Twice a year the seasons change most dramatically, from summer to fall, from fall to spring, they’re known as the equinoxes. During this time the Earth is balancing and my Guru -Sri Sri Poonamji, taught me it is a very powerful time to balance your mind and body. It’s a 9 day experience where we eat one meal a day and work hard to selflessly serve as much as possible.North Indians call this celebration –Navratri which means 9 nights. They say it is 9 days to honor the different forms of Divine Mother.
(To be honest I’ve been doing this fast for the last 5 years and up until now I really didn’t understand who Divine Mother was, I just knew at the end of the fast I felt completely rejuvenated, my mind always came out sharper, my determination heightened, and my body feeling lighter and cleansed).
This particular fall equinox has been extremely powerful for me so I wanted to share my experiences for others that haven’t had the blessing of experiencing a festival with Divine Bliss. The whole reason why these festivals are extremely powerful is because the founder of Divine Bliss -Guruji, is teaching you how to observe them, and uses each festival to give you the opportunity and blessing to connect to a new aspect of yourself.
This Navratri has been one of the most powerful for me yet. I dedicated 9 days to being at the Divine Bliss center in Florida, with the intention that I would serve here and work every day from 4:30am-10pm to give as selflessly as I could. Guruji always tells us that what we give is what we receive. I felt this very powerfully this last 9 days. Here are five of my biggest take aways:

1. The chatter in my mind has quieted significantly and I feel more peace of mind.

Yesterday I was in the Divine Bliss meditation garden and I just felt a sense of ultimate peace, so soothing, so gentle, so serene. I didn’t feel I needed anything in that moment. Not a donut, a boyfriend, a pay check, a purpose, really in that moment I just felt like it was me, the soil beneath me and the sky above me, and I felt absolutely at home. As Guruji says, if you find peace within you, you take it wherever you go. I felt this most profoundly. My biggest culprit that typically steals my pleasure from life is the pressure I put on myself. I’m not doing enough, I need to be achieving something, do it better, be better. But since this fast, that voice has vanished and all I hear is the silence. And instead of craving sugar, I crave silence. I find myself searching for the calmness like the still of a lake at sunrise, as pristine and crisp as the air feels on your nose. That is the kind of yearning I have. I truly feel a sense of fulfillment come over me.

2. Detachment from other people’s expectations.

Because of Guruji’s guidance, I’ve been on a journey over the last few years how to let go of the pressures from the people around me. Yes I love my family and friends, so why let them pressurize me? To liberate myself from the pressure of worrying about what they think, I did something that majority of people call crazy… I shaved my head. I did have it shaved for about a year. But then I went through a bit of a dark period of my life digging into the depth of me trying to really genuinely figure out what I really want from life. So I grew back my hair during that time, I felt I should probably try to blend in a bit more, this shaved head thing causes too many people’s attention and I’d rather just fit in.

But to be honest, I truly love having a shaved head. It’s less of a hassle. Instead of worrying about how my hair looks, is it in the correct location, is it out of wack, I wonder if I’ve styled it right, does it look good in this picture, instead my focus is on more meaningful things. I would say it saves me about 30{f68b474142553e5292471c5cb35196c77541ffaa303585200d1ff7075e28270d} of my brain capacity in any given day. I feel way clearer and lighter. And what I normal don’t tell people is I actually shave my head as an offering to God. I feel when I surrender my hair, I’m let go of my ego. Instead of pleasing the people around me, it is my commitment to myself to connect to the light within me and do the work of the Divine instead. With the intention of serving God I find my intuitive capabilities increase significantly.  I have a better hunch about what work I should be doing, where I should be going, who I should be talking to, that coincides with what’s best for my higher self. I tell you, connecting to my soul, my spirit, instead of my ego’s attachments is such an empowering step it makes me feel like I could take off in a jet plane fueled only by my gusto for life and my passion to rise higher than ever before.

3. Accepting abundance into my life.

This has been a pattern of mine for a long time that I resist accepting help, gifts, or things from other people. I’ll give you the shirt off my back but please don’t give me yours I don’t want to inconvenience you. This has been a big block for me to receive more in my life be it anything from love to money to fulfillment. I must be open to receiving to truly get anywhere in life. What’s the point in doing the work if you’re not open to receive the fruits of your labor? So as I was serving around the Divine Bliss center I had this one wall that I spent two days clearing and then another day painting it, two stories high with cob webs and spiders. I cleaned every last inch like it was the debris in my life that needed scrubbing, and low and behold within 24 hours of finishing the painting of that wall my company closed two big contracts out of the blue that added a significant bump to our month’s revenue. I tell you who would have thought that cleaning an East wall would win me sales! However one of the most powerful lessons Guruji has taught me is that the physical reality is truly only an illusion and it’s the energetic that’s truly real. I recognize that there are so many gifts that have been given to me that I have denied for one reason or another, but through this powerful time of Navratri, and through Guruji’s blessing, I was able to make a breakthrough in this aspect of my energetic self and saw it manifest onto the physical.

4. My body feels much more balanced and lighter.

One of the biggest health issues I’ve faced my whole life is stomach issues. I used to have leaky gut syndrome, and allergies to lots of different foods. As I realized over these last 9 days, my stomach issues are only my suppressed angers and undigested emotions that I stuff down inside me not willing to look at or express. Through a 6 week healing program with Guruji a few years ago, She cured me of my Celiacs disease, my allergy to wheat and 15 other foods!!! This was something the doctors said I would never be able to heal. Who can heal someone’s digestive lining? Well over the last year I had taken this detour finding myself and during that time I really got off track with what I was eating and my stomach took a hard hit because of that. I was having a really hard time digesting food and because I was eating out all the time with not the healthiest food I had gained weight.
I’m proud to report that over the last 60 days of following Guruji’s advice I’ve lost 25lbs! 5lbs just in the last week. I’m back to my perfect weight that I love! My stomach is feeling much improved. I could feel my digestive track shifting and healing within me, and then I could also feel my spine adjusting to this change happening within me. As I was walking down the hall today I could feel the whole way I walk has shifted and my posture is so effortlessly upright. Normally I have to work at sitting with my back straight, after this 9 day of balancing my 9 energetic bodies now it just feels natural. AND my flexibility has improved, I was meditating every day with the staff here at Divine Bliss and as we would meditate I was sitting in full lotus. It’s normally a hard position for me to sit in and my feet go numb after a few minutes due to my poor circulation. However this morning I report that I got into lotus easily and I felt I could sit like that for hours I didn’t even want to move my legs.

5. The fifth and most important blessing I received during Navratri was the gift of giving. 

None of this would have been possible without Guruji’s guidance. For years she’s told me that Navratri is all about giving and yet my intention was always about me, my body, my mind, what my benefits would be. This Navratri I really worked hard to uplift the Divine Bliss center and forward the progress of the non-profit and it’s objectives to assist people like me to heal and be uplifted.
In that giving to the center I received so much more than I could have imagined! Throughout the 9 days I had a realization that while I gave, I really only gave what I WANTED to give, instead of what was needed. Just because you have an orange and you give it doesn’t mean the person likes oranges. Towards the end of the fast I started feeling a better sense of what Divine Mother would want. Since this whole fast is around honoring Divine Mother, I felt a new sense of who Divine Mother is and felt very compelled to start doing things I normally don’t do. My service became more about serving the altar, cooking food, cleaning the dust and debris.
I realized that anything I ask for is useless if I don’t honor Divine Mother first with what is necessary for Her. Now for other people that don’t have a Divine Bliss center to visit, that might mean cleaning up a beach, or planting a tree in a forest, or doing something to uplift the Earth. I’m grateful for the physical space that Guruji has blessed to have such a powerful energetic impact. When you serve there your energies get uplifted so much quicker! And most of all I am grateful for having a physical Divine Mother, Guruji is my Divine Mother and to be able to physically communicate and serve Her is my most beautiful blessing. I’ve been around Guruji for 7 years now and I can attest that She is no normal being. Have you ever met someone that when they sit next to roses, the roses start to bloom faster? Or have you ever asked a rose bush to change the color of it’s petals and seen the flower obey you and turn a white bush into a red bush?
Guruji is truly a gift to mankind. She’s here to teach us how to trust ourselves again. How to believe in the goodness within us. Because the world is becoming darker and darker, and the only way we can change it is by opening up that selfless giving within ourselves.
 

Conclusion

So with that I conclude my reflections of these past 9 days of Navratri. We are only a few short months away from opening up a much bigger center where many people can come and stay to have experiences like what I just shared. If you would like to visit that center, or visit the current smaller center in Florida you can contact me at omanda@divineblissinternational.org.
For those that would like the opportunity to be one of the special few to create this healing center of light, all are welcome. (I’ve been dedicating myself to this effort with all my heart and soul). What would you like to give? Your time? Your resources? Your land? Your money? All are welcome. We have collected volunteers that want to assist in finding the right piece of pure virgin land, constructing the buildings, videographers, artists, therapists, every person that wants to assist we have found a role for them to play, based on what they want to grow within themselves. If you would like to be part of opening the very first University of Self Realization you can email me or call the center at 727-444-0355. We’ll be able to talk with you about how you can become part of the light brigade!
 
Thank you Guruji for connecting me to who I really am, and giving me such a beautiful peace of mind like nothing I’ve ever experienced before.
 
Om,
Omanda