will just fall away like layers that no longer serve you.

When you take this mentality and apply it to your life, in the most easy way possible, at every step that you have to take an important decision, you will realise that:

  1. People close to you either raise their energy to match yours.
  2. People leave your side since they are only hindering your spiritual growth.

This life, this birth, our time on this planet, has a biological mundane meaning but also has a deeper spiritual meaning.

That meaning is simple. That meaning is straightforward. The meaning is this:

“You are here to grow.”

You are here to grow into the best version of who you are and in your individual excellence lies the growth of all mankind.

It’s true.

Think about it.

Think about what would have happened if Einstein had just given up. Published a few papers and that’s it. Spent the rest of his time playing the violin, which he so loved.

If Michael Phelps hadn’t decided to teach us how far a professional swimmer can push the boundaries of physical capabilities.

If Roger Bannister had never taught us that a human being can indeed run a mile in less than 4 minutes.

The list is endless my friend.

I want to leave you with one of my favorite paragraphs:

  • Don’t let the obstacles that stand in the way of your personal growth bow you down and accept where you are.
  • What is in the path, becomes the path.
  • If obstacles are in the path, they become the path.
  • You are not here to resign to a life of mediocrity and decay.
  • You are here to stand in your power and in your authentic self to show the world that maybe you were assigned the mountain.. so you can show others that it can be moved!

Now obviously, it’s easier said than done. However, if I had to crystallize it for you in 5 points here’s what you do:

  1. Fix a goal.
  2. Figure out what you need to get there.
  3. Figure out what you lack right now.
  4. Get a coach to help you develop qualities and skills required.
  5. Detach from things and people who hinder your movement in that direction.

I can say from experience as a life coach that these 5 points are all you will ever need. Seriously.

I’ve helped clients accomplish things at 50 that most 30 year olds can’t even bring themselves to do and follow through on.

To be honest I think at 50 their decision for change was backed up by a whole life of dissatisfaction about those few things that they wanted to change.

At 30 you tend to keep off putting this process until later.

But yes, I was instrumental however only as a single point in this journey of theirs. They are the ones who actually put in the work and followed through.

  1. Nobody can do the work for you.
  2. Change is not a process.
  3. Change is a decision.

And what you need to do, every single day is to decide to stick to this decision through everything that happens to you and everything that doesn’t.

Hope this helps.

Hari Om!

Rahu Dasha is almost killing me. What am I supposed to do?

Hari Om Namo Narayana!

What would you do if you didn’t know how to swim at all and were picked up and thrown right at the deep end of the pool?

Don’t bother answering. I’ll tell you what you’re most likely to do.

  • You’d thrash around, trying to stay afloat.
  • You’d move your legs, your arms and try all kinds of things to be able to swim.
  • And in the process you’d inhale a lot of water into your lungs.

Don’t do that.

Do the opposite of that.

Become perfectly still.

Do the dead-man float.

You’ll be fine.

“What?”

I know, I know. This isn’t enough. You need more information.

Sure.

The basics of the North node and his energy and what his time period is all about, you can read in a lot of popular answers I’ve written over the last few years. You could try my book too. It’s very detailed and has multidisciplinary correlations you won’t find anywhere else.

But coming back to the question.

See, ‘Rahu ji’ is your teacher. He is a taskmaster.

He isn’t concerned about you getting hurt, getting stronger or anything of that sort that works with other planets.

Like, with Saturn, he is here to teach you with lack, delay and difficulties. Jupiter is here to teach you with wisdom and higher philosophy.

Every planet is here to teach you something to enable your soul to grow in a particular direction so that in the end, you can just decide to let it all go and achieve liberation.

The North node’s job is the most critical.

His job is to ensure that you absolutely, 100% go through the experiences that your soul signed up for before manifesting in a physical form here on this planet.

If you survive it or not, it honestly doesn’t make a difference to ‘Rahu’.

Why is that?

Because all of it is just an illusion.

The real lesson you are required to learn over and over and over again, that you’re missing out on and reincarnating here again and again is..

There’s always going to be some desire that is going to remain unfulfilled. You have to make your peace with that and transcend beyond this physical experience, for good; Anyway!

Even so, it won’t happen until you have reached that end of the cycle in reality.

So the job of the North node of the Moon is to deliver the experience to you. How you handle it will define how much you can gain or lose during these 18 years.

Here are some things you can do:

  1. ‘Kala bhairava saadhna’
    1. ‘Kaala bhairava’ is the deity of the North node and controls all the negative and positive duality of everything that the north node represents. Pray to him, get his blessings and you will see your life transform.
  2. ‘Going with the flow’
    1. This is actually something very deep to understand and to truly discover it, you will have to experience it and don’t worry. You will get there, within the first 6 months of this period itself. For better or worse, you will learn to not make plans but to ‘flow’ and follow your heart’s desires. To stop cheating yourself and to accept what you truly desire and go get it instead.
  3. Thinking positively
    1. The North node is about the mind. He’s about your thoughts, your consciousness, your desires and your ambitions.
    2. A very important thing to take care of during his time period is to ensure that you learn to meditate and work through your fears. If you don’t work through your fears, they will manifest very fast in this period.
    3. What would you do, I’m asking this question again. What would you do, if you didn’t know how to swim and were simply picked up and thrown at the deep end?
      1. You need to learn to stay calm.
      2. You need to learn to believe you can make it.
      3. You need to learn to believe that if you stay calm, you will have the control you need to make it through.
  4. Keep your ‘karma’ slate clean
    1. The north node is forward manifestation of ‘karma’.
    2. The North node leads you to the events and experiences that you need to perform.
    3. This also means that whatever place you find yourself in and whatever role you are performing right now, you are in ‘create’ mode. You are creating a chain of events for the future bound within the rules of ’cause and effect’. So if you do good things, good things will come back and surround you. If you do bad things, you are setting events in motion bound by the ’cause and effect’ mechanism.
  5. Learn!
    1. You aren’t in a ‘familiar’ domain in this period. Even if you have plenty of the North node’s energy already in your chart in the form of star placements or conjunctions with key planets.
    2. You need to learn from every new thing that comes across on your path.
    3. You need to learn about what you’re going through and please don’t try to solve the problems that you are encountering on the basis of past knowledge of how you’ve encountered these problems in the past.
      1. Why?
      2. Because it just won’t work!
    4. For the 18 years long time period of the North node, your life has changed irreversibly and you need to adapt to this new reality and not just ‘adapt’ to it, but ‘thrive’ in it! Forget how life was before this. Embrace and accept life as it is now!
  6. Get help.
    1. It could be because I’m a life coach myself, however the best results I have had have been with clients who were in ‘Rahu mahadasha’.
    2. With some work, after some time, It was amazing how they adjusted to setting goals and going after them. It’s the energy of ‘desire’ you see. This is what the North node is, it’s the energy of ‘desire’. The more you learn to harness it, channel it, the more it manifests faster and faster.
    3. To be able to work with this energy to your best potential, getting some help is a good idea. Early on in the time period of the North node at least, it is quite possible that you get all ‘caught up in your head’ and end up making no real moves at all. If you were to channel these energies, on the other hand, you would be able to accomplish a lot more.
      1. For this, when you’re not thinking straight and getting too overwhelmed, it is best to get someone on board to help you out. Coach, therapist, whoever works for you.

Hope this helps.

Hari Om Namo Narayana!

Rahu & Ketu: Understanding the Axis of Karma

Astrology for Personal Growth: The True Purpose of Jyotisha

Hari Om Namo Narayana!

Astrology can be used for personal development in the same way that any science or theories of personality analysis can be put to use for personal advancement.

See the point of ‘Jyotisha’ is to light the ‘Jyoti’ within.

That’s why it is a part of the ‘Vedas’.

And the ‘Vedas’ are ‘apurusheya’ i.e. they are considered to have originated somewhere in the astral plane (or another dimension?) and only the knowledge has been passed on to humans.

The beauty of the Sanskrit language is that even if a single ‘maatra’ is off, it will upset the entire ‘shloka’ and the entire flow.

It’s called a ‘check-sum’ system.

And, we can be 100% sure therefore, that ‘Vedic’ knowledge has not be tampered with. It has been passed on generation after generation and what you read today (Guarantees only for the Sanskrit version), is exactly what was being read thousands of years ago.

So therefore, ‘Jyotisha’ was never witchcraft, hocus pocus or ‘entertainment’ as it is being made out to be today.

This was a very serious science meant to help people discover about themselves.

And it’s saddening to see so many people running around with such little knowledge and trying to act like they know everything.

This isn’t that kind of a subject.

You can’t just read the BPHS and say “Oh I know everything!”

That’s just 1%

There’s the ‘Jaimini Sutras’, the ‘Surya Siddhanta’, the ‘Vedas’ themselves and among the many treatises about these subjects such as that of ‘Varamihira’, there’s a different way to look at every aspect.

I mean, you read the ‘Shrimad Bhagawatam’ and you’ll look at things differently.

Read the ‘Shiva Purana’ and voila! Whole new perspective.

Essentially, the more you read about all of these other subjects that most people don’t even think are related directly to astrology, the more you are able to discover new things and crack the code of present things.

For example I try to close all arguments by giving references from the ‘Bhagawad Gita’ and ‘Tantra’.

Why?

Because I’m a Life Coach.

My ideology is that.

I will tell you 1000 things about the stars planets and creation, destruction et all and in the end I will tell you to move your butt and get to work.

(Please forgive me if what I’m about to say sounds like a ‘Holier than thou’ perspective.)

This is the way ‘Jyotisha’ was always meant to be practiced.

It is supposed to help you guide the native and show them the path towards liberation.

For god’s sake it was not meant to be a competition between astrologers around the world and across fields of thought on ‘whose predictions are more accurate’!

C’mon!

When I see a debilitated Sun conjunct Venus in the fourth house, I don’t see the need to predict to the native that this means he will always have trouble at home however it is because of this that he will work more and eventually save more.

No. What good does this serve?

  • If I tell the native that you will have to compromise on your values to be able to earn the money the recognition and the accolades that you need.
  • That it will be because of your low confidence that eventually you will end up working and achieving a lot.
  • That it will be because of your unhappiness in being restricted to home and not having the kind of recognition you want, that you will actually develop your skills and get the kind of gains you want.

If I tell the client these things, these are actually things that help him.

I can make 10 more (general) predictions just by this single placement. I’m not kidding. In fact, let me do so just for illustrative purposes:

  1. Shows that the native’s father probably had difficulties in work of some sort when the native was 1 year old.
  2. Shows that the native probably dropped an year in college.
  3. Shows that the native met his wife because of some financial help that was needed.
  4. Shows that the native’s wife probably is a teacher or that the native met his wife through education or some sort of institution.
  5. Shows that the native probably bought a car or some sort of conveyance at the age of 23/24. This car or conveyance was probably white in color or possibly red/maroon.
  6. Shows that the native likes to keep a safe in the house where they store cash. Storing cash just makes them feel more confident.
  7. The native could also have bought a house at the age of 24/27 and/or taken student loans for getting into a prestigious college.
  8. The native could work in hotel management, have a home based business or also work in banking.
  9. The native’s job involves forging important partnerships and close relationships. The native could be a relationship manager, meditator, concierge or client servicing professional.
  10. The native’s family or the native alone, could have left their palatial home or family home to settle elsewhere at the ages of 1,13,18, 25.

Obviously now, these are general predictions. Exact ones will vary depending on the exact placements of other planets in the chart.

Tell me though, if you have this placement, did any of the points from 1–10 help you in any way whatsoever, develop personally?

But, if you read and imbibed those 3 points given in bullets right above this list, that is something that can actually help you grow.

Let’s say then, I looked closely at your ‘nakshatra’ and notice finer patterns, that point out towards your psyche and your mental state in general.

I give you a ‘mantra’ practice for the same.

Then I look deeper at the ‘taara’ placement and give you more inputs wrt how to best express yourself and constructively channel your assertiveness to build healthy self esteem in addition to keeping the peace in relationships.

That’ something that actually helps you grow.

Thing is, it takes more effort and it takes more work.

But that’s the price of growth man.

Discomfort.

I hope this answer helps.

Hari Om Namo Narayana!

‘Tantra’ and ‘Vedic’ astrology part 2

Karma, Energy & Saadhna

Hari Om Namo Narayana!

(‘Ardhnarishwar is the ‘tantric’ representation of both ‘Shiva’ and ‘Parvati’)

If you haven’t read the previous part of this series yet, please do so.https://coachkaushal.quora.com/Tantra-and-Vedic-astrology-part-1

Every minute of our lives is a constant cycle of ’cause and effect’.

What you’re experiencing now is a result of a cause or set of causes in the past.

And what you’re doing now is creating ripples into the future farther than you can imagine.

The thing is, the only way to effectively clean your ‘karma’ is to work on constantly performing good ‘karma’ consciously and at the same time, bravely going through the results of bad ‘karma’ from past events, actions and maybe even lifetimes.

The moment you begin to achieve consciousness, you realise that the more conscious you become, the more conscious you become to the pain you feel and the pain that you have caused others.

Oh it’s something.. it’s something.. I wish that if you ever go through this experience, you somehow have a faith deep enough to hold you strong.

Because if you don’t, there are people who can’t handle it.

It’s tough to stay within the material plane and continue to engage in ‘conscious action’ while at the same time realizing that everything you engage in and that feels true and ‘real’, really isn’t so.

This is why I love ‘tantra’.

Because in ‘Tantra’, the energy of Goddess ‘Durga’, the divine mother, ‘Adi Shakti’, is so all encompassing and inclusive that not for a moment do you feel there is an aspect of your psyche that is not worthy of being honored.

That’s the beauty of it.

‘Durga’ is ‘Durga’, the divine godhead himself, the divine mother herself, the divine power herself and the divine feminine, ‘Adi Shakti’.

As ‘Kaali’ with sunken eyes, dried up flesh and blood curdling cries, she is still who she is. As Parvati, beautiful, fair, soft and calming, in white, she is still the same.

No part of her is less worthy of respect or acceptance.

As an old widow, in the form of ‘Dhumavati’, she is just about as powerful as she is, holding a golden cudgel, dressed in striking yellow, in the form of ‘Baglamukhi’.

No part of her is less powerful no matter what the outer experience or impression.

In fact, there’s a lot lot more to be explored and you can read lots of stories in the ‘Shiva Purana’ as well about ‘Shiva’, ‘Shakti’ and their immortal bond.

They drift apart, they meet again, they reunite and in the end it is all but an illusion because both of them are the same.

See the only way to realise that life makes sense, creation makes sense and living in this false world and experiencing it, enjoying it, makes sense, is to understand the concept of energy.

All energy is constantly trying to come to a balance.

This, when all of the universe is constantly expanding.

And all imbalances in this system, are constantly propagating forward, while searching for a way to balance themselves out.

Too abstract?

Maybe.

I wish there were clearer plainer ways to put it.

There aren’t.

The only thing that is true in all of this, is that you can change the form of energy.

What this means is, you can change the present effects of actions that you caused in the past and also perform your ‘highest karma’ that absolves you, by transmuting energy.

‘Saadhna’ is one such way of doing it.

Look, the chart that you’re born with, is just a reflection of your ‘karma’ in previous lifetimes.

It will serve you and affect you for a little while, till the time you are still connected to your mother’s ‘karma’, which is I think around the age of 12.

As soon as you cross that point, you’re on your own.

Everything good or bad can be overshadowed by the power of your action.

And it is here that ‘saadhna’ can drastically change your life.

Imagine you were born with a debilitated Mars.

This will almost always point out towards issues in your solar plexus ‘chakra’ which is the energy center of Mars in the body.

Could point out to:

  • gut issues on a physical level and
  • confidence issues on a personality level.
  • At an emotional level, points out to a lack of proper self expression
  • and at a soul level, it points out to your soul being denied its true expression and desire over many lifetimes.

These ailments and handicaps you carry, the bad ‘karma’ that you have to undergo, can be nullified by transmuting this energy into devotion and discipline towards the right ‘mahavidya’ and seeking her blessings.

‘Mantras’ awaken the energies of that ‘chakra’ within your energetic system and this creates positive vibrations that give you both:

  1. The energy to bravely face the consequences of past ‘karma’
  2. and the power to perform good ‘karma’ even when faced with opposition and temptation.

The problem is however, that the process of doing so, is one that will:

  1. Open a barrage of past ‘karma’ all at once.
  2. Tempt you every step of the way.

That’s the issue with anything that helps you change permanently. You have to clear your dues first.

What this means is, if let’s say you are doing ‘Bhuvaneshwari Saadhna’ for the Moon.

  1. The initial effect shall be of you experiencing a lot of mental stress all at once because the Moon and the ‘chakra’ connected to it are being massively activated in the first step.
  2. As the second effect, your mind will be drawn towards everything that challenge its stability.

To be able to reduce these negative impacts to the most possible degree, you then need to resort to:

  1. Sacrificing physical comforts and luxuries
  2. Learning to use your setbacks as opportunities to embrace the reality that everything as you perceive it, are merely illusions of varying degrees of believability.

The trick is to understand that to have a better material experience, you need to transcend to a level where the material doesn’t effect you.

Imagine it for a second.

Imagine for a second to be in a mind space where you can recognize the fact that to succeed materially you need to be prepared to let go completely.

Where you are mentally so prepared to be able to withstand whatever is thrown your way just so you can rebuild independently and autonomously, that the very lack of what you seek doesn’t trouble you at all.

In fact no only does it not trouble you, you are consciously able to keep it at arms length from you.

This is how a ‘saadhna’ functions.

The purpose of the ‘saadhna’ is to disconnect you from your desire just to be able to align you with your highest ‘karma’.

Once you discover your highest ‘karma’, you can repay any ‘karmic’ debt faster than you can imagine.

Imagine a life where you know creating is firmly within your hands irrespective of the chart you were born with.

Hari Om Namo Narayana!