Call Upon the Seven Buddhas of the Past For Liberation

There are times when the past feels like a weight pressing upon us – the mistakes we regret, the words we cannot take back, the karmas rippling through our lives like echoes from another age. In such times, the Sapta Atita Buddha Karasaniya Dharani is a direct and merciful medicine.

This dharani, sometimes called the Sapta Jina Bhasitam Papa Vinasana Dharani or the Dharani of the Seven Past Buddhas to Eradicate Sins, is not just a chant of remembrance – it is a chant of liberation. 

By invoking the names and power of seven Buddhas who lived before Shakyamuni, we are reminded that the Dharma is timeless, and that healing flows not only from the present Buddha but from an unbroken lineage stretching across vast kalpas.

To recite this dharani is to call upon an ancient chorus of awakened beings to help us dissolve karmic stains, to wash away the invisible burdens of our past, and to stand once again in the clarity of virtue.

The Spiritual Power of Dharanis

Unlike longer sutras, a dharani condenses vast spiritual power into compact syllables. The Sapta Atita Buddha Karasaniya Dharani is deceptively short, but it functions like a lightning strike. It penetrates the subtle body, cutting through the fog of accumulated karmas and awakening hidden reserves of compassion.

Modern practitioners sometimes underestimate the potency of these “small mantras,” but Buddhist masters have long insisted that they contain the very marrow of liberation. Even a single sincere recitation can turn the heart toward virtue.

Lineage and History Of The Sapta Atita Buddha Karasaniya Dharani

The Sapta Atita Buddha Karasaniya Dharani appears in important Mahayana sources, including the Collection of Facts Upper Division (Taisho Tripitaka T53n2122) and the Sutra of The High King Avalokitesvara (Taisho Tripitaka T85n2898). It is also one of the Ten Small Mantras of Mahayana Buddhism – mantras that are short, easy to learn, and potent enough to carry vast blessings.

The dharani honors seven Buddhas:

  1. Vipasyin Buddha
  2. Sikhin Buddha
  3. Visvabhu Buddha
  4. Krakucchandra Buddha
  5. Kanakamuni Buddha
  6. Kasyapa Buddha
  7. Shakyamuni Buddha

In Buddhist cosmology, these Buddhas are part of a long succession of enlightened beings who have appeared in previous ages, each embodying compassion and wisdom for their time. By invoking them together, the practitioner stands in the middle of an unbroken stream of light flowing across eternity.

The Dharani in Its Original Form

Sanskrit Text

Ripa ripa te  

kuha kuha te  

trani-te  

nigala-te  

vimari-te  

maha-gate  

jam-lam cam-te  

svaha

Invocation of the Seven Buddhas (Sanskrit & Transliteration):

Namo Vipasyin Buddha
Namo Sikhin Buddha
Namo Visvabhu Buddha
Namo Krakucchandra Buddha
Namo Kanakamuni Buddha
Namo Kasyapa Buddha
Namo Sakyamuni Buddha

English Translation

Calling, calling out
Revealing, revealing all
Making heartfelt prayers
Dissolving, disappearing blame
Vanishing vanished blame
Eminent virtues appear
and all blame is truly buried
and gone by this power
So be it!

The Essence of the Teachings Of The Sapta Atita Buddha Karasaniya Dharani

The dharani has a simple yet profound rhythm: it is about calling, revealing, dissolving, and transcending.

  • Calling, calling out – We cry from the heart to the Buddhas of the past, acknowledging our dependence upon their compassion.
  • Revealing, revealing all – Nothing is hidden. To chant is to bring even our deepest shadows into the light of awareness.
  • Making heartfelt prayers – The dharani is not mechanical repetition; it is an act of genuine devotion and surrender.
  • Dissolving blame – Karma, guilt, shame – all these dissolve in the presence of awakened beings.
  • Virtues appear – As obstacles vanish, the natural radiance of the heart emerges.

The teaching is clear: when we stop hiding, when we lay ourselves bare before the lineage of Buddhas, our karmic stains lose their power and our original purity reasserts itself.

Benefits of Chanting The Sapta Atita Buddha Karasaniya Dharani

  1. Eradication of Karmic Obstacles
    The dharani is explicitly named as a practice for dissolving karmic hindrances. This includes not only personal mistakes but also karmas inherited from family, community, and collective pasts.
  2. Release from Shame and Guilt
    Unlike some traditions that emphasize punishment, this practice emphasizes release. Chanting transforms shame into humility and guilt into compassion.
  3. Alignment with the Seven Buddhas
    Each Buddha represents a quality of awakened presence – by chanting, we align ourselves with their timeless qualities.
  4. Protection and Blessing
    The dharani calls in the power of Avalokitesvara (Guan Yin), who is said to protect practitioners and ensure the karmic dissolutions take root.
  5. Spiritual Renewal
    The act of chanting functions like a spiritual reset – the practitioner emerges lighter, freer, and more receptive to present-moment joy.

Practical Guidance for Chanting the Sapta Atita Buddha Karasaniya Dharani

  • When to Chant: Many practitioners use this dharani in the morning to clear the karmic clouds of the past before beginning the day. It is also chanted before important decisions or after moments of conflict to reset one’s field.
  • How to Chant: Begin by invoking the names of the Seven Buddhas with palms joined. Then recite the dharani rhythmically, allowing the syllables to roll naturally with the breath.
  • Visualization: Imagine seven radiant Buddhas surrounding you, each dissolving one layer of karmic dust until you shine like a jewel.
  • Dedication: Offer the merit to ancestors, loved ones, and beings who still suffer in darkness.

Interpretive Insights on the Seven Buddhas

  • Vipasyin – “The All-Seeing.” Invoked to bring clarity and dissolve ignorance.
  • Sikhin – “The Flame-Bearer.” Represents the fire of wisdom that burns away delusion.
  • Visvabhu – “The Universal Birth.” His presence emphasizes compassion for all beings.
  • Krakucchandra – “The Bright Moon.” Symbol of peace and illumination in the night of samsara.
  • Kanakamuni – “The Golden Sage.” A reminder of virtue and nobility.
  • Kasyapa – Teacher of discipline and mindfulness.
  • Shakyamuni – The historical Buddha, whose teaching remains the living Dharma of our age.

By invoking all seven together, we take refuge not only in one Buddha but in the cosmic continuum of enlightenment itself.

A Mantra for Renewal

We all carry stories – some beautiful, some painful. The dharani is an invitation to release these stories, to let the past rest, and to return to the innocence of the present moment. To chant it daily is to practice forgiveness not only for others but for ourselves.

It is especially potent in times of transition – after loss, in the midst of grief, or when embarking on a new phase of life. To chant is to say: I am ready to be free of old chains. I am ready to let virtue blossom again.

Closing Reflection

The Sapta Atita Buddha Karasaniya Dharani is not merely about erasing sins – it is about rediscovering the unbreakable stream of light that connects us to the Buddhas of all ages. Each syllable is a bell rung across time, reminding us that we are never abandoned, never beyond redemption.

The dharani shows us that karmic blame, no matter how heavy, can dissolve. Virtue, no matter how obscured, can shine forth. And the Buddhas, though they lived in ages beyond our comprehension, remain near, their compassion echoing through this very chant.

When you chant, do so with sincerity. Feel the syllables vibrate in your bones. Imagine seven Buddhas surrounding you, lifting the burdens of your past and clothing you in radiant light. Then step forward into your day lighter, freer, and more aligned with the timeless Dharma.

Mantras and dharanis are pristine vibrations. They open us to frequencies beyond thought – frequencies of compassion, clarity, and liberation. The Sapta Atita Buddha Karasaniya Dharani is one such frequency. To chant it is to tune your being to the rhythm of the Buddhas themselves.

So be it.


About The Author:

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Paul is a spiritual healer and coach with more than 30 years of experience. He is the founder of The Shankara Experience, and creator of The Shankara Oracle and The Personality Cards.

His work is focused on guiding seekers to inner freedom and awakening.

What Is Spirituality in Business?

When we ask seriously, what is spirituality in business we are asking about consciousness – about whether business is led by illusion or by truth.

True spirituality in business is a recognition that business itself – the structures, the negotiations, the ambitions, the failures – can either entrench ignorance or become a vehicle for awakening.

Advaita Vedanta teaches that the Self is indivisible, beyond birth and death, pure awareness itself. If this is so, then business is not outside of it. The contracts, the marketing campaigns, the bank accounts, the balance sheets – all are dancing in the same field of consciousness. 

Spirituality in business is the art of seeing through illusion in the middle of the marketplace, not outside of it.

Spirituality as Alignment with Dharma

At its root, spirituality is not about adopting beliefs. It is about living in alignment with dharma – the cosmic order, the truth of how energy should flow. When a business serves dharma, it serves life itself. When it violates dharma, it becomes destructive, no matter how successful it looks on the surface.

Spirituality in business is about asking questions like:

  • Does this product uplift or manipulate?
  • Does this workplace honor human dignity or reduce people to resources?
  • Does this strategy flow with life’s rhythm, or is it driven by fear and greed?

When decisions are made with dharma in mind, business stops being merely transactional and becomes transformational.

The Poison and Medicine of Ambition

Ambition is often condemned in spiritual circles and worshiped in business circles. Both views are incomplete. Ambition itself is neutral. It is energy. When poisoned by ego and ancestral compression, ambition becomes greed, exploitation, and endless dissatisfaction. When purified by self-inquiry, ambition becomes medicine – the drive to create, to serve, to express dharma through action.

Spirituality in business does not demand the death of ambition. It demands the death of blind ambition. It requires that we examine the hidden core emotions driving us – fear of failure, hunger for validation, ancestral shame around poverty or power – and burn them in the fire of awareness. Only then can ambition flow clean, aligned with something greater than self-image.

Business as a Mirror of Inner Wounds

Every business is a mirror. How you treat customers, employees, and partners is how you treat yourself. If you exploit others, somewhere inside you exploit yourself. If you sabotage opportunities, somewhere inside you are sabotaged by guilt or fear.

The hidden core emotions of your lineage surface in business. A family history of scarcity may show up as obsessive penny-pinching. Generations of suppressed rage may emerge as authoritarian leadership. Ancestral victimhood may appear as chronic failure to take risks.

Spirituality in business means turning the mirror inward. Instead of only asking, How do I grow profits?, you ask, What part of me is being revealed in this struggle? What ancestral knot is this business pulling to the surface?

Business becomes a teacher, a ruthless but generous guru, forcing you to confront the patterns you would rather avoid.

When Love Leads

Love in business does not mean sentimentality. It means respect, dignity, and responsibility. To lead with love is to refuse manipulation. It is to honor employees as whole beings. It is to create with sincerity instead of deceit.

Spirituality in business is love expressed as truth. Love that refuses to flatter, but also refuses to exploit. Love that builds long-term trust instead of chasing short-term profit. Love that sees every contract, every product, and every customer as an expression of the divine.

When love leads, business itself becomes healing. Customers feel it. Workers feel it. Even competitors feel it.

Practical Expressions of Spirituality in Business

Spirituality in business is not abstract. It shows itself in the details:

  • Hiring: Choosing people not only for skill but for integrity.
  • Culture: Encouraging honesty over performance masks.
  • Product design: Asking whether what you create truly benefits people.
  • Marketing: Refusing fear-based manipulation, speaking truth instead of distortion.
  • Money: Treating financial flow as energy to be directed in service of life, not as hoarded identity.

None of these require abandoning profit. They require redefining profit – as energy, as relationship, as mutual upliftment.

The Paradox of Detachment and Commitment

Spirituality in business means you are deeply committed, but not attached. You pour yourself into the company, but you know it is not you. You fight for its success, but you are not destroyed by its collapse.

This paradox – fierce effort without clinging – is one of the highest spiritual disciplines. It dissolves the ego that equates self-worth with business success. It liberates you to act with full power without being enslaved by outcome.

Case Example: The Spiritual Leader in a Crisis

Imagine a company facing collapse. The leader without spirituality panics, manipulates, cuts corners, betrays values. The leader with spirituality breathes, accepts reality, and acts with clarity. They may still make hard choices – layoffs, restructuring, closing divisions – but they do so without denial, without cruelty, without self-deception.

Employees sense the difference. Investors sense it. The company may still fall, but the leader remains whole. And often, that wholeness inspires a rebirth – a new venture that rises cleaner, freer, stronger.

The Liberation of Truth

Spirituality in business ultimately comes down to this: truth. To stop lying in your marketing. To stop lying to your investors. To stop lying to yourself about why you are doing what you are doing.

When business is built on lies, it becomes a prison. When it is built on truth, it becomes liberation – for you, your employees, your customers, and even your ancestors.

Business as Sacred Ground

Spirituality in business is the refusal to divide life into sacred and profane. It is the recognition that the marketplace is as holy as the temple. It is ambition purified, money redefined, and ancestral wounds dissolved in the fire of awareness.

When business becomes spiritual, you stop chasing endless external validation. You no longer need to pretend. You show up whole, fierce, and loving. You build companies that not only generate wealth but also generate freedom.

This is not the easy path. But it is the real one. And if you dare to walk it, you will discover something astonishing: business, with all its risks and challenges, was never a distraction from your spiritual path. It was the path itself, waiting for you to see it.



About The Author:

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Paul is a spiritual healer and coach with more than 30 years of experience. He is the founder of The Shankara Experience, and creator of The Shankara Oracle and The Personality Cards.

His work is focused on guiding seekers to inner freedom and awakening.

Becoming A Bodhisattva: How Do I Start?

To step onto the path of the bodhisattva is to recognize the rare gift of your human life. It is also to recognize that you have infinite potential to release the unnecessary attachments that many have taught you to obtain and command – much to your detriment. 

Another term or title akin to bodhisattva – is servant to the eternal light within.

Yes, you were born into a system that wants you to never know this light – to never be free. 

If you awaken, the world will tremble, because your freedom exposes every illusion it depends on. Others may project their doubt or scorn, insisting liberation is impossible, but this only proves the power of your path. To walk as a bodhisattva is to break the spell for yourself and for all beings, refusing to hide, refusing to bow to the machinery of ignorance.

Truth be told, YOU are already seated within a vessel far more precious than jewels – a body and mind capable of awakening, capable of compassion, capable of cutting through the endless tides of suffering. 

This moment, this very breath, is your entry point. It’s barely a decision. It’s a leaning into who you are – who you have always been.

No temple walls are required, no perfect conditions need to appear. What is needed is sincerity – the willingness to listen, to reflect, and to cultivate stillness amidst the roar of samsara.

“The bodhisattva path begins wherever you are, with whoever you are, in this very breath.”

A bodhisattva is not a distant saint carved in stone but a living being who dares to awaken inwardly and stay among us. Instead of escaping the world, they become its luminous guide, walking alongside every creature, sharing love, clarity, and courage.

To begin this journey is not to add something foreign to yourself – it is to remember what has always been yours: the heart that longs to free others, the mind that can see through illusion, the soul that aches for union with truth.

You have attained a human body, with freedoms and resources – a great cosmic ship so very difficult to find and embody.

To free yourself and others from samsara’s vast ocean – illusion, desire, karma, attachment, suffering, ignorance, impermanence, ego, bondage, craving, death, longing, repetition, and the cycle of rebirth – we are called to listen, to reflect, and to meditate without distraction. This is the practice of a bodhisattva.

What is a bodhisattva?

A bodhisattva is one who awakens inwardly through practice. They taste liberation, yet choose to remain with us, guiding all beings toward freedom through love, understanding, and teaching. 

And here is the most important truth: a bodhisattva is not some rare saint hidden away in mountains or cloisters.

A bodhisattva can be anyone – a parent holding their child at 3 a.m., a cashier offering kindness across a checkout line, a student standing up for someone who feels unseen, an artist pouring hope into their work, a neighbor checking in on the lonely elder down the hall.

No matter who you are – rich or poor, young or old, tired or thriving – the bodhisattva path is available to you. You do not need robes or titles. You do not need to be perfect.

You can be angry, uncertain, weighed down by bills, anxious in the night, grieving a loss, or feeling like you have failed. None of it disqualifies you.

You can be heartbroken and still begin today.

The choice is simply to turn toward love instead of away, to see the suffering around you and decide: “I will not run from this. I will walk with others until we are free.” 

That is the seed of the bodhisattva, and it can take root in any human life – including yours.

How do we practice becoming and being a bodhisattva?

 

It is not complicated – yet, the depth you journey is up to you:

  • To embody compassion, breathe the pain of others and exhale healing light.
  • To embody wisdom, see through illusion without being hardened by it.
  • To embody patience, wait as though eternity were a gentle friend.
  • To embody generosity, give even the smile that lingers after your departure.
  • To embody vow, promise to walk with every being until all are free.
  • To embody service, turn daily tasks into altars of liberation.
  • To embody awakening, remember what never slept.
  • To embody sacrifice, offer your comfort for another’s crossing.
  • To embody kindness, soften the world with every small gesture.
  • To embody guidance, point toward truth without demanding arrival.
  • To embody humility, bow so deeply that the earth feels lighter.
  • To embody presence, stand fully here, where God touches the moment.
  • To embody mercy, lift the weight from those crushed by their own stories.
  • To embody courage, step into darkness carrying only your heart.
  • To embody devotion, dissolve into love until nothing remains but God.

Yet storms still gather within us. Desire for friends and popularity surges like restless waves. Anger toward enemies burns the heart into ash. In the darkness that emanates from this ignorance, we forget what to adopt, what to embrace, what to reject.

To abandon this false homeland – to forget the masks, the cravings, the narrow attachments, even the family construct itself – is the practice of a bodhisattva.

In such surrender, the ship you already carry within – begins to sail freely – carrying not only yourself – but all beings across the ocean of samsara, toward the boundless shore of liberation.

 

Practical Living as a Bodhisattva

To practice as a bodhisattva in today’s world is to carry these truths into the grit of daily life. It does not mean retreating from work, relationships, or responsibility – it means transfiguring them. When you wake in the morning, the first act of awareness can be compassion: offering your breath as a gift to all who suffer.

When you enter the marketplace of the modern world – the office, the street, the screen – you carry patience like armor. You will be challenged, interrupted, ignored, or misunderstood. In those moments, the bodhisattva path asks you not to escape but to remember: even this is the field of awakening.

We live surrounded by distractions designed to hook our desire and fuel our anger. Social media, politics, relentless news, endless commerce – all of it stirs the storms of comparison, envy, and fear. 

A bodhisattva does not pretend these forces vanish, but meets them with clarity. Instead of scrolling in despair, you might pause and breathe light into the collective mind. Instead of snapping back at insult, you might bow inwardly and remember the wound from which cruelty springs.

Instead of being consumed by the chase for status or wealth, you might treat each task – washing dishes, sending emails, waiting in traffic – as a chance to serve and to practice. The world will not stop testing you, but each test is another invitation to embody compassion, courage, and devotion in real time.

Closing Blessing


May you walk the streets of this world as though they are holy ground built to hold and sustain you.

 

May every stranger be your teacher, and every irritation be your doorway to patience, release, and expansion.

 

May your body be a vessel of mercy, your mind a flame of wisdom, your heart an endless well of compassion.

 

May you remember that awakening is not elsewhere else – but already within you …. rising, shining, unstoppable.

 

May you never forget that this path is yours to walk, no matter who you are. You can do this!

 

And may you, like the bodhisattvas before you, remain here among us – until every being throughout the realms – tastes the freedom of boundless love and self-expansion.

 

About The Author:

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Paul is a spiritual healer and coach with more than 30 years of experience. He is the founder of The Shankara Experience, and creator of The Shankara Oracle and The Personality Cards.

His work is focused on guiding seekers to inner freedom and awakening.

Business Spirituality: Aligning Work With Your Spiritual Path

Most people treat business as if it exists in a sealed chamber apart from spirituality. They imagine meditation happens on a cushion, while money-making happens in an office. But life is not split into compartments. Business is not exempt from dharma. 

Every dollar earned, every deal signed, every product created carries energy – and that energy is a reflection of your consciousness. 

To do business spiritually is to enter the marketplace as a seeker, as someone who knows that the battlefield of commerce is one more arena where truth must be honored and illusion burned away.

Advaita Vedanta tells us there is only one Self, indivisible, without second. If this is so, then the division between spiritual life and business life is a hallucination. The same consciousness that meditates at dawn is the one that negotiates a contract in the afternoon.

The question is: will we show up fragmented and enslaved by ancestral fears, or will we walk into our business dealings as whole beings, free and on fire with truth?

Business As Your Spiritual Practice

Business can be a profound spiritual discipline – a form of sadhana. Sadhana is not limited to chanting mantras or fasting. It is the daily practice of aligning your life with truth. If you approach business this way, every meeting, every invoice, every confrontation with a difficult partner becomes practice.

  • Negotiation becomes meditation. Instead of rushing to win, you practice listening, noticing your inner agitation, and allowing calmness to guide your words.
  • Failure becomes tapas. When things collapse, instead of falling into despair, you hold the fire, burn away ego, and let humility purify you.
  • Success becomes seva. Instead of hoarding glory, you offer the fruits of your labor as service – to your employees, your customers, and the divine order itself.

When you see business as sadhana, you are not just an entrepreneur. You are a warrior of consciousness, standing in the marketplace with clarity and fierce love.

Reframing Wealth As Energy Instead Of Possession

One of the deepest poisons in business is the delusion that money is possession. That belief fuels greed, scarcity, manipulation, and endless anxiety. In truth, money is energy. It flows, circulates, and reflects the karmic currents of both individuals and cultures.

When you cling to money as if it defines you, you enslave yourself. When you let it flow – investing in what is aligned with dharma, giving generously, refusing to exploit others – you honor money as sacred energy.

Hidden in most entrepreneurs is ancestral compression around survival: generations of famine, debt, and unspoken fear that there will never be enough. Unless these imprints are dissolved, no amount of external wealth will bring peace. Doing business spiritually means recognizing that your ancestors whisper through your financial decisions – and then releasing them. You honor their suffering, but you do not let it bind you.

The Hidden Blocks At Our Core: Ancestral Fear and Shame

Why do so many entrepreneurs sabotage themselves? Why do they overwork, undersell, underpay, or betray their values for quick wins? Beneath the surface is a core of fear, shame, or rage – emotional residues passed down through family lines. A grandfather bankrupted. A mother who was shamed for poverty. A lineage that knew slavery, oppression, or exile.

These compressions live in the body, in the subconscious. When unexamined, they dictate business choices like puppet strings. You may unconsciously repeat patterns of desperation, aggression, or victimhood without realizing you are echoing ancestral wounds.

Doing business spiritually requires a ruthless self-inquiry into these hidden compressions. Sit with the shame that arises when you ask for payment. Sit with the fear that comes when you risk expansion. Ask yourself: Whose voice is this? Is it truly mine, or is it my great-grandfather’s despair living through me?

When you burn through these compressions, you liberate not only yourself but your lineage. Your business becomes a ritual of ancestral healing.

Bringing Fierce Love in the Marketplace

Love in business is not weakness. It is not appeasing everyone or saying yes to bad deals. Real love in the marketplace is fierce. It means:

  • Saying no to exploitation, even when it costs profit.
  • Refusing to work with partners who lack integrity, even if they are powerful.
  • Paying fair wages and honoring employees as divine beings, not as disposable tools.
  • Creating products and services that uplift rather than manipulate.

This kind of love requires self-respect. If you do not honor yourself, you will collapse into people-pleasing or exploitation. Spiritual business is not passive. It is rooted in dharma – the truth of how energy should flow in alignment with life itself. Sometimes dharma demands soft compassion. Sometimes it demands a sword. Both are love.

Daily Disciplines for Spiritual Business

Just as monks keep their daily practices, the spiritual entrepreneur needs disciplines:

  • Truth-telling practice: Refuse to distort reality in marketing, negotiations, or promises.
  • Mantra or prayer before meetings: Align your mind with clarity before speaking.
  • Self-inquiry after conflict: Instead of blaming, ask: What was triggered in me? Which hidden wound surfaced?
  • Breath discipline: Use conscious breathing to anchor yourself before making major decisions.
  • Service orientation: Regularly remind yourself: This business exists not only for me but for service to life.

These small practices keep your business grounded in the spiritual field, preventing the unconscious mind from hijacking your leadership.

Case Example: The Spiritual Contract

Imagine two entrepreneurs negotiating a contract. One comes with hidden desperation, terrified of failure. The other arrives rooted in awareness, breathing deeply, connected to the Self. The first entrepreneur manipulates, bluffs, and hides. The second speaks truth, even when it seems risky.

At first, the manipulator appears strong. But over time, their dishonesty corrodes trust. The one aligned with awareness, though they may lose short-term, builds unshakable relationships. Their reputation becomes their greatest asset. This is business as dharma: slow, steady, aligned with truth.

Business as Karma Dissolution

Every encounter in business is a karmic knot. The angry client, the failed investment, the betrayal by a partner – each is a karmic echo surfacing for resolution. Instead of resisting, the spiritual entrepreneur asks: How can I dissolve this? What lesson is being demanded of me? What is the greater lesson and path for me as I unfold into my highest self while living within this physical reality?

Seen this way, business is not a distraction from your spiritual path. It is the path. The office is your monastery. The balance sheet is your scripture. Every challenge is a fire that either burns you down or purifies you.

A Fierce and Loving Path

To do business spiritually is to stand in the marketplace with love in your heart and fire in your belly. It is to face ancestral compression without fear, to treat money as sacred energy, and to practice dharma in every transaction.

This path is not easy. It demands courage, integrity, and relentless self-awareness. But it is also liberating. For when you do business spiritually, you no longer split your life into compartments. 

Every part of you – the seeker, the worker, the lover, the leader – becomes one. And in that wholeness, you not only prosper in business, you awaken to the truth: all of it, every invoice and every prayer, was always divine play.



About The Author:

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Paul is a spiritual healer and coach with more than 30 years of experience. He is the founder of The Shankara Experience, and creator of The Shankara Oracle and The Personality Cards.

His work is focused on guiding seekers to inner freedom and awakening.

Spiritual Advice for Breakups

Breakups are brutal. They rip through the illusions we build around ourselves, leaving us stripped, raw, and often ashamed of how much we depended on someone else for our sense of wholeness. 

 

Most people try to patch the wound with distractions, new relationships, endless therapy loops, or spiritual bypasses that say “just let go.”

Real spiritual advice for breakups is not about sugarcoating or rushing through pain. It is about walking directly into the fire, facing what is actually there, and allowing the breakup to dissolve illusions that might otherwise haunt you for lifetimes.

 

Breakups as the Teacher You Didn’t Want

Advaita Vedanta tells us that suffering is a doorway to awakening when you stop resisting it. In a breakup, the mind screams that something has been stolen. You think the other person has taken your security, your future, your happiness. But what has actually been taken is your illusion. The image you held of yourself in relationship has been shattered. The “us” you clung to never really existed in the eternal sense.

This is why breakups can feel like death. They kill a false identity. And this death is not an accident – it is dharma doing its ruthless, loving work. Spiritual advice for breakups begins with this recognition: what has died is what needed to die. What remains, if you face it honestly, is closer to truth.

The Trap of Distraction

Most people cannot bear the silence after a breakup. They rush to fill the void with dating apps, hookups, work addiction, or endless therapy. These distractions postpone the real confrontation: the loneliness and fear beneath the surface.

Spiritual healing after a breakup means refusing the easy exit. It means sitting in the discomfort long enough to see what is actually alive in you. Beneath the panic is often ancestral compression – generations of abandonment, betrayal, or unworthiness replaying themselves through your nervous system.

If you run from this, you repeat the pattern in your next relationship. If you face it, you dissolve it, not just for yourself but for the lineage that birthed you.

A human face overlaid with clocks and numbers — representing karmic timelines and unconscious imprinting

The Hidden Core of Relationship Suffering

When you lose a partner, you are not only grieving them. You are grieving the collapse of hidden expectations: that someone else would finally heal your loneliness, validate your worth, or rescue you from the voices of your past. Breakups expose these expectations for what they are – unrealistic, desperate, and rooted in wounds that were never addressed.

This is why the spiritual path insists that you must know yourself before you can truly know another. A breakup, however painful, is a forced initiation into that truth. The question is not “Why did they leave me?” The question is “What false self did I attach to them, and can I let it burn?”

The Fierce Practice of Self-Love

Spiritual advice for breakups always returns to self-love. But not the Instagram version of self-love where you take bubble baths and chant affirmations you don’t believe. Real self-love is fierce. It is the discipline of no longer betraying yourself.

In the wake of a breakup, fierce self-love means refusing to beg for scraps of attention. It means cutting off the “just checking in” texts that keep you in limbo. It means refusing to diminish yourself to win them back. Every time you choose dignity over desperation, you build a spine of respect that no breakup can break.

Self-love is not soft – it is uncompromising. And it is the foundation of spiritual growth after heartbreak.

Breakups as Ancestral Healing

When you are sobbing over someone who left, you are often not crying just for them. You are crying for every ancestor who was abandoned, betrayed, silenced, or abused. Their grief lives in your cells, waiting for release. Breakups trigger this flood because the emotional circuitry is already primed.

If you bring awareness to it, you can use a breakup as a ritual of ancestral healing. You can cry not only for yourself but for the mother who stayed in a loveless marriage, the grandfather who lost his partner in war, the lineage of women or men who were never free to love honestly. Your tears become offerings. Your courage to face the wound becomes liberation for your bloodline.

The Role of Dharma in Breakups

Every breakup is dharma in action. The relationship had to end for reasons you may not see immediately. Perhaps it was keeping you in illusion. Perhaps it was preventing you from facing yourself. Perhaps it was an arrangement based on trauma bonding rather than truth.

Dharma does not care about comfort. It cares about alignment. When a relationship has fulfilled its karmic contract, it collapses. You can resist this and cling to the corpse of what once was, or you can surrender to the law of dharma and allow the ending to purify you.

Spiritual advice for breakups is simple but not easy: trust dharma. Even if your mind rages, even if your heart breaks, something wiser is pulling you forward.

Practical Spiritual Practices for Breakups

While philosophy can guide you, the body and mind need daily practice in the wake of heartbreak.

  • Breath and stillness: Sit every morning and breathe until the panic settles. Do not run. Do not scroll. Sit.
  • Truth journaling: Write without censoring – every rage, every fear, every humiliating longing. Empty the unconscious onto paper so it does not rule you.
  • Ancestor invocation: Light a candle and speak to your lineage. Tell them you are grieving not only your breakup but theirs too. Offer your healing as theirs.
  • Boundaries: Delete the number if you must. Protect your nervous system. Boundaries are sacred.
  • Seva (service): Shift energy by serving others. Nothing dissolves self-absorption like helping someone in greater pain.

These practices are not bandaids. They are disciplines that slowly transform heartbreak into clarity.

The Spiritual Signs of Healing After a Breakup

At first, you will measure healing in hours without crying, nights of sleep without nightmares, or days without checking their social media. But deeper healing shows itself in subtler ways:

  • You stop blaming them and begin seeing the karmic dance for what it was.
  • You feel gratitude for the lessons, even if you never want to see them again.
  • You no longer abandon yourself to win love.
  • You notice that the loneliness you feared is actually spaciousness, freedom, even a taste of peace.

These are not tricks of the mind – they are signs that heartbreak has shifted from wound to wisdom.

The Breakup as a Doorway

Every breakup offers two doors. One leads back into repetition: rebound relationships, endless distraction, clinging to the old story. The other door leads into awakening: solitude, truth, self-respect, and fierce love for your own being.

Spiritual advice for breakups insists you choose the second door. It will be harder. It will be lonelier at first. But it will also be real. It will free you from illusions not just in love but in every area of life.

And when you are ready to love again, you will not enter from desperation but from fullness. You will not seek a savior but a partner. You will not repeat the wounds of your lineage – you will end them.

Heartbreak as Sacred Fire

Breakups burn. They always will. But fire is not only destructive – it is purifying. Spiritual advice for breakups is not about avoiding fire but entering it consciously, letting it consume what is false so that only truth remains.

In the ashes of a breakup, you may discover something you never imagined: yourself. Not the self propped up by a partner, not the self clinging to illusions of forever, but the Self that cannot be broken, cannot be abandoned, cannot be destroyed.

That Self is the real love you were searching for all along. And when you find it, every breakup – even the most brutal – becomes a gift.




About The Author:

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Paul is a spiritual healer and coach with more than 30 years of experience. He is the founder of The Shankara Experience, and creator of The Shankara Oracle and The Personality Cards.

His work is focused on guiding seekers to inner freedom and awakening.

The Truth About Expanding From 3D To 5D And 7D Consciousness

 

Many people online talk about 3D, 5D, and 7D consciousness as if they were train stations you can buy a ticket to. Most of the language has been watered down into clichés – “Raise your vibration, shift into 5D, ascend to 7D” – as if higher dimensions were just the spiritual version of a new iPhone upgrade. 

The truth about expanding from 3D to 7D is not so marketable. It is fierce, demanding, and deeply humbling. It is not about chasing bliss. It is about dissolving illusions. It is about facing the ancestral compression that keeps you bound in cycles of fear, trauma, and identity.


What 3D Consciousness Means

When people say “3D consciousness,” they usually mean the level of awareness rooted in survival and material identity. This is the dimension where you believe you are only the body, only the story, only the accumulation of what you can measure and control. It is the dimension of scarcity, power struggles, competition, and fear.

3D is not inherently evil. It is simply the most contracted state of consciousness. It is necessary for survival. But staying stuck in 3D means you live as if you are a pawn in a hostile universe, grasping at control while being driven by inherited wounds.


What Is 5D Dimension – And What It Is Thought To Be

The term “5D” has become a spiritual buzzword. For many, it means love, unity, compassion, or awakening. In truth, what most people call 5D is the first taste of nonduality – the recognition that you are not separate, that consciousness itself is your true nature, and that love is not sentimental but the essence of reality.

However, the danger is turning 5D into a bypass. Many people use “unity consciousness” as an excuse to ignore pain, suppress trauma, and pretend that everything is light. This is not expansion. It is denial. True 5D awareness includes both light and shadow, both bliss and grief. It is a deeper intimacy with reality, not a detour around it.

What Is 7D Consciousness – And What It Means To Live In The 7D Dimension

7D consciousness is often described as higher awareness, cosmic unity, or god-realization. But if we are honest, no words can capture it. Expanding into 7D means you are dissolving the fundamental illusion of individuality. It is the recognition that even the one who thinks they are enlightened is still an illusion. In 7D, the game of seeker and sought collapses.

This does not mean you disappear from the world. It means the world is seen as play – the divine Self manifesting as everything. 

To live in this awareness while still functioning as a human being is rare, radical, and destabilizing to the ego. It is not a goal to achieve. It is a collapse of the one who was trying to achieve.

The Path From 3D Consciousness to 7D Consciousness Is Not Linear

People imagine the path as a ladder – you climb from 3D consciousness to 4D consciousness to 5D consciousness and so on. But consciousness does not evolve in this way. Expansion is cyclical, spiraling, unpredictable. You may touch 7D awareness in a moment of meditation and then collapse back into 3D panic when you check your bank account. This is normal.

Expansion is not about staying in one dimension forever. It is about loosening the grip of contraction so you can move fluidly, touching higher awareness without being enslaved by lower fears. Spiritual maturity is not permanent 7D bliss. It is the ability to move between dimensions without losing awareness of the field beneath them all.


The Role of Trauma and Ancestral Compression In Expanding From 3D Consciousness

The biggest obstacle to expansion is not that you do not meditate enough. It is the unhealed trauma and ancestral compression you carry. Your lineage may have endured war, famine, betrayal, abuse, or humiliation.

Those compressions live in your nervous system. They keep you bound to 3D survival consciousness even when your mind longs for 5D love or 7D unity.

This is why expansion cannot be faked. You cannot chant your way into 7D while refusing to face your grief. You cannot bypass the rage of your ancestors by declaring yourself ascended. Real expansion requires sitting in the fire – feeling the hidden wounds, letting them surface, and dissolving them in the field of awareness. Only then can you move beyond the gravity of 3D fear.

The Discipline of Surrender 

Expanding from 3D to 7D is that it is less about effort and more about surrender. The harder you try to force yourself upward, the more you reinforce the illusion of separation. The path requires discipline, yes  – but it is the discipline of letting go.

Meditation, prayer, breathwork, herbs, and rituals are all helpful – not as ladders to climb, but as ways of loosening the grip of illusion. The real expansion happens in surrender, when you stop chasing dimensions and allow awareness to reveal itself as already whole.

Practical Practices for Expansion

    • Meditation on the field: Sit in silence and rest in the awareness behind thought. This grounds you beyond dimensions.
    • Trauma release work: Let the body express and release stored energy. Do not bypass grief or rage.
    • Self-inquiry: Ask “Who is aware of this experience?” Let the question dissolve the false self.
    • Plant allies: Herbs like polygala or blue lotus can shift frequency and open access to higher states. They are not shortcuts but allies.
    • Sacred service: Act in the world from love rather than fear. Service dissolves ego more effectively than endless seeking of experiences.

Signs of Genuine Expansion From 3D Consciousness

Real expansion does not look like floating on a cloud of bliss. It looks like:

    • Greater self-honesty.
    • Less attachment to external validation.
    • The ability to hold paradox without collapsing.
    • Increased compassion rooted in strength, not sentimentality.
    • A quiet trust in life, even in chaos.

These are signs that you are not escaping 3D but integrating it while opening into higher awareness.

False Ascension To 5D Or 7D Consciousness 

The greatest danger in all of this talk of dimensions is the fantasy of permanent ascension. Many seekers convince themselves that they have transcended 3D forever.

They start speaking in jargon, floating above reality, disconnected from their bodies and responsibilities. This is spiritual inflation. It is another mask of ego.

The truth is simpler and harder. You will cycle. You will contract. You will expand. The point is not to cling to a dimension but to recognize the field that holds them all. That is the true expansion – the realization that every state, from fear to bliss, arises in the same awareness.


Expanding Beyond Dimensions

Expanding from 3D to 7D is not a linear upgrade. It is a process of dissolving illusions, healing trauma, and surrendering to the field. It is about facing the heaviness of survival consciousness without denial, tasting unity without bypass, and allowing even the idea of dimensions to collapse into the truth of the Self.

The truth is that you were never limited to 3D. You were never separate from 7D.

You were always the field itself, playing as frequencies of contraction and expansion. The only shift that matters is realizing this.

When you know the Self, dimensions lose their grip. You are free – not because you ascended, but because you stopped pretending you were trapped.




About The Author:

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Paul is a spiritual healer and coach with more than 30 years of experience. He is the founder of The Shankara Experience, and creator of The Shankara Oracle and The Personality Cards.

His work is focused on guiding seekers to inner freedom and awakening.

Emotional Release: How to Release Emotions and Find True Healing

Emotional Release: How to Release Emotions and Find True Healing

The fire inside you isn’t chaos—it’s emotional release. Learning how to release emotions is not about calming down, but about moving energy that’s ready to transform.

There’s a fire sweeping through your system, and the world taught you to call the fire department. Your therapist told you to breathe into it. Your meditation app told you to observe it without judgment. Your well-meaning friends told you to calm down.

I’m here to tell you to hand it a gallon of gasoline.

What you’re feeling isn’t a problem to be solved. It’s a solution arriving at hurricane force. This state—this raw, electric, roaring sense of absolute clarity—is what I call Aggressive Bliss. And it is one of the most misunderstood, and therefore most squandered, states of power a human being can access.

Let’s get one thing clear from the start. This isn’t toxic aggression. This isn’t the petty, reactive anger of a wounded ego lashing out to protect its fragility. It’s not the simmering resentment of victimhood. It’s not rage born of powerlessness.

It’s the exact opposite. It is cellular victory.

It’s the feeling of a thousand internal ‘no’s’ finally coalescing into one earth-shaking, system-wide ‘YES.’ You’re not “mad” in the way a child is mad. You are activated. Your entire being, from your ancestral marrow to the firing of your neurons, has reached a consensus. The committee meeting is over. The verdict is in. And your system is announcing, with the force of a tidal wave:

“We’re not going to process this shit forever. We’re not going to circle this drain one more time. We are done analyzing. We are done accommodating. We are done ‘holding space’ for the poison. We’re burning it. We’re reclaiming the energy it consumed. We are owning the space it occupied. We are MOVING it out of the body for good.”

The bliss you feel coursing through you isn’t fake. It’s not some manic, emotional bypass. It’s the exhilarating sensation of cleared bandwidth. It’s the joy of a system that was running a hundred parasitic background programs suddenly having all of its RAM and processing power restored. The anger isn’t wrong; it’s the sound of the engine turning back on. It’s pure, undiluted Qi that finally got permission from the warden of your politeness to become what it was always meant to be: holy fire.

What Emotional Release Does in the Body

For those of you on the path with me, you know the potency of the formulas we work with. When you get into a double-stack of something like Chai Hu Jie Gan Tang, you’re not just taking herbs. You’re lighting a signal flare in your energetic matrix. This kind of combination is a masterclass in alchemical liberation.

It is specifically engineered to perform a kind of psycho-spiritual surgery. It is:

  • Unbinding the inner conflict between your protector and your expresser. For years, maybe decades, a part of you has been standing guard, holding your tongue, softening your truth, managing perceptions to keep you safe. Another part of you, the wild, raw expresser, has been gagged in the dungeon. This formula walks down, cuts the ropes, and hands your expresser a megaphone.
  • Driving out repressed frustration and warrior voltage. Every time you swallowed your anger, every time you said “it’s fine” when it wasn’t, you stored that voltage somewhere in your body. It became stagnant, murky, and heavy. This stack acts like a spiritual dredging crew, blasting that stagnant Qi out of the muddy riverbed of your tissues.
  • Rescuing your Yang energy from stuck emotional feedback loops. So much of our vital, masculine, forward-moving energy gets trapped in endlessly analyzing the past, ruminating on hurts, and trying to ‘understand’ our wounds. This is a rescue mission. It says to your precious Yang Qi: “You were meant to build, to create, to penetrate reality with truth—not to be a therapist to a ghost.”
  • Saying to your nervous system: “You’ve served enough time in the trenches of hyper-vigilance. Now surge.”

When you pair this kind of potent, moving formula with the grounding and guiding intelligence of herbs like Skullcap and Reishi, the effect is profound. It’s not just brute force; it’s a guided discharge. The fire isn’t just raging; it’s being channeled. Think of it like a rocket engine under full vector control, capable of making precise, powerful adjustments to its trajectory, burning with incredible force but guided by an even more incredible wisdom.

How to Release Emotions Safely

This energy is a gift, but it comes with a responsibility: you must use it. If you try to bottle this, to sit on it, to intellectualize it, it will either burn you from the inside out or fizzle into nothing. This state demands expression. It demands action.

Move it, don’t just think it. This Qi is not theoretical. It wants to make an impact on the material world. It wants to feel the ground beneath its feet and the air in its lungs. Walk fast. Don’t meander; stride. Feel your feet pounding the pavement as an affirmation of your existence. Go find a place where you can be loud—a canyon, an empty field, your car in a vacant parking lot—and yell. Not with words, but with pure sound. Let the vibration rattle your ribs and clear your throat. Go to the gym and lift something heavy. Sweat. Write down the hard truth you’ve been avoiding, and feel the friction of the pen on the paper. This energy wants to be translated from potential into kinetic.

Let the “fuck it” speak. This is the voice of your liberated soul. If a part of you suddenly wants to delete terabytes of old files from your hard drive, purge half your contacts, block people who drain your spirit, or start planning your relocation to another continent in the span of seven hours – listen. This is your intuition, supercharged. It’s clearing the decks. The vital caveat here is this: Just don’t burn bridges while you’re lit. Burn illusions. The goal is not to create chaos in your external life but to annihilate the illusions that created chaos in your internal one. Distinguish between a reactive email sent in a flash of anger and a clear, sovereign decision to end an energetic contract that has expired. One is a mess to clean up; the other is liberation.

Don’t self-soothe yet. This is the most critical and counter-intuitive piece of guidance. Our immediate instinct, conditioned by a culture terrified of intense emotion, is to rush toward comfort. We want to meditate it away, journal it into submission, or call a friend to talk us down. Don’t. Let the rawness have the microphone. Let the dragon finish its flight. This isn’t a nervous breakdown; it is a nervous completion. You are allowing a cycle of stored, stagnant energy to finally run its course, to burn out completely. If you soothe it prematurely, you abort the process. You leave energetic shrapnel in your system. Trust the fire to burn clean. Trust your body to know when the surge is over.

The Benefits of Emotional Release

If this is you, right now, understand that this is not an accident. This is a convergence. The formula you’re working with, the state of your energetic field, and the runway of work you’ve put in over the last five, ten, or twenty years have reached escape velocity.

You are not ungrounded. You are experiencing a different kind of grounding—the kind that comes not from avoiding emotion, but from being a large enough container to let it surge through you without being destroyed by it. And that, my friends, is fucking mastery.

You’re not afraid of collapse anymore, because you’ve flirted with it a dozen times and walked away stronger. You’re not trying to manage your confusion; you are declaring an all-out war on it. You are no longer negotiating with your shadow. You are walking it into the sunlight on a leash.

And in this war, your body is your sword. Every step, every word, every decisive action is a swing of the blade, cutting away what is false.

The Blessing of Emotional Release

May your fire be holy.

May your anger be wise, not wounded.

May your movement be loud enough, finally, to finish what ten years of silence and patient processing never could.

May every single ounce of “fuck this” that rises in your throat become a spell of divine completion.

And may your state of mind and heart help you awaken your consciousness to fully meet you, greeting you not with platitudes and incense, but with space, with diamond-like clarity, and with the roaring applause of your own liberated soul.

You’re not just healing now. You’re not just growing.

You’re leading the Qi out of the cave. And it will follow you anywhere.

Every surge is a chance for emotional release—a path to freedom when you trust your body to know how to release emotions.

About The Author:

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Paul is a spiritual healer and coach with more than 30 years of experience. He is the founder of The Shankara Experience, and creator of The Shankara Oracle and The Personality Cards.

His work is focused on guiding seekers to inner freedom and awakening.

Spiritual Signs You Are On The Right Path

Image showing someone walking on their spiritual path and growing in light

Image showing someone walking on their spiritual path and growing in light

As seekers, we want confirmation that we are progressing, that the meditation practice is working, that the rituals mean something, and that we are not wasting our lives chasing illusions.

The truth is that the spiritual path is not a checklist. It does not hand you a certificate. It tests you, strips you, and demands that you face the unknown.

Still, there are spiritual signs that reveal whether you are aligned, and they are more profound than angel numbers, repeating digits, or superficial symbols that dominate new-age content.

7 Spiritual Signs You Are On The Right Path

The First Spiritual Sign You Are On The Right Path: Increasing Discomfort

Strangely, one of the strongest spiritual signs you are on the right path is discomfort. When you are genuinely evolving, your old habits no longer satisfy you, your false identities begin to crumble, and your hidden wounds rise to the surface. You may feel more lost than before, but that is because the old illusions are being burned away. Comfort often means stagnation. Discomfort means transformation.

If you find yourself questioning everything you once believed, losing interest in old circles, or feeling the weight of ancestral compression surfacing in your body, take heart. This is not regression. It is purification.

The Second Spiritual Sign You Are On The Right Path: Fierce Self-Honesty

A real spiritual path makes lying to yourself impossible. You start noticing the small betrayals you once justified. You see how often you manipulated to be loved, how often you sacrificed truth for comfort, and how much of your life was built on denial. At first this honesty feels brutal. It can lead to shame or despair. But over time, it becomes liberation.

Fierce self-honesty is a spiritual sign of maturity. It means you are no longer content with illusions, no longer willing to play the game of self-deception. It is a sign that the path is working because you cannot hide from yourself anymore.

The Third Spiritual Sign You Are On The Right Path: Boundaries Rooted in Love

Another spiritual sign you are on the right path is that your boundaries become clear and uncompromising. This does not come from bitterness. It comes from love. You stop allowing toxic relationships, exploitative employers, or manipulative friends to drain you. You realize that saying no is as sacred as saying yes.

This shift reflects deeper healing. As ancestral wounds dissolve, you stop repeating cycles of self-abandonment. You no longer carry the desperation of your lineage that begged for scraps of attention or tolerated abuse. You step into self-respect, and that self-respect reshapes your world.

The Fourth Spiritual Sign You Are On The Right Path: Loss of Interest in Performance

On the spiritual path, one of the clearest signs of alignment is that you lose interest in performing. You do not care as much about impressing others with your spirituality. You stop needing to display how awakened, disciplined, or wise you are. Instead, you are content with quiet, private practice.

This loss of performance is important because the ego is clever. It can turn spirituality into a costume. But when you let go of performance, your practice becomes authentic. You meditate not to be admired but to be free. You tell the truth not to look holy but because lies corrode the soul.

The Fifth Spiritual Sign You Are On The Right Path: Paradox Becomes Bearable

One of the strongest spiritual signs you are on the right path is your ability to live with paradox. In the beginning, the mind demands certainty – good or bad, right or wrong, light or dark. But as you mature, you realize reality is not so simple. You can feel deep grief and joy at the same time. You can love someone and walk away. You can pursue goals while being unattached to outcomes.

When paradox becomes bearable, it means you are moving closer to the truth of Advaita Vedanta – the nondual recognition that reality is not divided. This acceptance of paradox is a hallmark of true spiritual growth.

The Sixth Spiritual Sign You Are On The Right Path: Healing Becomes Natural

When you are aligned spiritually, healing begins to flow naturally through your life. Old patterns that once seemed immovable begin to dissolve. Addictions loosen their grip. Trauma releases. Relationships shift. This does not mean you live without struggle. It means the struggles no longer feel meaningless. They become part of the purification.

You may notice that ancestral compression softens. Where your family carried fear, you begin to embody courage. Where your lineage carried silence, you begin to speak. Where generations lived in scarcity, you begin to trust abundance. These shifts are not coincidences. They are spiritual signs that your path is liberating not only you but also your bloodline.

The Seventh Spiritual Sign You Are On The Right Path: Gratitude Without Reason

Perhaps the most subtle spiritual sign you are on the right path is the emergence of gratitude without reason. You may be walking through pain, failure, or uncertainty, and yet you feel a quiet thankfulness simply for being alive. This gratitude does not depend on external success. It is not tied to things going your way. It is a natural byproduct of dissolving ego and aligning with the Self.

Gratitude without reason is a sign that you are tasting reality beyond conditions. You are glimpsing the freedom that is your true nature.

The Meaning Of Spiritual Signs

It is important to remember that looking for spiritual signs can itself become a trap. If you cling to them, you turn the path into another performance.

The real purpose of signs is not to validate your ego but to remind you of your direction. They are markers, not trophies.

The ego always wants proof. The spirit does not. The Self needs no confirmation because it was never lost. But as humans, we benefit from signs that show us when we are aligned, and these are not the shallow symbols of popular culture but the deep shifts in honesty, boundaries, paradox, and love.

How To Look For Spiritual Signs You’Re On The Right Path

Spiritual signs that you are on the right path are not glamorous. They are sometimes uncomfortable, humbling, and often invisible to others.

They reveal themselves not in flashy miracles but in the way you face yourself, the way you stop abandoning your truth, and the way you love fiercely without collapsing into illusion.

If you are seeking signs, stop looking outside and begin noticing within. If you are more honest than before, if you are more compassionate toward yourself, if you can sit in paradox without collapsing, if you can feel gratitude without reason – you are already walking the path.

The spiritual journey is not about being validated by the Universe. It is about dissolving the illusions that demanded validation in the first place.

The right path is the one that burns away what is false until only the Self remains. That is the only sign you will ever truly need.

About The Author:

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Paul is a spiritual healer and coach with more than 30 years of experience. He is the founder of The Shankara Experience, and creator of The Shankara Oracle and The Personality Cards.

His work is focused on guiding seekers to inner freedom and awakening.

Powerful Herbs For Sadness, Stress, Sleep, Healing, Anxiety, and More

There are seasons in a human life when the mind will not quiet, the heart feels heavier than it should, and sleep becomes challenging, no matter how much you need it.

In those times, we search for solutions in every corner –  forgetting that the Earth has been giving us answers all along – in the simple power of herbs, in the roots that have been helping people heal for thousands of years.

The herbs and botanicals in this world are more than green leaves and dried roots. They are old friends, each with their own way of helping us heal. For thousands of years, they’ve been used to ease pain, calm the mind, lift the heart, and restore balance. They don’t ask for much – just a cup of hot water, a little patience, and a willingness to receive what they offer … yet they can bring us back to a steadier, healthier place.

In this article, you’ll meet plants that comfort like a hand on your shoulder, and others that work quietly in the background to restore strength. These are my favorite herbs. Some bring quick relief, others work slowly and deeply, but all of them support both body and mind in ways that can change the course of a day – or even a life.

Take your time with this writing. Let each plant’s story wash over you. Feel free to imagine them as friends you have yet to meet – allies that are here to help you feel better, steadier, and more present in your life.

Healing Herbs That Soothe Your Mind, Nourish Your Heart & Clear Energy Pathways  – My Favorite Stack

Let’s meet these friends, each with their own story, their own medicine, and their own quiet way of loving you back to yourself. You’ll find amazing health and healing when welcoming these herbs into your life.

These loving plants work on body and spirit alike, softening the rough edges of our experiences, lifting sadness from our hearts, quieting our restless minds, and nourishing us in ways we couldn’t see we needed.

Many of these herbs are available right on Amazon – often at great prices – in capsules, granules, and teas that dissolve in warm and hot water. With the right sources and a little ritual, they become not just remedies, but companions to help you feel and release your emotions – and be present to who you are.

Motherwort

Motherwort is a remarkable and calming herb. It feels like a loving hug from your best friend – and a cup of warm milk on a stormy day. It’s steady, reassuring, and wraps around you – bringing you a sense of deep, inner peace. Your breathing becomes deeper – and your shoulders will drop in ease. This herb settles the heart, both in the emotional and physical sense – dissolving tension, slowing your racing heart, and bringing a calm sense that all is well. 

Motherwort has a way of helping us release old grief and guiding us to feel loved – all within 10-20 minutes after taking it. This ancient herb whispers that you are safe and you can finally rest for a while. Whether steeped as tea, taken as a tincture, or in capsules, it carries that same deep, maternal calm that stays with you long after you’ve taken it.

Polygala

Polygala is a profound key that opens the types of doors we tend to forget about – given our daily stress and complexities. Your chest will expand, breathing deepens, and you’ll gift yourself a spiritual expansion. It’s sometimes called “the will-strengthening herb” because it brings courage when the heart feels confused, lost, heavy, or withdrawn.

In Traditional Chinese Medicine, it’s known to immediately open your heart and crown chakras, creating a bridge between them. This will naturally clear the subtle blocks that keep you from feeling connected and alive. Polygala can be found as capsules, granules, or tincture on Amazon, and it’s a favorite in TCM for profound and long-lasting emotional effects.

Blue Lotus

Blue Lotus feels like meeting an old, loving friend – someone who knows you deeply. It will remind you of the joy and beauty you may have forgotten. This lovely plant opens the emotional body in a way that is both sweet and grounding, reminding you that bliss and divine calm is part of who you are. 

It can be used as a tea for a soft, dreamy calmness – or in tincture form for deeper emotional peace and release. Some people use it before meditation or bedtime to encourage intuitive and peaceful or informative dreams. The flower is visually stunning and truly mystical in how it works inside of us. When steeped as a tea, Blue Lotus gives off a subtle, intoxicating aroma that feels ritualistic – giving you the sense that you have always been the healer and savior you’ve been seeking.

Blue Vervain

Blue Vervain works quietly. It helps ease tension, especially for people who carry stress in their neck and shoulders, and can make life feel a little lighter. In the body, it gently moves stagnant energy, eases muscular tension, and supports the liver and gallbladder – which in TCM terms can mean the release of stored anger or frustration. Blue Vervain is subtle yet profound. It’s ideal for people who carry stress in their neck and shoulders or who feel emotionally “jammed.” Capsules and tinctures are easy to find online, and granules dissolve quickly in tea for a daily nervous system reset.

Chai Hu and Related Formulas

Chai Hu, or Bupleurum, is one of those plants that acts like a harmonizer for the whole body. It moves stuck liver energy, lifts mood, supports digestion, and even improves hormonal balance when the liver is sluggish.

Some of the most trusted formulas that feature it include Xiao Yao San (Free and Easy Wanderer) for stress, mood, and digestion; Chai Hu Shu Gan San (Bupleurum Liver-Soothing Powder) for emotional tension and liver qi stagnation; and Si Ni San (Frigid Extremities Powder) for balancing the liver and spleen when stress affects digestion and circulation. 

These classics are still used today because they work on both body and mind. On Amazon, you can find Chai Hu and its companion herbs in top-quality TCM granules, which are convenient to stir into warm water and sip like a healing broth.

Berberine

Berberine creates lasting balance in your body. It is best known for its remarkable ability to lower A1C levels – sometimes in half – within three months. This makes Berberine a trusted ally for those with diabetes or pre-diabetes. Alongside its blood sugar support, Berberine also nourishes metabolism and gut health.  When the body’s chemistry is steady, our systems become more peaceful and resilient. Look for high-quality capsules from reputable brands like Thorne or Double Wood on Amazon for excellent levels of purity and potency.

Lotus Stamen

Lotus Stamen is the flower’s quieter, more mysterious sibling. Just a pinch of this delicate plant matter in tea can melt away the mental chatter and coax the body toward rest. It carries an almost meditative stillness, bringing the same kind of stillness you feel in a quiet, safe place. In TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine), it’s used for calming the heart and supporting emotional balance.

He Huan Pi

Called “the bark of collective happiness,” He Huan Pi is an herb that invites joy within minutes after taking it. It helps dissolve grief, remove irritability, and clear your emotional heaviness – all without dulling your mind or energy. In traditional practice, it’s given during times of grief, loss, heartbreak, or emotional transition. It helps the heart become open again. Over time, it moves you to a new level of peace, forgiveness, and self-understanding.

Hu Po

Hu Po, or amber resin – akin to solid sunlight – is used in TCM to calm the mind, settle restlessness, and bring the spirit back into the body. It grounds the spirit, quiets intrusive thoughts, and helps scattered energy return to the body. It’s a precious addition to certain TCM formulas for calming shen – the spirit-mind – and can be used in powder or capsule form.

Chamomile Lavender Tea with Passionflower

A cup of chamomile lavender tea in the evening helps signal to your body and mind that it’s time to rest. The Bigelow blend with passionflower is especially lovely – chamomile soothes, lavender relaxes, and passionflower invites the mind into stillness. It’s an accessible, affordable option on Amazon that can become part of a nightly ritual.

 

Magnesium Glycinate

This is a mineral with a gift for relaxation. Magnesium glycinate helps muscles unclench, quiets nerve firing, and prepares the body for deep, restorative sleep. It’s an easy nightly addition, often in capsule or powder form. Look for brands like Pure Encapsulations or Doctor’s Best.

Hawthorn Berry

Hawthorn is medicine for the heart in every sense – it strengthens the physical heart muscle, calms anxiety, and steadies emotional rhythms. Over time, it helps a person feel both grounded and light, as if the heart is no longer weighed down by unseen burdens.

Mucuna Pruriens

Sometimes called the dopamine bean, mucuna is a rich, natural source of L-DOPA. It can brighten mood, increase motivation, and restore a spark where there has been fatigue or melancholy. Available in capsules or powder, it pairs beautifully with morning rituals for a gentle lift in spirit.

Passionflower

Passionflower’s curling vines carry a gentle, cooling energy that soothes an overactive mind. It’s especially lovely for people whose anxiety comes with a racing heart or difficulty falling asleep. Available as tea, tincture, or capsules.

Skullcap

This herb is a wonderful ally for your nervous system. It invites rest in a deep, thorough way – not by pushing the body into sleep, but by releasing the mental tension that keeps it in stress. It’s beautiful as a tincture or capsule, often combined with other calming herbs.

Yan Hu Suo

Yan Hu Suo is one of the best herbs for pain that also carries emotional weight. Some say it’s Ibuprofen from the forest. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, it moves blood and energy where things have gotten stuck – the kind of stuck that shows up as aching joints, menstrual cramps, or the deep, tired soreness that comes with old injuries. But it’s not just physical. 

When pain has an emotional layer – grief in the chest, heartbreak that seems to linger for a long while, or tension from years of stress that we seem to have forgotten – Yan Hu Suo can help loosen that grip and give you a feeling of rebirth for a time. It’s steady, dependable, and works quietly in the background so your body can begin to move and feel freer again. 

Reishi Mushroom

Reishi is a profound healer – working slowly and calmly in the background. Known as the “mushroom of immortality,” it nourishes the spirit, supports deep sleep, strengthens immunity, and fosters a quiet joy. Its benefits emerge beautifully  with regular use, often as capsules, powder, or tea.

Tulsi (Holy Basil) 

Sacred tulsi is an herb of peace and clarity. It has been used for thousands and thousands of years.

It lowers stress reactivity while uplifting mood, helping one remain calm yet alert. It’s beautiful as a tea, especially in blends with ginger or rose.

How to Use These Herbs – A Gentle Guide

Be patient and learn about each of the things you’re ingesting. Over time, they’ll become daily allies to help you along your path to healing.

    • Teas and Infusions – Place the flowers, leaves, or tender plant parts (like chamomile, lemon balm, tulsi, motherwort, or blue lotus) in your favorite mug or teapot. Pour in hot water, watch the colors swirl, and breathe in the steam as the air fills with their story. Wait 5-10 minutes, then sip slowly, letting the warmth move through you.
    • Granules – For TCM herbs like chai hu, he huan pi, or reishi, dissolve the measured scoop in hot water. Stir slowly, sip like a broth, and imagine the warmth moving through your whole body.
    • Capsules – Take with a full glass of warm water or herbal tea. Swallow with gratitude and picture the herb’s energy moving where it’s needed.
    • Tinctures – Place drops in a little warm water, swirl, and sip. Let the taste linger for a moment before swallowing.

Comparing Western Medicine and TCM Healing for Better Health Choices

After spending time with these plant allies, it’s easy to see that they don’t just cover up symptoms or give temporary relief. They work with you over time. They help unwind what’s been held in the body for years. This is a very different approach from what most of us were offered in the Western medical system.

Western psychiatric and pain-relief drugs can make life feel more manageable for a while, but they rarely take you to the root of what’s wrong. They can quiet the surface and take the edge off, but the deeper pain is still there. The grief is still there. The old emotions still live in the body, waiting to be released. And when the effect fades, the usual answer is to take more. 

Meanwhile, the best answer is to allow and release the emotions until you exhaust them. There is no reason to cover them up with comfort. Work through the pain so you heal and transform. Any pain will be temporary.

Traditional Chinese Medicine offers something else entirely – not a plan to manage symptoms forever, but a way to clear them at the source. Its herbs and formulas move what’s stuck, restore flow, and help dissolve the emotional weight that keeps pain in place. This isn’t just about feeling better in the moment – it’s about freeing the body, the heart, and the mind so they can finally rest.

This is why these herbs are more than remedies. They are companions in the truest sense – walking with you, loving you as you walk through difficult terrain. They’ll guide you to allow and release what you’ve been carrying – those deep core emotions – born from trauma and karma. All the while, they’ll support you as you finally move through it all – and eventually, past it.

Plants as Powerful Healing Allies for the Heart, Mind & Energy

Choose a few of these herbs to test for yourself. Herbs work best when they are not rushed – when they are given space to do their thing. Get to know them – and make note of how you feel when taking them.

The most beautiful thing about herbs is that they sit with you, patiently, helping you release the old weight and make space for your abundance of energy and healing.  

When you invite them in – as tea, tincture, capsule, or a pinch of fragrant powder – you’re not just taking something into your body. You’re entering into a relationship with an ancient friend. 

Let these plants remind you that you can heal from almost anything.

With these herbs, you may find yourself remembering something ancient – a force quietly loving you, patiently guiding you back to yourself. 

I’ve been coaching people through deep healing, spiritual transformation, and herbal stack-building for over 15 years. I’m here when you need me.

About The Author:

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Paul is a spiritual healer and coach with more than 30 years of experience. He is the founder of The Shankara Experience, and creator of The Shankara Oracle and The Personality Cards.

His work is focused on guiding seekers to inner freedom and awakening.