Why Was I Losing Interest in Everything—Career, Family, and Friends?
Why Was I Losing Interest in Everything—Career, Family, and Friends?
And One Practice That Ended My Anxiety and Saved My Life
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Faced Profound Failure, Loss, or Pain Recently?
This article is for you if you are slowly losing interest in everything: Interest in the World, Career, Family, and Friends.
You might have faced profound failure, loss, or pain that awakened you from the mind's suffering and almost forced you to explore spirituality. It might also be possible that even your greatest success felt hollow and meaningless to you, so it turned out to be a failure, and you lost interest in everything.
-Aby Vohra
How I Lost Everything in August 2008
In August 2008, near my 30th birthday and during the financial recession, I lost everything I had worked so hard to achieve. This profound loss and suffering drew me to the spiritual dimension, leading to a profound shift in my consciousness. It's been almost sixteen years now.
Slowly and gradually, I lost my mind and its conditioning, literally.
I spent much of my past life as a real estate entrepreneur in several countries. Born into extreme poverty in India, I grew up struggling to meet even the basic necessities of life. In 1980s my dad was an auto-rickshaw driver in an Indian city called Ahmedabad. He used to earn the equivalent of three dollars every day. He was a God figure to me. My dad was uneducated but one of the most selfless, humble, and caring people I know. This challenging upbringing conditioned my Ego to feel scarcity and fear around money, driving me to work tirelessly to become "somebody" and achieve various goals.
In hindsight, I feel blessed by those harsh childhood conditions, seeing them as God's grace in disguise.
Intense Awakening While Reading the Book "The Power of Now"
Coming back to August 2008 in Dubai, UAE, when I was 30 years old, I was feeling absolutely miserable and did not sleep well for three months or so. My real estate company was going down due to the financial recession after years of my efforts. My mind was creating horror stories about the destruction of my business, one after another, and I had no peace!
During that intense suffering, I encountered one moment that changed my life forever. I realized my first spiritual awakening shift while reading a sentence on page 53, in the book "The Power of Now" by Eckhart Tolle.
That statement was, “Focus your attention now and tell me what problem you have at this moment.”
Here is the page 53 of the book
To explain my awakening in short:
As I read that statement with intense attention in the book The Power of Now
My Mind Suddenly Stopped.
No Thoughts.
Just Still Silent, and all thoughts Disappeared.
After that awakening experience, the financial recession destroyed my business, and it was indeed a blessing in disguise.
The Dark Night of the Soul & How I Lost Interest in Everything
I don't exactly remember how many days, but a few weeks of that first awakening was so blissful that I completely lost the fear of death. I never had a fear of losing anything during that phase. I was filled with a divine peace. I didn't understand what happened to me, but I let go of my mind's desire for understanding.
After awakening, I encountered the Dark Night of the Soul. The Dark Night of the Soul is a long, depressing, and very dark experience that can continue for days, months or even years. After the initial phase of blissful awakening, the spiritual awakening process didn't always bring me joy.
Often I felt confused, frustrated, angry, sad, grieving, or "out of place". It felt like the end of my known World with my its old habits and conditioning. Whatever life I had built on a competing, achieving, and acquiring mentality no longer resonated with me. Life was making no sense to me.
My career, habits, relationships, and interests all fell apart.
For example, in the past, I immensely enjoyed reading books on success and business. I used to have hundreds of books on this subject. Suddenly, I was not interested in reading books on success and creating grand business. I started reading books on spirituality. I donated all business and success books to the library.
A significant reorientation had occurred in my life, and I find myself questioning: What should I do with my life?
What is my role?
What are my relationships with my family, friends, wife, and children?
Do You Want To Share Your Awakening Experience With Family and Friends?
You might struggle with this idea of how you can share your awakening with friends and family.
It is very important to realize that not everyone is ready to understand that you are going through a spiritual awakening. So the more important question to ask is, "Am I ready?"
Are you really ready to let go of your thinking mind?
Are you ready to be still and quiet?
Are you ready to do what is necessary to let go of form in order to experience the Source?
Are you ready to change deeply who you think you are? Are you ready to awaken?
Sometimes, you may feel a powerful sense of sharing your awakening experience with family or friends.
The excitement is natural and mostly helpful. It is a genuine response to the discovery of a truth that you know is setting you free now.
At the same time, this same excitement can get you into trouble. I have seen this happen with many of my 1-to-1 counseling session participants, who become so excited about the truth that they feel they must tell everyone. Well, not everyone wants to know this truth. Not everyone is ready. Your own family or your best friend may not be ready. Be prepared for this. If they are not ready, there is little you can do about it except work on yourself, change your own life and be a living example of the truth you are so excited about. Then, hopefully, your friend or family member will ask you about it one day.
If someone is not ready, it is important not to force your ideas on them. This will usually meet with great resistance, and they may take a close-minded position toward the very ideas you want to share with them so ardently.
So focus on yourself when it comes to awakening.
Focus on practicing presence as often as you can in your everyday life.
Focus on watching your thoughts and how you label everything.
Focus on practicing stillness and silence.
This is the best thing you can do for your friends and family, and really, for the whole World. The World needs your awakening. And as you awaken, those just about ready will recognize through you that they are ready.
Why Spend 40 Years Chasing Unnecessary Things?
In my case, All my mind's conditioning that the World has conditioned me slowly dissolved.
I have always contemplated that we are born without bringing anything into this World and leave without taking anything. So why do we spend forty years of our lives unconsciously working to acquire and accumulate things we don't really need, just to prove something to the World?
Why do we impose such a cut-throat education system on our children, forcing them to compete and compare with others?
Why are we never taught how to realize God within ourselves? Instead, we're brainwashed with an education focused on external achievements rather than understanding who we truly are.
Why do so many of us live as if we're compensating for sin? Why Do we have to pay the price just to be alive?
Why Achievements and Possessions Don't Bring Happiness?
I lost interest in everything because I realized that everything is impermanent. Achievements and possessions don't bring lasting fulfillment. External pleasures felt hollow as I connected more deeply with the present moment and my inner self.
I realized that I already have the whole Cake within me as my Inner Being, so why am I running after the cherries of the World?
As my Ego started dissolving, the once-powerful drive for material success and status symbols, such as grand business ventures, luxury cars, and branded clothes, began to lose its significance.
But why are we always running to achieve or accumulate this or that?
I realized it was because of Fear.
How Has the World Conditioned Us With the Fear of Being Not Enough?
All our fear arises from a sense of mind's cultivated lack. All fear stems from a sense of learned unworthiness that the outside World imposes on us from childhood. Our mind has cultivated a feeling that we are incomplete and that lack is to be filled with different forms of worldly objects.
You become ambitious and competitive when you have that feeling of lack or unworthiness. So you are compelled to achieve and acquire more and more, placing your self-worth on external things. Now, as you are always concerned about how others perceive you, your whole sense of self-esteem, self-worth, and self-concept depends on the World. All identities are derived from the outside World. Everything you value is now coming from outside yourself.
Your voice in your head tells you, "You are intrinsically unworthy and will only become worthy after acquiring such and such things for yourself to prove to the World! Remember, this is all conditioned. This is part of your childhood training that says you don't matter without achievement. So you grow up and go out and succeed. But now, your entire sense of self is based on outward successes. And you achieved all these things because you want to be loved by the World.
Remember that what the World gives you can be taken away by the World anytime. So you live in this desperate thought that the World will NOT recognize you if you don't achieve continuously. This thought is known as fear. Remember, this is an egoic illusion. Ego and the World have implanted this illusion in us.
The dysfunctional thought of inner lack lies at the root of fear
We are continuously told that something is wrong with us and that we must always act to prove our self-worth to the World.
The World Tells Us:
Don't you have a large house?
Then there is something wrong with you. Is your car small?
Then you are not worthy enough!
Buy our new product and it will enhance you.
Oh, you don't wear our clothing? Then you do not deserve to be called successful! You don't get paid this much?
Oh, then you are really mediocre!
What keeps you alive?
People don't accept you in their circle or invite you?
You are not deserving of life.
You're continually told that your whole self-worth is based on the World's perception of you.
Nobody comes to you and tells you that you are whole, beautiful, and wonderful exactly as you are. That you are enough as you are . That you may be weak in skills or knowledge. But you are whole as a being!. . All signals we receive from the media, educational society, or other people can be seen as attempts to make us feel inferior and/or diminish our soul.
You Are Enough. You Lack Nothing
Remember that you might have less worldly things, like knowledge, ability, money, status, etc. But it's all illusionary and transitory. These things of the World are simply the tip of the iceberg. Your being is always eternal, aware, and blissful. One who lives in this understanding is not fearful. Fear will appear, but it will have no impact on him.
As the Bible says, "Don't store up treasures on earth! Moths and rust can destroy them, and thieves can break in and steal them. Instead, store your treasures in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy them, and thieves cannot break in and steal them.
As per Jesus, heaven is your inner kingdom of heaven. Your Being. Your Atman. Your inner stillness.
How I Drifted Apart from All My Friends
I also lost friends. After my awakening, I couldn't continue on the path of materialism and achievement. I blessed my friends on their path, as everybody has their destiny. We separated like water and oil. After awakening, your friends either undergo this inner transformation with you or walk away from your life. It’s all good. On a deeper level, we all are ONE. There are no others.
Spiritual Awakening Destroyed My Mind
For me, the spiritual awakening was an intense experience of personal transformation. I transformed from mind consciousness to being consciousness. But despite how much suffering my dying mind's conditioning was causing me, deep in my being, I was aware that I was not going insane. I was evolving and the process of awakening was deepening.
How the Dark Night of the Soul Can Affect Your Life?
If you're experiencing the Dark Night of the Soul, you are feeling a sense of being lost. Your heart is in anxiety as if your World, with its known habits and conditioning, is coming to an End. This is because, after a spiritual awakening, your conditioned mind pattern is dying. While dying, your mind is making you feel miserable by re-identifying yourself with its old dysfunctional patterns.
After The Dark Night of the Soul, my inner being shined like a sun, and deep down, I started to feel its presence. A spiritual awakening is the process of rebirth of everything you are, while the dark night of the soul is the process of dying of everything you are not!
Sometimes, the Dark Night of the Soul is triggered by some external event. Death of Loved ones. Loss of business, possessions, relationships, or anything your ego has strongly identified with. So that results in a dark place.
New-Found Purpose After Awakening
There is the possibility that you emerge out of that into a transformed state of consciousness. Life has meaning again, but it's no longer a mind-made meaning that you can necessarily explain. Now your life is sustained by the being and not the ego. And while your ego is dying, it will make every last attempt to make you identified with itself. It will make you feel miserable by instilling fear in you—fear of no longer being run by the egoic mind.
After the Dark Night of the Soul, people awaken into something more profound, which is no longer based on concepts in their minds. A deeper sense of purpose or connectedness with a greater life is no longer dependent on explanations or anything conceptual. It's a kind of re-birth. The dark night of the soul is a kind of death that you die.
What dies is the egoic sense of self. Of course, death is always painful, but nothing real has died there – only an illusory egoic identity.
Why People Experience Misfortunes, Injuries, and Illnesses During Spiritual Awakening?
On my spiritual path, I succumb to many illnesses and injuries. This is what I call Fierce Grace. In this video, I explain why people experience misfortunes, injuries, and illnesses during spiritual awakening.
My biggest question then was why awakening isn't blissful and free from negative states.
Once you understand that spiritual awakening is a mind-destructive process, you will realize the peace of God within, as this understanding will give you the power to surrender your mind inward.
Which One of These Two Awakening Processes You Are Going Through?
There are two types of processes a person goes through during their mid-life. One is Spiritual Awakening and the other is Spiritual Enlightenment
Spiritual awakening is a process that you go through for a long time, and you slowly start operating from Being Instead of your mind. Your mind slowly dissolves, and you live from a surrendered state of Being that is one with God itself. This metamorphosis is like the transmutation of a butterfly from a caterpillar.
Spiritual enlightenment is when you get liberated in one instance, maybe in a few minutes, a few hours, or a day. This is a rare event when the person is fully realized, and the whole universe reveals itself to that person. Here, your center of Life changes from Mind to Being complete. Many enlightened sages go through this one-time event while on this earth. This depends upon your past birth Karma.
In a spiritual awakening, as the mind's conditioning is not completely dissolved, it pulls us in an unconscious state frequently, as if your mind is pulling you out. That's why you fluctuate between conscious and unconscious states.
Do This One Practice to Dissolve Your Anxieties and Transform Your Life
If you are going through the long spiritual awakening process, do this one thing and that will make all the difference. All the time, let your mind surrender to your inner Being. Always withdraw your attention from the outer World and rest it in your inner Being. Keep a minimum of 50% attention always inside you. Most mature spiritual aspirants keep 80% attention within and give 20% attention to the outside World.
Keeping attention inside means keeping your attention inside your inner body. The inner body can be your inner chest, abdomen, hands, or palms. Even you can keep your attention on your breath. Then, your outer tasks and worldly affairs are taken by God itself.
How to Let God Take Care of Your Day-to-day Affairs
Your mind will create noise that, without full attention to the outside world you will not be able to conduct your life and maintain your relations properly. But the opposite is true. By keeping your mind in God (in your Being), God will be the doer of all worldly activities, not your mind. Your mind and body will be taken over by divinity
You will then be free from overthinking, allowing Intuition to replace thought. Realizing your inner Being with this method will diminish your compulsive thinking, and you will need only a few conscious actions to flourish. You will radiate life energy that would otherwise be lost in overthinking and unconscious behavior.
What is God?
God is another name for awareness, your inner being, that inner stillness, and that is who you are.
God is the highest state of awareness. God is not a separate entity. You experience God once you turn inward and become conscious by surrendering your mind to Being.
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