Any philosophical system that cannot imagine the complexities and mysteries of the human experience and couple this with its release, any system that cannot incorporate its own placement of the known within the larger context of the far more vast unknown, is an incomplete system. Jungian frameworks, in my view, is a rare understanding that scaffolds the seeker by bridging the vast knowledge of the Western and Eastern esoteric traditions by accessing the knowing that exists within each individual. I can say that my life has been chasing after a cavern so deep I can settle with for a long period of exploration.

One of my early memories is of my mother proclaiming her realization that Sathya Sai Baba is God, he was a guru our family were followers. Although she has since shared some of her process on attaining that realization over the years, the declaration was itself a major pivot point in my own life and set up a sense that the numinous need not be relegated to academic and theoretical discussion amongst monastics or the devout but was embodied in the flesh and blood of a human being who walked before us and was to be carried in us. At the age of 9 I received darshan from Sathya Sai Baba and, again, the lasting impression I have carried with me informs my belief that I am not meant to live my life informed by stats and norms but by archetypes and legends; I do not see myself as another member of the overpopulated herd, but rather as the Hero of my own living legend. This guiding principle has led me to this process of applying for a deep dive into the collective unconscious in Jungian analytic training. 

As a child the mythology around the Ramayana and the Mahabharatha were transmitted to me in the form of the Amar Chitra Katha comic books. Simultaneously I was reading western comics by way of Marvel and DC; Spiderman, X-Men, Batman, Superman and the Justice League were all consuming my attention alongside the figures of Indian mythology which included Hanuman, Lord Indra, Krishna, Kali, Shiva, and the many others. I attended a Catholic grammar school in Staten Island while singing devotional songs on weekends amongst the Hindu Sai Baba organization. My mother encouraged my reading and would reward me upon completing a book in the classic section of the library with a comic book of my choosing. Which is not to say I wasn’t enthralled by video games as well. I spent countless hours pondering the puzzles of The Legend of Zelda and to this day love guiding Link in his quest to save his beloved. 

When I began the practice of poetry writing at 17, at the end of high school, I began to forge connections between the broader mythopoetic landscape and my own emerging narrative, needs, and ongoing struggles. I would characterize the struggle of my childhood as it evolved into my own emergence as an individual as defined by the tension between inward and outward gazing. When isolated my sense of my own sufferings becomes unbearable, when connected the feelings are emboldened in an empowering way; suffering is all pervasive and unbearable for all living beings. At the pivotal moment in my own development, I was told confidentially that processes that caused shame and isolation were shared by this person who indicated it was broadly experienced in the community as well, saying she had known a few people who had been experiencing mood disorders and asked to take psychopharmaceuticals. 

After my encounters with the mental health industry in my freshman year in college, I began to seek both individual therapy and a deeper engagement with transpersonal psychology. I wanted so much at that time for all the perceived chaotic thoughts and feelings to just make sense. As my age continued to grow, I also wanted my transpersonal work to make me money (sense/cents), and be sustainable as a career and vocation, but this desire was placed on hold after college for almost 20 years. I graduated from Rutgers University, after a painful few years at Vassar College, and passed through five years as a substitute teacher that includes a 10 month incomplete term as a Teaching Fellow. I then pursued a Masters in Library Science and worked at the Queens Public Library for 15 years in progressively advancing roles from Children’s Librarian to Supervising Librarian in various communities around Queens, the most diverse borough in New York City. 

These years were the establishment of my professional competency and the foundation for my personal confidence in my discipline that I now see as my yoga practice and ascension into my own hero path. I began to see that while many of my peers were engaged in practices that can be seen as analogously related to the sitcom, episodic and seeking short term gains with a narrow scope, I was building an array of insights and holding them within my own consciousness for a more long term goal (an epic saga) as I waited for a signal of what the Divine Source wanted from me in regard to my next professional and personal steps were to be in my life.

In 2017 I was inspired to create a weekly program for Radio Free Brooklyn I called “The Truth to Power Show'' wherein I acted as producer finding a guest amongst the community each week and holding a conversation with over either a pre recording and then LIVE on air show that streamed audio only over the internet. This experience was vital to my own progress and preceded by a wish for me to amplify my emergence as a poet and thinker in the community. As I began to listen to deep philosophical and mythopoetic inspiration from those around me I began to pull in more individuals who aligned well with my own emerging theoretical orientation. 

Some of my initial guests were individuals like Rick Jarow, who had taught me “Psychology of Religion” during my time at Vassar and with whom I had connected as an adult for his manifestation circles, and Allan Avidano, my high school friend who had written the book The Other Son which explored his thoughts around Christ within a existential humanistic lens in a fictional narrative. As I became more resolved in my search for specific guidance on my work in the world, I was able to manifest guests like Audrey DiMola and Ken Ferlic who posed challenges to the norms of the mental health industry I had been grudgingly accepting to offer me a new vision for processing trauma. 

It was at that point that I opened to my work in the world and my ongoing internet searches scanning professional opportunities located a job listing for Kristine Mann Library in the CG Jung Center of Manhattan, NYC and led me to accepting the position of Head Librarian.  As I deepened with my own knowing, I began to see that threads from my past were emerging as signs for the future I was called upon to enact. The plasticity of my own self-talk and life’s story was evident as I began to release narratives that no longer served me in favor of stories and myths that emboldened my light and empowered me to confront my shadows.

Over the years 2016-2021 I self published two poetry books and was able to negotiate with Poets of Queens Press to publish my third poetry collection. Each volume builds from the personal mythology towards a more collective interdependent narrative. The second book which is the first in a proposed series stands out as a part of a lineage of persona poems where I draw from my own mythology as much as I did from internet searches and news articles to populate poems focused on the lives of celebrities, imagined in meditative moments so the reader can examine their own humanity in relation to the systemic sensationalization of the Page Six material, aka celebrity gossip. That book Celebrity Sahana, Or How to Meditate with a Hammer is book 1 of The Paparazzo Poet Meditations and is sandwiched between the 2016 books Escape from Samsara  and the 2021 book Breakdown Dancer published by Poets of Queens Press.

In my own seeking to liberate my creative expression: from participating in National Novel Writing Month, engaged in theater work ranging from acting from a young age in community theater, to directing Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Viriginia Woolf? my senior year in Rutgers University, from study improvisational comedy from 2012-2017 at People’s Improv Theater, to studying storytelling with Adam Wade, a Moth grand slam winner teaching at Magnet Theater, from shamanic work with Foundation for Shamanic studies, to leaderships retreats with Esalen (including work with Bioenergetics with Radical Aliveness with Ann Bradney) and Hollyhock, from manifestation circles with Rick Jarow, to taking classes in swing dancing and writing classes at Gotham writers workshop and Brooklyn Poets.

At the precipice of the pandemic, in September of 2019, I had a direct communication from some Divine Source that I was to study Clinical Mental Health Counseling at Naropa University and needed to plan out a solo show I was to perform nearing this degree’s completion that enshrined my journey into the Hero’s journey that was already emerging for the past quarter century. Sometimes I wonder if it's naive to think it’s possible to achieve the progressively advancing levels of consciousness discussed in Eastern yogas. I wonder about this yoga and how it might stand juxtaposed to the Western lottery or American Dream of investing your energy in the Casino Capitalism of the Western Occidental countries. Where does capitalism meet the mythopoetic? It’s funny this question comes up. I invested much time and energy in developing this mostly improvised (comedy) 5 act show whose focus was on my 17 and 18 ego persona that was narrated by a more critical eye of my 45 year old self. I approached the humor of this show without judgment or pathologizing, offering what was referred to by the audience as “self deprecating humor”; I like to think of the show as a loving roast of a past self that I no longer feel I need to pander to; while I love that 18 year ego, I think his naivete was problematic. 

Still, I was able to draw from his innocence as a way into the sublime. Although I’m interested in creating sustainability, I’m also nauseated by the idea of commercializing my own process, monetization rings for me in harmony with weaponization. At the same time, I understand that sustainability requires financial gains. I believe in energy exchanges and I do think when someone makes an offering the gift is more meaningful and grounded. However I recently was informed that evidence based research doesn’t support this premise. Thus, I’m conflicted about commerce. 

At my core, I believe the United States has incurred a deep pathology that Trump, neoconservative and even neoliberalism is spreading an ideological infestation that poses more of an existential threat than any pandemic ever could. My physical body inevitably dies, but the mental imprints of samskaras I’ve left will be perpetuated progressively outward in the community and world as well as dictate the trajectory of my own post death experience in subtle or perchance gross energy; I do not know but I hold a space for my inner unsubstantiated knowing that we do not end when we die. I will continue my own deep dive into my subconscious and exploring its connections to the collective while at the same time returning to the community something beyond just a rich man’s navel gazing for a fee. 

In many of these contemplative communities people say they received a “download” to proceed with certain actions, but more important for me is the future “upload” of a school for adolescents and children that would functionally communicate the Eastern and Western esoteric in the United States that encourages the core values that are expressed in the Jungian transpersonal lineage of which Naropa University partakes and has encouraged me to engage with in the past 3 years of study. I have also studied with New Kadampa Tradition in western global Buddhism in general, intermediate and advanced coursework, retreats, and meditations. Furthermore, films and deeper creative work is in order for my journey.

Imagistically I feel I have opened a path to a cavern within me and connecting us all and, unlike others who seek to quickly move to bring others into this wonderful tourist spot, I crave a focused chance to do more adventurous exploration of this cavern as I integrate and give back to the world the insights and theoretical underpinnings that I would carefully curate as a curriculum for those who need it the most desperately in a cultural zeitgeist where leaders are using power unconsciously perpetuating systems of oppressive thought and actions. There are fewer and fewer sources of light in these dark times and I seek to amplify the spark that I’ve been holding for many years for all the world to see. Thank you for the opportunity to tell my story up to now. At this threshold I can see the process is an ending and all endings are emergent beginnings.

When working with higher consciousness studies we are inundated by the idea that the problem is you. You are the one who is in control, master of your domain, and therefore the creator of all your problems. Those who point outwards seemingly miss the point. You are not a victim of circumstances, you are the divine energy that is of the nature of God. While this may have a kernel of truth to it, we also need to be honest with ourselves about how we got to where we are now. For many, the journey began with birth. For those who believe in countless rebecomings, this is still the point of convergence to this incarnation. But prevailing notions tell us and we accept that this was an uncontrollable (re)birth and that is the nature of our suffering. But what if we were to use our imagination for a moment here to reconfigure this picture? Where would we find ourselves if we did and what consequences of this premise (if it were true) would follow logically? 

Follow me on this thought experiment: If we were to imagine that we chose this birth and everything that happened up to this moment of reading this text, of allowing ourselves to entertain this idea, was of a conscious act of creation that we ourselves participated in with the cadre of beings that have entered our awareness since birth in some dimension where our highest selves could interact, then what? Then we would have to make sense of what has happened to us in this paradigm. No loose threads, no regrets, no missed opportunities. If it was not meant to be it would not have happened. Therefore it is blessed not by God, but by us in this experiment. Now that we have drawn out the trajectory of our life what logically follows to happen? Well, it depends entirely on two things: What was our intention all along? What is our intention now that we are aware? And these two must converge in order to proceed. Unfortunately there can be no conflict in our intentions, no splitting of minds, no parts that we need to make concessions. This is the apex where we must now attain the highest sight for ourselves and for our surroundings. When we become what we always have wanted.

In traditional composition we build narrative fiction by conflict and resolution. Instead of drawing from these arts, we must draw from improvisational models. It’s just a reality that nothing is scripted and reality isn’t clean. So we take the material that has been given to us and we resolutely say “Yes, and” to it to build something that has always been meant to be built since time immemorial. When we see bits and pieces of a picture we begin to see an emergent principle. How do we find purpose driven flow in our life? By answering the essential question: What do you see here? Instead of using our eyes, we use our hearts. That is our vulnerability. And that is our power. Put aside our egos, put aside our need to look good in front of others. We were never meant to be strong the whole time. It’s okay to concede these past experiences were building me up. But also they didn’t happen to me, but to my ego persona who is representing that higher self who sent you on this mission.

The ego persona and the higher self can only unite through a unified intention. They turn in the same direction. Now 100% of your efforts are to achieve your life purpose. The doubt, the denial, and the statistics must be tuned out. They were never part of your story. It was the chorus of NPC (Non Player Characters) who were never an essential part of your life anyway who sing about that. Don’t get attached to the feelings and drama of the past. Keep yourself honed for what comes next. You are the hero of your own story. And who comes into your life is there only to remind you and offer you what you need to move forward into your true greatness. 

How that greatness manifests is how you perceive it. If you need to take baby steps then do it. But keep the trust that the story ain’t over until you feel what you need to feel. Until you achieve what you need to achieve. And leave the rest to others to make sense how they will. Maybe it starts with you just cleaning up around the house, or maybe it starts with you writing a poem, or a novel, or a screenplay. However it starts, it is where it will go that is most important. And the flow that comes behind it. As you as moved forward you will keep the focus on this is how it goes. And leave room for even you to experience the surprise of discovery. What sounds one way in your head, will always feel another way in your heart and body. So go with the flow, dive in and with no judgements discover what you were meant to do after you’ve decided where you want to go.

I was deeply inspired by many wisdom traditions to choose this lens to see the world with, and most immediately, western Buddhism in New Kadampa Tradition, Rick Jarow’s manifestation work, and the work of Ken Ferlic in RYUC.info. See my prior statement here: https://vijayrnathan.com/personal-statement 

Would you like to conduct the experiment in your life that was mentioned previously in https://vijayrnathan.com/imagine-this? Then read on.

There are no mistakes. And yet there’s a process. If you’d like to manifest in your life, you must relinquish your conventional world view. This lens is holding you back. After many attempts to integrate a manifestation lens into my life as an add on feature to a more conventional world view, I realized I had to reset my entire system to seeing this in the non-duality lens. Non-duality is based on the core teachings on Emptiness in Buddhism. Emptiness recognizes that there is only consciousness and mind is the creator of all phenomena which do not exist inherently from their own side as they appear. Manifestation is different from setting a goal and working towards that goal using planning and to-do lists and relying on windows of opportunity. Manifestation work is a reorientation of your mind to the non-duality POV. 

Right now, in conventional thinking you are scrolling on your phone, sitting at your desk at your computer, or other places acting as an independent operator in a physical environment. This is only partially true according to conventional understandings. Ultimately, you are a mind perceiving reality experiencing the ripening of your past actions and filling in the slots of your preconceived beliefs. Why did you come across this page? It was not random. It was not the algorithm. It was your past patterns that brought you here. It appears to you as a repetition of what you’ve seen in the past. And what is possible for you in the present. It can become only what you think is possible. If it’s not possible that this is a revelation and the threshold that will bring you where you need to be then it’s not. But if you believe it is possible then it can be. If you already believed it was possible then it is if you chose to accept it as true. This is the non-dual point of view.

What you believe is what you have believed in the immediate and extended past. There are many chances for us to gradually or suddenly change our orientation in what is known as a major pivot in life. In these pivots we can retain an anchor in what we know to be true and give up or sacrifice some conventional views that are not true. You can offer the idea that others create your problems as a sacrifice. You can offer that you create your problems as a sacrifice. Now accept there are no problems. Just like in improvisational comedy it’s all a farce really, a joke, that keeps building up. OMG. I can’t believe how silly and stupid people can be! OMG I can’t believe how annoying and frustrating reality can be! Everything can be taken very personally or as a illustration of the absurdity of the world. Making sense of the world using the non-dual point of view allows you to make sense of the world according to your own inner sense of knowing. The best practice is to make it funny. For as Oscar Wilde once said, “If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.”

If you retain the POV that your ego self and your higher self have merged into one after a pivot point where you can now accept that you manifested your life up to that point you can then brace yourself against the most severe trauma by protecting yourself from repeating patterns and after determining your new course, dedicate this path to seeing the best in all things. Sometimes you need to reset and start again. That' happens but if you do need to do that, storytell the hell out of your process. They will inform you as you reboot your intention to manifest your life from here on out. Starting from now. Or a point in future. 

The clean point at which you decide all this is a mere appearance to mind. And I’m setting a clear intention to go where I need to go, do what I need to do. If you experiment with this idea, know that everything that happens after you begin you co-created. And attuning your instrument to the vibrations of your energy will help you to minimize any dangers or even aggravations. Just look at the comedy of the whole situation and how those around you mean well but do not always say or do what reflects their highest self. So just accept that things will be messy and you will not see it at first but if you continue to amplify the flow around you and accept that you don’t know, while bringing with you the top of your intelligence of what you do know and get into your body around your inner sense of knowing. Well, you’re off to the races.

So I invite you to try this out for yourself and seek a consultation if you’d like more guidance. Thank you for listening and it’s your own belief in yourself and your patterns which brought you here. You’ve got some good karma behind you so good job on being here and being you.

If you want more on the mistakes made in this process I was inspired by this antedocte around WD40 given by Ken Ferlic.

As a collective, historically speaking, we have come to an understanding from various treads in society that “no human is an island” and we are “trapped” in the gaze of others whose scrutiny defines us. From childhood we are told who we are and are given hoops to jump through to achieve the rewards and punishments given by others on our progress. We come to reflect and internalize the views and pathology of those around us. 

It is clear we are defined by those whose company we keep. And if they deem it so, only then will we be happy. Yet some understand that our own personal happiness is only one part of a larger puzzle. What about all those who suffer? How can I personally be happy if those around me are not synchronized to this feeling? This leads many to retreat into what we call “the bubble” of their own creation. Reliance on the algorithm to curate our experiences online, and a more esoteric version to curate our IRL experiences, according to the laws of attraction. 

But growth does not happen in safety zones. So our higher self must call into our field of awareness opportunities that will challenge our norms and common place understandings. How do we navigate this without encountering the natural resistances of the mind that doesn’t want to “eat my veggies” or do the pushups that are required to build endurance and strength? And yet we sit here wanting the results of  years of effort without putting in that effort. The magic is it can happen in a snap. By aligning our personal ego and our higher self in one clear intention that follows from all our previous choices, we can commune with the Universe and see all outwards events that happen after this pivot point to be of the dreamlike nature of ultimate reality. Conventional understandings tell us hell is something “bad” and to “avoid” but nonjudgemental awareness informs us it is something to be moved through, a natural part of a larger process.

What do events mean outside of their natural flow and surroundings? Nothing. So if we change the flow all events will naturally line up with the current we exist in. Trust the current, trust the flow, trust the understanding, and submerge into your own sense of knowing. When we fall in love the sense of danger no longer exists. We are willing to do anything to seduce the beloved who can do anything and we will romanticize it as part of their lovely nature. Or at least, that’s the formula. Drawing from our libido to achieve lasting happiness and meaningful living is the key for human beings. Broadening our sense of connection to all living beings, is the ultimate imaginative challenge. 

How do we navigate the gaze of others? We must invert the gaze and focus on how it reveals to us our own true nature and from this information point we can be empowered to forge true bonds that will take us to where we want to go. It may not be flattering to know our true nature, but that information is essential to building what we need to build. Keep neutral and impartial when receiving this information. The key to Hell is stagnation, not flow, and if we continue to move through these states of mind, I firmly can testify we will find ourselves on the path and engaged in the work we need to do. The experience of doing a push up might not be considered pleasant in certain views, and certain mindsets, but to the avid gym rat it is a pleasure to build the strength they covet.  

We will then call into our life the support we need and the input we require to progress. Then the experiences we will have will serve us. If we think this is possible, if we believe it to be true, if we continue to hold this focus. It transforms into a game of keeping the bucket of water on top of our head without spilling a drop. That kind of focus, that level of determination is one that can be cultivated. There is no where that you are not. Wherever you go there you are. And so those you call into your life, those who offer you the feedback and orientation to your surroundings can only serve you. And you can offer to serve them. Do not go about trying to save others. View them as already saved. Then go about your business, with an open invitation to other fellow travelers and adventurers to join you on your mighty quest to gather the needed evidence and treasures that will support you on your journey through life. Godspeed fellow traveler! May your journey be the quick path and may you find yourself where you actually are today.

The experience of “love” is often said to be the answer. But what was the question? The experience of love is a soothing antidote to suffering. We experience impulses, anxiety, depression, anger. To soothe this discomfort we accept ourselves as we are. We can extend that feeling to others. To love someone else requires that we model by loving ourselves. Yet, the idea of protection, of protecting someone else from their experience of this same experience is the element being addressed in this essay. If our beloved experiences discomfort, various destructive impulses, anxiety, depression, or anger, to tell them you love them is to assure them you hold the answer to their experience. 

Rather we should encourage people to love themselves so that they themselves become the source of their own salvation. Assuring them they have all the answers is not helpful either. They do not consciously know the answers. And to tell them they do have the answers is to contradict the facts that are available to them. As we explored in this series of statements, there is the ego, the conscious persona, and the higher self, or divine nature of each individual. Connecting or allowing for communication between the two is the key to avoiding an oppressive edge to the love we offer. 

We may know what has worked for us and historical records and evidence based practices point towards best approaches to solving or making progress on various challenges in the human experience. Encouraging people to problem solve is only one element of the human experience. First and foremost, one must truly see the circumstances and situation they are in. To look at evidence based practices and case studies requires we see parallels but also requires we see how our situation differs from the examples given. In relationship there is a tendency to protect people from their experience. Often we want to “win over” people by showing them our knowledge, demonstrating our experience and conveying the lessons or wisdom we hold.

In all relationships from parents to lovers and everything in between, we navigate the tendency to “coo” to the other, to seduce them into our understanding and seeing of the environment. A parent may coo to their baby so they will respond and activate their communication with the parent. We raise their awareness to their feeding needs or caring needs by this communication. In this way we provide for what we know they need. Even in courtship we may coo at the mate to demonstrate we can meet their needs for affection. The courtship and maintenance of a relationship  requires we tune into the needs of the beloved as much as we do with our own needs. Each providing a service to the other in an exchange of energy.

This is the model we can work with to understand the variations on this formula in our lives. What gives us insight into our experience? How does insight serve us? While we can “bless this mess” and accept we are experimenting with the reality around us. We want assurance that we can and will succeed. There are no guarantees. No one could have told the viral stars of the internet twenty years ago how to land a viral video. Why this video or that video lands with people is difficult to predict. So success can feel like a lottery. Only some people make the narrow goal of attaining authentic living in our society. Others spend their days pretending to be normal and going along with the herd until they die. What made their life worth living? Whatever it was we all chose to be here and we choose life. To choose otherwise is to endure a true conflict or splitting of our mind.

For that reason love is not oppression but liberation. The dedication of loyalty and fidelity is the crux of this experience. Otherwise it is a con job that we are offering when we say we “love” someone else or ourselves. If we do not offer ourselves full faithfulness to our prior choice to live and loyalty to our goals set at our conception, we will see life as an arduous and difficult process. But it can be easy, it can be empowering, and it can be full of joy. Trust is the key to joyful living. We do not require permission from an outside source to flex our love. It is a human right. It is not a threat to anyone’s independence. However, it is a dance that requires us to acknowledge however much progress we’ve made for ourselves we cannot tell or instruct or command others to replicate our own process. They have to find the way for themselves. And trusting we can only inspire people by addressing our own needs and finding sources to comfort and soothe our pains is the way. 

Together we are strong. Together we can survive. The environment conditions us for survival. We are grateful for adverse conditions for they are the building blocks for the path. But it requires our transformative power of alchemy to be enacted. We can do it if we believe in the magic. These are not mere words, they form a spell that we need to perform in our lives and show our miracle powers so that we fulfill out duty assigned to us at birth to show them how it’s done. 

If this inspired you, you are welcome to reach out for a consultation to unlock your creative power and manage the challenges presented in your ongoing process.