Letter of Gratitude from the Himalayas

“Thank you. Thank you for your kind, gentle, and beautiful voice. For sharing your insights and wisdom in such simple and profound ways. For dedicating your time and life to help so many seekers.”

My Dearest Gangaji,

I hope this message finds you, as well as your family, friends and loved ones healthy, happy, safe, and sound. I have no idea the state of the world, as I've been living in silence and solitude for 18 months in a small mud hut at 4k meters in the Himalayas, without any toilet, electricity, or running water. (I will have to walk 2km to get network in order to send this!) I know you don't normally read emails, but I'm sending this anyway in hopes that it'll reach you. I'm not looking for a response, just wanted to thank you.

My name is Robin, I'm an Indian American living in Mumbai since 2010, when I started Kranti, an NGO that empowers girls from Mumbai's red light areas to become agents of social change. We work with 25 girls and women, ages 15-25, who are survivors of trafficking and daughters of sex workers. Along with therapy, yoga and meditation being a big part of our lives, we also use theater and travel as tools for both social and inner change.

Several Krantikaris are now studying in the US and Europe as well as India's top universities and boarding schools, pursing degrees ranging from psychology and sociology to Yoga and Buddhism. All the Krantikaris who have taken jobs work with animals, orphans, prisoners, sex workers, or special needs children. (No, I didn't force them!!)

The reason I'm writing is because, in short, your books have been one of my only companions and an absolute lifesaver on this mountain. In 2019 I was diagnosed with burnout and was forced to take time away from Kranti. (The video below shows the beauty, joy, and successes of our work quite well, but no video can capture the days I've spent negotiating with traffickers, or the nights spent in jail being beaten by the police, or the week when a Kranti girl ran away and the police called me to look at every dead body of a teenage girl that turned up in Mumbai.)

Leaving the girls was of course the biggest heartbreak of my life, especially having lived with them for a decade. But I knew deep inside that this was, as we say in Hindi, God's beckoning or calling.

Just one week after I went offline, I had a glimpse of...call it awakening, union, samadhi. And I naively thought that what I had been seeking for so long, was around the corner. But it never returned, and I've spent more than a year now banging my head against the (stone) wall, crying more tears than all the snow and monsoons combined, and analyzing all potential options for suicide.

Sometimes I spend the morning screaming on my knees, and by evening, I'm lifted into total ecstasy. Some days I wake saying, "I'll wait for You until my last breath," and by nighttime I'm giving God new ultimatums and suicide deadlines. In short, I've gone absolutely crazy!

Sometimes the only bright part of the day has been reading your books or listening to your podcasts which I have on my phone. And I wanted to write and tell you that they have been absolutely life saving, often in the darkest of times. They've helped me tremendously, albeit temporarily, to look beyond my "story" of being incapable, unworthy, etc.

Thank you. Thank you for your kind, gentle, and beautiful voice. For sharing your insights and wisdom in such simple and profound ways. For dedicating your time and life to help so many seekers. Your work in prisons truly touched my heart...I've spent time in jail as an activist both in the US and India, for my work on LGBTQIA rights and sex workers' rights.

Your childhood and life "story" also resonated deeply, as I grew up with immigrant parents, thankfully sober, but both suffering from severe mental health issues and extreme domestic violence. Needless to say, it's been quite a journey, not just in the mountains, but over years of therapy, to move from anger and resentment to forgiveness and gratitude.

Thank you for being such an instrumental part of that journey. I just wanted you to know how far your books, podcasts, and teachings are reaching without you realizing it. I know they're not "yours," but thank you for being the instrument.

I just wanted to write and give you an idea of just how many people your work is reaching, in the craziest, smallest corners of the world. But, lastly, a personal request. If you have the time, I'd truly appreciate it if you'd take a few minutes to pray for me. I know the "story" is already written, and there is nothing "I" can do about it, but the knowing never makes the longing any easier.

Thank you once again. May God's grace, love and blessings not just be with you always, but may you feel yourself swimming and living in it every single moment of every single day.

With endless love and gratitude,

Robin

Here is Robin with a little more information about Kranti.

How Real Is Fear?

Jeff Maurer first met Gangaji in a church in Arlington, Virginia in 1997. It was a meeting that had a profound impact on a life that had been dictated to by fear.

Not long after meeting Gangaji, Jeff attended his first retreat at The Omega Institute in New York State. It was there that he first spoke to Gangaji, and also became a volunteer when he offered to host video satsang at his home.

Almost a decade later, a woman who had been attending the Gangaji video group in his home invited him to offer meditation sessions to prisoners in the Montgomery County Jail. Undeterred by his underlying fear, Jeff said yes! Until Covid-19 put a stop to those visits, Jeff had been attending the jail regularly for over 13 years, offering Gangaji videos, "Freedom Inside" issues, guided meditations and sessions to men and women. He is looking forward to returning to jail soon! You can listen to a sample of Jeff's guided meditation below.

Guided Meditation

Falling Into Yourself: Self-Inquiry with Gangaji
A Seven-Part Online Course

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You Don't Need To Fix Yourself To Know True Happiness

In this video, You Don't Have to Fix Yourself to Know True Happiness, Gangaji is inviting you to stop imagining what it is about yourself that you need to get fixed, or get rid of. Stop imagining how you need to be deeper, or awake a hundred percent of the time. All of that is within the realm of imagining a problem or imagining that there are certain benchmark measurements.

"Problems do appear in people's lives and there are measurements. But I am inviting you to engage in an experiment: to just immediately being at home."

Ending Patterns of Unnecessary Suffering

Sign up below for Gangaji's free course, Ending Patterns of Unnecessary Suffering. This is a three-part, multimedia course containing audio, video, written elements, and interactive inquiries.

Gangaji's Invitation

There may come a moment in your life when you have searched long enough for home, you have worked endlessly to fix yourself, and you still remain wanting and wondering. Peace and fulfillment are not in sight. Some might experience this as disillusionment. But perhaps this is the perfect opportunity, the perfect moment for you to stop, to call off the search and discover peace in the last place you thought to look—deep within yourself.

Gangaji offers to ordinary people leading ordinary lives a unique and transformative invitation to discover what has always been whole and fulfilled, what has always been here and is, in truth, who you already are. Her life is dedicated to serving and supporting your discovery and your deepening in lasting peace and fulfillment.

The Opportunity of Retreat

The Opportunity of Retreat. Attending a Silent Residential Retreat with Gangaji offers you the opportunity to step away from your daily life, stop any stories you may be telling yourself, and stop trying to fix or change anything about yourself. In a deeply supportive environment, it is a time to rest, and bring your full attention to diving deeply into the depths of your being.

With Self-Inquiry, Gangaji will guide and support you throughout the retreat in turning your attention away from your thoughts and into the direct experience of what is always here - peace itself, consciousness itself. In the willingness to retreat from your search for just one moment, you can profoundly realize you are already home, already free. This is the secret that lies at the heart of retreat.

In Daily Meetings with Gangaji, your questions and reports are welcome and essential to the vitality of the retreat. Our time together may also include meditation, chanting and video presentations.

How to End Unnecessary Suffering

Unnecessary Suffering remains as long as there is limited identification with yourself as just a particular body, or a particular history, or the latest evaluation. When your attention shifts to yourself as the consciousness that everything is appearing and disappearing in, your unnecessarily suffering ends. Not your pain, not the pain that arises from compassion or the pain that arises from physical or emotional hurt. When unnecessary suffering ends, there is a resting place. When you know where home is, at any moment, in any circumstance, regardless of emotions or state of mind, in an instant you can return home.

In this video, Gangaji expresses her support for the end of your unnecessary suffering. "If you haven’t discovered that home is already present in you at every moment, my function is to point your attention there. If you have discovered it, my function is to challenge any concept you may have about it."