Around this time, 5 years ago, I was struggling with the thought of going through another day in life. And as I have shared already in the black hole of social media, I also gave a good go at ending life. Depression had been on and off for sometime, despite what was on paper a very fulfilling career.  With the occasional breaks of “falling in love” (read “becoming attached, needy and pretty much high on dopamine”) or letting my hair down on dance floors, I was really struggling to see what this life was all about. It felt empty.

Today, as I look back, I can see clearly that this was Grace - the Grace to discover so early that it really was empty. 

I was taught that I needed to have a serious job, be financially safe, successful in the societal order. A wise conclusion from my upbringing, given where we came from and what we had been through as a family in the 90s. But as I pretty much hit the peak of what I could achieve at the age of 30 (who knows how, it has to be Grace), it was perhaps unsurprising to discover that what was left was despair. Was I going to spend the next however many years I had living this empty life?

Little did I know that this very despair that I fought and medicated was Grace.

Then I saw the next “Exit” sign - change of jobs to “be of service”. Again, I must be the last one to discover this, but still worth sharing. Being of service is just another identity - a better ego, more acceptable and lovable, but no less painful and untrue. If at the core, it is led by a “someone feeling unworthy on some level”,  or a “someone feeling they have something to offer and help others” (notice that this is just the same “someone”), it is still a form of extraction of self-worth, just a more hidden one.

Today, I see that was Grace too - it led me to discover that real service only comes when the “someone” goes. It is effortless, abundant, needing nothing in return and infinitely beautiful.

The next potential exit appeared - “meet the love of my life, then have a family”. With little connection to who or what I really was, I attracted other equally disconnected people and together,  we danced the dance of triggers, blame, I’m-sorry’s & relief (and a woosh of dopamine) that we often call a relationship. Relationships and plans came and fell apart. Expectations were shattered and so was my heart.

Little did I know that what I perceived as “failure” at “love for another” was the Grace of real Love that knows no other.

Around that time, someone who appeared wise, told me that in order to love another, I first had to love myself. Now that’s my favourite lesson of Grace. There is a whole industry of self-improvement, self-acceptance, self-love, self-compassion and so on that is perhaps useful on the journey, but ultimately empty. It is designed to help us create a better version of ourselves or accept the flawed version that we are in order to feel better. If you have already tried this, you might have discovered that it works only temporarily - the human animal always looks for more, better, deeper, more refined version of itself - a new identity to replace the old one. I gave it a good try.

What Grace to fail at that self-love exercise too! At the point of cultivating self-love, it is already too late. One step before that, the question is what do we mean by “self” - who is the one that we are supposed to love? We assume that we are this body, this thought-emotion-perception complex, but have we ever checked this to be true? Until this assumption remains unchecked, no self-love exercises would alleviate the layer of despair, insufficiency, inadequacy, worthlessness, fear…whatever it is for you.

Eventually, the exit of the spiritual path appeared. Plant medicine, meditation, yoga, Teachers. It was revealed through the wisdom of great teachers, that despair is at the bottom of every ego - in some of us, it is more obvious and closer to the surface. Sadly, that feels very uncomfortable for all the rest of us who are trying to deny its existence within ourselves at all cost. So in our society, we medicate it, take it to therapy, fix it, fix it, fix it.

It was Grace to meet True wisdom in Gangaji and Eli who told me to stop trying to fix it. After 30 years of running away from despair or indulging in it, I was finally turning towards it to meet it.  And there was such relief, such unconditional love, such wisdom in that.  Over the last 2 years, there were many moments of deep recognition of who I really was. Not the limited “I” that tried to “love itself” -  basically a survival mechanism to avoid despair - but the Presence that is there before all conditioning and beyond survival. My mind, which was very skeptical and logical - full of shit basically - slowly started losing its grip and became humbled by its own limited nature. The assumptions loosened and could be inquired into. What was learnt and what was really true, unchanging, always here?

Still, I kept re-identifying with my limited personality going about life. Truth and self-realisation became the last burning desire that I was after. At times, there were glimpses followed by days of searching for glimpses, and as always, where there was search, there was suffering.

It was Grace to fail at that too. I discovered that self-realisation and freedom from suffering wasn’t something I could work at. I wasn’t going to “get there” after many satsangs and years of yoga or meditation practice. Exquisite and heart-breaking failure . Oh Grace!

I prayed (I never do, but despair obliges)...And Grace responded. One day in September 2020, I had the good fortune of meeting Mooji on a market place in Portugal - a renowned spiritual Master, who woke up to his True Nature upon meeting Papaji in the 90s. I had never felt attracted to him as a teacher - I already had my own teachers, I thought. He was wearing a facemask and all I could see were his eyes. At first, I wished he wasn’t wearing a mask so that I could hear him speak better (funny how my mind has so many absurd preferences at all times). But it was Grace again.

As his face was covered, his eyes and forehead looked like my dad’s - a long lost love. It took a little fight before my heart melted in a mixture of tears, pain and Love all at once.  ”Where have you been all this time, Beloved, I missed you so much.” I heard myself say inside my head. I had never seen him before, but it felt like I’d known him forever. The invisible shield I had unknowingly created between “me” and the rest of the world was crumbling in small pieces.

As he spoke to me, I could barely function - my mind was even louder than normal, as if in a mental purge. Shame, guilt, pride, sadness, the desire to be someone special, the worthlessness of missing my only chance to meet someone like him...Everything came and all at once. Still, his Love and Humility pierced right through this shield of resistance and touched me in some way that I didn’t understand. We sat with him for a while, visited the chapel in Monte Sahaja and went home.

As the days went on, I kept hearing his voice in my head, saying “Simple, simple” as if he had left a mantra with me...Like a sweet reminder to drop every thought, everything I knew, everything I wanted to know, everything I thought I was, every feeling, every story, everything that could be dropped. And in that dropping to discover the utmost Simplicity that had been there all along.

Instead of me finding Truth, the last few weeks have felt like Truth finding “me”, dissolving my edges, melting the boundary between “me” and the world, “me” and thought, “me” and emotion, “me” and Truth, me and Grace. Somehow, through Grace itself, this boundary was revealed to be just a thought - a very old thought that didn’t even have words. 

Little did I know that it wasn’t “Grace helping me” all along. Rather, Grace was my true name.