Why Spiritual Practices Can Transform Your Career | Swami Chidananda DSH #1386

Completely fine.

Because I have to live, right?

I have to do my duty.

And so if I don't kill, I'm going to die.

So to do my duty or Dharma, if I have to eat an animal, it's no problem.

In the same way, if I don't need to,

then I choose a life that will cause less pain.

Okay, guys, honored to have a monk on the podcast today.

We got Swami coming in from Sedona, from a yoga conference.

Thanks for joining us today.

Thank you for having me.

Absolutely.

How was the conference in Sedona?

It's very nice.

Yes, had the opportunity to speak about yoga philosophy.

A lot of times, yoga is looked upon just as like the physical elements of it, but there's a much deeper aspect of it too, with the meditation and the philosophy.

Yeah.

So to speak on that was very nice.

That is interesting because when I think of yoga, I think of stretching and, you know, physical, maybe some stress relief as well.

But there's a mental component to it too.

Yeah, absolutely.

So yoga is a whole system.

And yoga is literally defined as to come into union with your higher self.

And so the physical parts are only, I would say, 5% of it.

Wow.

But when the yogis came to the United States to share, they had to start somewhere.

And so they started to speak about the physical elements.

And hopefully they were saying, well, if you do that, then there might be a natural inquiry to to know more about the breathing and the meditation and the philosophy.

And so that's kind of my dharma duty is to help people to go deeper than just being on the mat.

I love the power of breath work is interesting to me too.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, if you look at it, breath work, right?

That's,

that's a new age thing, breath work.

Right.

That term.

But we were talking about in the Vedic tradition thousands of years ago.

So the idea of breathing, controlling the breath, controls the mind.

And so a lot of things that science is even speaking about in these days are things that the Vedic tradition was putting into practice thousands and thousands of years.

You guys were ahead of your time, man.

Seems like Western is just catching up to some of the ancient traditions, right?

Yeah, exactly.

You had an upbringing in India.

You were there for a while?

Actually, no,

I was born there, but when I was very little, my mother moved to the United States.

And so I grew up in the States.

And before before I became a monk, I was working in Wall Street and in finance and not so connected to the spiritual path.

But through a series of events,

I started to go deeper into the philosophy.

And then that led me down the journey of the spirit of spirituality and then eventually becoming a monk.

Wow, a total 180.

Yeah, 360.

Yeah, 360, I guess.

You didn't feel fulfilled when you were in Wall Street?

Yeah, I mean, I would say, you know, I always like to say there's, there's a nice quote, you can win the rat race, but at the end of the day, you're still a rat.

And it was this feeling of, well, I had material success, but paradoxically, I was not happier.

Like I felt some joy.

Like, you know, you come to Vegas and

you go to the casino, you have all of these things, but and you feel some momentary happiness.

But then there's a deeper sort of feeling of, what is the purpose of life?

It can't be just to have a nice car, lots of money, nice clothes.

There has to be something more.

And so you reach that conclusion two ways.

You either reach it when you go to the rock bottom, when you have nothing and you're like, okay, I need to, there's got to be something more.

Or you reach it when you're at the top, when you have everything and still you're like, there's got to be something more.

So either way, you're going to get to that place.

where you're going to have to turn inside.

You're going to have to find some purpose.

And so that was sort of the the catalyst for me was just looking at my life and saying,

what now?

What is the real purpose?

And then that led me on the journey.

And do you think purpose is an individual thing?

Do you think each person has a different purpose?

Well, no, I would say the ultimate purpose of every human being is to know who they are.

Because a lot of times when you don't know who you are, you identify with the limit itself.

And in that identification, there's fear.

And I'm sure sure every single person listening to this has felt fear.

Yeah.

And so when you feel fear, you can't make good decisions in your life.

You either take a decision which is very quick, you take a decision that is trying to

get some momentary pleasure, or you don't take a decision at all.

So when you know yourself, when you know your eternal self, the fear is gone.

So that's the ultimate, we call it dharma or duty of every human being.

Know who you are.

Shout out to today's sponsor, Kinsta.

If you run anything online, an e-com brand, a podcast site, a service business, you know hosting is one of those things that can either run quietly in the background or completely wreck your momentum when it goes wrong.

I've been there, pages not loading during launches, site crashing when traffic picks up, support tickets going nowhere.

You end up wasting hours trying to fix problems that shouldn't exist in the first place.

That's why I moved to Kinsta.

They're a WordPress hosting company that's actually built for people running real businesses.

Fast speeds, solid uptime, enterprise-grade security, and a dashboard that doesn't feel like it was built in 2008.

Everything just works and it runs fast.

Before Kinsta, I had hosting that couldn't keep up.

It hurt SEO and slowed down conversion and made simple tasks way harder than they needed to be.

What I like about Kinsta is that it's all handled.

I don't think about updates, backups, traffic spikes, cover.

When something comes up, which is rare, I'm not stuck in support loop talking to some chat bot.

or outsource team.

I get real people who know what they're doing.

That's worth a lot more when you're moving fast.

And performance matters.

Faster load times help with rankings, with retention, with your entire customer experience.

It all adds up.

Not only that, you get a 30-day money-back guarantee to try it risk-free.

So if you're tired of managing your own hosting problems or relying on outdated tools, check out kinsta.com/slash dsh.

Go to kinsta.com/slash dsh.

That's k-in-st-t-a.com/slash dsh.

First month's free, migration is done for you, and your site will actually feel like it's built for 2025.

And the best way to know who you are is to live a life of love.

And when we say live a life of love, that means a life of service.

Try everything that you can to be of service to others in whatever that you're doing.

And if you're able to do that, then you can really say you're living a good human life.

I love that.

Because many people think to serve, I have to become a monk.

You don't have to be a monk.

You can serve by

maybe inspiring people through your podcast.

you can serve by being successful in wall street and maybe using some of that to to help others so there's many many ways to serve but if you're not serving and your whole life is just based on consumption i will bet you

a lot that you will end up suffering wow so you don't experience any fear anymore because

i'm not enlightened so that when you are enlightened you become fearless but that's the state of enlightenment right many people people talk about enlightenment.

You see a light, you see this, that.

No.

Easiest is a person who's enlightened is a person who is fearless.

And so I'm on my way.

I'm on my way.

But I would not say I'm there yet.

Yeah.

That would be a large claim to make.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Very few get to that level, right?

But that's the goal.

We have to get to that level.

We have to get to that.

Yeah, because I feel like there's a lot of also subconscious programming in people these days.

So there's just fear coming out non-stop.

Yeah.

This is called samskaras.

So samskaras means compulsions, patterns and habits that we have reinforced through our entire life.

So whenever something happens externally, my mind starts to understand it in a certain way.

I'll give you like a very simple example.

I get abandoned as a job.

That's an external thing.

In that moment, my mind starts to say, what's wrong with me?

Maybe I'm a bad person.

So that's an insecurity.

The insecurity becomes a pattern that is called a samskara.

And that's going to affect the rest of your life.

Every decision you make will be based on that particular pattern that had been created when you were younger.

Now, if you want to take it to a whole nother level, imagine you've lived multiple lives.

And imagine in multiple lives, These same samskaras or patterns you've reinforced.

Now they become like water running through a rock.

For millions of years, there's grooves in the rock.

So your subconscious has created these grooves that are almost impossible to break.

And these grooves determine how you act in the world.

So the spirituality is about taking the negative compulsions and patterns and transforming them to positive patterns.

So for example, negative could be like jealousy, insecurity, lust,

greed.

Positive could be consistency, humility,

empathy, compassion.

So there is a possibility to transform those qualities, but you need to do it by utilizing a certain practice.

That's yoga.

Yeah, yoga and maybe meditation, right?

Yeah.

So meditation is part of yoga.

And from a holistic perspective.

That's interesting.

You got me thinking what my samskaras are now.

I got to figure those out.

I think abandonment is definitely one of them.

Sure, sure.

And, you know, we have, we have so many.

And the thing is.

Shout out to today's sponsor, Notion.

Your time is for building, not emailing.

Countless incredible tools exist to help you build your next big idea, but your inbox has not kept up.

What started as a revolutionary way to connect with customers, hire your team, and run your businesses has become a time sink that pulls you away from what matters.

Notion Mail is the inbox that thinks like you.

It uses AI to automatically sort what's important, drafts replies, and even helps schedule meetings without you lifting a finger.

I've set mine up with custom views so I could see what matters by topic or urgency and their snippet feature.

I use it daily to knock out repeat emails, follow-ups, intros, quick thank yous, and one click.

It's fast, clean, and smart.

If you already use Notion, it integrates seamlessly.

And if you don't, this is a great reason to start.

Try NotionMail free at notion.com slash DSH, all lowercase.

That's notion.com slash DSH and using our link helps support the show.

Many people think, you know what, I'm going to just overcome it myself.

Right.

But that's like trying to swim across a massive wave.

No matter how hard you try, you're not going to get across it.

So you need to utilize some element of grace to help you to overcome it.

So the grace is the spiritual practice.

It's that energy that we utilize beyond ourselves that helps us to transform.

Also, at the same time, we are divine.

I always give the analogy, you can't remove wetness from a fish in an ocean.

Do you imagine going to an ocean trying to remove wetness?

Impossible.

In the same way, we are divine, but because of so many of these samskaras and patterns and compulsions, we've completely forgotten who we are.

And so when we're in that space, we're in fear.

And by knowing ourselves, we remove all of those things.

Understand?

Ah, we are divine.

Yeah.

We are love.

Yeah, people are forgetting that.

I think life is so fast-paced these days.

Of course.

You know, I think people are so are always in so much aggression right or so much anxiety that's because we don't know who we are that's because of all of these compulsions that we have been

suffocated by our entire life and there's no way to get out of it

because this material world is designed to reinforce our negative patterns

And spirituality is designed to help you to remove those negative patterns.

And so people have to make a choice which way they want to go.

Yeah, it's easy to compare yourself in this materialistic society to others financially.

Of course.

And with social media, it's like you just see posts of people doing well and you want to compare yourself to them, you know.

Yeah, social media, I would say,

it's beautiful because it allows for a lot of knowledge to be shared.

And maybe some people will hear this in the social media, right?

And at the same time, it really, really reinforces a lot of our negative patterns because we're constantly consuming all the time.

And social media is saying,

you're not as good as them.

And so that creates a lot of issues in our mind.

And that makes us take actions that might give some momentary pleasure, but will create long-term suffering in our lives.

Yeah, you got to be very cognizant of how you're using it, right?

Exactly.

Yeah, it could be used for good, but also easily for the opposite.

Exactly.

I want to talk about the plant-based diet.

What was the reason for switching to that?

So I would say when we're talking about plant-based diet, many people make the mistake in thinking that

it's not good to take a life.

But actually in the Vedic tradition, we say that life lives on life.

When I'm talking, I'm killing millions of bacteria.

When I'm walking, I'm killing millions of organisms.

So every sentient being is a life.

So we establish sentience as something that has a certain level of consciousness and a certain awareness of the senses.

And so in that idea of sentient beings, there's those that are more conscious of who they are.

They feel the senses more and there are those that don't.

So for example, we say that human beings have the most awareness of their selves and they feel the senses the most.

And then below that would be cows, certain animals like chickens, so forth and so on.

And below that would be plants and then organisms, lower organisms, so forth and so on.

So when we're looking at the spectrum of sentient beings, we try to cause the least harm possible based on a situation that we're in.

So for example, if I'm an Eskimo in Antarctica and I have to kill a bear or a fish, it's completely fine

because I have to live, right?

I have to do my duty.

And so if I don't kill, I'm going to die.

So to do my duty or dharma, if I have to eat an animal, it's no problem.

In the same way, if I don't need to, then I choose a life that will cause less pain.

Okay, so that's the idea called ahimsa, doing the least harm possible given any situation that we find ourselves in.

So many people think that monks or the Vedic tradition says you have to be vegetarian.

That's not true.

What we're saying is that try to do the least harm possible.

So if you don't need to kill a cow and eat it every single day, don't do it.

Because you see that people, the cows are being put in factories,

murdered.

You can see in their eyes the pain.

And now you're taking that life and you don't need it to survive.

Then what is that going to do?

That's going to cause you to consume all the energy of that animal.

What do you think the animal was feeling when it was killed?

Fear, pain, aggression?

When you eat it, what you're going to feel?

The exact same thing.

So what many people say, Swami, you know, my doctor said, I have to eat meat.

It's okay, no problem.

Like if you have to eat meat, do it.

But try not to eat it every single day.

Try not to eat a cow when you can maybe eat like a chicken.

Because we say a chicken might have a less awareness of itself um less aware of its consciousness so you have to try and find that uh that place which makes sense for you right for example if i ask you here's a huge 100-year redwood tree yeah and a mosquito and you have to kill one or the other intuitively you know you know what i'll kill the mosquito then the redwood tree right right so intuitively it's already programmed in you If you give a knife to a child and say, eat a slice of banana or a cow's head, it's going going to choose a banana.

But when we're very much in our negative qualities, when we're very much in the world, we lose that connection to our intuitive element that tells us, hey, that's not good what you're doing.

You don't need to eat cows and meat every single day.

So that's why we're vegetarian, that we try to do the least harm possible.

But if somebody has to eat meat, to survive, to do their dharma, it's no problem.

I like that.

That makes a lot of sense.

You brought this photo here today what's the meaning of uh this picture right here so he is called hanuman hanuman is a specific deity in our tradition that uh symbolizes faith and strength on the spiritual path so whenever we are walking the path and it's really really difficult we connect to hanuman through a mantra or through a ritual and that connection allows us to tap into the energy of this particular deity and what he represents and utilize it to move forward on our own journey.

A lot of the mantras seem very powerful.

We did one before the episode and felt the room change a little bit, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, mantras, look at the world as a vibration.

Everything in this reality is a vibration.

Some are more solid, so you can touch this.

And some are more subtle, like the voice.

So everything is only a vibration.

So we say that we are constantly bombarded with a lot of negative negative and limiting vibrations

through social media, through the music we might listen to, through the surroundings, through our friends or to the people around us.

It's always negative vibrations reinforcing our negative qualities, taking us further away from knowing who we are.

A mantra is said to have the vibration of pure consciousness.

So when you chant the mantra, it pierces through all of those limiting energies and allows us to tap into unconditional love.

And so when you immerse yourself in the mantra, it just takes you back to who you are.

And like the perfect example that I would give you is: imagine you're at a party, a huge party, and there's a lot of people singing and dancing and talking.

And so all of that knowledge, that voices, the vibrations are coming in,

and you're not paying attention.

All of a sudden, somebody far away, they say, Sean.

And they're not saying it louder, but you turn around.

So how is it possible that all this noise is coming, but you turn around for Sean?

That's because that's who you are.

You recognize your name through all of the other vibrations.

So when you chant a mantra, the mantra has the vibration of your heart.

So the moment you chant it, the heart says, oh, somebody's calling me.

And so it's able to go through all of that energy of the world and then tap tap right into who it is.

Wow.

I need to start doing mantras every day.

Yeah, that's our main sadhana or spiritual practice.

So

if there's listeners that want to learn a mantra, they can reach out to me.

And we teach how to utilize a mantra practice and a mantra and

start a daily practice if they want.

Yeah.

Are you supposed to listen to them at first until you can speak them out loud or how does it work?

So usually it's the other way around.

You first try and say it out loud to feel the vibration of it.

And once you start to immerse it, then you can just chant it inwardly.

So right now I'm talking to you, but I'm also chanting the mantra.

Really?

Yeah.

So both are happening at the same time.

Wow.

So that's the state that we try to get to, where the mantra is always running in the background while we're doing our duty.

And why that is, is because it allows us to stay in the present moment.

I'm doing this.

This is my external duty.

But when I'm chanting, it's always allowing me to do it from a space of service, from a space of love.

So that's the beauty of the mantra.

It keeps you in the present moment and doing your dharma or duty in the best way possible.

You've mentioned love a few times now, so it's very important to you.

Yeah.

So, you know, for us,

unconditional love, that's what we say, is equivalent to God.

Wow.

So many people say God is like a being on a sky with a beard saying, hey, you're are a sinner.

No, that's ridiculous.

For us, God is unconditional love.

So if you want to, many people have different names for unconditional love.

Jesus, Yahweh, Hari, Narayana, Ishvara, form, formless.

Many, many different things.

But for us,

for simplicity, we just say it's love.

But love has three qualities.

So if somebody says, what is love to you?

So we say love has these three qualities, and that's what we're connecting to.

So the first quality of love is called shit

or consciousness.

So imagine we have a Big Bang, right?

So from the Big Bang came this whole universe.

So for us in the Vedic tradition, we say, look,

everything after the Big Bang is science.

We're not a cult like electricity is bad.

Don't use a phone.

Like, no, that's ridiculous.

Everything after a big bang, it's science and science will understand it but what is it that caused the big bang what is it that caused everything to come from nothing how did the laws of physics come where did gravity come from where did the elements come from so for everything to come from nothing there had to be a will it's in sanskrit we call it sankalpa sankalpa means will there had to be a will to create So will is a quality of consciousness.

So the main quality of consciousness is the will to cause things to happen, like cause and effect.

So the first quality of unconditional love is chit or that first will, that supreme consciousness that created everything.

That's love for us.

Does that make sense?

Yeah.

Okay.

So that's the first quality of suit.

That's the first column.

The second is sat.

Sat means.

the ultimate truth.

So as human beings, we're always searching for truth.

We don't know what the truth is, but everything that we do is always trying to move us towards the truth.

So this love is truth with the capital T.

That's the final conclusion of truth.

So this is called sat, the ultimate truth.

And the last is called Ananda, means bliss or joy.

So it's not like ice cream happiness where I eat one ice cream, then I take another one and then another one.

It's not a limiting happiness.

It's not something that comes and goes.

it's the highest joy that we can feel

so love is sat chit ananda truth consciousness and bliss so when i speak about love that's what i'm referring to yeah because sometimes when you uh really love someone you tell them the truth and they they take it harshly but you actually care about them though yeah so you can perceive unconditional love when there's absolutely no attachment

A lot of times I tell something to you, you take it harshly.

Now, when you take it harshly what do i do i become angry i become frustrated that's not love because i've already i have an attachment to how you feel about it right so that's not unconditional that's still a limiting love interesting only when you can share love and it does not matter what the world thinks about you it does not matter what you get from it then you can say you're living a life of love Wow, that's a hard place to go to.

That's why the yogis strive for it their whole life.

that's the that's the enlightened beings right because i said enlightened beings are fearless right yeah so what is

the absence of love fear

so when there is no love there's fear when there's love there can't be fear so enlightened beings are fearless and their entire life is a life of love but to live a life of unconditional love It's the hardest thing you can do in this world.

Like

Hollywood makes out love to be like such such a simple thing, right?

Every movie at the end, or we come together and we ride off into a sunset.

That's not love.

Love is the greatest sacrifice.

Love is, you have to give up everything

that you think is right or wrong to live a life of love.

That can take a whole lifetime.

Yeah, because they teach you right and wrong with every decision you make.

Every decision you make has an attachment, has an expectation.

I'm attached to what what you think about me.

I have an expectation that it's going to turn out this way.

So to completely remove that and just to serve, that's when you can say you're enlightened.

Right.

Yeah, because a lot of people care what others think about them.

Yeah.

I would say almost everyone.

Yeah.

If you're not enlightened, you're always going to have some expectation and attachment.

And so that's really the thing that we're always trying to move towards.

If you're able to do this podcast from a space of unconditional love, you'll change the whole world.

Wow.

It has the potential to change the whole world.

That's the power of love.

I need to get there.

We all are attracting to that.

Yeah.

I would say I've improved.

I used to really care what people said about me like 10 years ago, but I've gotten better.

You know, it's hard, though.

You know, the entire journey, my guru, his name is Paramahamsa Swami Vishwananda.

He told me, he said, you know, the spiritual path is a pilgrimage and it's lifelong, but it's only 40 centimeters.

It's from the mind to the heart.

Whoa, that's deep.

And that can take an entire lifetime.

Wow.

But that's it.

Just that 40 centimeters.

And we're somewhere there.

Some of us are closer to the heart.

Some are closer to the mind.

We're all on that journey.

You mentioned past lives earlier.

So is that something you believe in?

Yes.

This is called reincarnation.

So it's not that Sean, it's reincarnated as the personality Sean, but that which resides in you, it's called a soul or an Atma.

And that soul inhabits the body of Shan, then next life inhabits another and another and another.

So another quality of a sentient being is that a soul inhabits it and gives it consciousness and allows it to act in the world.

So a soul can be in a plant.

in a cow, in a dog, in a human, but it's always moving more and more and more towards love.

And so when that

experience of Shan is finished, the soul takes on another body.

In the scriptures called the Bhagavad Gita, we say that just as a person casts off worn-out clothes and puts on new ones, so does the embodied soul cast off worn-out bodies and enter into new ones.

So it's just a progression.

of experiences.

Interesting.

And once it's done with this life, it goes to the next and the next.

Where does that end, do you think?

It ends ends in the ocean of love.

And so we come from love, we have these experiences, and then we go back to love.

And these experiences just

make

love even more sweet, even more beautiful.

I mean, it's a very cliché term, but to really appreciate light, you must understand darkness.

To really appreciate oneness, we must also experience duality.

So this reality gives the soul those experiences, which will help it to to

embody

love in a higher way.

That makes sense.

So karma ties into this too, right?

Karma dictates the type of lives we'll have.

So everything for us to experience duality,

for us to experience this reality, there needs to be two things.

One is impermanence and the other is duality, right?

That's because Love is eternal and one.

So to have a momentary experience of what it feels like to not feel love, you have to experience duality and impermanence.

And so karma allows for that to happen.

It's the natural law of cause and effect that allows us to have these multitude of experiences before we go back into the ocean.

And do you believe karma can follow you from previous lifetimes?

Yes.

Previous lifetimes dictate the type of life you live now.

Wow.

So your past karmas dictate the type of reality you live in now.

But don't look at karma as a very, like many people mistake it for something very simple.

Let's say I hit you, right?

Yeah.

Because I have a desire that if I hit you,

it'll make me happy.

And my ego makes me do it, not my heart.

Once I hit you, what are you going to feel?

Pain.

Right.

So pain is an energy.

So that energy that I have made you experience, The law of karma dictates I will have to experience.

Wow.

But it's not an immediate thing.

It's not like you're going to hit me right back.

It could be,

but it might not be.

So what happens is that the pain that you feel is a seed.

It takes a seed form and it attaches to my subtle body and it waits for the right time to bloom.

So maybe 10 years, 20 years, maybe another lifetime, maybe another person, maybe another scenario.

will happen to me where I will experience the fruits of my action, where that seed opens and I feel that pain.

Maybe somebody cheats on me.

Maybe somebody hits me with the car.

But whatever I give you, I will have to experience.

It could be now, it could be in a future life.

But karma allows reality to continue forward.

And then once we've balanced all of our karmas, once we do our dharma from love, our duty from love, then we go back to the source.

That's really important for people to know before they commit, you know, violent acts or whatever.

Yeah.

And don't look at karma as good and bad.

Karma is any action done from the ego that causes some type of suffering in the environment.

It could be a human, an animal, mother earth.

And that suffering has a vibration that you will have to experience in the future.

Wow.

And some things will cause more.

Karma, some will cause less.

If I just steal your cup without looking, there's some karma there.

But if I kill you, there's much more.

So if every action is creating entanglement, how do we free ourselves from entanglement?

That's if we do our duty or dharma with love.

So if every action becomes one from love,

then if I give you love, what am I getting back?

Love.

A hundred times more love.

So we have a choice.

Do I want to give you pain and I receive that pain back?

Or do I want to give you love right and i receive the love back so you can either perform your duty and create karma or you can do your dharma or duty and share and experience love can you offset karma with love yes really yes yes so the law that's a very good very good question the law of karma

is tough

right

But love has the ability to offset all of your karma.

It's just one act of love.

Wow.

there was this uh there's this funny story of a man he was looking over his balcony and he sees um a homeless person with one leg hopping and he's begging for food and the man is like overcome with sadness it's like wow it's so unfair why this person has one leg and why he's in this place and his teacher comes and says what are you doing and i says i'm looking and you know i feel this is unfair The teacher says, if you only knew his past karmas, you'd be running down there to cut off his other leg.

So there is some grace in also what's happening, but we don't understand it.

And just one act of love can remove and change all of your karma.

Wow.

That's the beauty of grace.

You see, there's only two ways to grow on the spiritual path, suffering or grace.

So suffering is the path of karma.

I do something, I get pain back, and I do it so many times that eventually I say, no more.

and grace is i don't have to experience that pain i can utilize the mantra i can do my yoga practices and work through these karmas energetically without actually having to face it externally right i'd rather go down that route yeah that's so that's why we tell people we we're not in the business of conversion i don't care if you follow this path or not because at the end of the day we're all going back to love we're all nobody can remove the wetness from you.

Nobody can remove the divinity from you.

You'll always go back to love.

We're just here to provide a path of grace.

Yeah.

And if somebody is wanting to take that path, it's available.

I love that approach because there's a lot of divide with modern-day religion.

Yeah, a lot of tension.

This is all dogmaticism, right?

This is the idea that we understand God and we can put God in a box.

But love is beyond the understanding of the limited mind.

The moment the mind thinks it understands love,

in that moment we limit love.

And so that's modern day religion.

We all think we know the truth.

But there's a beautiful verse that says, the truth is one, but the wise speak of it in many ways.

It's only one ocean of love, but many, many rivers get there.

And as long as you have a mind, you might think that each river is contradictory.

But when you're in the heart and you look back, you understand that every river was always going to lead you back to the same goal.

Interesting.

You've mentioned ego a few times when you were on Wall Street.

Is that something you struggled with?

Definitely.

The ego is also something I struggle with now.

Really?

The ego is anything that creates separation and divide, that makes you believe that you are separate from everything around you.

That's what we call the limited I, the lower I.

It's identification with body and mind.

And so as long as we have not reached a state of enlightenment, the ego will always be present.

And the ego can take many forms.

It can take lower forms where the ego can be present in when we cause death or harm.

But the ego can also be present when we're doing spiritual things, saying, look how great you are.

You're a monk.

Look how amazing you are.

You're doing all of these spiritual practices.

You're chanting the mantra every day.

You're reading the Bhagavad Gita.

That's also ego.

And sometimes that's even worse.

And so in that way, the ego is always present

till love fully awakens.

So look at the mind like a steel rod.

So when you take a steel rod and you put it into a furnace,

when you put it into the furnace, The fire of the furnace makes the steel rod red hot.

And it becomes bright red and it takes the qualities of the fire but when you take it out it still retains an individual identity it's not melted so that's what happens when you become enlightened you have an identity but that identity is fully divine right it's taken on all of the qualities of the fire it's become red hot and in that space the ego is completely transcended but identity is there but that identity is only there to be of service to the world.

So it's a whole process.

And yes, we, of course, struggle with the ego every single day.

Every single day we have that till the rod is red hot.

Yeah, I see it destroy a lot of people.

They can't control their ego.

This is a problem.

This is why we need spiritual teachers in our life.

This is why we need spiritual practices.

Because sometimes, you know, people will say, I'm my own guru.

And there is truth in that, because the guru is a divine energy that helps us to go back to source.

That's how we can qualify a guru.

It's called tattva or guru principle.

So the guru principle can come in a book, in

a person,

in a teaching.

It can come in many ways.

And obviously it can come in a form.

And we say that we must always access that guru principle.

But when we do that,

then eventually the inner guru will awaken.

And then that can be guided.

So I studied under my guru for

for almost 10 years.

And then he said, okay, now you go back to the United States and start teaching.

And now you have to find me inside of you.

So now you go to find the inner guru.

So that external guru sometimes, most of the time, is important

because it cuts through all of the nonsense of the ego.

Yeah.

That says like, oh, I'm spiritual.

I'm doing this.

I'm doing that.

But the ego has just even hijacked your spiritual practices.

So the external one can help us.

How do you get the guru title?

Is there a process to get that?

So in the Vedic tradition, there's four types of gurus.

So the first type of guru or teacher is one that teaches you mundane things of the world, like math, social studies, how to fix a car.

That's a teacher.

Then you have something called a pundit.

A pundit is somebody that can teach you rituals and mantras and practices that are more spiritual in nature.

Then you have an acharya.

An acharya is somebody who's embodied those teachings, can inspire you, but is not fully enlightened yet.

So they can inspire you and give you some awakening.

Then you have what is called a satguru.

The satguru is the one that has fully become enlightened.

And they can help you to fully go back to your true self.

So there's four types of teachers.

Got it.

And

I just want to clarify,

there are teachers that call themselves Satguru.

They could be or they can't be.

I don't know.

I'm not talking about a specific person.

It's just the title Satguru.

It's somebody that has living a life of unconditional love and can help you.

So in that spectrum, try your best to find some teachers that can give you some knowledge.

Try your best to maybe read some books of saints that were coming from the past.

Try your best to take some yoga practices and do it.

And then, if the journey would involve meeting a real life enlightened master, great.

If not, then the divine will also help you in many other ways.

Yeah.

What's the type of yoga you recommend, people?

There's a lot of different types of yoga.

So, what I would recommend is something called Atma Kriya Yoga, which is a specific practice passed down down by a great saint named Mahavatar Babaji.

He's said to be 5,000 years old.

And he was first spoken about in a book called The Autobiography of a Yogi.

And this book

was written about 100 years ago, and it's one of the most beautiful books on spirituality.

And it's changed many people's lives.

And it talks about this great saint.

And so I come from that lineage.

My guru comes from that lineage.

And we teach that particular practice.

Wow.

And so to receive initiation from that, it's a, maybe I'm biased, but it's a wonderful thing.

Yeah.

So we teach Atma Kriya Yoga and Mantra chanting.

I'll see if there's any of those in Vegas.

Yeah, yeah.

And you can always reach out to me.

We do many workshops and retreats where I teach it.

And, you know, I'll just, just on that, why is it important to become initiated in a lineage?

Because people say, I'll just Google it.

I'll just do it by Google.

I don't need somebody to initiate me into Kriya Yoga or chant a mantra.

So look at that like

imagine you are in a place and you need electricity and you use a portable charger.

What is it called?

The ones that run by themselves,

like a big

generator?

Generator.

So you have a generator.

And the generator is powering your house and it's doing well.

That's like doing a practice which is not being initiated into.

It's still helping you.

When you become initiated into a practice, it's like tapping into the electrical grid.

Now you have the energy of the entire

electrical grid.

And that's going to obviously have a deeper transformation inside of you.

So I would encourage people, firstly, find the right person.

Don't just go to a random person.

If you feel some connection, try and take initiation into a practice, into a mantra or into Kriya, and that will have a huge impact on your life.

I love What's your main focus this year?

Are you doing workshops and events?

Yeah, so the main focus this year is doing a lot of retreats and pilgrimages where I teach the Kriya, I teach a scripture called the Bhagavad Gita, teach mantra chanting.

So I'm traveling a lot and sharing this year.

So yeah, if anybody wants to connect, I guess they can reach out.

Yeah, we'll put a link of all your events in the video.

Anything else you want to close off with?

This was really impactful on me.

Thank you for coming.

So I would just close off on if people are just, if they want to take three things away from this, if they're listening and they're inspired, I would say I'll just give three things that they can start doing.

One is called seva or selfless service.

So every chance you get, try and do something where you don't expect anything in return, emotionally or physically.

And that trains the ego to not be so in the forefront because the ego is always going to try to do things for its own benefit.

So when it's selfless, you're training yourself to not go into the energy of the ego.

So whatever that means to you, do something selfless.

The next is sangha or community.

It's very, very, very important to surround yourself with the right community.

Because if you don't, you will be dragged down.

So surround yourself with those that are also looking to grow spiritually.

If you can't spend 10 minutes with your friend without drinking a beer or getting drunk or doing drugs, that's not a good sangha to be in unless you want that for your life, right?

It's up to you.

So try and find a community that will help you to grow.

And last is sadhana or daily spiritual practice.

So take 10 or 15 minutes a day to tap into unconditional love.

That could be through mantra chanting, through kriya, through breath work, whatever it might be for you.

So if you do seva, sadhana, and sangha, selfless service, daily practice, and spiritual community, that will really help one to go deeper into experiencing unconditional love.

I love it.

I'll start doing that immediately.

Thanks for coming on, Swami.

Yup, check him out, guys.

Check out his events below, and I'll see you next time.