Blossom Your Awesome - Episode #6 - Spiritual Master Acharya Shunya

In my latest episode of the Blossom Your Awesome Podcast Episode #6 I am in conversation with Enlightened Vedic Spiritual Teacher to thousands Acharya Shunya.

Of course we just scratched the surface. As a student of life and having had the good fortune of reading and taking in wisdom and connecting with masters like Guruji I feel I'm on a path to continued growth and wisdom. And I'm here in this space hoping to bring some of that light forward to you.  

She shares powerful insights from the vedas and tells me there were more than twenty female Rishis who contributed to the vedas. I never knew this. 

Guruji as I call her, this means teacher or master is elevating consciousness worldwide.  She is an award-winning and internationally renowned  author, speaker and scholar of nondual wisdom (Advaita) and a classically-trained master of Yoga and Ayurveda. 

The first female head of her 2,000-year-old Indian Vedic spiritual lineage.

For more inspiration or to work with me - check out Blossom Your Awesome. 

Or for some of my other work check out Sues Blues. 

Transcript

00:00:00
Hello there and welcome back to the blossom, your awesome podcast. I am your host Sue Dylan in today, episode number six, A very special show for you. We have got the world renowned spiritual teacher, a Chaerea Shania guruji as I like to call her. She is a scholar and teacher of vita which is non dual wisdom. She is a classically trained master of yoga and Ayurveda and she comes from a 2000 year old indian spiritual lineage. She is going to be sharing all of that with us today and I welcome her to the show, I'm so honored, I cannot thank you enough for um giving me this time, you have all my blessings and then um sometimes souls hear their inner calling, you know and they get attracted to my deeper teachings.

00:01:14
So I always welcome um you might be completing some journey from some other lifetime. Okay, um yeah, and I just, I I feel like I'm just blessed to have this time with you. So um I want to ask you first, you know, I just, I think it's so special that you come from this lineage And you're like you're the chosen one. So can you tell me for you what that's like? Yeah, for um for women to be leaders and lineages is not something brand new to the vedic tradition. In fact in the vedas, women were women spiritual teachers were known as brahma botany and we all know the term Rishi which means seer pages here but we are unaware that there is also a term called the chicha And 23 female Sears have contributed to the mantras of the vidas.

00:02:20
So that's not a small number. So in ancient India men and women were at a bar and in fact in the rig veda we find references to women going to war, leading um you know infantry and leading you know legislative assemblies and becoming advisers and ministers and also spiritual teachers. There are mantras where parents pray to be to give birth to a scholarly panda to a student, a daughter who knows God and can show the way to God. So I come from that tradition. But then India went through the dark ages when there were invasions and indians lost touch with their own heritage and especially when the elite um empire, the moguls was a more patriarchal system. So gradually the indian women to the vedic women to went not exactly under the radar, but they went into the background and the veda started being taught only to the males male candidates.

00:03:33
But my lineage was fortunately um popularly did not just by ordinary men, but by tremendously conscious and liberal and truly deeply vedic people. And so my grandfather had opened the doors to her school to the girl child long before I was born. So and so for some reason he chose me, he must have known that one day I would be doing what I do confidently happily and humbly and I had a lot of male cousins and I also had some of his male disciples, but he chose me. He continued to groom me And when I turned 24, he said now you shall lead the way. But in our tradition, just because we've been told by the guru doesn't mean we suddenly announce to the whole world and become a star guru.

00:04:37
I took my time. I continue to, you know, have fewer students in my life, but mostly continue to practice the spiritual wisdom in my own life to see if I could be peaceful, if I could truly live those teachings. And then at age 40 I announced that I'm available for more public teachings. And since then there's been no looking back for my lineages, international avatar right here in California, wow. And now can you tell me for like what advice you would have for, especially with the, you know, being indian I'm indian and the kind of having uh you know, men, women, the discrepancies even in India still for powerful women who want to do things like what advice you would have for women. Just, I think the only, I think there's a discrepancy is very obvious in the indian community and unfortunately I saw it worldwide too, just in subtle ways and the whole world still panders to the great spirit in a male body more than a female body.

00:05:54
I think the best advice I can give to any indian woman is to now no longer be in confrontation with the mail counterparts because that's just situational, that's circumstantial but go more within and connect with their soul power and instead of talking about their powers, start living with power. It's also important to find role models as in teachers, colleagues. Um there there are more female centric teachers because then that just shows us away, you know, we learn more by osmosis than just by memorizing something or you know, learning it. So when you see somebody empowered, you start behaving in that manner. And I have noticed this that whether you're indian or american or tribal, it doesn't matter when any human being beat whatever sex they are come into their power from a place of Peacefulness, not from a confrontational place because that still shows that we are, you know, unsure but really honing into who we are and we no longer attached to external approval or esteem and we are just totally coming from within, we know our wholeness, our fullness, our power lives within us.

00:07:17
The whole world starts bowing to you. That's all I have just seen that. So I am always ready to tell the indian women to stop, you know, living on scripts and just really quickly, there are four kinds of thoughts in the way the tradition. This is my original teaching from the vedas, that there is an instinctive teacher thoughts, you know, like I'm hungry, I'm lusty, I'm I'm mad, you know, just quick reflects thoughts. Then there are the scripted thoughts that come from being an indian or being from an Australian. So indian women have a lot of scripted thoughts and we need to see, wait, is this a script? You know? And then there is a third thought, got a deliberative thought and this is where we need to be all women need to be here or anybody even say off, you know, say of a different race or a different sexual gender, which you know, is being ostracized. We all need to come from a deliberative place and you know, say, you know, should I be pandering to this?

00:08:22
Am I really a victim? What are my real choices? Should I be behaving in a certain way? Should I be defending? Should I be offensive? So it's a really a deliberative place and when we are there more and more we are connected with our soul power which is equal for everyone. And then finally this turns into spontaneous thinking, which is when you become a teacher or you become a joyful leader because now you don't have to think it, you're flowing it, you know. So for me, growing up from India though, I came from ultra liberal family progressive thinking, Family, interestingly not modern, progressive, but ancient progressive, I am still a mother and a wife and you know, part of that indian culture and so what I've always done is like look at scripts and say, you know, this is a script, this may work for other people. It doesn't work for me and then I don't let anything come between me and my freedom do not walk a script, but then I don't go to war for it.

00:09:23
I'm very gentle. I'm a firm person. Most people don't dare contend with me, I will never raise my voice because I don't need to. My conviction is my guide and I have now found that my presence has empowered so many indian men and women along with my students worldwide. So I hope that helps. That does help a lot. So just a follow up question for somebody who doesn't know like what is just a little piece of advice you could give someone to kind of start tapping into that soul power. Yeah, so I this is a madre for wholeness and power. And um you know, I would like anyone who needs to get in touch with themselves to go into this mudra often and then you can't just touch it here. You actually have to think this thought, my wholeness, my power, my worth belongs to me.

00:10:28
I own my life, I own my quest, I own my dreams, I own my no, I own my yes, I own my own life journey and this this plus this the thought plus this gesture has been changing lives of my students. Okay, thank you so much for that. Um that was really powerful. I'm going to have to do that when I, when we finish here, but I can feel your energy is coming through my computer. Um so next question for you is um you know, for someone who's like a new student or somebody who doesn't know anything about your teachings um or just vedanta, like what is the kind of to help them understand very simply what that is. The term is vedic.

00:11:33
And there was a vedic era in ancient India long before India became hindu. So and the vida comes from the root with which means to know. So it was a knowledge based higher consciousness tradition and it was actually known as cena Tana dharma, the eternal tradition of what is beautiful and balanced and this veda tradition and the Sears known as Richie's and Jessica's and Yogis and yo Guineas, they gave birth to Ayurveda, the system of health and healing from India, which is very popular. They gave birth to yoga, which we all know. They give birth to meditation. They gave birth to tantra. They gave birth to judas, the vedic astrology. So all these gifts from India that we know about the chakras or the mantra or you know all that beauty um without the religious dogma is coming from this vedic tradition and what I especially liked.

00:12:35
So I teach all of that. Plus I especially my favorite or the deepest teaching that I offer is known as Advil eta or vedanta which is a non dual teaching which says that you know we are all sharing beyond this body and mind which is personal for each person. But each one of us is sharing, sharing a common essence or a common self with a capital S which is pure consciousness. So it's like say there is an ocean and we decided we were going to get the ocean and hundreds of buckets so we take billions and billions of buckets and we bring the water from there. But the water is the same in all the buckets. So our bodies and minds are like buckets but our true self is like the water and we are all really at an inherent level one. So when we help another, we're helping ourselves. When we abuse another were abusing ourselves. It's a very high invitation to live from, live in duality live where you see separate people and things even enemies and friends.

00:13:43
But you come from a place of non duality but this is really powerful because it's the truth and you connect with something deeper and bigger and beautiful. So that is vedanta. So what I really offer is vedic teachings and specifically this non dual teachings of vedanta Ayurveda which also comes from this place of your spirit and you can heal your body and mind through natural ways and the yoga philosophy. This is what I teach the world vedic is less known, The word hindu wisdom is more known and sometimes people call me as the teacher of hindu wisdom, which is totally fine because Hinduism is one of the religions the veda gave birth to. But I think the way the people and the vedic ethos is responsible for so many religions, Sikhism, buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism and they all share the common knowledge of dharma, karma. You know, transmigration after death that the body is, the soul is immortal, body is mortal.

00:14:49
So they all carry like these common themes which come from the ancient company Shuts Bhagwat geeta brahma sutras. These are the ancient scriptures which contained this universal knowledge because I have students all over the world from every religion and I tell them you don't need to change your religion when you study with me, you will just remember who you are spirit divine And you've just incarnated in a specific body, in a family, in a community, in a race, in a religion and you can just be a really conscious person. But really the call of the way that was you are spirit and you're just having an experience. So now today this has become common knowledge, but this is 10,000 year old knowledge and I share from that original teachings. So in a way I'm an ambassador of that science, there have been more ambassadors of the science. I'm not the only one, but perhaps because of being trained in the original teachings, but because my father, he was a diplomat for the country and he traveled all over the world and I briefly went to visit different countries.

00:16:02
Even when I was a younger person with him, I got to be exposed to both, you know, where I was and what was outside my community and my home and my lineage. And so I feel like I'm a very comfortable interface er between, you know, the modern and the ancient and um, and I don't and I want to keep the essence, whatever is the truth and the truth of the veda is that it was always universal and always meant for humanity to become trustees of this planet and become a voice for those animals, plants, trees, mountains, universe that don't have a voice, but they still represent the supreme power, you know that the great higher power is shining through them, wow. Um, okay. Yeah, so now, yeah, if I'm someone like, if I want to share with my people, if I'm someone who's struggling in life, like I just am stuck somewhere, I'm having emotional issues, whatever it is.

00:17:10
What is that? How can this, where, where do I start? What, what should be my mindset or what is the advice you would give somebody in that place? So when we have um, a math problem, a math puzzle and we try to solve it, then we can then we go find a professor for a tutor for math. Right? Um, so in different domains of hourly existence, we have had to go to a counselor, a therapist and our teacher, Earth magic teacher different ways. So the way that says that um, we are more important than our physical body is our intellectual and emotional body and you know, for us humans, you know, we're a special breed of animal and our mind is highly evolved and very complex and it's actually meant to give us happiness. Therefore it's the name the name of mind in Sanskrit, which literally means happiness.

00:18:15
It means purity, it means brilliance, it means abundance. You know, so our mind is actually a genie and it's meant to wish fulfill for us. It's meant to fulfill our wishes, but we don't know how to use it. It's like we have this amazing remote, we're pressing its random buttons and we're getting caught up in our own subjective creation of that mind known as Samsara. So if there are seven billion humans on earth, there are actually seven million worlds because each one of us is projecting fuming, creating a delusionary world of our own with our grievances, our anger, our projections, our imaginations. So the reader says that you go to a teacher of that tradition who can impart you that knowledge systematically and you settle down with them for a while and you just listen. So that stage is called shrub in um, like, you know, you're just listening and then you contemplate and then you try to practice that.

00:19:17
So for example, when I talked about, you know, wait, you can say wait, is this a scripted thought. This is coming from my indian script, this is not even me. What a relief, you know, suddenly which is you're not that hot. So it's like you listen and you contemplate and you try to practice and then this is the good news that the veda says, you don't have to learn to be happy. You don't have to learn to be advised. You don't have to learn to be abundant. That's your true nature. Your true nature is boundless lee, blissful, abundant and wise and you have you are, that's your birthright to be healthy and happy and wise and abundant and truly, truly blessed except that you've forgotten it. They call it Maya, it's like a spell that has been cost over all human minds and we're like just scratching ourselves to pain and discomfort. But when you hear this knowledge from the open issues in the Bhagwat geeta things that I teach, I don't have to do much. You know, I have students who have not even met and they're just listening and what's happening is they're remembering, this is what the veda says, you're already everything that you need, everything is inside you.

00:20:30
But as you re here, this knowledge from the issues who received it in meditation from the supreme, there's no author to the vedas by the way, so that knowledge doesn't belong to humans, it was received and it's transmitted by a teacher of the tradition to the suffering one. The suffering one recalls and remembers their own soul power. That my wholeness, my sovereignity, my abundance lives within me. And suddenly my students, I find them saying no and meaning they're no and saying yes, when they should be saying yes, they start writing their own scripts. Suddenly, people who are, you know, stuck in little passive places, become really big and bold and you know, and so what's the big deal? You are in finite, big and bold according to the veda. So the way that is a very empowering science and it doesn't say say that you have to be the guru or the teacher for the rest of your life worshiping them or you know, bowing to them because that's a very disempowered way of learning if you want to learn who you are, the ultimate reality.

00:21:34
But you can just like you go to an arithmetic tourer, you go to an art teacher, you go to a teacher of self knowledge known as a metronome and they shall when they speak, they are not going to talk about the world and how to be popular in it or how to be famous in it. They'll just tell you about you and as you remember who you are the world and it's problems will be over lower paradigm and your power and your potential will be much more. So it's not like, you know, my life doesn't have challenges, but I am bigger than all those challenges and that is why, you know, I can be in life in such tranquil and peaceful space, you know, because I have remembered who I am and that's, that's uh and so I know that even if I'm living in a bucket, I'm still the ocean and that's a very big difference. If you live in a bucket and you think that's it, I'm just these two leaders or you know, this one gallon or two gallons of water.

00:22:37
And so now I'm worried about every drop of water and I'm competitive and I'm jealous and I'm envious of somebody who has three gallons of water. But if I know I'm an ocean, it's a cognitive knowing then you know, I don't really care. And so I have just come from this in finite space and I've been teaching and teaching the scriptures and you know, students are joining me and it's not like I'm busy trying to trademark my knowledge and you know, selling it's super expensive. It's like, it's just all flowing, you know, because you know that you are an ocean. So it's not like you're just trying to capture on or something and package it and you know, and get the world to pay your bills and it's just, it's a whole different dimension. I can't tell you and it's so peaceful and anything I need, it's true, the universe just takes care of me because I am one with that higher energy of the universe. You know the peach Street, the Petri or the persimmon tree and the fig tree. I have them in my garden.

00:23:38
They are growing fruits for everyone, not for themselves. The river is flowing water for everyone, not for itself. It's a giver. And when it gives then the universe makes sure that clouds come and reign over it so that it's full. When you give the universe takes care of you. Well, when you were just busy snatching and holding the universities, will you take care of you then? So it's a very different dimension of generosity and reciprocity trust and and flow. So when you say, where do I begin? You begin with knowing discovering that I have a problem. I need a specialist. I could go to a therapist if it's a minor thing, you know something to adjust. Or I could go to a teacher who will help me get out of my own self created mental limitations. And that's when you go to a vedic teacher, not necessarily to a yoga teacher or an ire veda teacher. You know, I have those of darts too.

00:24:42
But then you go study with data and then they would remind you that, you know, you just believed you were limited, but you are an unlimited being. And when my students have been with me for a while. I say it and as if like invisible chains seem to break away from the inner mind and suddenly they are talking back to their parents in a respectful but such a powerful way that their parents are listening to them, You know, I had this, um I've had students from so many traditions, you know, where um I have found university that for example, if a woman hits 30 and she's not married, it's not just the indian tradition, you know, everywhere, you know, the world says, why aren't you marrying, why aren't you with her boyfriend? Why aren't you settle down? Or if a man you know, is is not earning a certain amount of money worldwide, people start poking at him, you know, So I found people so limited or defensive or sorrowful and then they come and listen to someone like me or they read my books on my, on my blogs and they start getting more and more empowered and suddenly they found out that the reason they were not married was because they had to do this whole different thing and marriage and Children will just come in the way because the higher power wanted to use them for something, a whole different thing, you know, and they blossom and do something else until now they were feeling like apologetic and then suddenly they realized that their whole life was a designer in the theater for them to blossom into being a gift for this whole universe.

00:26:18
Similarly, somebody who had probably left med school and was just, you know, hanging around, you know, being an artist, probably the divine, the divine honest wanted to express divine art through that person, but now they come from an empowered place rather than a, you know, I should have done an M. B. A place, you know, so it's so my teachings lead to greater self acceptance, but it doesn't happen in 30 minutes. You know, vedic teachings are not feel good teachings, I don't teach a package, I don't give one single mantra and I don't believe in that kind of, you know, reduce diluted watered down teachings from India as Yvonne Mantra. 1 20 minute meditation, you know, or something like that's gonna fix you. You know, so many people do the buddhist meditation, you know two times a day for example, or they go 10 days from camp, but they come back and within a few days there as gossipy, as irritated, as frustrated as ever. You know why? Because Lord buddha Gautama buddha, he didn't just meditate, he had a whole wisdom tradition around how not to be sorrowful and how to connect with something deeper, how many people say they are trying to live the knowledge in their relationships at their profession while commuting how many people are trying to be buddha, you know, while they're dealing with traffic, it's so easy to sign up for our camp or you know, just do the meditation.

00:27:45
So Lord and Lord buddha didn't get like oh yeah, here's my teaching twice a day meditate two times a day and you'll be happy. He didn't say that nor did the veda. It takes, it takes an inner desire to discover that you have a problem, go to the right person, get the right knowledge, not just a band aid knowledge and and then use it in your life and slowly, you know for my students within a day within one teaching because it's eternal wisdom. They say, whoa, oops! Whatever is believing was not true and this is why things started changing and then you know they come back and they stay and and they just, they're still the same moms and dads and parents and you know executive assistants or doctors and engineers but they are just empowered beings And this is how I would say problems get solved. Otherwise we just go round and round and we never really get off the train that's taking us in chase of ephemeral happiness, ephemeral pleasures in the world.

00:28:54
But unfortunately at the end of every pleasure, full encounter is a sad discharge waiting for us and that's why we need to go back and find a place inside us. And there is a proper method and it begins with the teacher and it begins with patients and trust that if I found my teacher and the great power and the great supreme being nameless and faceless wants me finally to find find the ultimate treasure inside me. So, I think I just found my teacher, I've had so many different teachers with that message. I feel like you were giving that message directly to me. I mean you were, but it's for everyone. But um You know, that is my life story. I'm 44, I'm single, I have no Children. I know I have a deeper uh calling and I've been looking for uh you know, I read a master or a guru and I've had ones that have misled me um or were not what they said, they were.

00:30:03
And so I'm just really, I cannot thank you enough. I'm feeling like I'm probably gonna cry after we get off this. And I just um I really would like you to be my teacher and I I look forward to meeting you when you come back. My teachings are for the whole world. So, and you know, every teacher who misled you was really doing their job, the whole world and every character in this universe, especially the ones who give us pain are our biggest teachers, because they are leading us ultimately to discern between truth and an appearance and that's why you get hold in knowing what you really want. And any teacher who wants to possess you or keep you is not worthy of making a teacher, because then the teacher is needy, but if the teacher is free and can set you free to be who you are, there is a hidden purpose for you.

00:31:06
You're almost there. But once you connect with it through self knowledge, everything will make sense. So I welcome you to the study of the way that when you say you find me as a teacher, what you're really taking refuge in is a great knowledge that had that made that has set so many people free. I'm an ambassador for that knowledge. So I welcome you and this um knowledge has set me three. You know, any teacher who does not share their vulnerability is not a vedic teacher in our vedic tradition. The way the teacher was once themselves under the bondage of the world and the senses and desires. And we thought that we get determined by our objects, the people in our life, whether I'm married or not, whether I have a child or not, whether have a dad or mom or not to have a broken family or a nice good regular family to have a family on the east side of the west side of the neighborhood, you know?

00:32:08
So we have we were aligned with our objects. And do I have a boat? Do I have a house with a car? That's how most of us are until the third relationship, which is with the self. And once we have that, then you can go back and have your relationships in your car. But you know, whether they come or go, as I say, you're cool, you're good. Your whole so yeah, it's it's a riot self discovery is falling in love with yourself. And so you come back so full and so flowing and that great, divine, supreme, divine all of us will then begin using you for its own purpose. Okay. Well, I just uh yeah, thank you guruji so much. Thank you so much. And I really, really you're going to still be in this area when you get back right. Because I would Love to but I'm not going anywhere. I'm just going for two months to travel across to be with my father and to travel across the river Ganga.

00:33:16
And you know, I'd like to do that, spend some solitary time. A few students will join me and maybe in the future you will travel with me to India and you know, we go to some very special places off the tourist grid so that it just rejuvenates me. And then when I come back I'll be teaching again and my classes online and available to people. But most welcome to join. Okay, well yeah, I will be joining. I would love to come do some classes in person and get you know, meet you and touch you and have a blessing from you. Absolutely. Absolutely My blessings to you soon. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you. Okay, bye. Mhm, mm hmm, mm hmm. Mhm. Mhm. Mm hmm