Ananta Ripa Ajmera | The Way of The Goddess - Part 1

Srini: Welcome to the Unmistakable Creative. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us.

Ananta Ripa Ajmera: Thank you so much for having me.

Srini: It is my pleasure to have you here. So we had you here back when you had your previous book, and as I was joking with you here, the only real reason I had you back is cause I just wanted to listen to your voice again because it was so soothing the first time.

And I thought, yeah, what a perfect way to spend a Friday afternoon. But all joking aside you have a new book out called Way of the Goddess, which I just finished reading and actually not only answered, but also raised tons of questions for me. So before we get into the book, I wanted to start by asking what I think is a relevant question given the content of the book, and that is what religious or spiritual beliefs were you raised with and how did those end up impacting both your life and where you've ended up?

Ananta Ripa Ajmera: That's a fascinating question. I have actually been reflecting on that very thing recently. I grew up in the Jane religion, which is a subset of the Hindu faith. Buddhism is also a subset of Hinduism as Aism. They all derived from Hinduism as the mother religion I grew up doing. Fasts once a year, we would have a fast where you would actually stop even eating root vegetables because they would be harmful to insects underground.

Not only did we eliminate meat completely, but we would get down to the vegetables that would harm insects. In a nutshell, Jainism is really about nonviolence to a very extreme extent. And I believe that really influenced me growing up to be considerate of how my actions would be affecting others and to really care for others and to be compassionate towards others.

It also instilled in me a really deep value of self control and having control over the senses, which was really an interesting thing to have in. Midwestern town in Ohio growing up without really any other Indian American kids. It was a culture where a lot of people did drink and go out and did things that were very opposite of controlling the senses.

And yet, I believe it was the seeds of jism that were planted in me in childhood that really. Instilled that value into me and made me really curious eventually to explore that relationship further. I believe that taking nonviolence and self control to an extreme also. Influenced my mind in a way that I felt that I needed to stop eating together.

And I confused the religious understandings I grew up with self harm, and I didn't understand from what I understood growing up that. It's not important. It's important to be compassionate with others, but we can't forget ourselves in that equation. I didn't quite get these two messages about being able to control the body and its senses, but also to care for it in a healthy way, and to be able to be compassionate with others, but also to be compassionate with ourselves.

So I think I had these two. Traits in me of the self control and compassion, and then I had a lot of questions and I went to a Catholic high school because I felt like I was really confused about what is my religion, Why does it demand that I have to do so many routines and disciplines and have such extreme control where it seems nobody else has this kind of self control.

How do I actually take care of myself and be spiritual at the same time, and how do I care for other people and not lose myself? In that process, were questions that I had. Growing up and I felt in my teenage years that Jesus and Mother Mary and the whole idea of Catholic faith was a lot more accessible to me when I was a teenager.

So I begged my parents to actually send me to a Catholic private all girls high school because I wanted a connection to God and spirituality that I felt I could connect. When I was a child, I had gone to Bible school because my mom was working in the daytime and I was an only child and I didn't have a babysitter.

So I used to go across the street to our neighbor's house where they had a babysitter. They were Catholic, so they had Bible school in the summertime, and they asked my parents if they could send me along with their kids to Bible school, even though I obviously did not grow up. So they said, Sure she can go.

So I remember going to Bible school and being told that I could actually close my eyes and invite Jesus into my heart. And I remember that felt really good to do this idea that I didn't have to go to a temple. I didn't have to go to a church. I didn't have to go to any religious institution, but I could actually create a direct connection.

With divinity within me, and I remember I said, Yes, sure. I would love to invite Jesus into my heart. It was the same childhood when I was raised with Jainism, but because my parents said I could go to Bible school, I had this experience of welcoming Jesus into my heart. And as I grew up and got older, I remembered that experience and I remember how good that felt to have a.

Connection to God and how it made all these far away things feel a lot closer to me and a lot more direct. And so I think that influenced me to wanna go to a Catholic high school to be able to know who Jesus was in my heart, because I did feel that there was a presence in my heart that I could. Go to and turn to in times of trouble and distress.

So even though I had developed an eating disorder before going to high school, I also didn't have it for as long as I feel I may have if I had not known that actually there is this divine presence in my heart, and I do have the power to heal myself and to love myself as a way to love others. I feel that.

A message that I understood and then I went to Catholic high school and I had an amazing experience there. I really enjoyed all the learning that I had. And then towards the end of high school, I began to again question what about what I was raised with? I still don't really understand that.

And it wasn't until after. Went to college that I ended up going to a yoga class in New York City and listening to all this chanting of Sanskrit VA Man, which I used to hear in the Hindu temple that we went to, even though I was Jane, we didn't have a Jane temple in the city that I grew up in. We had a Hindu temple, so I was used to going to the Hindu temple.

I was used to celebrating. Many different kinds of gods and goddesses beyond what are included in the Jane religion. And I was reminded of the temple as I went to the yoga class and I saw all these people of different backgrounds really going into this. And I remember receiving the chanting sheet and how it said that yoga is a spiritual practice that prepares you to live a life of service and to.

An ambassador of non-violence and to develop self-control, and it just brought me back to the beginning and I was like, Whoa, this is really interesting. Here I am in a totally different setting as a stressed out college student in New York City and I'm. Being reminded of what I heard in childhood that I never understood, but it felt like they were explaining it to me in a way that I could actually grasp this time.

And that became a beginning of a whole new journey of then deepening my understanding of what. Hinduism and the VALIC spirituality of yoga, which is so widely accepted amongst yoga practitioners around the world, is really all about. When I went to the yoga class, I was also quite fascinated to see all of these photographs of gods and goddesses, like Lme and sars, withy and dga, and I'm like, Wow.

American quote unquote, right? American people, they're not Indian, but they have all of our Indian cultural sounds and sight and smells of incense, and it was just really fascinating. So it inspired me to take a deeper look at what is this Hindu religion that gives given birth to my religion?

I grew up. And Buddhism and sexism. And then it was so amazing to find out, wow, Hinduism is called a religion. But in actuality, Hinduism is one religion that truly says yes to all religions and that there are many paths to the one truth. And I'm like, Wow, feels like such a full circle to come back home in a way to realize this.

And I felt. That understanding completed the puzzle and was the beginning of really going a lot deeper into the spirituality of the Vedas, including Iveta Yoga and Vata, which is the end portion of the Vedas that gives us the spiritual philosophy of yoga and iveta. The

Srini: reason I started with that question is much like yourself, I was raised Hindu.

But I always say that I'm a spiritual skeptic. I believe that there are things that are spiritual, but I also am willing to write off a lot as new age bullshit. And my friend Matt is you realize some of the things you don't guess come to talk to you about would be. Classified as what you call new age bullshit I'm like, yeah, I'm aware of that, which is why I'm willing to actually have a conversation with them about it. But the thing that I think struck me in particular, the why I wanna start with that question, particularly with you, is because mentioned early on in the book that you felt nothing when you looked at sort of these dates and these idols.

And I think my biggest frustration. The way that my religious upbringing was. There were no answers to questions. Yeah, people just did things blindly. Like we didn't get our haircuts on Tuesday, which I had mentioned this on the show. You might know this, so I don't know if this is a Jane thing or it's just a thing so you're not supposed to get your haircut on Tuesday.

Nobody could ever tell me why. So finally I was at an ATRA in India at the surf camp, and I'm like, All right, you guys are intra, you've all people have gotta know the answer to this. And I'm like, Why don't Indians get their haircuts on Tuesday? And they're like, Barbershops in India are closed on Tuesdays.

I was like, What the hell? That's the reason I'm like, we don't even live in India and we haven't been getting our haircuts on Tuesday because barber shops are closed in India. And so I was like, Okay, wait. That can't possibly be it. And then I Googled it and of course, ended up on Flora where the answers ranged from.

Barbers need days off to, they need data, sharpen all their scissors. After cutting all that hair, nobody actually knew an answer. And I felt like this was basically the same thing with so many religious traditions that we have. Like I remember asking my mom, I'm like, Why the hell. Do we drive brand new cars over lemons as part of a puja?

I'm like, What is that about? I'm like, If you told me it's to prevent the car from being a lemon, that would make logical sense. I'm like, I'd like, all right, cool. I can connect it to something that's reasonable. She's I don't know. We just do it. I'm like, Why? You don't know why you do these things and you just blindly follow them.

So it sounds like you had somewhat of a similar experience, so Yeah. One, why is that? Like, why the hell do we not seem to have answers to these things and. As somebody who managed to integrate the best of both religions you have these organized religions that lead to a lot of conflict between different groups of people often can be cult-like.

And I get the value of organized religion from the sense that it provides a tremendous sense of community. I see it in my parents, but I'm curious why you think more people. Don't have the same sort of perspective that you do in their willingness to explore and actually accept the validity of other people's beliefs when it comes to religion and

Ananta Ripa Ajmera: spirituality.

Yeah. I could relate to so much of what you were saying. I had the same.

Too. Frustration. I didn't understand anything that would go on in the temples, and it was very frustrating to not be explained anything. I am like that too, or I need to know why or else I'm not going to.

Feel happy about doing it for a long time. So I definitely did go through a period of rejecting all things Indian, just out of not really understanding them. But I think for me it was actually meeting young girl in India, whose name is Lme, who had gone through sexual abuse and childhood. That really struck me that how is it that we worship goddess's?

And we, especially worship Lume the most widely worshiped Hindu goddess of wealth in India. And yet we treat women and girls who might even have the same names in such a different way. And it just made me really curious to find out what does this really mean? And it is interesting cuz I ended up going to a east west bookstore, which has incidentally a lot of new age things and I think.

I don't know if it's just growing up Indian or having more of a skeptical questioning mind, but I've always felt that it's important to question whatever is there in the name of religion and God, because probably of all the conflict that goes on in the name of these things. And it was really interesting as I've dug deeper and deeper into the philosophy of ante in particular.

To find out that the way to connect with the universal consciousness that all religions are calling by different names is actually by the very process of questioning. And so it's encouraged in the. Spiritual philosophy of Vaha to develop your subtle intellect. Vaha explains that there are two kinds of intellects.

One is your gross intellect and one is your subtle intellect. With the gross intellect, it's

,

different than intelligence. First of all, a lot of people think intellect intelligence are the same thing. They're very different. Intelligence is what you gain from outside sources. The intellect is what comes from within you as originality, as creativity, as the spark of a higher level of the mind that can actually think, plan, analyze, and decide things for your life.

So there's a gross intellect and a subtle intellect. The gross intellect is what allows us to make good decisions in day to day life. The intellect is that which can. Distinguish between pairs of opposites. If you have a choice to say stay home or travel to Zimbabwe, it's the intellect that will actually think and reason and use logic to decide whether it makes more sense for you to stay.

Put or to travel to Zimbabwe or whatever you may want to go. Then at the spiritual level, there is a thing called the subtle intellect, which is that part of our intellect that can actually discern between what is terrestrial, what is just coming and going, and what is transcendental or eternal. The only thing that is actually eternal is that which is present in the past, in the present, and will be continuing to be present in the future, which ends up really only being the soul, which is the same in me as it is in you, as it is in all living beings.

And we are able to develop that subtle intellect, pur them, the philosophy in two ways. By not taking anything for granted. And two, by questioning everything. And what I found in Hanta is that it's actually a very logical system of philosophy that ultimately leads us to a place of not having anymore questions and finally finding that piece that we're always looking elsewhere and outside us.

Srini: Wow. Let's get specifically into the book. Last time you wrote a book called The Ivey, the way that I remember going through that and there were a lot of really cool things in it that I thought, Wow, this is more of a book. It seemed like last time you focused. Much more on what really was our physical health, even though I know you allude to some of that this, but this time it seems like you took an approach to really understanding how our minds were through this lens.

So what prompted this book in particular, like why this book of all the books you could have written?

Ananta Ripa Ajmera: What prompted this book in particular was my own journey of healing and. Being able to finally connect this mysterious goddess tradition that I grew up with. And then that came back into my life in college with the health based knowledge of Iveta for physical health, the yoga psychology, which supports our mental health.

And then the. Spirituality, which helps us develop our subtle intellect and basically realize who we are as an eternal soul and going through the cycle of. Remembering one aspect of the Warrior Mother, Goddess dga. Each day has really changed my life in countless ways. I finally understood in my studies that the reason why we have so many gods and goddesses in the Hindu religion is.

For any other reason, but that the ancient stages were actually quite kind to gift us role models for how we can be as we face all of life's challenges. The challenges of life are many and varied, and therefore they created many and varied. Gods and goddesses to be models for us to remember and to call upon in times of distress, disease, obstacles and challenges.

When I started to really understand, The Chra system and this idea that one form of this warrior mother, goddess th lives within each of our chakras, and that it's connected with a specific power that we can cultivate. It became such an incredible quest then to realize that I can actually call upon these stories, these mythological stories, and.

Certain practices to cultivate the powers that the heroines of the stories, if you will represent. It really gave me a way to navigate the challenges of my own life and to heal my own traumas and to stop looking at certain situations with a limited perspective, but to then start to see actually all challenges are opportunities to realize.

Who I am beyond the challenges. It's like how in the Veic tradition we have this elephant headed God named Gia, who is always evoked as the remover of obstacles. But Lord Gia is also believed to give us obstacles because it's only in having obstacles to face and then actually facing them and removing them.

That we get to realize the power and strength of our own. So knowing these stories and this idea even of an all powerful warrior mother, goddess living within me in all these different centers of my being, representing certain powers that I have within me to heal myself, to know myself, and to trust myself in all situations has just really changed so much for me at a physical level, at a psychological level.

In terms of my acceptance and ability to forgive and let go of any and all past transgressions violations and boundaries that were crossed by other people in my life. And I feel that growing up I really always wanted female role model in particular to look up to and to. Be able to emulate.

I never really found what I was looking for until I encountered, again later on in life, the VA tradition of the goddesses, and I just felt that, yeah, Thugga is how a woman should be in this world, but not just a woman. I felt that, Oh, as I understood more and more, this is just symbol. We don't have to say, Oh, I believe this God is, and therefore I don't believe that God is, or, I don't believe this God, I believe that God, we can actually look at it.

As universal mythological stories that are queuing us into something about ourselves. And so even if we're not in a female body or we don't identify as female, what I've understood about Goddess DGA and her being. Personified as a warrior mother, goddess is representing this idea that we all have within us the power to give birth, right?

The mother part is representing the power to give birth, the power of transformation, the power to start something different than you concluded. And we all have that power within us to give birth to our. True self, our most authentic self, the best of our self, our highest self, if you will. Then the warrior part is really important.

Also, when we think about a mother, we think about certain feminine characteristics, right? About being compassionate, about being forgiving, about the love and the care and the kindness, and all these good, warm, wonderful, loving qualities. However, the VA tradition wants. And has created these deities to be quite balanced, even in terms of gender.

So it's not enough what it's saying to be simply compassionate, forgiving, et cetera, et cetera. We also have to be warriors on the spiritual journey. We have to be willing. To fight the battle with our own darker emotions. We have to be warriors with our fear, with our anger, with our jealousies, with our insecurities, with our anything that stands in the way of realizing the fullness, the power, and the strength of who we really are.

So therefore, we all, I feel. Need to have this divine energy or connection, if you will, with that part of us that can actually evoke new beginnings to our own self. That can create sustainable transformation to bring about the best within us, and to do it in a. Where we are always realizing that even as we meet outer challenges, outer bullies, outer obstacles, these are all actually just pointing us to our own inner obstacles, to our own inner bullies, and to our own inner challenges that we ultimately have to overcome to even be able to handle the ups and downs and the difficulties of life in a empowered and strong.

Srini: Wow. This is a really deep rabbit hole. So let's start with one of the first things that struck me in the book, and you say that stability means many things to many people, but on the spiritual path, it's the ability to remain focused on your objective, no matter the obstacles that arise.

Having the power of stability means being able to say yes to people, practices, and situation that support you on your quest for spiritual growth and saying no to what no longer serves. Easier said than done, I think. Yes. Yeah. Because we all have to put up with copious amounts of bullshit in our lives, whether that's people, whether that's organizations, whether that's situations.

So how is it that we start to bring about this sense of stability? What is it that we can do to actually start to feel a sense of stability, particularly in a world that is pretty much in

Ananta Ripa Ajmera: constant flux?

That's a great question. It's sometimes as simple as rooting our feet into the earth and reconnecting with the present moment. I feel that so much of the suffering that we have in our lives due to what comes and goes and is out of our control is due to living in the past or being worried and anxious about what is going to come in the future.

So the quickest way to calm the mind and to really cultivate that sense of stability and groundedness to go through whatever earthquakes are gonna come and try to shake us, is to actually be in the present moment. And to do that, we also need to be in our physical body. So the practices that I share for cultivating the power of stability in the first chapter.

Of the book and of what I like to call the hero's journey that it takes you upon with the idea of the divine feminine as being the power of transforming yourself are very much about being in your physical body in a very earthy and grounded way. That has to do with the five senses. So I talk about how you can even stop and smell.

Flowers for an instant sense of calm, instability, the sense of smell in Iveta, the world's oldest system of healing and the subject of my first book is deeply connected to the earth element. The earth element is what gives us a sense of grounding and stability. So even when we take a moment to just smell something that we like to smell, that, that calms us, that inspires us, that feels good to that sense, it helps bring us back into the moment, the Mary Old flowers.

In the I Veic tradition have a particularly stabilizing effect on the mind. So you can even be able to, you can even try to get some of those flowers in particular and to smell them, but it would work with any scent, even essential oils that you might have. Then literally rooting your feet into the earth is something that's so helpful for.

Making that connection to the inner world, which is where your stability really lies. Practicing tree pose and mountain pose from the yogic tradition are really helpful because in the yogic tradition, we are actually really learning from nature. How to be in this world. Whereas the VALIC tradition has given us lots of role models in the form of gods and goddesses and cosmic characters, if you will, to be able to model our lives after we have in the IIC tradition, the abundance of teachers and role models in nature that are showing.

How to be in this world in a harmonious and balanced way. It's like how Muhammad Ali had once said, That is why you two can. Sting, it can float like a butterfly and sting like a bee because we have this whole world of nature within us, and we can learn about ourselves by learning about nature outside of us.

And the Yoic tradition is really there to help us learn how to be steady and stable, like the tree, how to be really deeply rooted and grounded like a mountain. And when we practice these poses with an understanding of what it is we're trying to cultivate, then we can be a lot more conscious in actually empowering ourselves to experience the full benefit of the practice.

It's the same thing for the yoga poses too, right? Why are we doing this? Is it just to stretch? Is it just to make our bodies look a certain way? No, actually the reason why we do any of the yogic practices is to consciously become what it is we are physically embodying. So to do that, it's really important to not only do the pose physically, but to really contemplate this idea that I.

The stability of the tree within me, I can actually root my feet into the ground while also reaching my head up and reaching towards the sun and the light of that sun. So when we really embody the spirit of nature, then we get a lot more healing powers that come from that, and then that also really helps to calm our mind and bring us back into the moment.

Wow.

Srini: Talking about food and sleep a little bit, because I know that you mentioned a few things here about you said agitating foods are those that make you feel anxious, nervous, worrying, scared, pure foods give you physical and mental stability. And you also talk a lot about sleep as well.

So what role do those play in stability?

Ananta Ripa Ajmera: Huge roles. in the Ayurveda that tradition we have three sub pillars of great health. The three main pillars are the three doshas or the three bio forces that are made up of different combinations of the five great elements, which are space, air, fire, water, and earth. And we are having those in different proportions in our bodies and those elements and their combinations as dohas can go out of balance.

So bringing those into balance and understanding those and working with those are considered the first pillar of health and iveta. But then the second pillar, three pillars of health, according to Irv, that are food, sleep, and what is known as Bro. Aria, which is actually the subject of the second chapter of my new book, Channeling Your Energy.

It's more than abstinence from sex. It's actually mindful relationship with your five sense. So the kind of food that you eat, the quality and quantity of rest that you receive at night, and really living in harmony with the rhythms of the day and the year through irv does daily and seasonal lifestyle actually makes a huge difference in how stable and grounded you're going to feel.