The Heallist Podcast
Heallist is on a mission to empower holistic healers, one story at a time. Join founder and serial entrepreneur Yuli Ziv as she connects with inspiring voices in alternative healing who’ve achieved true abundance, while also providing practical insights into building a conscious business. Whether you're deep into business expansion or looking to take your healing practice online, tune in every other week for new episodes and insights and visit Heallist.com to explore our tools.
The Heallist Podcast
Mastering business longevity with Rajesh Ananda
Discover the secrets to business longevity and spiritual fulfillment with our esteemed guest, Rajesh Ananda, a celebrated spiritual meditation teacher and leader of the Foundation for International Spiritual Unfoldment (FISU). Rajesh shares his remarkable journey from a troubled youth to a passionate meditation teacher, revealing the core principles that have guided FISU's impressive global presence. His personal stories shed light on the transformative power of meditation in maintaining focus and resilience, offering invaluable insights for anyone aiming to create a lasting legacy in their own endeavors.
Unlock strategies that blend spirituality with practical business acumen. We delve into the world of lead generation where CRM tools play a crucial role in brand expansion and customer engagement. By tailoring personalized messaging and maintaining a consistent brand identity, Rajesh highlights how creative outlets—like podcasts—can serve as powerful lead magnets. This episode is packed with tactics for reaching new audiences and fulfilling a mission of serving humanity, emphasizing the importance of diversified lead channels to ensure a robust and impactful reach.
Exploring the delicate balance between spirituality and materialism, our conversation navigates the evolution of mindfulness and meditation in modern times. Rajesh discusses the challenges traditional meditation faces amidst trendy mindfulness practices and the need for adaptation to maintain authority in a crowded field. By integrating spiritual teachings with the practicalities of running a spiritual business, we explore the path from individuality to universality through personalized mantras. Rajesh provides a transparent discussion on pursuing personal and spiritual growth while maintaining the resilience needed to succeed both spiritually and materially. Tune in for a transformative conversation that promises to enrich your spiritual journey and business endeavors alike.
Check out Heallist.com for digital tools created just for holistic healers.
Welcome to the Healist Podcast, where we inspire and guide healers through business expansion. We give voice to incredibly abundant healers to share their stories. We dive into the quantum field to unlock the energies of conscious creation. We also develop digital tools to help you grow, which you can find on HealLesscom. I'm your host, Yuli, and I'm grateful you chose to join this space. Now let's go deep.
Yuli:Hello, my dear friends, another super insightful episode of the HealLess Podcast. We're so excited to be back this year talking more about the business of holistic healing, and today we have an incredible guest joining us for an enlightening conversation. It is Rajesh Ananda. He is a renowned spiritual meditation teacher and the leader of the Foundation for International Spiritual Unfoldment. As we dive into the secrets behind the remarkable 50-year longevity of Faisu, rajesh shares insights into building a lasting legacy of this incredible organization that has 50 teaching centers around the globe. Rajesh, welcome to the podcast. I'm so blessed to have you here and share your wisdom and I love this topic of business longevity.
Yuli:So, as we set intention for this episode as I like to do always is, I would love to give our listeners a little bit of motivational boost, whatever you want to call it, as we're still early in this 2025, this incredible year to make change and impact. I would love to inspire them to just keep going. I think it gets hard sometimes in this business and there's so many blocks and challenges, and it's definitely not an easy path for teachers, healers. So anything we can do today to inspire them to keep going, I think is going to be really impactful. So thank you again and welcome to the podcast.
Rajesh:Thank you very much. Yes, longevity is an incredible word. I think behind that there always has to be a deeply profound effort on our part to keep things going, because we are going to have the challenges, we are going to have market changes, personal changes, everything going on in our lives, because our lives are moving forward, generally at a, you know, a quite fast pace. So when we have our organizational business you know, I like to call it an organization because we're a non-profit and all the countries where we exist Keeping going yes, is a huge, huge challenge. My sort of story of success being able to maintain the organization over this long period of time. I've been involved for about 45 years.
Rajesh:The organization has been going for just over 50 years, and so I've been involved since I was in my late teens, when actually I was a bit of a troubled teenager, going through those difficult teenage years and I sought advice, and generally the advice was learn to relax, you're too tense, you're worried about things. And I discovered meditation and in three months it completely changed my life, so much so that I basically said I cannot go through my life without being able to pass this on to other people, and that's how my focus started and I have never strayed from that focus. In those days I was the youngest new teacher in the organization. My guru, guru Rajnanda Yogi, basically invested time in me, and my wife the lady that became my wife at that stage was slightly more mature than me, so, as a new teacher in the organization, they allowed me to teach, even though I was just 20 at that stage. I wanted to, I was passionate, I kept that focus.
Rajesh:And, yes, the challenge of life is how do you keep that focus over such a long period of time? I think it becomes natural, to be honest, after you get into the motion. The focus is always there, sort of at the back of your mind. You don't have to live it every moment of the day, because I think that's sort of a mistake. You know, when we make plans, the good thing is to make your plans and, as such, forget them. Just get down to the nitty gritty. Stop looking at the goal, look at the path ahead. How are you going to walk to that goal? You know what does that path require for you to move forward Personal stability. You know life can be very unstable around us. There can be many family changes, many work changes, etc. We have to navigate them, but obviously I found through meditation, great inner strength that has given me that resolve to go on. So as we get to this sort of you know, end of the first month of the year, I really want to encourage people.
Rajesh:We may have had a really tough January because in some businesses January is fantastic. In others it's a real challenge. You know, if you're a hairdresser or those type of people, you know those type of businesses. We know that they suffer really badly, as an example, and people don't obviously have money. So January can be a really, really challenging month. Either you're really busy or you're really quiet. Don't lose your resolve, you know. Go back to why you're doing this, what's motivating you, what changed your life that you can pass on to other people. So that's what essentially kept me focused those personal changes and obviously, as I grow into greater adulthood, through those years took on more responsibility. That brought other challenges, but I kept my focus and, as I said, the most important thing is doing that from a stable base.
Yuli:Thank you for sharing your incredible story. Really, I think I haven't heard that one before Somebody who's trying to teach or getting on this path at such an early age and keep going for so many years. It's somebody who's trying to teach or getting on this path at such an early age and keep going for so many years. It's truly inspiring. And as we talk also about your incredible organization, I want to shift that a little bit to that. So, as a leader of organization, how do you then project that stability and how do you plan strategically the year for your organization that is so vast and so global and has so many different pieces?
Rajesh:You make for yourself. We're really not that enormous. We're quite a small organization really. In the sense of global presence we do. I think organizational method is very important and thankfully I've always and just meaning my wife. My wife passed away unfortunately two years ago, so I continue our legacy with the same amount of focus. That time investment is basically again very important.
Rajesh:The challenge of running a large organization, I think it's organization and method, as I said. So normally at the beginning of the year we decide what we're going to do, what courses are going to run. Now, normally the courses that we run the residential deepening courses for the people that have learned with us have to be booked a year in advance anyway to get the venues. We don't own those venues, we go in and rent them etc. So as such, we're moving one or two years ahead in the principal basis of those courses that we're booking, the venues booked etc. Then we release the details to people to say it's safe to go and book your flights because we get a lot of interchange through Europe etc. So I just looked.
Rajesh:If you go onto my website, there's an article actually about we manage the business through an app called Asana, but there are many to sort of to do in business apps. This is my personal favorite. I've used many of them through my career and through running this organization and I commit everything into this. I have my weekly planner and I plan out exactly every day. I put all my appointments in there. It links with other things as well, so I've normally got four or five weeks ahead and I'm sort of filling that. And obviously we have the planned promotions, the advertising when I do a public talk, if I need time to put aside for making podcasts, for making videos, all those types of things. So having a base or somewhere where you commit that to paper just really, really helps me keep super organized and I've really done that most of my life. It's a very important part.
Rajesh:I'm a bit of a tech boy actually. I mean Vice, who runs completely our organization on the salesforceorg platform. So we're a nonprofit. Salesforcecom is the financial. You know the sales side. Financial dot org supports non-profits and so for the last 20 years we've run all our courses. Everything goes back into org where we manage the progression of all the students, their sessions, what they've learned, they can create a support case, etc, etc. All our plans go there and again, it just requires focus.
Rajesh:But what I love is just, you know, making a plan, so getting it. Don't think of every single plan every moment of the day, because that's torture. But then, as you work through your diary and you see what's coming up, you commit time to that. Time is such an important investment and, you know, one of the biggest challenges we have is that life can pull us in so many different directions and often because of that we don't become as efficient. So one thing I've really learned to do is to like well, I'm going to allocate this amount of time today, and sometimes that can flow. Sometimes I don't even plan that. I'm like, oh, I've got a couple of hours free, right, I'm going to look at my list. I'm like, oh, I've got a couple of hours free, right, I'm going to look at my list, I'm going to bite off some of this, because if you bite off little bits, it's a lot easier than trying to chew the whole thing. So time investment is so, so important. Being organized is super important to, I think, being successful.
Yuli:That's an incredible lesson and I couldn't agree more. And since you mentioned all those amazing tools, one I wanted to summarize a little bit for our listeners who might be not as tech-savvy or familiar. So Asana is an amazing platform for project management and you know we at Healist we use ClickUp as our main tool, which is kind of similar. There's many, many incredible tools that are out there. Some of them are more sophisticated, some of them built for teams, some of them more appropriate for individual users.
Yuli:So it's really worth spending actually this early time of the year, especially in January easier, slow months and getting your systems in order. I think it just sets you up for great success and creates some great habits throughout the year. So I highly recommend CheckIt's on its platforms and if you don't have a team of people that you're working with, you're just looking for your own individual. You know slightly more organized task list and you know calendars are great, but they're not always put things in right priorities right. So I personally also use Trello. It's just my daily quick tool that I can use, perfect tool, yes, and it's just so easy.
Yuli:Yeah, and it has a mobile app. So if I'm on the go and I want to update something, I do through the app, but really what I do with my Trello, actually, I have a couple of boards and some of them like more like long term goals and focuses, maybe for this quarter, right and then I have a separate board for this week only and I literally I train myself not to even look at the long term stuff unless it's my planning day or I'm like really deep into some works. I only focus on what's this week, because that's how I personally avoid the overwhelm of being a startup founder.
Yuli:Because, if you think, about everything all the time.
Rajesh:You're just overwhelmed.
Yuli:Right right.
Rajesh:And that often creates fear, and then you just sort of get stuck, you know exactly.
Rajesh:What I love about you know, discovering your organization is that you have an amazing back-office system. So people and that's one of my big recommendations have your plans that you need to have systems. You cannot do this on the back of a cigarette packet, as the old saying goes. It's a good place to start, but in our modern day world where everything is so interconnected emails, social appointments having a back office system that you invest time to keep up to date, to love and to look after because you do need to love it. When you love it, it loves you back.
Yuli:Well, thank you for this great compliment and, honestly, that's how we build Healist. We build it with lots of love and lots of good energy and high vibrations to infuse into this healing space. Because I know that tools and admin and back office is not the favorite places where healers like to be right, yeah, so when we build those tools, we keep that in mind, that it has to be super easy, super user friendly, speaking in their language and this is my pleasure of building the software is how I found, you know, this perfect combination of being the geek that I am, just like you, and being also this productivity perfectionist a little bit right. I like to be efficient. I like things to flow.
Yuli:I don't like to do dumb tasks that technology can do. I wouldn't utilize my highest potential as a human, so as much as I can outsource to technology, I love doing that. So I try to bring all of that into the holistic healing world that you know and bridge that gap and show people that you can actually really improve your life Right. It's not just something tools that you can intimidate by or be overwhelmed by every day and just dread about doing.
Rajesh:You know how I look at these tools, you know, because I'm a bit of a tech boy and I do use, apart from Asana and Salesforce, some other tools. I look at those as an extension of my creativity completely. I'm a creative person but I've got to funnel that somewhere, I've got to commit that to digital paper or whatever. So these, these apps and different things I use are and it's such a wonderful extension of my creativity and they embrace my creativity and they allow me to express it in another way that's amazing.
Yuli:Yes, I love to. I love this analogy and you know it. Definitely, those are tools of expression, like you said and you know. Since you mentioned also some of the CRM tools and again for our listeners who may be not familiar, salesforce is a great example of a CRM tool that is, a client relationship management platform. There's again many others and they range from something that is similar to like pen and paper and Excel spreadsheet or the Google Sheets, for example, to more sophisticated tools like Salesforce, who also integrate with other systems like email, like if you're using MailChimp or one of the email sender providers, they might integrate with that. And the beauty of those tools really that they connect all the customer data from different places and allow you to not just organize it and manage it, but then also work with it proactively in a more creative ways and really tailor messaging and personalize it. So can you talk a little bit about how your organization is working with some of those tools?
Rajesh:Yeah, I suppose one of the focus beyond the creativity is we're lead generating, aren't we? We want new customers, not always from a commercial sense. We want to spread our message that we want to help people. You know, I see, our organization is basically founded in serving humanity. That is, that is our core mission. So everything else you know, the, the social posts and everything you know, we do want to generate leads, but the purpose of that is to have more people that we can educate into our system. We can teach them to meditate in our unique system, and we know their lives are going to be much better because of that.
Rajesh:So obviously, we have bills, like everyone else. So there has to be some commercial year, and I'm never embarrassed about that because everyone has bills. You know it still costs you to send one email, regardless of you know we see that as being free. So we need to generate income. Obviously, our purpose is, you know, to connect with those people, to help them, to serve them, etc. But that's all under the umbrella of what I call lead generation.
Rajesh:So for any business, you cannot neglect this. You've got to be on it almost every day if you can. Or, again, you will portion certain times where you're going to look at your posts. You know what do I say here. How can I attract new customers? Do I need to pay for advertising? Is it appropriate to pay for advertising now? Is this the right time? So we all go through those continual questions about how do we put ourselves in a good way in front of other people.
Rajesh:I'm very, you know, protective of my brand. Everything that I produce socially or on our website is very brand focused, and I think that's very important. You are unique. Whether you're a healer, whether you're. You have a unique skill. Therefore, you are your own brand and it's very good that you continue to preserve that brand. Think about that brand. Don't keep changing it, because it really confuses people who you are. Get really solid about your brand and then bring it forward. Bring it forward more and more. So, you know, in our longevity, we've only really had one logo change in that sort of 50 years, so to speak, and our brand is consistent. Everything we do, even if we post a picture, it will have a little logo somewhere on it, etc. So that people can identify that eventually with us.
Rajesh:But any business we've just got to commit and it can be really, this is probably the most challenging part of any business, whether you're a commercial business or you're a non-profit how do I get new customers? So we've got to allocate, we've got to read, we've got to learn, we've got to learn what's going to fit well in our arena. How often should we post, etc. Just to maintain it? Our arena, how often should we post, etc. Just to maintain it?
Rajesh:But I think again, do not get obsessive about this, but be active. You can't just go for three months and not say anything or post anything or do an advert and then accept customers. It ain't going to happen. You've got to raise your presence, you've got to raise your profile and you've got to spend, I would say, an hour and a day thinking about that. Seriously, it doesn't have to be every day, but maybe like three days a week.
Rajesh:You're thinking right, what do I do? How do I get new customers? Where do my customers live? How do I find them? What's their demographia? Are they mainly female? Are they between these certain ages? Does my messaging embrace them? Does it attract them? I think, lead generation. I've had my good times and I've had my really bad times when I just thought, oh God, nothing is working, you know, and sometimes that's just a lesson on refocusing, relooking at it or just keeping on because you're not in control of all so many other elements, you know. So it really, again, it's that time commitment, it's that focus that we need to just carry on amazing well.
Yuli:Thank you for sharing all those insights and just to add from my end a little bit as we're, we're all in the same boat, no matter what business you are we're also working on. You know. This podcast actually is a lead generation strategy for us.
Yuli:It is a creative outlet for me. Don't get me wrong, it's one of my really favorite things to do in this business and I so much look forward to that. But it's been also an incredible lead magnet, right? Because the people that find this podcast they most likely are our audience and at some point they want to check out Healist and what we do and they might then take maybe some of our workshops. They sign up for a platform, they become part of our network and eventually they upgrade to our paid subscription.
Yuli:This is the funnel and we all get creative. And another important point is you have to All get creative. And another important point is you have to diversify your lead channels so we can't put all of our eggs in this podcast bucket because as much as it's great, it's only limited to a certain audience. So you kind of have to test your audience in different channels and fine tune but at the same time kind of stay alive on many of them. That's what I find important, because the different people that are going to come through podcasts tune but at the same time kind of stay alive on many of them.
Yuli:That's what I find important, because the different people that are going to come through podcasts is not going to be the same people are going to come through email marketing or social media and you kind of want to reach them all.
Rajesh:Yeah, it's like every avenue is almost like a unique channel and you have to serve that unique channel.
Yuli:Right, but some of them are also great and just kind of what we call nurturing leads if we're getting further into marketing terminology, right, which I embrace, I love having, by the way I love having a conversation with someone like yourself who is deeply spiritual and has a great mission to impact the world. But we can also get into conversations about leads in a different sense. Yes, definitely, definitely, absolutely. Mission to impact the world, but we can also get into conversations about the business.
Rajesh:Yeah, yes, definitely definitely, absolutely, you know. That's why we we go back about systems to help you do that. You know putting. I think one of the most important things is when someone is engaged with you. That's not the only engagement. If you can put them on some sort of marketing drip and programs like MailChimp are cheap, they're included Spend a couple of hours looking at those videos and then, when you've interacted with someone, they'll go on a journey for six or seven weeks where you tell them good stuff about you. Obviously, they can unsubscribe if they want to, providing that you've subscribed through a conversation or through email, and then you just keep drip, feeding that information. It's so, so important.
Rajesh:In our system. All our leads come into Salesforce and then they get updated and that automatically talks to MailChimp and we'll put them on a journey, depending on where they are, etc. So we've got that all automated, so I don't have to worry about that. I think well, okay, this person attended an intro talk. They didn't take any action. Are they going to learn with us? We put them on a different type of drip to basically say well, you attended, you know something about this. So here's some more information that's complementary to what you've already heard, or we got this sort of cold. You know that they may have filled out a form just asking for more information and then we put them on, you know, a colder drip which talks more about their pain and how we can help them with that, etc.
Yuli:That's a great, great point. And, again, thanks for sharing those strategies, because I think it's really important as we think about our audience and our clients. And when I say clients or customers, it's anyone who has ever been exposed to work, basically, For practitioners. It's someone who, yes, may have been your client for many years, but there's all those other people that are potential clients, right, that could turn into a client, and this is a very important group to work with.
Yuli:And within this group, you can have different layers, right. You can have people that you had a very brief conversation with. Or you can have people that you know maybe attended like different workshops or classes that you had a very brief conversation with. Or you can have people that you know maybe attended like different workshops or classes that you taught, but now you want to try to interest them in your one-on-one services. So, all those different groups, it's so important to have a system to identify and tag properly. Because once you've done that, and even if you're working with just Excel spreadsheet, just have different columns, come up with different names for them but put them in different buckets, because if you can personalize their journeys, this is gold. This is where you win. This is when people stop unsubscribing. They're actually opening your emails, they're actually reading them, they're actually taking action.
Rajesh:I think it can be simple as hot, warm and cold. But you know they've been in touch with you a few times. It looks like you know they want your services. You know in that moment they're very interested. So they're hot. Warm is like they might be slightly indifferent, they haven't had too much engagement, and then put them then on a warm list and then obviously a cold list means they've had very usual engagement with you and you need to warm them up. You make them warmer and get them hot. Very simple and works.
Rajesh:It's very simple. Honestly, you know people complicate marketing. It's really simple. At the end of the day, keep it simple, because if you don't keep it simple, you just won't. You won't manage it. It'll just become so overbearing that you'll just give up, and that that's often why people just give up. Sometimes, import is the best you know as far as marketing. Keep it really simple. As you evolve, you can make it more sophisticated, you can increase it, you can get people to help you, but obviously today we have the wonders of ai. So I I'm keen, I do use ai. I'm, I'm. I think it's an amazing tool. I will normally write most of my stuff, but I might pass it through ai to say what do you think this is this? You know this is the audience. You know these people are hot audience. You know these people are hot. You know, is this a good message for hot people? So use the tools that are there, that are free, to continue your journey, to keep your focus there.
Yuli:Absolutely, and I could agree more about AI in terms of improving and optimizing your messaging. It often has suggestions that I would never think about. I know it's so clever.
Rajesh:Especially, like not all of us. You know I'm used to writing and I love writing and I think I do it reasonably well. But you know, some people say to me I could never write because my grammar isn't good. And I said, no, don't worry, just write it right into GBT or Gemini and just ask them to correct the grammar. You're done in one second. You don't have to struggle with that. You know, keep it simple.
Yuli:Absolutely. As someone who is, you know, english is my third language. I can attest that I've been writing way more since I have had GBT, because I was just very self-conscious about my grammar. It would take so much time, with different tools, to try to correct it that I eventually would give up. And now suddenly I can produce content that I'm not ashamed of because I don't want to have.
Rajesh:I must interject a bit of a funny story here, because when I was young I mean, as you can tell, I'm from the UK, I grew up in London Educational standards through the time that I was at high school weren't great and really weird. We're the base of the English language and we weren't taught proper grammar. So when I got together with my wife my wife was a foreigner. My wife was from Trinidad in the Caribbean we came to London. My wife was from Trinidad in the Caribbean. We came to London.
Rajesh:She came to London and I met her there and she had the most perfect grammar because she'd been learned abroad and grammar had been taught to them perfectly Well. I can honestly tell you that I was trying to write all this stuff you know, newsletters and things and we nearly had divorces about where commerce went. She was like I can't speak your English and you don't know where it's for the commerce. You know I had to learn that. Now I write really well, but I struggle with that so much, so much so you can improve in whatever you're doing.
Yuli:You know you can improve from what you're doing Absolutely Well. I love those stories. Where, where do we go from here? I feel like we know we're on such a path of really uh, diving deep into a lot of the marketing and systems and business strategies and it's just so insightful and hopefully inspires many of our listeners to take action. You know I want to talk a little bit about the subject of business, competition and the holistic business and you know this whole idea because I think when also things get slow or maybe tough or, you know, start maybe questioning our path, there's the inevitable comparison that comes in right. It's part of that cloud.
Rajesh:Yes, yes, definitely.
Yuli:So how do you, especially for organization? It's been so many years and you've seen this space evolving so much just in the last few years, all of a sudden, you know, going from just a few meditation schools out there, just a couple of meditation techniques, now there's hundreds, right, yeah, how?
Rajesh:do you?
Yuli:thrive in this environment.
Rajesh:Yeah, what was the big I can honestly say upset for us is when mindfulness came in full blast, because there is a big difference between mindfulness and meditation. Full blast, because there is a big difference between mindfulness and meditation and this, you know, it was more about mental health and mindfulness and using meditation as a tool. So there was a lot of mixed messaging at this time. But it took off and, to be honest, we were almost left behind because it took off and we weren't teaching mindfulness, we were teaching meditation, though they are closely related. So we had to look again at sublings all these people teaching mindfulness. Where do we sit in all of this now? It was a very difficult time.
Rajesh:I'm going back about ten years when all this sort of you know started here in the US with you know, with different mindfulness teachers, and it sort of spread around the world. It's changed now. Meditation has a much higher profile than mindfulness, you know. So it's reverted back and I'm really happy about that because you know who is observing who. In mindfulness, you know you're meant to think about day, but who is the observer at the end of the day? It's still you. The meditation endears you with that knowingness of yourself in such a deep way that you are the observer. Okay, it's not your mind, it's a deeper aspect of you that's observing.
Rajesh:Sorry, I digress no, don't be sorry this is all part of the yeah so when this, when this took off, it was like why do we sit? You know, we seem to have. You know, no one seems to want us anymore, and they were. They were really difficult years, but we held fast because, at the end of the day, what we do is quite unique, and that's what I want to get across to your listeners. There's only one you. It sounds a bit of a cliche Now. We hear this all the time. There's only one, you. There's only someone who has your experience, but we have to celebrate that.
Rajesh:If we've done all that we spoke about before, if we have the passion to help others, we want to make a change in the world. Yes, of course we want to earn a living and support ourselves and our family. Nothing wrong with that. That's part of it and I'm sure we'll talk about that. That's the big point. You know the balance between the material and the spiritual which confuses so, so many people. The important thing is stick to your guns. If you know, this is correct. Yes, look at what everyone else is doing, learn from what they're doing, because there might be some gems in there that you haven't thought about, or things have evolved and you've stood still a bit. So you need to move forward.
Rajesh:But essentially go back to I am unique, my offering is unique. Yes, there is a tribe for me out there. I just now have to be a bit more clever in how I connect with that tribe. How do I put my head above the ball pit, so to speak? How do I show my uniqueness? And all that is completely possible with your messaging.
Rajesh:So, like we have a new website that I rewrote completely to bring it sort of up to date, and I'm thinking, well, I've come to New York, oh, my God, there's so many people doing meditation. How do I raise my head about that? How do I show my authority? But I think I've managed that because when I read back sort of trying to be as objective as I can, even though I'm the author, I bring it back and go trying to be as objective as I can, even though I'm the author, I bring it back to that. How will people think about this? You know, am I showing my authority here? And that's what we need to do. If you're good at something, if you're good enough to say I'm a healer, I've got something. I can help people. You have to focus on that. You have to show your authority, that this, whatever you do, lies especially with you and you can help others because of it.
Yuli:It's beautifully said.
Rajesh:Thank you.
Yuli:Yes, I had a moment to digest that and integrate, but no, and you mentioned also a very important topic of balancing spiritual and material, which I would love to get your message across, because you strike me as somebody who is very well balanced in the area and I love meeting, like I said before, people in the space that are deeply grounded and figured out all the conflicts and blocks around this issue, that we can talk a lot about the history, where it's coming from and how long it's been around, and each of us also have unique backgrounds that add to that. But it's something that I really see as one of the mission for my company, even though, if you look at it as a platform and technology platform and systems and practice management tools, but I really see one of our deepest missions is to help healers balance this spiritual versus material area and I would love to have your take on that okay.
Rajesh:Well, normally when I, when I talk publicly about the situation, because it get us often, like you know, I'm working and I have money, but I want to live a spiritual life and for me the spiritual, material worlds are the same, are the same, I think you know we have the material world to help us have greater tangibility with the more abstract spiritual divine. So we need to go. So the material side of life is more concrete, so we go through the concrete to reach the abstract. I'm going to talk about love here because that's very, you know, essential. Part of what I teach is, for instance, like you know, why, why do we love someone else? You know, why do we, why do we need to be loved, why do we crave that love? To love someone else and be loved? It's simply because that divine force is so abstract to many people. Those that are more unfolded get more in tune with it and we understand it better, we live it eventually. So, through the love that you have for someone else, it's like that is the object of your love and that lifts you from the material or from the lower levels into something far more abstract and through that we get to know those divine forces the universe, god, far more effectively. So so I always say through the concrete we reach the abstract, and that concrete is materialism. Now, when we look in our world, the person who's totally materially focused is a such, because they cannot understand that abstract. So therefore they're focusing on the material. But hopefully, as they go through that material materialism will lift them into the higher echelons and they will, you know, experience divinity, god, whatever we want to call it. So in business we have that same thing the material has to exist, but it is a vehicle through which we can raise our services, we can raise our mission, etc. So people do get this very like. They'll come to us and say okay, you're a non-profit, so why are you charging for your courses? Why are they not free? Um, I think we have learned and I'm really pleased to share this is those that don't pay never stay. And that is one adage we have in FISU, because one year on our 25th anniversary, we taught for free for a year and in one central lane we taught 600 people. Only 10 of those ever remained.
Rajesh:And I think again, it's like if you put your hand in your pocket, you're slightly more committed. You know, even if it's small amounts. It doesn't have to be large amounts, etc. So we learned this Don't be embarrassed, make sure your charges are affordable to the audience that you're targeting, etc. And there's no problem in the sense that you need to earn a living from this, but you have to be, as such, focused on that.
Rajesh:But for me, to do my work, it's like my organization. I can't do my work, I can't pay for advertising, I can't pay for the rent of this place unless I have income. So that is completely fundamental to my mission and therefore it must all remain in balance. I think the danger is okay, you could be earning a lot of money. What do you do with that money?
Rajesh:Again, these are all human, personal judgments we make on ourselves, aren't we? How material am I? Do I need to buy that, etc. You know, I always love my girls. Use the analogy like if you can have a rolls royce, have it, but do not be attached to it. So if it went to more own, you couldn't pay the installments or the tax or whatever and you had to go back. You wouldn't be devastated, etc.
Rajesh:And I think, if we have that same attitude in life, that everything around us is really a gift, even the material things. I have a home, a car and those things. I feel so blessed to have them and I look at them. Sometimes when I go from the station and see my little car park there, I think, god, it's so good to me, I've got this wonderful little car. So many in the world don't have those sort of luxuries. So it's really appreciating what you have, not necessarily craving for more. I mean, yes, if you have a family, your kids need shoes and you know you've got to have money to do that and nothing wrong in that at all. But what is your motivation? That's the question. What motivates you? What is the end goal?
Rajesh:One thing I love about America that is not so prominent in Europe is there's a lot more giving here. They encourage you to give, to be more open with charities, with non-profits, etc. I really love that in the US culture that's not so prominent in Europe. My English people are very generous, but it's not. It's something that isn't said as much, something that's not as public.
Rajesh:So again, have what you want. If you are working to buy a new house, what's wrong with that, you know? I would see that as a spiritual venture because you have to have somewhere to live in this world that we live in. That's so, so necessary, but do not be attached to it. You know, if you've got a Rolls Royce and you're driving down the street and you're thinking all swanky, everyone's looking at me because I've got this wonderful car You're attached to it. You have created attachments. So if someone scratches your car in the car park, you're going to be. You have created attachments. So if someone scratches your car in the car park, you're going to be super upset because you have those attachments. So if we can live more like I need to provide the certain things I need to do to exist, to fulfill my mission. But that's not going to be the end. I'm'm not just there to you know, fill my pocket.
Yuli:Amazing, amazing message and resonates so much. I can't believe we're running out of time almost and I wanted to give you an opportunity. I mean, it was a really wonderful conversation. I feel like we could talk for another hour, but I really wanted to give you an opportunity to share more about your mission and what you do and anything else you want to share with our incredible audience of holistic healers yeah, well, I think you know.
Rajesh:Again, one important message is you need time to rest, you need time to center within yourself. Meditation is a perfect tool for doing that. Remember, meditation takes you from the surface levels into that deep peace within, and relaxation is the door to our higher self. So when we learn to relax, also in the deeper areas of ourself, is strength, and when we go through meditation within ourselves, we feel stronger, we increase our self-esteem. That helps our confidence.
Rajesh:So in business, running an organization dealing with people, we're much on it. It's so much easier for us we stop worrying. Yes, there's a difference between concern and worry. We have difficulties in life we should be concerned with, but we need to stop worrying because that goes nowhere. So many people are totally stressed and anxious and their minds are whirling the whole day, and that's creating so much energy that depletes their physical energy, leads to disease.
Rajesh:The meditation is just an incredible tool. In my system, every person that comes to learn receives their own individual mantra, which is based on their vibration. So if we were to condense you mentally, physically, mentally, back into sound value, because we're basically atoms that are vibrating and we vibrate at a certain frequency and that frequency for each of us is unique, which is confirmed by the iris in our eye, our DNA and our fingerprints. So, even though we're related as the brotherhood of man, we found our own individuality of man. We found our own individuality. So my organization's mission is to take you from individuality to universality and give you all the benefits that outfall meditation gives you when you practice regularly.
Yuli:Amazing. Well, thank you for being there and really dedicating your life to this incredible mission. I'm very privileged and grateful to have you on this podcast and not just sharing your beautiful spiritual teachings, but also diving deep into some of those behind the scenes aspects of those spiritual businesses but not many people talk about or even open to talking about. So I'm really, really excited about this conversation and I think sharing some of this data and talking about topics like the material and spiritual and sharing some of your learnings is going to be really beneficial for a lot of our listeners.
Rajesh:I really hope so. We're all going to. As I said at the beginning, we're all going to have challenges and difficult times. Soldier through, have your focus, remember your mission, rest, have time to be objective, to rest and just do a great job, be successful.
Yuli:Amazing. Thank you again and see you soon.
Rajesh:Thank you for having me.
