Lena Wendth asks,
"We believe we are living the life we chose. But are we? Or are we simply living the life we inherited? The habits, the routines, the definition of success, the constant rush. For years, I never questioned any of it. I simply functioned until one day my body forced me to stop."
"For years I believed I was living the life I had chosen. But after spending nine months in a hospital, I realized I had simply inherited a definition of success that wasn't truly mine. That realization led me to leave everything behind and begin a journey across Africa that has now lasted more than twelve years."
"I slowly stepped away from the life I inherited and started building one that actually felt like my own."
A search on Google tells us that,
You inherit 50% of the DNA from your mother and 50% from your father. This genetic code determines physical traits like eye color and height, and it influences your risk for certain health conditions. Before passing it down, parents' chromosomes mix randomly, meaning siblings get different combinations.
Agathiyar, in his memo to us regarding the Body (Udal), Breath (Uyir), and Soul (Atma), revealed the following.
The Pindam, made of the elements derived from the Pancha Maha Bhutam in a specific proportion, takes a form that begins to reside in the womb. The five elements are taken from each parent's body to form the zygote and shape the body of the embryo, fetus, and child. If the proportions are compromised, complications appear in the child.
One portion of earth from the female and three portions from the male; Four portions of water from the female and three from the male; Five portions of fire from the female and six from the male; Eight portions of air from the female and two from the male; and finally one portion of Ether from the female and eight from the male go towards making a healthy constitution.
If the soul is said to monitor this under the watchful eyes of Lord Brahma, the Karma of the individual and ancestors further determines our placement in families and nations conducive for us to experience what we came to learn. The planets later govern us, affecting the individual and his generation to come.
Besides inheriting our parents' DNA, which carries the genetic code and risk factors for health, we either live through their times of troubles and sufferings too, turn over trash looking for a silver spoon, or live a life of pleasure having been born with a silver spoon. Our parents, grandparents, and ancestors, who are a part of us, then live the life we do later. Similarly, we inherit the beliefs and faith we received from our parents and through the religious institutions. Coming to the spiritual masters, we inherit their ways and thoughts. But I was bent on making changes in the template adhered to, as in traditional Siddha Puja, after watching the Siddhas themselves come to carry them out at my home, Agathiyar Vanam Malaysia (AVM) back then. Mentioning this to the head of an ashram, asking him to simplify the rituals after he took over from his deceased master, he asked me how he could possibly drop the 300-year-old practices traditionally carried out. When I asked Lord Muruga, who asked me to build him a temple too in 2018, after Agathiyar asked for one in 2002, he surprised me by saying that I shall do it differently, when he replied in the Nadi to my thoughts and questions that arose in me, asking how many more temples he wants and needs. Ramalinga Adigal, in building the Satya Gnana Sabai, indeed did it differently too. But after his departure, we understand that people stepped in and changed things.
I guess I too, like Lena Wendth says, "I slowly stepped away from the life I inherited and started building one that actually felt like my own", I have stepped away from inheriting tradition. This does not come as a surprise now, since Agathiyar, in revealing my past birth in my very first Nadi reading, said that I had angered the elders when born as a Nambuthiri priest in Kerala; I went against tradition and changed things and carried their curses into this life.
Speaking about her purpose, Lena Wendth says, "And for the longest time, I thought my purpose was to change the world. For years I believed my purpose was to change the world. It sounds naive phrase, but I generally believed it."
She said it well, about our wants that keep changing over time. She says,
"When I was younger, I never wanted just one thing. One day I wanted to become a vet. The next day I was fascinated by the horse police. Then crime psychology."
"I thought I had found my calling. I wanted to become a war correspondent. I believed that if people could only see what was really happening, they would wake up. But becoming a journalist taught me something I'd never expected. Just because a story is told doesn't mean the world changes. Often the only thing that changes is the number of people watching. And after a while, even the most heartbreaking stories become yesterday's news. People carry fear, shock, guilt, but very little actually changes."
Then she saw a shift in her.
"When I discovered Eckhart Tolle, he speaks about two purposes: an outer purpose and an inner one. And suddenly life made sense."
"I wanted to heal the world while feeling completely disconnected from myself. I stopped looking outside for a while. And instead I started my own healing journey."
"Then I realized that if people don't change inside, can the world ever heal? My whole understanding of purpose began to fall apart. But suddenly, I wasn't looking for stories that explained the world anymore. I was looking for stories that helped me understand myself."
So too have I found that the many stories shared in this blog helped me understand myself.
When she was "Full of ideas, full of energy, always believing there had to be something more. Different circumstances, the same me. That confused me. I thought it simply meant I still hadn't found my real purpose, that there was another mountain, another achievement. Another version of myself waiting in the future. All those years, I wasn't searching for purpose," she says. "I was asking my purpose to make me feel whole. To finally tell me, you've made it. You are enough now. But no purpose in the world can do that."
Today she says, "Every journey, every encounter, every ordinary day teaches me less about certainty and more about presence."
She adds another gem, saying, "I don't think life is asking us to understand everything. Maybe it's simply asking us to stay open, to trust. Purpose quietly found me. Not as one big mission, but as a way of living."
If she thought the purpose was to change the world, and she believed it, so too would I and my wife have believed. If I had not negated and let go and not accepted them but instead taken them up further to greater heights, it could and might possibly change things and people's lives. But Agathiyar had me shove aside all that he had me take up.
Although I do tend to agree with Lena Wendth that, "Just because a story is told, the world does not change" and adds that "The only thing that changes is the number of people watching her videos," or in my case, reading the blog, many a saint has come along and keep coming to tell more stories in the hope that it shall lead us who have strayed away back to the path of truth. A book that I picked up at my college library back then, in my college days, had taught me to say no. Another book, Paramahansa Yogananda's "Autobiography of a Yogi", that was passed on to me by an officer at the office who opted out of the government job to become a monk at Paramahansa Yogananda's Ranchi Ashram in India, made me aware of masters and gurus living amongst us. My writings too have struck the chords of a handful of readers going by their correspondence with me.
Living life to its fullest, there comes a time when we question our purpose in coming here. In letting go and losing our hold on things, when we travel within, sitting in silence and contemplating our being and purpose here, the guru in us, the Soul, is met. It reveals our true purpose. As for me, I have come to just watch now, as my tasks are done and Agathiyar's message has been delivered widely and across. Today Agathiyar had me drop what initially seemed to be my purpose in coming here and has me sit, and while my time, alone, in the moment, with only my memories and thoughts of him, and moments with him. It is both blissful and peaceful. At other times, though, the silence is boring; the boredom fills the emptiness.
So does Lena Wendth write that,
"Everything is already okay. So these days I'm trying to make peace, and every time I manage to come back to that peace for some seconds, life becomes a little quieter, a little lighter. I notice something interesting in that state of peace. There's this calling that appears from time to time. Calling for me to move for the next step. It's like my outer purpose seems to find me while I'm connected with my inner purpose instead of the other way around. I used to ask, "What do I want from life? Now I'm learning to ask life, what do you want from me?" I have no idea where life would take me next. And to be honest, I have no problem with that because for years I thought finding my purpose would finally bring me peace. Today I deeply believe that practicing peace is my deepest purpose. And maybe if I keep returning there again and again, my outer purpose will quietly keep finding me too."
"But our outer purpose can never replace our inner one. Because everything we build will one day disappear. Everything eventually disappears: the films, the books, this YouTube channel, my work, my body, everything in the outer world changes. And strangely, I don't find that depressing anymore. I find it freeing because if all of that can disappear, then maybe it was never who I truly was. So I ask myself: if I let go of my work, my achievements, possessions, my appearance, my past, my opinions, what remains is quietness, a deep feeling of being. And from here I don't need to become anyone."
This coincidentally was told to me by Balamurugan during our telephone conversation yesterday afternoon. He asked me why I wanted to become another Ramalinga Adigal or, for that matter, another person. He had earlier told me to remain as Shanmugam Avadaiyappa.