Tag: wellbeing

The call of fire in our hearts

Fire.
Our world is on fire. And so is my heart.

Ish

Art by George Redhawk

Fire. 
Our world is on fire. And so is my heart.

And I know that fire is the element of transformation- the cycle of initiation, purification, becoming…this is a becoming that necessitates the burning away of all that is false- inside and around us.

Between a peaking global pandemic, uprisings and protests for basic human rights and dignity and political mayhem, the past fortnight has truly tested us all!

I hope you are simultaneously safe and stirred to the core in the very best of ways because a new reality is pouring into this planet rapidly and calling us to take our place in it in a whole new way. Somedays it has felt to me like drinking right from a firehose!

They say hindsight is 2020, and 2020 is here. What you want to see when you look back at today, is begging be seeded now. The call to alignment has never been louder!

This stirring is not punitive, but rather an invitation into embodied wholeness. 

If you’ve been denying your truth, hiding in the shadows with a dream in your heart, stifling your voice, waiting for someday to live your purpose, I want you to ask yourself: what are you waiting for? If not now, when? If not you, who?

I know the path is uncertain and scary- I’ve walked through this fire myself before, leaving familiarity, safety and comfort to heed an inner calling. So I also know, that every time we step in through the fire, committed to living nothing less than the life we came here to live, when we dare to welcome truth over comfort, courage over fear, we are supported in unimaginable ways that bring us into a state of grace. 

Our planet needs your unique medicine in ways only YOU can bring! In ways that make you come alive!

Are you willing to let the false burn away and embody your truth? In your very ways of being and doing?  

The world just opened a direct path to your innermost calling. Come claim your rightful place in it. Align! 

In this radical time, feeling is not just healing, it is also the doorway to inspired, aligned action. Remember, there is no transformation without embrace- within and between us. 

To help you digest, reset, find purpose and resource in this fiery time, I am offering mini restorative sessions at no charge to you.

If you haven’t worked with me privately, you may be amazed at how impactful and powerful these re-sets can be. 15 minutes of attuned presence can transform lifetimes of pain.

This work is for you if you want to live a fulfilling, vibrant and authentic life. 

If your heart is also on fire, join me. Whether you want to offer the world your unique medicine, express your authentic voice or need support to heal and release emotional, relational and spiritual roadblocks, our work together will help you realize your deepest longings. 

All you need to begin is curiosity. Let’s talk.

Please take great care of your hearts and share this invitation with someone you know who could use it. 

I’m here. I’m listening. I’m standing with and for your brilliance, and the power of the human collective to rise in love together. 

Only love,
Ishita

Say yes to YOUR life!

You need not betray yourself to be successful in life. In fact, a successful life can only manifest when you live authentically, from your Truth.

Ish

A little encouragement for listening to that inner knowingness….

I know sooo many people who are “in transition” right now. This is most commonly manifested as switching careers in our generation, but if you look more deeply at the unrest that drives it, the transition permeates all aspects of the being…mental, emotional and even spiritual…because all aspects are of the one.

Sometimes it’s hard to know which way to go. Old beliefs, fears, structures don’t serve, but the new, almost become, luring and inviting, can seem scary.

In these pregnant moments of self growth, be bold my friends! Be Courageous! Use these words, know the worth of living a life ALIGNED!

A collection of wisdom by Winslow Strong-

“If you bring forth what is within you it will save you. If you do not, it will destroy you.”

Thomas Merton

“And what, precisely, is destroyed? Energy is destroyed first. Those shining eyes. And then faith. And then hope. And then life itself. The increasing deadening of aliveness that Brian experienced as he went into the seminary is the very opposite of Jane Goodall’s experience. When a life is founded on self-betrayal, the habit of self-betrayal proliferates until we are at peril of not remembering who we are at all. There is a slow deadening of spirit as we try to pick up the burdens of adulthood without the energy of The Gift. Our work can be motivated by obligation, by hunger for the external rewards of accomplishment, or by strongly reinforced ideas about who we should be in this lifetime. But none of these motivations has the authentic energy required for mastery of a profession. So, all of these motivations lead slowly to a downward spiral that tends to crash, as it did with Brian, at midlife. Without the balm of real fulfillment there is a growing emptiness inside. Finally, it requires a heroic effort to simply go on with life in the face of this emptiness. The light in the eyes goes out.”

Stephen Cope

to heal the world, heal your wounds

You cannot give to the world what you do not have. And you cannot ask the world to be what you are not.

Ish

You cannot give to the world what you do not have. And you cannot ask the world to be  what you are not.

In Viktor Frankl’s words:
“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” 

In Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev’s words:
“If there is no transformation in you and me, if there is no change in a way we perceive , experience, feel and act in this world, How can you change the world?”

It has become clear to me, that the only (not just the best) way to help the world or make it a better place or create positive impact, as many are out to do, is for each person to clarify and settle their inner space. The only way to heal the world, is to confront and heal your own wounds.

To connect with the peace within, and solidify into that connection.

Notice I didn’t say find peace within, because it’s already there. Your attention probably just happens to be elsewhere, and because life happens “at the intersection of awareness and physical reality,” your experience and perception is limited to the expanse of your awareness.

Everything you know and experience already exists in it.

You must be wondering how I would know this most fundamental, intimate secret about you that you may not even know for sure…I know, because this peace, this stillness, this beingness, this fundamental wholeness, is my home. And it is also yours.

You may have forgotten, but maybe as we journey here together, I can help you remember…

 

a story of my becoming

I used to think I was Ishita. Then I was sure I was nothing. Now I know I am everything.

IshLeave a comment

As Ishita I have spent my life asking big questions and dissecting the edges of knowledge, unconsciously engaged in what I now recognize as a search for core Truth.

Growing up close to rivers and mountains in a Himalayan valley, I could be found admiring forests full of Koel songs or tracing lines of ants for hours at end, moving through the day with eyes closed, trying to see without seeing…

Driven by hungry existential curiosity, I looked for Truth in my homeland and awaylands, in forests and mountains, deserts and oceans. An explorer and creator, a wonderer and a wanderer I did, made, felt and thought about much…

Searching for answers through my work, I evolved into a multidisciplinary designer and thinker. Trained as an architect and a writer, I grappled with steel and concrete on one end, and our very humanity on another. Refusing to limit my explorations to a single label, I have worked as an architect, designer, painter, photographer, potter, editor, journalist and yogi…

I kept searching for Truth in the hearts and minds of others, in up-down-out-and-arounds, until my incessant questioning began pointing me towards my self and I got quiet, clear, still and full.

I separated knowing and understanding. I dropped the lie.

I admitted that the answers to my own questions lay inside me and had always been there. I realized time was a modification of my mind.
I accepted and surrendered to that which I knew but didn’t understand.
I began to align my outer self with my inner knowing.

Then, walking past a bookstore window I read the words “I Am That” popping out at me. To my own surprise, I heard myself say, “Why, yes, I am!” I walked into the bookstore, picked up the book, opened it up to be brought home by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj’s teachings. It became the only book I read for 4 years!

Over the next couple months, re-cognizing my own inner truth I had never had the words to articulate, I wept with joy and laughed with gratitude. Here at last, home at last! And then, the depths of my I-ness dissolved. All boundaries between me and not me melted so completely that there was no I left…no time, no space…nothing but the non conceptual one-ness, that which had no second. That which cannot be put into words, for it is the thing that makes words. And all else.

Eyes opened, the dream was over.

If you’re curious, yeah, I kept going to work, apparently losing your I doesn’t prevent architecture to be made through “you!” A glorious time of learning and assimilation followed. I discovered that the biggest questions have small and simple answers, that there is no core Truth. And that is magnificent!

I don’t believe there is The Truth, but I have found a Truth, in which I am finally home. And I want to help you find yours.

In 2015, I left work & home to make space and figure out how to engage consciously with the world and integrate my inside and outside. In that space emerged pointers that have brought me to exactly where I need to be now.

Now, whether I am leading a meditation, designing a product or a process, a painting or a poem or a photoshoot, I do it just for the pleasure of doing it. I don’t expect or need it to fill a hunger or a void in me. And the work is both better, and more pleasurable than ever.

Life is light, joyful, wholesome.

Fully at home in the foreground of spaciousness, I play in the world centered in peace within. And this fuels a joyous curiosity and a wondrous exploration, rather than limiting them.

I am ever more intrigued by the manifest world and want to know its very fundamentals as I explore life in its fullness! I am finally, free.