REPOST: #42 Acharya Shunya: Finding the Sovereign Self

How can we find authentic freedom, everlasting joy, and unshakable sovereignty? In this episode, Acharya Shunya shares the seven stages of falling through desire from consciousness to unconsciousness to discover our true nature and improve our health. Acharya Shunya is the first female leader in her 2,000 year Vedic lineage from India. Her insight is profound and under the heel of her gentle, poetic tone, she crushes the Ego that keeps us isolated and alone to hand us our larger Self. This is the process we all walk through over the course of our lives as we search for connection and continually must remember that the connection we seek is to our Self. By finding the Self, "the nightmare is over and you have awakened". 

We may romanticize spirituality as something that happens away from families and work and the daily life, but Acharya Shunya breaks these assumptions. We enlighten right where we are, up in the night with children, sick ones and elders. We don't need any particular thing in our external life to be one way or another. The battle for our spirit exists in finding our way to come correct to every breath, while we grocery shop and stand in lines and take out the trash and pay bills. "Find the Himalaya within you." 

This householder spirituality was part of the Vedic tradition from thousands of years ago. In fact, she shares how the Vedas were written in part by 27 Rishikas (women seers). The Vedas are older than Hinduism and note the equality of power held by women and men, the widely-noted presence of divinity in the 'male body, female body or mixed body'; divinity is present in all life, in all faiths and religions and cultures. "When we sleep, we all return to that one common womb."

Acharya Shunya's website: https://www.acharyashunya.com/

Acharya Shunya's book, Sovereign Self: Claim Your Inner Joy and Freedom with the Empowering Wisdom of the Vedas, Upanishads, and Bhagavad Gita: https://bookshop.org/books/sovereign-self-claim-your-inner-joy-and-freedom-with-the-empowering-wisdom-of-the-vedas-upanishads-and-bhagavad-gita/9781683645818