Breaking Free: A Journey of Self Discovery Read online

  The other thing that was adding to my doubt was whether it was the right time for me to be in a relationship. By now my spiritual life had become the most important thing in my life, and I couldn’t help but wonder whether having a girlfriend would be a distraction and slow down my spiritual growth, but I did love spending time with Kim. I felt torn. On the one hand I was getting such joy from my spiritual practices, but on the other hand I didn’t want to stop things with Kim either.

  ***

  After several weeks had passed without me being able to shake off the doubts that I was having, I finally decided that it would be best for Kim and I to break up before things became more serious. It would only be that much harder to do when I left in a year’s time, but Kim refused. She insisted that I was thinking too far ahead and that we should just enjoy the now. I gave in and said, “Okay,” however my internal struggle continued.

  Then one day not long after all of this was happening I had a realisation. For all the time that we’d been together I’d never really thought seriously of taking Kim with me to India. I’d always imagined that my spiritual journey, and my future trips to the ashram, which were sure to happen, would be something that I’d have to do alone, but maybe this wasn’t how it had to be. Perhaps I’d had it all wrong. Over the past few months, I’d spoken to Kim so much about spirituality and Amma that she had become very curious to see the little Indian woman who went around the world hugging people for herself. So that weekend when I saw Kim, I asked her just how serious she was about wanting to go to India. Having spent nearly all of her life in Korea, Kim’s biggest dream was to explore the world. Her answer was therefore a very definite yes. She was totally serious, and of all the places she wanted to go in the world, funny enough, India was now at the top of her list. This changed everything for me as it meant that we no longer had to have a fixed time on how long we could be together. If things fell apart between us before we the end of the year, then so be it, but if things continued to go well, then at least there was the option of us keeping things going.

  Man did it feel good to no longer have these doubts eating away at me. This peace, however, didn’t last long. If my mind couldn’t use doubt as its main weapon to make trouble for me, then it would have to find something else, and the weapon it now used was to put the spotlight on Kim and to find fault with her. A lady with a petite body would walk past and immediately I’d compare her to Kim. I’d see a woman running through the park in the evening, and the thought, why doesn’t Kim run in the evenings like this woman? would surface. These small thoughts, as much as I wished they didn’t, would very quickly gain momentum. What a slave I was to my mind and how truly amazing it was for me to see how much power these ridiculous thoughts had over me. In a matter of seconds I’d go from being in a great mood to being in a bad mood, just from listening to one silly thought that had popped into my mind. The irony of it all was that Kim was a good-looking girl, and I myself was the one who was far from perfect, but this was something my mind chose to ignore. It wanted the perfect partner in every possible way, regardless of my own shortcomings. I noticed that only at times when I was feeling insecure about my skin, or feeling insecure about something else about myself, would my mind stop trying to find fault with Kim. It would then swing around and think how lucky I was to have Kim in my life, but as soon as these moments of insecurity had passed by, my mind would automatically return to its old ways of putting the spotlight back on Kim. Of all the things I had observed about myself over the past few months, this was the most difficult for me to see. It made me sad to see just how much ugliness and selfishness there was within me. What made it that much worse was for me to see how utterly powerless I felt and how these negative patterns would completely control me. Without Kim even being aware of it, it was as if she was constantly holding up a mirror and showing me all these different aspects of my own personality, and to see all this ugliness was no easy pill to swallow.

  ***

  For the first few months that I had been living in Dongtan, I had always looked forward to my weekends with Kim, but I now found myself getting into bad moods very often whenever I saw her. I’d feel such peace during the week when I was doing my spiritual practices in my own company, but then our weekends together would be another story. Sometimes when the resistance in me was really strong, I’d walk through her front door and immediately my mind would look to find fault with her. It could be anything. What clothing she was wearing? Had she put on weight? Was she in a bad mood? It’s like my mind was trying to come up with any possible reason why I shouldn’t be with her and why I was wasting my time. However, through all my fickleness and constant mood swings, Kim hardly put a foot wrong. Perhaps this was what infuriated my mind even more, the fact that it couldn’t come up with any concrete reason to justify me breaking up with her.

  Although I’d been unaware of it up until now, this had been my pattern for all these years ever since I had started dating. I’d meet a girl, enjoy the chase, the initial excitement of being together, but then I’d feel trapped and want to be single again. What made things different now, however, was that I was trying my damn best not to give in to these negative habits of mine, and to do this was a constant battle. Some weekends it got so bad that it felt as if a Third World War was happening inside me. My mind would be saying things such as, What am I doing with Kim? I’m wasting my bloody time. I should just dump her and go and find someone else. However, I’d then feel my heart saying, Hold on a second there, Jed. You’re going to regret it if you break up with Kim. Look at all the things that you have in common with her. Trust me - there’s great potential between the two of you, if you can just hang in there and stop listening to everything your mind tells you. Don’t you see that your mind will never be satisfied. So you break up with Kim and find the most beautiful woman in the world. What then? I guarantee you that it won’t be long before you start to feel bored again. The problem is not Kim: The problem is within your own mind! I did hang in there. I did listen to my heart, but there were many times when I so badly wanted to give in and to get the hell out of the relationship. Thankfully it did slowly get easier over time.

  CHAPTER 28

  I was already half way through my teaching contract. For my summer break I decided to spend the two-week holiday with my family back home in South Africa. One of the first things I did when I got home was to go through my cupboard and see what else I could get rid of. Despite the fact that I had done a clean out a few times already, I was now even more determined to simplify my life as much as possible. I had recently heard that a great Indian saint had said that if you own things and don’t use them, it’s the same as stealing.

  “It is stealing,” he said, “because you are preventing someone else from enjoying the use of it.”

  This really got me thinking about what I used and did not use. Not only with my clothes, but photos, pictures, books, old sport’s equipment – if I wasn’t going to use it, then it got put on the pile of things to be given to the needy, which of course, there was no shortage of in South Africa. I even made a trip to my bank to see which accounts I no longer needed and how I could make things simpler. It had almost become a game for me. Simplify! Simplify! Simplify! This was my motto. The less I had, the less I had to look after and worry about holding on to. That meant more freedom to do the things that I really wanted to do.

  As nice as it was to see my family and to spend time with them again, after the first week I was already beginning to look forward to getting back to the simple and quiet lifestyle that I had made for myself in Korea. However, saying that, my trips back home always gave me a good indication of how I had changed since I had last seen them. For one thing, I realised during my short trip to South Africa that I no longer identified myself as being South African anymore. Of course I loved South Africa and felt perfectly at home whenever I was there, but I felt equally at home when I was in Korea and India. The label of me being South African therefore didn’t really mean much to me anymore.
Home was becoming more and more wherever I was at the time.

  Another thing I realised when I was back home, was how I was feeling less of a need to speak about Amma and spirituality to my friends and family. In the beginning stages it hadn’t been like this at all. I couldn’t stop speaking about it. I guess it’s because I felt so happy and wanted to share what I had discovered with the people around me, but now the desire to speak about it wasn’t nearly as strong as it was before. Don’t get me wrong though, if someone was interested in spirituality and wanted to hear about Amma, I was only too happy to sit and speak about it all night long, as it was a topic I loved. But to speak about it to people who weren’t interested at all was a waste of time.

  Something else that pleased me, was to see that I was becoming more confident within myself. For a long time it always used to leave me feeling unsettled when I went home and caught up with my friends. With their nice homes, expensive cars, and the big savings accounts that they all seemed to have, it always left me wondering whether I was making a huge mistake with the way that I was living my life. However, now I was more comfortable with the fact that I was just different, and that I wasn’t going to live the conventional life that most of the people around me were. Job security, status, material possessions, and a big home with a white picket fence – these things were not what drove me. Inner growth, being the best that I could be, helping others, learning to live more in the present moment and to enjoy life more – these were the things that moved me the most.

  CHAPTER 29

  When I was growing up, I had always been led to believe that God was a man in human form in some far-off place, separate from the world and separate from ourselves. Not only this, but whether or not I believed in this God would determine whether I went to heaven or hell. This had never felt right to me in the past and perhaps this was why God and religion had held absolutely no appeal to me when I was young. I was now absolutely convinced, however, that this image that had been painted of God was the furthest thing from the truth. From all the teachings I’d read from different enlightened spiritual masters, it seemed clear to me that they were all saying the same thing, and that is that there is consciousness, spirit, divinity, God - call it what you will - in everything, in all of creation. Everything, every blade of grass, every stone, every animal, and every person has this same consciousness, this same divinity, in it. This unseen and mysterious power that operates in one thing, for example one’s body, is the same unseen and mysterious power that operates in everything else in all of creation. This therefore implies that everything in creation is ultimately connected to the same power, the same energy, and if you’re able to see it this way, then you realise that God is not some person sitting on a throne high up in the clouds above, but rather is within you and within everything else. What a mind-blowing revelation this was.

  As this truth sank in that everything in creation is infused with divinity, the way I saw things around me went through yet another shift. For one thing, I began to look at the world, particularly nature, with so much more wonder and appreciation than ever before. If the same consciousness was in everything, then the environment was just as alive and just as much a part of divinity as I was. For this reason I made a big effort to treat Mother Earth with respect and to leave her alone as much as I could. I stopped picking flowers and did my best not to kill any creature, big or small. I even struggled to bring myself to kill a mosquito, no matter how irritating they can be at times. I’m sure that Kim must have thought that I was a little crazy whenever she saw me chasing around my apartment trying to catch a mosquito in a glass, and if this didn’t work, then out came the vacuum cleaner and I would catch them and set them free this way.

  Not harming nature was a start, but I also wanted to play my part in making things better as well. The first step for me was to become more aware of how much water I was using at home, whether or not I was turning off the lights whenever I left my apartment, and to not waste food. On top of this, I also got into the habit of picking up a few pieces of trash on the street during my walks in the evenings. This wasn’t anything that was going to win me the Nobel peace prize, but it did make me feel good to know that I was at least trying to do my small bit in making a difference.

  Seeing divinity in nature was one thing, but then to see this same divinity in people around you, especially those people who you couldn’t stand, this was not so easy, but still I had to try. So, not only did I want to become more aware of how I was treating the environment, but I also tried to become more aware of how I was treating other people around me. Were my actions positive and of some kind of benefit to other people, or was I doing things only for my own selfish reasons? Was I speaking kindly of others, or was I wasting my time in gossip? Even more important than my actions, and the words that were coming out of my mouth, I tried to become more aware of what I was thinking about other people. If my thoughts were positive, I knew then that my words would be positive, and if my words were positive, then my actions would naturally follow and be positive as well. So it all started with the thoughts that were passing through my mind.

  ***

  In one of Amma’s books I remember her saying that when you are under the guidance of a true spiritual master, it is like being on a concord as opposed to a shuttle bus. By this she means that your spiritual growth is that much faster than it would be otherwise. It had been only three years since I had first met Amma, yet in such a short space of time it felt as if my life had been turned completely upside down. What’s more, it didn’t look as if things would be slowing down anytime soon. Sometimes I just wanted to say, “Hold on a second. Let me at least have a few minutes to catch my breath.” However, in my heart of hearts, I had absolutely no intention of slowing things down as this transformation that I was going through was like a drug. The small taste that I had been given so far felt so damn good that I just wanted more and more.

  I had often wondered why this spiritual awakening was happening to me of all people. Why had I been so lucky to come into contact with a spiritual master like Amma? I hadn’t exactly lived the most moral life in my past, but I guess that this is one of the nice things about spirituality, that it is your own personal journey to awaken and better your life and therefore it is open to everyone. Nobody is excluded. If you’re willing to put in the effort to steady your mind and overcome your bad qualities, then the benefits are there for everybody, no matter how off the rails your past may have been.

  I now found myself thinking of the divine so much that even my dreams were changing. If I wasn’t dreaming of Amma or some other spiritual master, then my dreams would very often involve spirituality in one way or another. I remember one morning during my morning meditation, the words, Djokovic stuns Federer, shot into my mind. Later on in the day when I had a look at the sport news to see what had happened in the tennis, I was surprised to see that the exact headline was none other than, Djokovic stuns Federer. My own inner guidance had always been there, but it was only now that I was becoming more attuned and learning how to have the ears to listen, that I could hear what it was telling me. For me the secret lay in first being quiet, and then paying attention. The answer to my question could come in a number of different ways. It could be a thought that suddenly popped up, or a gut feeling. At other times I would ask a question and the answer would come to me in a passage of a book. Every now and then my inner guidance would communicate with me in the form of a dream.

  This wasn’t to say that I only got an answer when I asked a question. The more I was developing the ability to listen, the more I realised that my inner guidance was communicating with me all the time. Once again I felt this in a number of different ways. When I did something that was wrong, my conscience would immediately scream out at me to let me know that I shouldn’t be doing that. There were also times when I’d read an article of someone who was doing a lot of good in the world and I’d feel greatly inspired to get out there and do good myself, but then I’d be hit with a wave of ins
ecurities and understand, Oh yeah... it’s not my time yet. I first have to work through my own stuff before I can help others. There were even times when I felt my inner guidance, this mysterious power within me, to be a complete prankster. Some mornings when I was eating breakfast I’d tell myself, Okay, Jed. Now I’m going to eat my cereal with total awareness. However, no sooner had I finished my breakfast than I was putting the cereal box back in the fridge, and not in the grocery cupboard, which is where it should have gone. Whenever this happened I would immediately burst out laughing as I knew right away that my inner guidance, God, was playing a joke on me. It’s like God was saying, ‘Okay, so if you’re eating your breakfast with awareness, then please tell me why the hell you’re putting the cereal box in the fridge?’ It was so refreshing for me to realise that God, the power behind and inside everything, actually has a sense of humour and can be a real joker.

  ***

  Then something quite unexpected started to happen to me at school. As was my standard routine by now, I liked to spend my free lessons either reading from my spiritual books or watching YouTube links on spirituality, but whenever I did this, my eyes would immediately mist up with tears. It would have been one thing if this were happening to me when I was sitting in the office alone, but I was sharing an office with six other ladies after all. You can imagine how embarrassing this would be if the Korean ladies in my office saw me crying all the time, but the same thing kept happening to me. Whenever I saw a picture of Amma, or I thought intently about God, my eyes would immediately start to get misty. It started happening so often that it was almost funny. Whenever it happened I would immediately stop thinking about God and start thinking about something else, like sport, or what I was going to have for dinner that evening, or the good looking ladies at my school. This always did the trick and would quickly put a stop to the tears that were itching to come out, but the thing is that it felt so damn good, as I’d feel such love and joy within me. Sometimes I would chuckle to myself, and think, that’s it, God. I’m not thinking about you any more as every time I do my eyes start to water.