A Story: Alignment with My Life's Purpose

The journey of uncovering my life’s purpose is really the story of my entire life. One day, I may write the full story, in its entirety. For now, I will share a small snippet of that story which begins a couple years leading into the discovery of my purpose here, on earth. I just want to pause and mention that our purpose is not JUST something we do. It is WHO we are. It is the essence that we bring in each moment. Everyone’s essence is beautifully unique. Our purpose is expressed in the way we live all moments; how we drink our tea, how we walk, how we communicate, how we watch nature, and how we interact with the world around us. Living in alignment with our purpose is living in alignment with our Authentic Self. It’s a since of being home within yourself and feeling guided by your heart and soul. It’s knowing, with every cell of your body, that you are exactly where you are supposed to be. What we do in this world will always evolve and grow, but knowing that you are walking the path of your purpose is something no one can take from you, even if no one understands why you are doing what you are doing.

The pivotal shift in uncovering more of who I really am and my life’s purpose started with my travels to Peru. My first visit to Peru was in July of 2018 for my 300 hour yoga teacher training with School Yoga Institute. Before this training, I was not very confident. I doubted myself and was deeply affected by how others thought of me. I was easily offended and a “people pleaser.” The ups and downs of life always threw me off balance and I would ask “why me?” This all shifted after Peru.

I was living in New Jersey, with RJ, for about 4 months before I left for Peru. We moved there together in February 2018. RJ and I were in a relationship for a little over a year and were still getting to know each other on a deeper level. I was teaching yoga, working at a chiropractic office as a receptionist and offering reiki sessions. I had my 2nd degree training in reiki and was a 200 hour trained teacher. I did not like my job at the chiropractor office, but I was just starting to introduce myself into the yoga community in New Jersey. This chiropractor job helped me make enough money to pay my minimal bills and fund my trip to Peru for my 300 hour training.

I almost didn’t make it to Peru! A couple weeks before I was to leave, my car broke down on the way to visit my family in Massachusetts. The entire computer system broke and the cost of the repair was $2,400. This was just about all my savings and I was going to be using some of those funds for my travels. RJ urged me to still go and I am so grateful he did because without his guiding words I may have missed an opportunity that was essential for my spiritual evolution.

RJ and I’s whole relationship is one of Divine Timing and Grace. There have been challenging and beautiful moments, but I know, in my soul, that we are together to support each other on our spiritual journey to Self-Realization. We have traveled together for many lifetimes and, yet again, are together for this life.  RJ has always been the catalyst for so much of my own personal growth, although it’s sometimes been uncomfortable to look at and address. I am forever grateful for his guidance and look forward to a life-time of growing and loving together.

So, I journeyed to another country by myself, for the first time.  The only other country I traveled to was Ecuador and that was with a large group of people for a college course. Now I was leaving, on my own, and I was so nervous! I met a fellow student at the Lima Airport in Peru and we flew to Cusco together. She thankfully spoke Spanish and was able to handle most of the arriving logistics. We then made it to our hostel where we met two other women from the training! We spent a few days in Cusco, adjusting to the altitude, and then made our way to the retreat center, in the mountains of the Sacred Valley.

When I arrived in the Sacred Valley, surrounded by the mountains, I felt like I was coming home. We drove on a bus with the whole teacher training group and arrived at Munay Sonqo. This retreat center is breath-taking with the views of the mountains, the stone walks-ways, mazes of flowers, the numerous gardens, and little nooks of peaceful nature. The main temple, where we practiced every day, was circular and framed with windows that looked out to the mountains, the gardens and a small waterfall. The food was always made with so much love. Everything was gorgeous. I just couldn’t take it all in, in a months’ time. I had a strong sense that I would return again.

This training healed me in ways that I didn’t even know I needed. I came out those 4/5 weeks in my power, connected with a like-minded community, and open to an abundance of opportunities. This training helped me uncover my gifts and what I am passionate about. I was able to let go of a lot of fear, self-doubt, and anxiety. I started to feel what it was like to be comfortable in my unique expression and learn to speak my own needs through honoring and loving myself.

A large portion of the training incorporated healing experiences and shamanic practices. I began learning more about healing, beyond what I had learned during my first two reiki trainings. Creating sacred space, honoring the ancestors and connecting with the spirit of plants and the mountains all felt so familiar to me. I was also able to share reiki sessions with many of my fellow students and it helped me realize how passionate I was about supporting others on their healing journey through energetic healing techniques.

While in Peru, crystals also started to find their way into my life and I bought many at the local Pisac Market. I had always been fascinated with crystals and stones as a child but lost that interest as I grew older. I just fell in love with Peru and with the community of School Yoga Institute. After completing this training, I was now considered a 500 hour trained yoga teacher and was eligible to teach yoga teacher trainings. I intensely dreamed of being a facilitator with School Yoga Institute. I set the strong intention to teach with them, while in Peru, and nurtured that seed when I arrived home.

I arrived back in New Jersey, a completely new person. I quit my job at the chiropractic office and focused on teaching yoga full-time and offering private reiki sessions. My connection to Great Spirit shifted and I was finally developing my own, intimate relationship with God! It was so freeing to feel a deep connection to all of life and to feel God in ALL of it. Not just an idea of God that is “out there” and “above me.” These were much of the ideas of God I had received growing up, while going to Catholic church. For a time, in my teenage years, I completely shunned the idea that there was any God. Thankfully, that has all shifted.

In Peru, I also worked with cacao for the first time and it was so profound that I also started sharing cacao ceremonies in New Jersey. I would speak with the Spirit of Cacao and she helped me with my own heart healing. I also developed my healing sessions and began working with crystals in my reiki sessions and focused on balancing the chakra system of my clients. My intuitive abilities also started to strengthen and I was receiving numerous messages throughout each session. I would share these messages with my clients and noticed how helpful and impactful they were to my clients healing.  

As I was developing myself as healer, I was also working with School Yoga Institute to become a facilitator of 200 hour yoga teacher trainings. My first opportunity to go back to Peru was in the same year, December 2018! I was so excited that I was going to be able to return to the sacred land and shadow a teacher training to learn how to facilitate trainings. At this point, I was coming more and more into my own power and my gifts as a healer. The December training in Peru was liberating, in many ways, because I had to grow into my voice and confidence. I’m grateful for all the loving souls in that training who supported me on that journey of self-discovery. After that training, I felt ready to co-facilitate a training and was given the opportunity in February 2019. Now that I was preparing to teach yoga, I felt the weight of the responsibility of guiding others in this ancient practice. I needed to a true Spiritual Teacher, so that I wasn’t misguided.

Paramahansa Yoganandaji was first introduced into my life in 2017 by RJ. I remember reading the Autobiography of a Yogi, that he gifted me, in the beginning stages of our relationship. I was transformed by Yoganandas life story. I am so grateful RJ guided me to him because Yoganandaji has supported my spiritual growth in exponential ways and continues to do so. The Self Realization Fellowship, which was established by Yogananda in 1920, re-published the Lessons in 2019. These Lessons were written by Yogananda, when he was alive, so that students could continue to learn through his spiritual teachings, even after he left the body. With the upgraded lessons, I decided to apply for them and begin my own personal studies with Yoganandaji. The lessons were sent to me every 2 weeks for 8 months. Once I practiced all the techniques within the lessons, at the end of the 8 months, I was then eligible for Kriya Yoga Initiation. Kriya Yoga is a scientific and ancient pranayama technique that brings the kundalini energy through the sushumna nadi to support the practitioner in obtaining union with Source.

I started studying these lessons in January of 2019 and then, a month later, I was off to Peru to teach my first yoga teacher training! The winter of 2018-2019 was one of the most challenging times between RJ and I. We were both discovering our own connection to God and religion. RJ has very strong Catholic roots and I do not. As I was coming more into my power as an energy healer through reiki, crystals, ceremony and shamanic techniques, RJ was becoming increasingly uncertain of whether what I was doing was “right” or not based of the catholic church’s values. My connection to God was not what the church told me it was supposed to be and I didn’t feel that I was a “bad” person for not aligning with what the church said. Since RJ’s roots are more steeped in Catholicism, he really battled with a lot of the guilt that can come with that religion and doubted that I even had any relationship to God, with what I practiced.

Although we both had a connection to spirituality through Paramahansa Yogananda, we still walked very different paths. RJ was resonating more with Catholicism and I resonated more with earth medicine, reiki, and ceremony.  I didn’t feel called to follow the Catholic views and RJ did, at that time.  I also just want to mention that this doesn’t refer to Jesus, but only the views of the Catholic Church. There was this weighted feeling that Catholicism was the only way and if I didn’t believe in it or follow it, I was being misguided. So, as I went off to Peru to teach a yoga training, RJ and I were on very shaky grounds.

A week into the training I got a call from RJ and he told me, “I completely disagree with everything you are doing. Teaching yoga, sharing reiki, working with crystals-everything.” I was stunned. I didn’t even know how to respond or what the resolve could be. I told him we can’t talk for a week so that I could process everything and see if we can even be together. I cried, mourned, meditated, and processed for many days. But most importantly, I followed my heart. It was so painful to think of the relationship with RJ ending because he had been a huge catalyst for my spiritual growth and evolution and I truly was inspired by the way he lived and embraced life. How could someone that has had such a positive impact on my life tell me that what I am doing is wrong? What if it is wrong? Am I misguided? I thought to myself, “okay, so what if I stop everything I’m doing? I go back to New Jersey and never return to Peru. I don’t ever teach yoga, I never do another reiki session, and I stop offering ceremonies and working with crystals?” I instantly felt the connection to my soul severed and I felt the hollowest I have ever felt in my entire life. I knew I couldn’t deny who I was (and am) any longer. In that moment, I stepped into my gifts, my power, and owned my path as a healer. This is why I am here.

Within a few hours of stepping into my truth, I received a call from RJ. He said,” I’ve been meditating, and I see. I see everything you are doing. The yoga, the Reiki, everything.” And to this day he truly is one of my biggest supporters. I am beyond grateful for his presence. Without his questioning of my path, I would have never owned it. After this experience I knew, more clearly, my path and who I am, but that knowing didn’t arrive, on a cellular level, until I did a week-long water fast. I was called to do this fast because of a reading I received with a healer in February.

I received my first coca leaf reading with a light worker/elder in Peru. She is a profound woman and, now, dear friend. During the reading, she looked at me and said “do you remember why you came here?” I said, “umm, to serve…go home to God?” She said, “No, no, no, do you remember why you are here NOW?” She followed by saying, “Well, you are this close to remembering.” Pointing to a couple coca leaves touching. She finished by saying, “Go on a week-long water fast and you will remember.” There was a lot more to that profound reading but I’ll just focus on this one piece.

So, I came home from that training with a renewed hope in RJ and I’s relationship and a deeper since of my Self and Purpose. I ventured to do the week-long water fast in March, before I was to go back to Peru again in April for another teacher training. That week was one of slow movement, inner reflection, and cleansing on every level. During that fast I realized, on a cellular level, that my purpose on earth is to be healer and support people to come back into their hearts, their power, and their purpose. I needed to claim this path, without any fear. I also scheduled my Holy Fire III Reiki Master training with my Reiki Master in Massachusetts during this time. I didn’t know it then, but Holy Fire III Reiki would be a major guiding force in my life and support me in coming into Alignment with my Authentic Self, over and over again.

Owning my path and purpose in this lifetime, is liberating beyond words. No one can take this knowing away from me. It’s beyond something I “do” and beyond a “label” of who I am. As I said in the beginning, it’s an essence and a since of being guided, in all moment, by Great Spirit. My path is going to greatly evolve over time, but I know, with each step that I take, I am in true Alignment with my purpose for this life. However this journey of life may unfold, I have trust in the process.

Right now, my greatest teachers on this spiritual journey are my husband, RJ, Daughter, Lila, Paramhansa Yoganandaji, Mother Mary and Holy Fire III Reiki. My spiritual practices are an essential part of my life in order to remain in Alignment with my Authentic Self and to truly listen to my own hearts calling. I pray that all beings find a home within the wisdom of their heart, own who they are and their gifts, and live a life of complete fulfillment. Om, Peace, Amen