It’s easy to get snagged in chaos and gloom when things seem to be spinning out of control. It’s also easy to get sucked into polarity and lose your centre, your Self. That’s exactly how I felt one day in 2013. I stood outside of my office, lost, and searching for answers to step beyond the chaos that seemed to have taken hold of my life. Moments earlier, I had had a panic attack in front of my marketing director. I have no idea what I said, but all I felt was a wave of fear that I would lose my new job and impact our fragile family economy, and my child would suffer.
I had overridden my gut instinct and many other people’s sound advice not to take this role. Still, I faced the other job choice that paid less money, and I chose the logical path – one that eventually led to my burnout and rebirth of courage and purpose. Part of the journey was learning to know who I was and having a clear intention, a Sankalpa, for my life. Something essential. Without this self-orientation, we will feel like a leaf in the wind or a cork floating on a stormy ocean. Our life path will be based, as mine was, on external circumstances, and we need a lot of luck on our side.
My journey to finding my Sankalpa began on an acupuncturist’s table. Lying like a pin cushion for 30 minutes, I was introduced to a Yoga Nidra practice by Shankardev; a GP turned spiritual teacher. A key phrase that struck home to me was, ‘That anything in life can fail you, but not your Sankalpa made during the practice of Yoga Nidra.’ I took that to heart, began studying, and ultimately became a Yoga Nidra teacher. As a Menopause Mentor, a critical stage is to help women become self-oriented and become aware of their true nature, their innate Self, their dharma.
This is not achieved by thinking or by emotion alone. To become aware of your purpose requires much more than your thinking mind and emotional attachments. Thinking and emotion are critical, but not your whole story. Too many people believe they should have the answers to their life purpose without any assistance. That you should already know everything is a harsh demand to place on yourself. Very few people know their purpose without self-exploration and self-development. To find your dharma, who you are, and your life purpose, your dharma’s expression into the world needs you to systematically explore your personality, talents, desires, circumstances, current commitments, and stage of life. When you go beneath thinking and emotion into the feeling and sensing – the alive Self, once you touch this part of yourself, your dharma heart, you will feel a sense of clarity, strength, and excitement about your life, that you have never experienced before.
