If you have fear, you have no faith

by Aditi Sahai, Scotland

“Every challenge in life is a message that a change is coming soon.”

Mohanji

I was 26 years old when I met Mohanji for the first time due to mild pressurisation from my mother. In my opinion, it was a meeting with no thought, no planning, and no genuine interest, but I did it to please my mother, who had stumbled upon a guru, a master with whom she instantly connected.

Having practiced the Buddhist philosophy for 25 years of my life, wherein I was taught to look within, find the answers from within, fight every hardship by giving it your best, and continue to do even if every cell in your body said otherwise, it was hard for me to relate to someone who was all about SURRENDERING.

Don’t get me wrong, the philosophy of what I practiced and what Mohanji said was the same thing; the application, however, was very different. And having mastered the art of controlling every minute aspect of my life, it was mind-altering to let go and just surrender.

I remember being fully prepared to meet someone clad in an orange outfit, with beads and malas all around, and being convinced that my mother had potentially lost her mind. But there he was, walking out of his room dressed like a tennis player in shorts and a t-shirt with the most heartwarming smile. He looked at me, and I couldn’t help but give him my biggest smile. What followed this was a casual satsang. This word had a VERY different meaning in my dictionary. I thought satsangs would include having a puja ritual and talking about all the various gods and acts of saints, but this was a conversation about abortion.

I was mildly shocked to see Mohanji discussing such a topic since it was outside the construct I had envisioned about a guru/master. I was prepared to hear him say something that would be a bit misogynistic, and the cynic in me would get the chance to pull my mother down for dragging me to something like this. Though I do not remember the exact words he said, I do remember Mohanji explaining it practically and correctly, yet it had a heart and the right touch of spirituality. And that was enough for me to give him a shot.

I didn’t have enough faith to trust him with my life, but I was told he loved animals. Since I had an ailing pet then, I thought, ‘If he loves animals, maybe he can do something for my dog’ since I had tried everything possible. This was the beginning of my journey with Mohanji. I knew nothing, wanted to know nothing, and honestly, if his love for animals was true, I couldn’t care less about the rest. All I did was connect to his photo, chant the Mohanji Gayatri three times, and just say, “Please look after my dog.”

My dog passed away a year after I first met Mohanji in the most peaceful way possible. I had always expected this, but until I met Mohanji, I couldn’t accept the reality of this situation ever taking place. Even though he lived a full, happy life, his loss hit me very hard. I went through a severe low in my life, and a small reminder from my mother led me to find Para Bramha on Facebook and pour my heart out.

When Mohanji meets anyone, he can see their past, present, and future through multiple lifetimes. However, this is common knowledge if you read about the various experiences shared, but since I had done no homework, I was like raw clay that looked at Mohanji for some serious molding.

I don’t know how I connected with Mohanji in my past lives, but I feel we have known each other for lifetimes. I didn’t need a major life transformation to feel my connection. It was as if it was time, and we picked up right where we had left off the minute we met.

Though after the initial Facebook interactions, I was fortunate to have direct access to Mohanji, I only ever bothered him for major life decisions- which, for me at the time, was my career. He was more my guidance counselor and less a guru. I connected to him as my mentor, someone who would be truthful but fair and guide me to decide for myself and not make them for me. He always gave me independence and freedom. No conversation ever ended with a decision, but it always ended with him empowering me to make the right call for myself, and I loved that.

As a younger child, I was mostly timid and never really had to make any decisions. Mohanji taught me to decide for myself and stick to it, whether right or wrong. After a lot of deliberation and confusion, I finally decided to drop everything I had originally planned and started working in the various branches of the Foundation full-time.

My next and probably life-transforming encounter with Mohanji happened a year later.

By now, I had fully been inducted into the various platforms of the Mohanji Foundation. I was part of the corporate wing, which was creating programs from Mohanji’s teachings fit for companies – to help people in their personal transformation so that they could bring about a transformation in the way they held their position at work and carried out their activities; I was helping in the editing and formatting of the Mohanji Foundation newsletter, I was assisting Ammucare by doing seva as and when possible, and was slowly getting involved with his personal office team.

Amidst it all, I was also in a six-year-long relationship, which was inching closer to the next big step. It had been a relatively happy relationship with its highs and lows from time to time. But as I got more and more involved in the Foundation and started to truly understand what Mohanji explained about the mind, intellect, ego, and personality, the more I understood myself, my weaknesses, my insecurities, how my mind worked, and others as well. As I kept getting more and more clarity, I suddenly witnessed a bigger and bigger distance between me and my boyfriend. Though we loved each other, for some reason, we couldn’t find any ground to connect on other than that.

We dragged this period for a year, hoping to find our connection, and eventually decided to get married (hoping that would help us).

It was in December 2021 when I went to Shirdi to meet Mohanji and tell him I would get married. In hindsight, I didn’t go to ‘tell’ Mohanji about my decision, but since I spoke to him before every big decision, I went to chat with him in the hope he would affirm that I was doing the right thing. But like always, he saw right through my bullshit and said something no one had – “Great, but why does it look like you are second guessing this?”

 I instantly uttered, “I’m scared.” I didn’t know what else to say since I felt this big pit in my stomach since I had made this decision. I needed someone to say no, and I didn’t want to be that person. Mohanji understood how I felt and instead spoke to me about my work and stability – things that had no relevance to my problem at the time, and I wondered if he could even see me or how I was feeling. I just needed him to give me a sign, “Yes, go ahead.” I left his room completely confused. What did stability or my work have anything to do with me getting married?

A month later, my boyfriend and I got our families to meet each other. I thought it was a great first meeting. But for some odd reason, I could not utter a single word that night. I blamed it for feeling shy and apprehensive about how things would go, but I truly felt as if something had stopped me from speaking. And that was the beginning of the worst three months of my life.

This meeting was supposed to be the beginning of the next chapter of my relationship, but it opened a new dimension. My entire family was ecstatic about the meeting and planning things forward while my boyfriend’s parents were preparing to cut all ties.

After a few exchanges in the following days, I discovered that his parents had taken immense disrespect to me for not talking. They loved to meet my family, but my behavior that night was unacceptable. It was nothing I said, but it was that I didn’t talk at all. Though my boyfriend was mature enough to know that I would never do a thing to disrespect his parents, he unfortunately could not see beyond what his parents said.

This led to us fighting about everything under the sun, things that happened that night, years ago, my parents, his parents, his attitude, my behaviour, the basis of our relationship, and everything boiled down to me having ruined something special. The only way out was to apologise to his parents for nothing.

I was confused, hurt, angry, frustrated, and in pain. My boyfriend’s parents had always known about me; we had had meals together; we spent days together; they knew me! I couldn’t wrap my head around what was going on. Every member of my family had a different solution. Some said I should let it go, some said to apologize, and some said I should speak to my boyfriend and sort it out. I needed unbiased advice, so I looked to a close friend at the Foundation.

Having worked in the corporate leadership wing under the Mohanji Foundation for a year, I have built a great friendship with a profound practitioner and a co-worker. Besides our age gap, everything about us was the same. She was my friend, confidante, colleague, and, on some occasions, pseudo-mother.

I rushed to her place immediately. I sat down to explain everything that transpired, and as I continued, I could see the change in her facial expression, and the words came out, “This won’t work.” I stopped her before she could complete it and broke down. Afraid of my reaction, she kept silent and called her husband, who, oddly, was the most stable person I could have spoken to that day. The three of us discussed the situation and came up with a clear idea of what had to be done since the bottom line was – I wanted this to work.

I left their place feeling very confident to speak to my boyfriend’s parents to explain myself and apologise for any misunderstanding. I came home, prepared with my thoughts, only to find my father putting his foot down. In this mess, I didn’t have a single person say I didn’t do anything wrong and had nothing to apologise for until then.

I’m someone who has little faith in what I do, what I say, or what I might be capable of. I always second-guess myself and need a hell of a lot of reassurance to say – I’m right. Even though I knew I didn’t do anything wrong, I needed to hear that from someone.

After a conversation with my parents, I spoke to my boyfriend, who, instead of wanting to sort things, wanted a break – on the advice of his parents. Up until this point, I thought I had dealt with the worst. I remember being out on a walk, reading this message, and instantly having a panic attack. I rushed home, unable to speak, unable to breathe. I just sat in front of my mother and cried, wondering what I did that was so wrong. I cried myself to sleep that day. 

Seeing my state, Mohanji asked me to get a Mai-Tri done by a practitioner living in LA. I had never heard of her before, but I was told she was no-nonsense, to the point, and strict. Not knowing what that meant, we began my sessions. From the first session, she returned and told me hard truths about my relationship, the people involved, and how this would not be good for me in the future. But I refused to accept it. I refused to accept that this situation could not be resolved. I refused to accept that this was not good for me. I refused to accept that there could be a potential for me without my boyfriend in the future. For a week, I argued, saying this had to work out, this would change, people would change, and I wouldn’t have it any other way, while my practitioner patiently listened. Her only response, every time, was to focus on my own healing and look at becoming stable. My situation with my boyfriend was not getting any better. I couldn’t help the relationship or myself at that time, so I decided to listen to her and just do as she said.

I had gotten several Mai-Tris done in the past, but this was something else; it was very intense. The practitioner told me the details that Mohanji showed her about (i) my past – that I had no idea could come back and play out this way in my life, (ii) my present – that I had never shared with her or Mohanji and there was no way for anyone to know and (iii) my future – which was even more grim than my current state if I continued on the path. My healing showed that I was completely chained through all my chakras due to some heavy dark energy that blocked me from having to think clearly, blocked my life from progressing, and had me holding very strongly. She worked with me like a warrior for a month, doing multiple daily sessions. I diligently listened to her and did everything I was asked until she scolded me. But we worked together like a team, and finally, after some time, I could feel the difference in me. 

I went from crying while listening to her notes about my session to just being able to listen with awareness. I went from fighting and arguing with her to understanding with silence why some things happen the way they do. I started focusing less on saving my relationship and more on saving myself. 

But deep down, the question remained: Mohanji always helped me; he always cared for me. If he could heal me from this and make me more stable, he could turn around the entire situation. He is Mohanji; he can do anything, right?! So, I contacted Mohanji. I told him about the incident, my sessions, what was revealed to me in all of them, and how personally things had progressed with me, but I knew that some things were beyond me and only he could help. He heard me out completely and agreed. He said he could help remove all the obstacles affecting my relationship, but his only question was if, even after all of that, I could confidently say my boyfriend would take a stand for me now or in the future. I was dumbstruck. 

From the very beginning, what attracted me to Mohanji was his practicality in every situation. Be it finances, family, relationships, career, health, he is always practical. Because what is spirituality in this day and age if it can’t be applied in your daily life? 

Mohanji asked me to speak to the practitioner, convey our conversation, and continue the healing. As each day passed, I would get more and more clarity about the person I was looking to settle with, the family I would be a part of, and the kind of life I would be forced to live in. It became clear to me that the first thing she said right after our very first session was absolutely correct – this will not work out. This made me sad, but by now, I had grown stronger and more stable mentally and emotionally to deal with it. I remember the run-up to the last few days of my healing. I was fortunate enough to be able to speak to Mohanji every day, even for a few minutes. He spoke to me as a friend, listening to me crying, explaining the situation, and on a parting note, said one thing to me, “No matter what happens, no one, and I mean no one, should ever be able to walk all over you. You deserve to be respected.”

He empowered me to think clearly and make my own decisions by keeping all the cards in front of me. It finally became abundantly clear to me that this had nothing to do with feelings, love, relationships, families, or even dark energies. Mohanji could and did save me from it all. This was more about me, my self-esteem, and my self-respect – something I had completely sidelined. There was no knowing if I would find myself in a similar situation in the future, but could I risk it after everything Mohanji had done for me? Would I be okay if this new family disapproved of my involvement with the Foundation and stopped me from doing work that finally gave me joy? Would I be open to living a dead life for the sake of not stepping away from a relationship because I spent so much time, energy, and effort on it?

I knew what had to be done. I needed to speak up, end this, and for once respect myself enough to take a stand – something I had never been able to do in the past. After three months, I finally met my boyfriend, and in the most respectful, dignified way, emulating Mohanji all the way through, I ended it. 

I recall crying that day, not because I was upset about my decision or the relationship ending, but because it relieved me. I finally felt free after six years!

Had I not known Mohanji, had I not trusted in him completely, had I not been able to fully surrender to my healing, I would not have had the courage to walk out of this relationship standing tall. If it were not for a guru, a teacher, a guide, and a friend like Mohanji, I would have continued to think that someday my boyfriend would understand, someday he would change, someday they would respect me, and someday he would take a stand for me.

Though those three months were extremely tough, I also know that Mohanji encapsulated and dispelled a lifetime’s worth of unhappiness within that short time frame. It was all grace, grace, and grace that I had never experienced before.

I now see what Mohanji meant when he initially spoke about stability. Stability is key in a life filled with unexplored emotions and unfathomable uncertainties. It’s easy to understand, difficult to cultivate, and even more difficult to maintain. Some days, we might feel steady and strong, like we’re on solid ground. And on other days, we might feel like we’re stumbling more than ever. But that’s okay. Like all good things, stability takes time. But stability is everything. Once we gain it, there is nothing that comes to par. 

I have nothing but love, respect, and immense gratitude for Mohanji for saving me from myself, giving me the strength to learn to accept AWARENESS, for making me learn the art of SURRENDERING, and, most importantly, teaching me about the importance of STABILITY in my life. 

|| JAI BRAHMARISHI MOHANJI ||

Edited & Published by – Testimonials Team, 1^st February 2024

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