I arrived to South India a few days ago and it feels great to be here, my spiritual home, the motherland of yoga and meditation, INDIA.

I have been coming to India since the year 2000 so by now it feels very much like home to me. I remember the sacred mountain Arunachala,  (the oldest mountain on earth) and where we live here in India told me the 3rd time I climbed up the mountain, that this was my home. At first I was not crazy about the idea of India being my home but now, 8 years later, this is truly my spiritual home. Having spent most of my life traveling, to me home is wherever I lay down my head. But there is something different about India, something deeper, richer and older then just a place where I lay my head at night.

As a foreigner here in India, I feel like I have some kind of ancient agreement (along with thousands of others), to help usher this country into the new world.

India helps one listen to their inner world. Sometimes it is so crazy here on the outside with honking horns, countless beggars, thousands of vehicles from bull carts, to family motorcycles to Mercedes Benz all lined up together to run the same light, that you can’t help but feel your inner stillness and hear your inner voice. Because I think that is something we have lost in the west. We are so busy on our smart phones that we not only do not listen to one another but we don’t even know how to listen to that voice that is within all of us.

Let me explain it in another way. We are as much a part of nature as a tree, a blade of grass and a deer because the food we eat turns into our bodies. The air we breathe are the same molecules that Jesus breathed. Physics proves that we are all connected and all one. But how do we experience this?

Take a look at water. Water is affected by gravity and gathers in pools of indentations and not on mounds. Water does not run upstream but always down. How many times a day do you feel like you are swimming upstream. Water could never do that because of gravity. Well you have your own inner gravity, your own inner voice and inner knowingness that is just like gravity.

Nature doesn’t argue about what seed gets to grow where or who’s leaves are brights or prettier. Nature just is. We are nature but we argue with ourselves, we argue with people we love and most of the time we are so busy worrying about what other people think, that we can’t hear or won’t listen to our inner gravitational pull. Deepak Chopra calls it spontaneous correct action, Buddha called it right action. Jesus calls itlove thy neighbor as thyself and do unto others. Jesus didn’t say love thy neighbor unless he is muslim or a different religion.

Your job in this world is to enlighten you. For you to learn how to listen and move with your own inner gravitation pull. Your inner gravity. The gurus in India all say that it is more important for you to sit in meditation then it is to feed 1,000 people or find homes for hundreds of dogs. Now don’t get me wrong, we help others when we can and when it is put in front of us to serve, we do serve. However, what I see with many people is that they are so caught up in others that they ignore themselves. This was a painful lesson for me when I closed my first yoga studio. We helped many people but it was at the expense of my own inner peace and happiness. These days I help out of a place of fullness and peace and not out of a need to help, it is out of fullness that I help and not out of emptiness. What are your motivations?

Until you have no fear, anxiety, jealousy, anger or worry within you, your job is to heal you. Because what you think goes out into the world and perpetuates the same. So if you are peaceful, you perpetuate peace. What are your perpetuating thoughts and emotions?

One of the best ways to feel better about ourselves or to cure depression is to help another living being. However, your main job is to help yourself.