The Calling: Follow your spirit- all the way in

039 Exploring the Paradox Between Life and Death: A Deep Dive featuring Unmani

• Homaya / Unmani • Season 1 • Episode 39

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Hello, lovely listeners! It's a pleasure to have you join me for this episode of "The Calling." Today, we dive deep into a heartfelt and profound conversation with the remarkable Unmani, a spiritual teacher whose wisdom and insights have touched many. We explore themes of life, death, and the profound journey of self-discovery.

Episode Summary

In this episode, Unmani shares her journey through life and spirituality, touching on the essence of being and the powerful realisation of "I Am Life Itself." She reflects on her personal experiences, including the heart-wrenching loss of her husband, and how these events shaped her understanding of love and existence. We also discuss the concept of dying to the ego and the spiritual awakening that comes from facing one's deepest fears and truths.

Key Takeaways

  • Embracing Life and Death: Unmani discusses her books, highlighting the balance between life and death and how they encapsulate the human experience.
  • The Journey of Self-Discovery: She shares her personal narrative of spiritual awakening, beginning from childhood realisations to profound insights gained through loss.
  • Living Beyond the Ego: We explore the idea of letting go of the ego and how this surrender brings true freedom and a deeper connection to life.
  • Navigating Grief and Presence: Unmani eloquently describes her journey through grief and the continuous presence of her late husband in her life, offering a raw and authentic look at coping with loss.

This conversation is a beautiful reminder of the depth and breadth of human experience. Grab your favourite beverage, find a quiet spot, and let yourself be immersed in this rich dialogue. As always, thank you for being part of this journey. Until next time, stay curious and open-hearted.

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The Calling EP39

[00:00:00] Unmani: Hello, my beautiful people. This session, this episode today, we're going to take a deep, beautiful breath because we have a bath of love and truth waiting for us with Unmani, she's a beautiful spiritual teacher

[00:00:26] Unmani: that I have the honor to know and to exchange throughout the years. And we just had a very short conversation before we started recording, and I felt like that episode should be a solo episode.

[00:00:44] Unmani: Mani, welcome. Thank you. It's lovely to be here. Thank you so much. I'm happy that we get you here as a guest, and it's already from the moment I introducing you through recording here the episode. I keep on having chills all over my body, and I feel that those chills as an extension, we can say, when you mention the names of the books that you wrote.

[00:01:19] Unmani: And I would love you to give us the download again so the audience, although I have the names, I feel that there is something when you are speaking those names, that they are such a, the encapsulation of the truth and the wisdom that is captured there is being transmitted. Yeah, sure. So the first 

[00:01:43] Unmani: book is I Am Life Itself, which I wrote about 20 years ago or more, maybe.

[00:01:52] Unmani: And then the second one is Die to Love, And then the most recent one, which I wrote maybe six years ago or five years ago is the courage 

[00:02:04] Homaya: to come alive. It is so powerful. I feel that one of the, a very interesting thing that I experience with people who dive very deep into spirituality and to non duality, which is, we can say in some way, can we say that this is?

[00:02:23] Homaya: Yeah, sure. Yeah, the perspective, we can say. of you experiencing life. Many times the dialogue with life itself is through a very deep pronunciation and rejection. And when I hear those titles with the word life and alive and die. It's like those are, it's like summarizing the experience of humanity.

[00:02:56] Unmani: Yeah. Yeah. I feel that each book really came 

[00:03:02] Unmani: from the depths of myself and I've always loved writing for myself. And I've used writing as a way of exploring and expressing myself.

[00:03:14] Homaya: Yeah. And it really essentially is. about the paradox of life and death, of who we are, actually. What was the inclination, the motive, what moved you to write I Am Life Itself? 

[00:03:34] Unmani: I wrote that before I started 

[00:03:36] Unmani: teaching. I actually started to just write my story like a brief version of my story.

[00:03:44] Unmani: And I felt Like it was important for me to write it for myself. And then it extended a little bit further than that. And I didn't expect it to even get published. But somewhere along the lines it did. And then one step led to the other, but it was, it really felt like some kind of like declaration to life 

[00:04:08] Unmani: in some way I am life.

[00:04:11] Homaya: So powerful. It's so simple. And it's so powerful. And I truly want to put a little star on this conversation for the listeners, that there's so many things that are running so much beyond the words in your presence, that is so notable. But I know that many people who are listening to the podcast many times are listening while they are traveling and while they are taking their kids somewhere or walking on the treadmill or something like that.

[00:04:43] Homaya: And I feel that this conversation is something to take with a beautiful landscape and your preferred beverage and sink deeper into it. So when you're saying that you wrote about your life and the declaration that I am life, which is the truth,

[00:05:05] Homaya: can you share what brought you to your own realization of that? 

[00:05:10] Unmani: Yeah, first of all I feel as a child, 

[00:05:15] Unmani: I always knew this. I feel like most children, or we could say all children, are this, know this, but usually it's forgotten or overlooked as we become adults. And for me, 

[00:05:34] Unmani: there was no forgetting.

[00:05:36] Unmani: It was a continuous knowing. 

[00:05:40] Unmani: But, because as a child and as a teenager I didn't have anyone around me to reflect back to me that what I knew was the truth, I assumed that there was something wrong with me. 

[00:05:57] Unmani: And 

[00:05:57] Unmani: I thought I'm not like everybody else. I don't know who I'm supposed to be in the world.

[00:06:04] Unmani: So obviously there's something wrong. I need to try to become someone. Actually I knew that there was no one in here, actually. It was simply life living itself. And I didn't understand, actually, how And why people took themselves so seriously and essentially took their thoughts their mind so seriously, as if it was really telling the truth.

[00:06:29] Unmani: Because it was obvious to me that it was just a tool or a joke even. So my journey at first for many years was about trying to find who, who am I supposed to be in this world? And I tried on different hats, tried to be a different kinds of people. And none of them really fit because I could see immediately that it's not real.

[00:06:56] Unmani: So it was a continuous seeing that it's not that it's not that I'm not that I'm not that I'm not that in whatever area. 

[00:07:05] Unmani: of life. And then I went to India, 

[00:07:11] Unmani: In search of ultimate answers, but I, because I was still believing that there was something wrong with me, and I came to Pune in India, to the Osho commune there.

[00:07:29] Unmani: And Osho was no longer alive, but just being there was very heart opening and, yeah, just an incredible experience. Also to listen to Osho's words was very confirming, but I still felt that there was something missing that I just somehow still didn't find myself, until I came across a woman spiritual teacher who was teaching in Pune, but outside of the Osho commune.

[00:08:07] Unmani: Her name's Dolana, and she was, Holding satsang. And I sat with her. I wanted to sit with her, but she asked people to only come if you're willing to die, if you're ready to die. And you had to write her a letter. And so I wrote her a letter saying, I'm really sorry. I think I'm really ready to die.

[00:08:36] Unmani: I've tried everything. And she wrote back to me saying, write to me when you're sure you're ready to die. 

[00:08:44] Homaya: What do you feel she recognized there?

[00:08:47] Unmani: My hesitation my, my lack of like full commitment. At least in what I was saying, I feel like I would, I felt it, I felt the commitment and the readiness, but I wasn't going for it in my expression at that moment.

[00:09:04] Unmani: And so when she wrote back, it really threw me back onto myself and was very confronting forced me to see, I need to really put my life on the line here. And so I wrote back saying, okay, I'm ready, I'm ready to die. I've tried everything else and Yeah, I really felt I'd done quite a few different like therapy groups in the Osho community and in one I'd broken my leg trying to kill my mother.

[00:09:33] Unmani: She wasn't there, obviously. And so nothing helped, nothing got me to the root of things, it was always just dancing.

[00:09:42] Unmani: And so then I went to Dolano and I spent some time there. And in the beginning, I felt like she was speaking about something that I still needed to attain. I, the way that, that she was, somehow I interpreted that what she was speaking about was something other, something out there, because everything my whole life, every, everyone has been speaking about something other, right?

[00:10:11] Unmani: Something else. No one ever actually points to who I am. And so I just assumed that's what she was doing too. Until there was a certain moment one evening where I was like, could it be that she's actually supposed to be me? Speaking about and pointing to who I really am, what I've always known since I was a child.

[00:10:37] Unmani: Could it be that anyone in the world could actually say that? And I realized that yes. Yeah, she was pointing to that. So that was mind blowing that someone in this kind of play of the world could point. to what is beyond the world. And yeah, so it was a big confirmation for the little child here that had always known that and never forgotten, but never found it reflected in the world until that moment.

[00:11:08] Unmani: Yeah. So that was like the major realization. And then after that, it was more about okay now what, how has it lived? Now that I'm not in search of it, or trying to mold myself to become someone how do I actually 

[00:11:26] Homaya: live this? Yeah. This truth, although it is alive, in every encounter that it is present, it is It feels so heart nourishing. It's I can literally go in tears. And I know many times I have that, that people are saying about my look, the way that I look, they say about my eyes. I'm saying to them, it's not my eyes, it's where I'm looking from.

[00:11:58] Homaya: It's not what I'm looking at, it's where I'm looking from. This makes the change. And it's really, it's also beautiful for me to remind or demind at this moment that there is no way, a real official way where you die. It's really a signature. It's 

[00:12:25] Unmani: different for everybody. 

[00:12:27] Homaya: It's really different from everybody.

[00:12:29] Homaya: And what you were sharing, that you were thinking that she, You're probably, your mental perception at that time, at the time of the search was already saying, Oh, I moved to that direction. She's going to take me from here to the next point. So we're already speaking about pointing somewhere else until you drop that away.

[00:12:52] Homaya: And you could see that all the fingers are pointing inwards. 

[00:12:57] Unmani: Yeah, and I thought it was the most intimate knowing that she was pointing to something that I felt was so private and intimate, and that I was alone with it. I'd always been alone with it. But the reality is that I'm never alone with it.

[00:13:14] Unmani: I'm always, or I'm always alone with it, but it's 

[00:13:17] Homaya: yeah. Yeah. One of the sentences that I, like I have my manifesto, my words, my sentences that takes me through life. And one of them is God is a private thing. It's a private thing. I'm very well, I'm very happy to hear about your God, if you want to share with me and be with me with your God, but it's like God is a private thing and like my God is my God, and it's almost not my God even, it's like this is it's that, and that's it.

[00:13:51] Homaya: Yeah, this is where words are just limited. Yeah, this is so inspiring that you wrote three words, three books about those things. Wow. 

[00:14:02] Unmani: But I feel like I didn't write them. Yeah. I remember after I wrote the first book and it was published, my parents said to me, Oh, we're so proud of you. And my publisher said, Oh, well done, or I was supposed to have a party to celebrate the publishing.

[00:14:21] Unmani: I felt like I didn't write it. I can't take credit for it. Yeah. 

[00:14:27] Homaya: Sometimes it just came through. I want to go to a sentence that you said, and maybe we can massage it a little bit. Where she asks you, if you're really willing to die, and you said, I am willing to die. And I feel that there are some people among the listeners that can take this and breathe, it's it's a part of the conversation.

[00:14:55] Homaya: And I can also assume that there will be people who will wouldn't even be able to understand how could it be that someone is asking you that you would be willing to die if you want to learn with them. And so can we massage that a little bit? 

[00:15:16] Unmani: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like in, in the years that I've been teaching that I've I've evolved in terms of like how I use these sentences are you willing to die in the, at the beginning I assumed that if you're on the spiritual path that you must be willing to die.

[00:15:37] Unmani: Whereas actually I realized that not everybody, Has that same willingness and that's not a bad thing. It's just we're all unique and our paths are all absolutely unique but And some people hear this in a kind of harsh way or that they need to try to be more willing to die Which is the opposite actually because Being willing to die for the sake of the truth is actually about losing hope, right?

[00:16:11] Unmani: It's a sense of hopelessness, which sounds very depressing and it can be depressing, but it is also it's about trying and failing at all the other options that are available to you. And seeing. That there's nowhere to go 

[00:16:32] Unmani: but be here. There's nowhere to go but this, 

[00:16:38] Unmani: And 

[00:16:38] Unmani: to meet yourself.

[00:16:40] Unmani: It's the end of trying to escape, or trying to fix, or add sugar on top of everything to make it better, but to, 

[00:16:52] Unmani: just really be confronted with the reality.

[00:16:55] Unmani: And the I in the sentence of I am willing to die is the artificial identification. Absolutely, yeah. Because what is dying is, was supposed to was never born any case and is supposed to die any case. 

[00:17:15] Unmani: And that one thinks I am me can't try to die. Because that's maintaining itself more. It's keeping itself alive, actually.

[00:17:28] Unmani: And it doesn't want to die. Its nature is that it wants to survive. But that's why I say it's about hopelessness. When we, we've tried to know myself through the mind, through what I think, who I think I am, and we've realized that it's hopeless. We've tried all different ways. And so there's a death in seeing that I am not limited to that me.

[00:18:03] Unmani: That me might be here and we use the word me, we tell the story of me, but when we recognize, once, once that me has seemed to not be who I really am, once that death has happened that I'm not located in that me I'm not in that story of me, that I'm so much more unlimited in fact.

[00:18:29] Homaya: Yes,

[00:18:33] Homaya: and I know that in your life story Death came

[00:18:38] Homaya: in a way that I remember that I was, it was just the time that I got to know you and I actually have met more your husband than you. So I've met him and I've met your child and yeah, I came to listen to you. And then there was a moment where I heard that your husband passed away.

[00:19:04] Homaya: Death kept being a conversation. 

[00:19:08] Unmani: Yeah, in fact, I wrote the book, 

[00:19:13] Unmani: Die to Love and then my love died. 

[00:19:17] Unmani: Yeah, it he died suddenly from a sudden heart attack, and So it's 

[00:19:22] Homaya: very young in age, correct? 

[00:19:24] Unmani: Yeah, it was 53. Yeah, while we were in India. And so it was, a big 

[00:19:31] Unmani: shock. Also for me, I'd never had someone really close to me die before and he died in my arms.

[00:19:40] Unmani: Luckily my son, who was two and a half at the time, he was sleeping and a friend was with him. You didn't see 

[00:19:48] Unmani: it, but yeah, it was,

[00:19:52] Unmani: yeah, no words. It's a big slap in the face, let's say, but at the same time also another wake up call. 

[00:20:02] Unmani: Although of course I would never have wanted it to be in that form, I feel also his death 

[00:20:09] Unmani: was a gift. It humbled me even more and, 

[00:20:15] Unmani: yeah, it brought me to my knees. I feel in a way it turned me inside out.

[00:20:22] Homaya: Even more. 

[00:20:23] Unmani: Even more. Yeah. 

[00:20:24] Homaya: Spirit was calling you even more.

[00:20:27] Homaya: Sometimes it is so challenging to people and it takes me to the spiritual safe case that we were speaking about and you couldn't understand why am I saying spiritual suitcase? What do you mean by that? I feel that the way that I see it many times is I feel people try to take spirituality like this is a book that they should put in their pocket.

[00:20:47] Homaya: Yes. Spirit, sometimes people are asking me and saying, oh, we don't understand what you're doing. Like people who are in marketing and so on. I say this is a good way. You don't need to understand what I'm doing. It's okay. It's okay. It's a good sign that you don't understand.

[00:21:04] Homaya: Because if you could understand that you could take all of me, you could take all my spirit, you could take all my omnipresence, you can take everything that I'm playing, like my entire life, and you could put it in a. pocket. And I'm not supposed to go into a pocket. I'm not supposed to go into a square.

[00:21:22] Homaya: I'm not supposed to go there. And 

[00:21:24] Homaya: yeah 

[00:21:24] Homaya: you feel the same. 

[00:21:26] Unmani: Absolutely. Absolutely. Life is much more mysterious than that. 

[00:21:30] Homaya: And supposed to be mysterious. 

[00:21:32] Unmani: And as soon as we think that we know how it is, or we put a label on it, we are blocking the mystery. We're not acknowledging the mystery.

[00:21:41] Homaya: Yeah, this is dying on the wrong way. It's dying of not to be alive. It's dying to really 

[00:21:49] Unmani: disconnect. We talked about dying, like the death of who you think you are, but that's a different kind of, a deadness. Exactly. 

[00:22:00] Homaya: And this is why I want to bring it. It's like in the sense of, okay, when people are playing and opening to spirituality, there is some superficial level.

[00:22:16] Homaya: So many people, it puts a laughter in my, in me. that really minimize spirituality to the law of attraction. Somewhere, it's like spirituality ends there. Ends in, let me control even more the laws of the universe. Let me control even more without understanding that you just got another gadget, and it's no different than, the sandwich that you were eating.

[00:22:41] Homaya: It's another gadget. Now, it's not that you can decide how you're going to play this life, right? You can decide if you want to play with spiritual laws or without spiritual laws, of course, but also playing with spiritual laws is still part of a game. Yeah. 

[00:22:56] Unmani: And we try to control life in that way because we're afraid to lose control and to acknowledge that, in fact, life is already out of control.

[00:23:07] Unmani: Whether we like it or not. Yeah. Because me controlling it. 

[00:23:14] Homaya: Yes. And then in that, the reason that I'm bringing it now is like in the context of, okay, how far would I take my spirituality? Because there would be people at that moment when you lose your lover in your hand, that you can lose the faith. You, if at all, you had faith.

[00:23:36] Homaya: Actually, I don't know if someone can lose faith. If you have faith. cannot be lost. But then anything that is not a full embodiment is, I'm going to lose the faith, I'm going to lose my sanity, I'm going to lose everything I control, and I might even judge my own spirituality. I might even judge if I'm spiritual, if I'm not spiritual, if I can do it, if I cannot do it.

[00:24:04] Homaya: Because here, the loss of life through which you experience everything, including divinity, including oneness, It's still happening through this portal of the 3D experience, right? So this is one of the most challenging thing. And then here in the 3D experience, you moved to the edge of the edge. And for some people, it might seem oh, wow, a door was added.

[00:24:34] Homaya: But I feel that for you, a door was open. 

[00:24:37] Unmani: Yeah. For me, like when I said before that I felt like I was turned inside out. It felt the love that was between me and my husband was turned inside out. So it was no longer between me and him. It was unlimited. And then this paradox in a way of loss and presence of like his physical absence.

[00:25:05] Unmani: And the terrible pain and agony of that loss. That came in waves in different ways every day. for for some years afterwards, in fact. And then the sense of presence, knowing that he hasn't gone anywhere, because he was never separate from who I am, from life itself, and that, and living with that paradox, or that yeah, I want a better word than paradox, but anyway yeah, living with that contrast or that dichotomy, I don't know what the word is, but it's yeah, people often questioned me about that.

[00:25:44] Unmani: Because at that time I started to share a lot on social media because I was using social media as a way of just pouring my heart out. Every day after I put my son to bed, I sat on the computer and just expressed what was in my heart. And then it became my daily practice. That actually was really helpful for me.

[00:26:06] Unmani: Part of what I shared was very human. It was very much feeling, expressing the agony of the loss. And how I felt in the body and, the waves of grief and all the different aspects of that. And then the other side of it, that actually everything's fine. And I got a lot of questions from people.

[00:26:29] Unmani: Things like, if you know yourself to be, if you're awakened or if you know yourself to be life itself, then surely you wouldn't experience grief or loss. You wouldn't be. in pain. 

[00:26:46] Homaya: Because it's either or the other. While I am life itself, it's I am that and that. 

[00:26:54] Unmani: I'm life itself and I'm this human expression of life itself and being, having this human expression, it's always going to be somewhat limited because we're limited to this particular human that has its conditioning, its physical sensations, its experiences, its traumas, its wounds or whatever and so life, yeah, is 

[00:27:20] Unmani: expressed through this.

[00:27:22] Homaya: And there is a space for it. Absolutely. Because if not, it wouldn't have been. 

[00:27:27] Homaya: Yes. And that's the other thing is that there was no filter, like no, not allowing different, certain aspects of it. If I needed to shout and scream or punch pillows or walls even I, I didn't stop myself because I, oh I never had the idea that this expression or these feelings mean something about me, and it doesn't mean that I'm not spiritual or I'm not there yet.

[00:27:58] Homaya: It's just a human thing that needs to come to life. Yes, it needs to be expressed. And yeah, and all the time, of course, there, there was this seeing, the knowing of it. of every expression. And knowing that, of course, gives, it is the space for this human to express herself. 

[00:28:22] Homaya: Yeah. 

[00:28:23] Unmani: In whatever way she needs to.

[00:28:24] Unmani: And this is freedom for this human. This is freedom. 

[00:28:29] Homaya: Yeah. What I want to go, I know that we need to come to completion, but I really want to go just a little bit more deeper. I feel that this conversation is so precious for so many. that are on the spiritual path and coming into peace to be, to really embody this expended presence of who they are, right?

[00:28:52] Homaya: And I feel that one of the things that we're touching here is the judgment of what is good and bad. Yeah. that we are invited to go beyond. 

[00:29:04] Unmani: Yes it's always an idea of what is good or bad for me, right? And so when we believe that I am a separate me inside here living my life, then this, whatever we come across or whatever we experience is considered good or bad for me.

[00:29:22] Unmani: Always this link to an apparent But when you see that there is no separation, there is no separate me inside here, then there is no judgment. There might be, the mind might go on having its thoughts, but you can see that there is nothing that is good or bad. Because there's no me for it to be good or bad for.

[00:29:47] Homaya: That is both for the experience of the one experiencing life, and also what I love to name the return light of the, what people are returning to you with. So it is both for losing your husband, and making peace with the fact that there's no good or bad here. And it is both with going through whatever emotional, mental processes that needs to happen in the rhythm, in the spiritual rhythm of those mechanisms inside of our system, no good or bad there.

[00:30:26] Homaya: But also no good or bad of if I'm spiritual or if I'm not spiritual, although people might come with a question and an expectation that, oh, you should be beyond. your emotional body. You should be above. While you're not supposed to be above, you're supposed to be it. 

[00:30:44] Unmani: Yes. This, there's, actually something that my husband the way he expressed this, I found very touching and beautiful.

[00:30:53] Unmani: He said, I'm absolutely loyal to this guy.

[00:30:58] Homaya: I love that. Yeah.

[00:31:00] Homaya: Wherever he takes me, if you want 

[00:31:02] Homaya: to get. 

[00:31:03] Unmani: Yeah. And sometimes it was messy, because this guy can be 

[00:31:06] Unmani: messy or this woman, 

[00:31:08] Unmani: thank you. Such a beautiful, deep conversation. Thank you. I'm very blessed to have you and

[00:31:16] Unmani: I'm listening to this conversation, the several people in my realm that I'm saying to myself, Oh, I really hope they would listen to that and give that space to the listening.

[00:31:29] Unmani: So thank you for your presence and for your wisdom and for the path that you walked in your life and for being so loyal to that path. Yeah, thank you. So yeah, really beautiful conversation. Thank you.