Remover of Obstacles (What I learned in India)

As I work to heal and return to myself, I teach and support people to remove the obstacles to discovering that happiness comes from within.True freedom is encountered through this knowledge.  Final mastery of life is based on this simple principal.  As we lose our attachments, as we surrender our aversions, as we transcend the ego and return to the source at the core, all we find is joy.  This is indeed a process, a practice, an ongoing exploration and discovery. All other pursuits lose their meaning in the face of this basic undertaking.We come into life in an evolutionary process. As our lives become more complex, there are more thoughts, more ideas, more goals, more objectives, more needs, more responsibilities, more duties, and we become more scattered, more diverse, more fractured. In our parlance we believe this process to support more life, more joy.But we are mistaken. We are shattered, in a beautiful way, like light through a prism into rainbow, but we are not whole.The true journey begins when we give up our evolution and begin to devolve.  This is the journey back to ourselves, to simplicity and oneness.The obstacles we face are the shattered rainbow of ourselves. This is the basic wound. As we were separated from ourselves, and as our lives unfolded, we kept shattering, forgetting more and more who we were.Devolving means returning to oneself. Each time we heal part of the shattering a wholeness returns, truly a devolution into wholeness.As we become more whole, we experience more joy for that is who we really are. Every healing piecing back together brings a burst of joy, of connection. Every time we encounter a broken shard, we feel the grief, sadness, even anger or shame, the loss of ourselves.  With courage we step back in to heal another shard and the joy returns.  Everything that supports us in this process brings us closer to ourselves and the discovery that happiness comes from inside. Then we are free to fully engage in life without fear.Once we understand, we realize there is no other pursuit worth following that does not support us in this process.  One obstacle at a time we repair ourselves in the journey back to joy in our hearts, which we all once knew and all carry the imprint of, the deep memory of, otherwise we would not all carry the deep awareness of the lack of it.Great thanks to Archarya (Dr. K.L. Shankaranarayana Jois) and Kristin Laak for showing me a clearer view of the source.