I was brought up in a very strict conservative Catholic upbringing. I know that there’s many of us that sort of have come from that type of upbringing. In particular, my family came from an island in Portugal. There’s different, it’s not to say that everybody had that experience that I had. The experience I had, I was born there, my family was born there, we emigrated when I was five. That particular Island, the whole feel about the religion and health played in your in your life had to do mostly with suffering. So, that’s how I was brought up. It was about, my cousins, my family, my immediate family, everybody had the same sort of view or values instilled in them. So, that was a really big part of me growing as a person with those kind of values or I like to say attachments, I had a lot of attachments that were around suffering and fear and not really feeling like blossoming and having joy and being the person that God intended you to be, wasn’t really a big part of that. It was very suppressed. It took me a while to sort of come to that connection and to know deep inside that that was very much the divine plan for all of us.
So, when I when I was introduced to Sahaja Yoga I had been a seeker for many years, so I tried to sort of find the connection. I befriended friends at work, I had a little bit of travel in my 20s where I went to Nepal and I was in Africa. I wanted to know as much as I could about different faiths to see what was the right answer. So, it was very much, I had a lot of seeking in my life, trying to find the right answer. But through that, that was good, I realized that there was no right path and I became very universal in my views which I realized when I came to Sahaja that that’s very much a Sahaja thing. It is a universal religion, so it sat really well with me. So, when I did start Sahaja, I really felt like I was in the right place. One of the things that, or some of the things that I brought before were, of course, the seeking part, really feeling like I knew who I was, both spiritually, that was still not really affirmed in my being and also as a person, you know, qualities to do with self-esteem, believing in yourself, knowing who you are, all those qualities I still seem to be always kind of wondering or doubting. So, when I sat in the first class and John talked about some of these things, I thought, “wow, I’m really in the right place”. I got,”wow, this is great”, because he spoke about all these qualities along the different chakras that, once enlightened and activated, can bring you that sense of peace and who you are and the connection to the divine and the global connection and the community connection. So, I just thought I’m definitely in the right place.
When we started the Guru game, getting back to the Nabhi and why I’m speaking here tonight, it was very, very, it was actually amazing that I got that because probably for the last 10 years a big element in my life has been worry and stress and my husband and I both left the corporate world and we both started our own businesses. At the same time, I’ve started my family, I have three children, three boys. So, I did sort of a part-time design business from home and my husband ventured out doing different things. It’s been quite a rollercoaster ride, I͛d say for the last ten years of, between the both of us, of working and not working. So, that’s always kind of been a cloud over, unfortunately, one that I let be a cloud, over our heads and again, being parents, you͛re always concerned about your children. Then recently, like at Christmas time, we had a really sort of a hard hit where we thought we might lose our house, that we were at the time contemplating or wondering if maybe we’re going to move in with my parents again or maybe move into an apartment. So, it’s very real, feels like just the other day but thank goodness, it was many months ago. Then I started Sahaja in February and at that point I was just like, okay, I just don’t know what to do anymore. I felt like I didn’t have the answers anymore. Three years back, I had made the decision to go back to school, to go to Teachers College and for something a little bit more secure in my life, a new career. It related to what I’d done before design, it was teaching design, tech and design in high school, that was my certification but I seem to get in at a time where they weren’t hiring teachers. So, if any of you are familiar with the teaching industry, now is not the time to get into teaching, or at least three years ago. Maybe it’s starting to come out but I think still now it’s a little iffy. During that time, probably for about a year, we were both without work. So, I started Sahaja and I focused on the Nabhi because that was very much something that I was needing to activate the whole piece. We can see here that’s a huge one piece. Seeing if I could remove the blockages to do with like money and career and worry and anxiety, all those blockages and all those heavy things that I carried. I had always sort of worked on that but I felt that this approach and the Sahaja way really seemed to hit home for me, hit home inside with divine or spirit within, it seemed to connect. That was very helpful to me. In May, I started to really focus on that thanks to the Guru Game. And so, something really neat happened. I was at the grocery store and, this is like early June, and I ran into an old employer and she had asked me if I had found any work in teaching and I had said, “not really, I’m trying to be positive,” I said, “trying my best, volunteering, this and that”. She says, “okay, well I have a friend and she’s opening a new school, it’s under renovations right now, it’s in Oakville, it’s a private school, boys’ school and I believe she’s still looking for one or two more teachers. Here’s her email, why don’t you send her an email.” I thought, okay, alright, that sounds really good but I was a little, you know, still those attachments of like fear and not knowing. So, I emailed her friend and then I received a phone call to come in for an interview. I thought, okay, so, they probably really need supply teachers. I went for the interview and to make a long story short, in June I was hired as their elementary art Teacher. I think that is, Shri Mataji in one of her talks, or probably many of her talks, but the ones that I’ve listened to, she talks about sort of letting go of those worries and those concerns and then things will work out, they will be taken care of. So, I really believe that was a time in my life and that aspect was being taken care of. It was really wonderful. I want to go on a little bit if I still have time, just how this connects to when I recently played the Guru Game with the heart chakra. As wonderful as this opportunity came my way and as much as they had all the faith in me, I’m still working on it, I think I’m getting a lot better, didn’t quite have the faith in myself to take on this art teacher role without having the specialty, although I knew I could do art but being a private school, everything’s to the tee, I have to do a really great job and so those past attachments of fear and self-doubt were creeping back in. Obviously, with Sahaja, I’ve been going to the lake and meditating and I just said, actually, this is before I did the Guru Game for the heart and I was just saying, “I just have so much fear about this upcoming job that starts in September about how I’m going to be able to obviously show my gratitude for them to hire me but just do a really good job and be able to teach properly”.
What’s been really great is focusing last on the heart chakra and especially the center chakra for courage and removing blockages of fear. I’ve been doing that like every morning, I get up early and I’ve been doing my meditations and that’s been my focus and I’ve been trying to also contemplate some other of Shri Mataji’s words about when you have fear and you’re putting the sort of that out there, you know, let go of that and put joy into it. Turn it around and put the joy into it and let joy come out of that. So, I’ve been driving in the morning, thinking, “I’m going to put joy into my classroom, I”m going to show those boys joy, going to have a really good day”. So, I’ve been trying to do the work as they say and so, those are some really great things that have been happening to me and helping me to evolve spiritually but also to connect to myself and know who I am. Actually, I just want to tell you another little thing that’s kind of neat. Is that okay? This even happened before Christmas and this has to do with signs and in Sahaja, we don’t really look for signs, that’s not part of what we believe and it’s from within and our connection to the divine but something kind of funny has been happening and I just want to mention it because it’s really kind of neat. So, before Christmas, right before I started Sahaja, I kept seeing license plates with the word Bava on it, B-A-V-A, or it would be, B-H-A-V. And I kept seeing this, it was ridiculous. I kept seeing it like every day, like three or four cars. It would never happen when my husband was in the car with me because I would tell him and he’d be like, what are you talking about, we never see those license plates but when I was in the car driving around, I would always see this and then just a little while ago, I decided to google what the spiritual meaning was of Bhava and again, not trying to put too much into signs but it was interesting because, Bhava Sagar, I don’t know if I’m saying this right, represent the void in this part, everything again to do with our Dharma, our who we are, our connection to the primordial masters that are reincarnated and they represent the aspects that we have to learn and balance in our lives. Like for example, Moses being the main one who came to us with the Ten Commandments and about what is righteous, what is, you know, knowing automatically. Once we have that Dharma, we evolved in here that we automatically know what is right. And all the other masters that I can’t remember who they all are but Socrates being one and Abraham and Lao Tzu. So, every time these masters came to us, they promised these wonderful lessons and philosophies about balance in our life and teaching us how to connect and as Shri Mataji talks about being in our spirit right here and that is very much a part of our evolution, so that we know with all our true knowledge and knowing and feeling both spiritually and physically and psychologically that we are connected to the divine. I thought it was really neat that I kept seeing these Bhava signs because now I know what it’s about. You got to admit, there’s a bit of a connection there.
Speaker 2: And it also means the ocean of illusions, exactly what you were fighting.
Right, what I was fighting, that’s right. The ocean of illusion is very much when you’re catching to these things that are about money, concerns and focusing too much about money and those things that keep us from evolving spiritually, that was very much what’s been hanging on to me for like ten years or more. It’s nice to know that I’ve been having a lot of evolving and I mean that’s a lifelong journey. Anyway, that’s sort of in my journey until now, many more journeys to come along that path, so that’s it. I poked myself, well, I was in the classroom and one of the boys, this was only like two weeks ago, lifted up a hardboard as I was leaning forward to help him, like right in the eye and I just thought, okay, that’s a goner for like another week or two, it was like really bad and it was like really weepy and watery and swollen but like a day later it was fine, it was amazing. So, I find that there’s a lot of good vibrations happening that will help us.