Month: June 2025

Inner peace lies within — it’s something I often speak about, something I’ve preached for a long time. I’ve been on this path for years, working to examine my thoughts and uncover the reasons why certain outcomes keep repeating.

My understanding of myself has deepened through experience and through the teachings of Neville Goddard — teachings that, in the end, are about ourselves and who we believe ourselves to be.

For many years, I lived in an institution that left me feeling helpless. I used to speak constantly about my past, repeating the same stories I had endured throughout my upbringing. I identified so strongly with them that I believed that was who I was.

In the beginning, after I stepped out of that reality — the one where I was a Hare Krishna girl married at a young age — I felt a lot of anger and frustration. I didn’t know which reality to belong to, or what to identify with.

I had entered society — the so-called “real world” — with an open, innocent spirit, hopeful for a better life. I was finally free. But was I truly free?

Yes, on the outside. But inside, I still carried my conditioned way of seeing things.

It didn’t take long before my old doubts and low self-worth returned to haunt me. I found myself in situations full of chaos and drama — situations I couldn’t break free from because of my deep fear of rejection or of not being good enough.

I lived in a constant state of adjustment — always making sure others were comfortable, tending to their needs, and never claiming space for my own.

Looking back, I can now see that growing up in the movement did have beautiful aspects. I was fulfilled in ways many people never get to experience.

But I had to step away for a long time, because I had also been hurt — not by spirituality itself, but by the dogma and fanaticism surrounding it.

Though the movement emphasized that children should never be forced into spiritual practice, in reality, it was rigid, joyless, and imposed upon us.

I still remember walking into the temple for the first time at the age of seven. The air was filled with sweetness — a mix of fruit, flowers, and thick incense smoke. My mother spoke of the sleeping deities resting behind the curtains. I had no idea what that meant.

She gave me japa beads to chant the Hare Krishna mantra. I felt an immediate attraction to Krishna and all the divine figures I was introduced to.

Then, one day, she took me to the temple room to finally see the deities. I remember the sound of the bell, the soft chime, and how the curtain slowly opened.

There stood Caitanya Mahaprabhu and his brother Nityananda in ecstatic dancing poses, adorned with flower garlands and radiant with joy. Their faces were filled with bliss, and even as a child, I turned to my mother and knew — this was something meaningful.

It was 4 a.m., the sacred hour for meditation, and though waking that early was hard, I was grateful for the spiritual experiences I had.

Still, I had to face the damage caused by the rigidity — the cold, rule-based system that neglected emotional needs.

Years later, after leaving the movement at age thirty, I was disgusted. I wanted nothing to do with it. I rejected everything I had once known. I desperately wanted to be “normal,” to fit in with the rest of society.

Until that point, I had only known the inside world of the movement. I had to step out.

Today, I can see both the beauty and the pain of what I experienced. I understand now that practicing spiritual life doesn’t mean you understand spiritual life.

Many people live by the rules, dependent on the rituals they follow, yet remain disconnected from joy and meaning. That’s not fulfillment — that’s spiritual dependency. That’s fear.

True spirituality means walking with your own legs — not clinging to the chain out of fear of falling.

I carried many spiritual tools with me from childhood, but for a long time, I didn’t know how to use them.

Then I discovered Neville Goddard. His words helped me connect the dots: that everything is consciousness, and reality is shaped by how we perceive it.

There is no fixed world. We are the dreamers.

What we experience — the people, the stories, the emotions — all arise from our awareness. Just like our dreams at night, all the characters and situations we encounter are reflections of us.

Neville says, “Things have no reality other than in consciousness. Therefore, get the consciousness first, and the thing is compelled to appear.”

We can only perceive that which we are aware of.

So, who are we, really?
What is the reality we’re perceiving — right now?
And can we say that it’s truth when ten people beside us may be seeing something entirely different?

I was heavily influenced by how I was raised and how I saw myself.

Sometimes, I still forget who I truly am. My habit-mind clings to the old narratives and labels.

For a long time, I lived as a victim of my past.

But today, more often than not, I feel gratitude. Gratitude for the journey that brought me back to myself.

We’ve all lived through experiences that left their mark. But perhaps we can start seeing those moments not as things that broke us, but as the very things that shaped us.

Because in the end — I decide what I do with my story.
And so do you.

After writing about money and security in my last blog, I found myself unexpectedly drawn to the story of the Titanic. I had never looked into it in detail before, but something called me to reflect on it.

So many wealthy people boarded that ship with confidence, perhaps even a sense of invincibility. They brought with them their treasures, their finest clothes, and their precious jewelry. Yet, when the ship sank, all of it went to the bottom of the ocean with them. Some passengers gave up their places on the lifeboats for others. They accepted their fate with calm. Others panicked. But regardless of their reactions, they shared the same ultimate reality: everything external can be taken from us in an instant.

What remains in moments like these? Inner peace. Self-connection. Faith. No amount of wealth or possessions can protect us from life’s unpredictability. True security doesn’t come from the outside — it’s rooted deep within.

And yet, how tightly we hold on to the illusion of outer security. We stay in jobs we don’t enjoy, in roles that limit us, just to feel safe. I hear people say, “I’m not happy here, but at least it’s secure.” But what is security, really, if it robs us of joy?

I’m not saying we should walk away from everything. Not at all. Security can be a beautiful thing. But we have to remember: we can only hold something new when our hands are empty. Clinging too tightly to what we have — out of fear — leaves no room for the life we could live.

A quote I heard recently from the Indian monk Keshava Swami stuck with me:

“We have taller buildings but shorter tempers. Wider highways but narrower minds. We’ve conquered outer space but are still struggling with inner space… We lose our health to gain wealth, then spend that wealth to regain our health. We have more degrees, but less sense.”

So true, isn’t it? We’ve gained so much — materially — but in many ways, we’ve lost ourselves. And that’s the greatest loss of all.

Don’t get me wrong. I love comfort. I love beauty. I love nice things. I’m not anti-pleasure or anti-material. I just know that without a strong relationship to ourselves, none of it satisfies. The outer can only enhance what is already alive inside us.

This comes back to one essential truth:

Everything begins with awareness.

How do we experience life? What lens are we looking through? If we’ve been raised to believe that life is a struggle, that joy is rare, that nothing comes easy — then that becomes our experience. Not because it’s true, but because we’ve accepted it as our truth.

We watch the news and consume the worst of the world — because we’ve lost touch with the news inside of us. Our own desires. Our joy. Our curiosity. And so we fill that empty space with fear.

But what if life is simply a reflection of what we’re aware of?

Dreams work like this. When we dream at night, we create everything — the people, the setting, the fear, the love. It’s all us. And waking life isn’t so different. We experience life not as it is, but as we are.

Even on the Titanic, everyone was living the same event, but not everyone experienced it the same way. Some resisted. Some surrendered. Some panicked. Others chose peace. The difference wasn’t the situation — it was their state of being.

I’ve realized something: only I can free or imprison myself.

It’s not money.
Not my job.
Not a relationship.
Not circumstances.
Only me.

The side of the coin I choose to look at becomes my reality. I used to see only one side — the side of fear, lack, self-doubt. But pain made me curious. Suffering made me ask: Is this really all there is? That question led me to spiritual truth. To teachers. To inner work. To stillness.

Truth has many faces, but it always leads to the same place: home. Peace. Awareness.

If you’re seeking peace, you have to go there — into yourself. That’s where the answers are.

And if I can help share what I’ve learned, or walk a few steps with you on your path, I would be deeply honored.

We all need money, so much so that many of us are willing to sacrifice our dreams for it. We push ourselves through jobs we don’t love, often complaining about how exhausting it is to show up day after day. And yet, we rarely question why we keep doing it.

When we love what we do, something shifts. We enter a state of flow. It’s no longer about the paycheck — it’s about fulfillment. But most of us don’t dare to believe such a life is possible. Instead, we cling to the idea of security, even when it costs us our joy.

How often have you heard people gather at work just to talk about how boring, unfair, or underpaid their job is? It becomes a kind of united suffering. A collective story of endurance. But why do we endure what we don’t want, what doesn’t make us happy?

The answer is simple: fear.

I know this well.

After leaving the Hare Krishna movement, I had to start life from scratch. I came to Switzerland at 15 to get married. I had just completed boarding school in France, where all classes were in English. Because the Swiss temple needed a cook, and I was the new young wife, I was sent to the kitchen.

Nobody asked me what I wanted to do. And honestly, back then, I didn’t even ask myself.

Later, I became a mother at 20 and stayed at home. My then-husband was a missionary who sold Vedic scriptures door-to-door. We lived with very little. When my son turned five, we moved away from the temple and enrolled him in a public kindergarten — a huge shift for us. I had never lived in society before, and suddenly, I found myself isolated in a small apartment, disconnected from the only world I had ever known.

That’s when I decided to get a job — to feel useful, to contribute, to belong.

My first job was delivering ads. It was tedious. Eventually, my ex-husband and I burned them all in a giant bonfire in the forest. That was the end of that. My second job was better. I finally earned real money, for the first time in my life. But I had no relationship to money. I had never handled it. And when I had it, I felt guilty and gave it away.

Money scared me.

I didn’t know how to keep it, how to use it wisely, or even how to enjoy it. I thought having it made me selfish. I often gave it to my husband, then panicked when I had none left. The fear of not having enough — and the shame of having anything at all — kept me trapped in a cycle of lack.

Looking back, I see how much of my money story was shaped by the environment I was born into. My mother was 15 when she had me. Our family was rich in love but poor in financial security. There was always an undercurrent of anxiety around money. I learned that money was stressful, elusive, and not something I could trust — or that would trust me.

Working at the temple for no pay felt easier than negotiating a salary. I was simply “given what I needed.” Later, in the outside world, I accepted being underpaid and overworked because I didn’t believe I deserved more. I thought I had to prove myself to belong.

But what I’ve realized is this: I’m not alone.

This is a collective story. So many of us carry inherited beliefs about money — from our parents, our culture, our traumas. Some believe they’ll never have enough. Others look down on the wealthy as if wealth is shameful. Like in Aesop’s fable of the fox who couldn’t reach the grapes and decided they were probably sour anyway, we protect ourselves from disappointment by pretending we never wanted more to begin with.

But here’s the truth: abundance begins with self-worth.

We can’t experience value in money if we don’t see the value in ourselves.

If I have a lump of clay in my hand, I can either shape it into something beautiful or I can toss it aside and say, “It was just clay.” The same goes for our lives. Will we shape something meaningful out of our circumstances, or will we stay stuck in fear, convinced there’s nothing more for us?

Money isn’t inherently good or bad. It simply reflects us — our beliefs, our energy, our self-regard.

And no, money is not the answer to a happy life. I’ve known wealthy people who are constantly afraid of losing what they have. And I’ve met people with almost nothing who radiate joy and gratitude. It really is a mental and emotional relationship.

So the question is: what do you believe about money?

Do you believe life is on your side? Are you provided for? Are you worthy of receiving more?

You don’t have to stay trapped in the story you inherited.

As one quote says, “Abundance is not the absence of scarcity. It is the presence of abundant mentality.”

Another says, “Abundance manifests not just as money and possessions, but as health, love, happiness, and peace of mind.”

You always have a choice: To sculpt something meaningful from your experiences or to let fear decide what you’re worth.

Abundance starts in your mind.

And you are the sculptor.