A State of Constant Heartache: What If Your Dreams Are So Crazy That Not a Single Soul Supports Them
Or so you think. I am one of the few people I know who did some radical 180 turns with their career. From aiming to be an academic professor in life sciences to an executive director of a meditation school. How the heck did that happen?
From where I am right now, it doesn't seem like such an insane turn of events. However, earlier in life, I had much more limited plans for myself, which, in hindsight, constricted me greatly. In short, I wanted a very different kind of life from what I planned for myself, but my dreams were so far from what I considered reasonable that I couldn't imagine ever living that life. That disconnect between what I wanted and what I thought was achievable gave me a state of chronic heartache.
When that dream first knocked on my door, I was a grad student at Duke University in North Carolina. Back then, life was easy - no kids yet, bike-to-work commute, and playing volleyball year-round with fellow students. The days of untainted youth and not a worry in the world.
Something was brewing in my Soul in the background, though. A strange dream, coming seemingly out of nowhere and tapping on my shoulder, day after day. Somewhere amid that rational and structured life, filled with experiments, conferences, and weekly meetings with my advisor, another side of me was emerging. And that side wanted little to do with logic, science, and left-brain thinking. It wanted the world of the Spirit, the world of magic, a shamanic world.
As I was going through academic training in graduate school, a part of me was dreaming about receiving equally thorough training in some kind of spiritual arts, maybe around meditation and alternative healing. Maybe I practiced Aikido for years before that, and in Aikido, like in other Japanese martial arts, there is an idea of an uchi-deshi or an apprentice who trains under a sensei and assists them on a full-time basis. So, there it was - I wanted an apprenticeship in shamanism.
I never told a single living soul about it. I was afraid of being ridiculed. Everyone in my family has a PhD, so my closest circles would have questioned my sanity were I to mention it. I was ashamed and embarrassed by these strange desires, and the logical part of me brutally dismissed them as dangerous nonsense. This post is probably the first time I publicly talk about it.
I haven't mentioned it to anyone before, mostly because I have people-pleasing habits and often doubt myself more than I should. I am not as brave as I wish to be (but I am working on it).
Why change of heart now? Three reasons:
Eventually, years of despair and inner pain pushed me to fulfill my dream. It was either "Do what I want to do", or "Die of heartache". After I started walking my path, I encountered such miraculous success, that everyone in my family who doubted me and my craziness started seeing it a new light.
My father was a brilliant physicist. He was in the prime of his time when he died of brain cancer at the age of 46. That taught me a lesson - I won't live forever; my life can end anytime. Whatever I want to do, I must do it now. To avoid suffering from regrets of not being bold enough later.
Maybe someone out there who is being beaten by the same dilemma can learn something useful from my story.
In meditation, when we go into our inner world, we may encounter not only eternal bliss, but also the parts of us that ache because they represent the dreams that we have not fulfilled. A part of life that we didn't dare to live.
So we feel pain, but it is not necessarily a pain that we need to silence and shun further into the exile. It is something to listen to and act upon, unless we want to miss out on our own adventure.
So, back to my story.
After graduating with a Ph.D., my husband and I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area to pursue our postdocs, and life took a turn from easy to grim. My research project was a dead-end, and I was drained and depressed from the demands of raising a 2-year-old daughter on a meager postdoc salary. Plus, I spent way too much time on the bus, commuting to and from San Francisco. And during those times, a silent part of me that wanted something different went ka-boom! I went into an intense feeling of heartache, that couldn’t be silenced by anything. A part of me was shrieking, “Go find a teacher who can train you. You can’t delay it, you must do it now”. While my practical side retaliated, reminding me that I had no stable job to make enough money to even pay for the daycare, no green card to stay in the country (my visa was tied to my workplace), and no slightest idea of where even to look for meditation teachers who take apprentices. Classic beginning to a good story.
My problem back then was:
Lack of faith in my destiny.
Lack of knowledge on how certain things work. I didn't know such important terms as "dharma" or "daimon" or "shamanic calling”. I wasn’t aware that dharma is what is mine to do in the world. It is a duty that can't be forfeited.
"Daimon" is a term described by Carl Jung as an inner force of creativity that will destroy us unless we use it. I also knew nothing about "shamanic initiations" that can't be refused. Talk to any shaman if you don't believe me. You don't mess with your own vocation. If you got a strong gift, you either use it or it will batter you until you start using it.
I always thought that all of that was nonsense, and that I had the willpower to refuse the calling, ignore my dharma, and fight the spirit of creativity inside of me. Ha ha. The consequences of that limited worldview were despair, heartache, and constant bloody battles inside.
Back then, I hadn’t realized that my life was somewhat taken care of. I just didn't know that yet. Were I to know the concept of, “faith”, my life would have been easier.
I only had one book on spirituality in my home that I really liked; it talked about how meditation was easy and natural. I found it at Duke library, and I never parted with it because it was the kindest presence I knew in my life. The guy who wrote it, Lorin Roche, had a PhD from UC Irvine on research in meditation and has been teaching meditation for 40+ years. I got the book in 2010, but I haven't met Lorin in person until 2016, when I started my meditation teacher training. In 2018 I started my apprenticeship with him through hundreds of phone conversations, emails, discussions, and then working and teaching together. In 2020, during the pandemic, I quit my corporate job to start promoting meditation online. In 2021, in the midst of the pandemic, we trained over 1000 meditation teachers and brought this inner medicine to many more people. We managed to be one of the most affordable training programs and gave 200+ scholarships to bring meditation into unrepresented communities. Over 2 years, we made close to 2 million in revenue, and in 2022 a nonprofit was established from those profits. Mind it, I had on experience running meditation schools before that. One would say it was magic and luck, and I would say that the reason I was so strongly pushed by my heart to pursue that direction is because thousands of people have benefited from that.
I learned most things I know about meditation from my teacher, and he is family to me. My mistake was to doubt my dreams and desires so much. I lived years in despair, fighting my own wisdom and power.
Not a mistake that I want to make again.
P.S. A quote that my teacher love is, “There is no cure for not living your creativity.” I want to remember that too.