Divine Lineage Student Interviews
Discover the Real Life and Spiritual Technologies of Yeshua and the Holy Family, brought to the world by Saint Sri Kaleshwar.
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Transcript of Interview with Chris Ishwarananda Bryant: 12 Steps to Liberation and Seeing God in Others
Awakening, Recovery and Finding Alignment
Jenna: Hey Chris, it's so good to be here with you. Welcome.
Chris: Hello, hello. It's great to be here. Thank you for having me.
Jenna: So, so excited to chat with you. Chris Bryant is with us today.. also known as Ishwarananda. We'll talk about your spiritual name and how that came to be as we get into the convo. But we are we're recording this at the end of 2023 and we were just talking about lessons learned from this year and all of the ways we create too much structure and get out of balance and all of those things and we were just talking about a new year's version related to balance and asking the universe (divine mother, divine father) to help us find that perfect balance.
Chris: It can be so elusive sometimes actually.
Jenna: Yeah.
Chris: We get so so busy but you know it's essential. It's essential to have a sense of balance with me walk forward in the world these days, yeah.
Jenna: And you've been finding that on your journey. You are a student who did not meet Sri Kaleshwar. You and I met in the divine lineage. And I'm excited to talk to you because you're one of the generation like me who came after his time on earth. And so you've come to the lineage through some interesting experiences and life lessons… life experiences, as we all hav,e and that sense of finding balance on the path is really interesting to talk to you about because you've got a lot going on… like you're in school, you're studying these advanced yogic practices, and I'm curious how that evolution has occurred for you. Going from this place of really being out of balance in a more extreme way for a while in a life to then having the divine intervention that started to bring you a greater sense of that balance and this journey to wholeness. So what's your origin story? How do you get into this and if you're willing to share, about the Ishwarananda from the past or past before you became Ishwarananda, you know, how did that Chris find this journey?
Chris: Oh, wow. First of all, that's articulated very well. Those are two very big questions you know. I think the origin story began from a place of like extreme imbalance, extreme.
It was pain that brought me to this path. It was seeking a sense of relief and clarity and serenity that brought me to these practices… of these japa practices. And I was working with a trauma therapist at the time and he kind of presented this foreign practice of connecting with the elements and to stick my thumb in the earth and start chanting and I had no experience at all with japa of this nature. I'd been a yoga instructor for think a year or so at the time, but I was in a place of transition to where things seem to be like breaking and in destruction all around me. And I needed some relief… I needed some guidance, and he gave me these practices, and I was like, I have no idea what this is, but I trust you. If you just say this works for you, then I'll try it, and then I really did dive into the japa as if my life depended on it. Like it was my last ditch effort… a way out… to find a place of peace and you know it really took a long time. I felt like I was spending my wheels… like I didn't really feel traction until about six months in but then once I felt a little bit of traction and the tires startedto kind of grab the road. It just seemed like everything in my life starting to really align in ways that… I had no experience with that level of alignment.
Jenna: It can be a really like startling and fun experience when that happens.
Chris: Oh, totally, totally. It was completely, completely new. Life became this big adventure of like… I wasn't living in like a normal level of faith with what was occurring… it was like a complete and utter surrender to what was occurring around me because what was occurring I had no framework for those types of experiences… that type of alignment… those types of connections that I was making.
Jenna: Like synchronicities.
Chanting the Guru Gita
Chris: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Synchronicity is a great way to describe that. And also, I think, at the time when I started with these Japa, I was also introduced to another practitioner who was a devotee of the Sita Yoga Path.
And she had spent 20 years or so in that path. She had been to many Shakti-pat intensives with Guru Mai, and, I was at a phase of my yoga journey where I wasn't satisfied with what the Western world was offering me in terms of yoga and I wanted more.
I wanted depth. I wanted more than just Asana and Pranayama. I knew there was more to it, and she introduced me to the practice of chanting the Guru Gita.
Jenna: And you did that practice for a really extended period of time like you kind of did that as this really transformational process and like really dedicated yourself. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
Chris: Yes. And I'm still in the process. I'm still in dedication to that daily out in it. When I was first introduced to the Guru Gita, which is just a brief description of what it is.
Guru Gita is a Sanskrit chant that stands for the song of God. And it's 182 stanzas. It takes about 45 minutes to an hour to chant and then 15 minutes of a silent meditation. And it really required at that time something extreme to bring my mind into state of stillness. But the very first time I sat for the Gita, I touched a level of stillness I had never known before. I didn't know it existed. It was just kind of like, oh my god, it's everything I've been looking for. I'm ready to devote my life to this thing, because there was this yearning for comprehension of what liberation was for so long.
Because at the time when tragedy was occurring around me, I just wanted out of the suffering of the planet. Like I wanted to escape it and the only way out seemed to be through. A comprehension of what liberation was seemed foreign, this triad with what is enlightenment.
I've no idea what this thing is, and so the beautiful thing is it seemed to be a path to stillness that was everything I had been looking for.
And so I sat. I would drive to this woman's house, her name is Katie West, and I have so much love for this woman, and all she did.. she really saved my life at that chapter.
But I was in need. And I would go to her home, which was basically an Ashram, and I would go once a month to chant. And I think I did that three months or four months at a row, and then it was like, I need more. I want to sit for this daily, and at that time I was struggling. I am a recovering addict, and so at that time my disease was not was not controlled and prayer seemed to be the only thing to find…to be the only refuge. And in 2019, January 26th, I sat for the Guru Gita daily and still have continued to sit for this practice for over a thousand consecutive days now.
And yeah, it's really, it's really taught me more than any book could ever teach me. It's taught me more than any teacher could ever teach me.
This stillness became my teacher. This is love. And so that's kind of kind of back. You know?
Finding the Way Out of Darkness
Jenna: Wow, I think that's just incredible. I love the idea of these practices, prayer, dedicating ourselves for an hour, whatever it is a day, can save our lives. And I think it's also worth just pausing and reflecting and appreciating you for the journey you've been on. Because I too struggled with substances for a long time in my life, and I didn't have tools. I didn't have tools to find inner peace and to get rid of stress and anxiety. And the world, we get raised in… what do you have? Substances. And that's what we get taught.
And I think so many people have been there, have struggled with that, and we don't talk enough about that. Like we don't talk enough about how have all these other tools that are disposal and also the like level of pain and darkness that's been possible on this planet. That so many people have found themselves in… that's a hard, hard place to out of… that is a hardest to get out of.
And I think… I'm just acknowledging and appreciating your journey and your drive to take whatever steps would help you… even if you weren't sure. I think it's just a beautiful, beautiful journey. And I'm just, I'm just grateful that you're sharing it with others. Because we talk so much about the light and the love and the positive aspects of spiritual life. But not about how dark it gets when we're facing our shadow.
Chris: Yeah.
Jenna: Yeah, there's something really hopeful when you hear someone who has found a way out.
Chris: Yes, at one time I was completely lost in anguish, but I found a way out. And that's possible for anyone I feel. But yeah, there seems to be more and more kind of swimming in this place of anguish, a fear. I don't know how to get out. And that's why I have so much passion for working at the detox center that I work at. It's such a privilege to be able to kneel down and meet people where they're at. And say, “I've been there too. I've been there too, you're not alone.” You know, when the world has met you with judgment or shame or exile, “Let me be someone to meet you with compassion.” And one deserves that.
Jenna: I agree.
Chris: Yeah, everyone is the one worthy of it.
Jenna: Yeah. Yeah.
Chris: And so as it moves me, it just moves me.
Practicing Christ Consciousness
Jenna: Me too. And what I think is so moving about what you just articulated is like… that's Christ Consciousness. We are practicing in a lineage that is of the Christ lineage specifically and this is what it's about. It's about seeing the level of darkness and illusion that is possible and very present on this planet and meeting it with like the deepest levels of compassion and forgiveness and empathy and reverence and your journey as a testament to that and a great example of that.
Chris: I thank you, thank you. Yeah, the path to forgiveness… I feel like really was what he stood for and that has been a big part of my learning lately… is how to forgive…what do we do in places of resentment when pain was offered to us that we didn't deserve and how do we meet
that with love instead of this forceful angry… and that's also not to say that like anger is to be repressed to you… their anger is also sacred, so sacred.
Jenna: And that forgiveness process also then turns back on ourselves… Because of this world, like all the stuff, we get caught up in and the darkness, we get caught up in. It's very easy to then look at your own life and actions and all the things that have played out for yourself and judge yourself. So that becomes a really interesting part of the journey of not only forgiving outwardly but then really like finding love for ourselves. Even including all of that all that stuff we engaged in or that we wouldn’t do now… it's loving that…
Chris: Yeah, especially when it's hard to. It's most important to offer that forgiveness and love when we feel the least desire to. I mean, those corners are so liberating. I mean, you meet those aspects of your psyche and offer love. That wholeness… they can blossom from it.
0:18:05 And you're a double. Yeah, right.
Jenna: There's never a dull moment in being human.
Chris: That's for sure. Oh my goodness.
Jenna: And this this journey for you has evolved in to you now pursuing a path of education where you can take this this practice of supporting others and finding you healing and wholeness, and I guess making that into a more professional future for yourself. I'm curious about how that is progressing for you and anything you could share that just helps highlight how you found that path and what that's about. And I think too when we find this spiritual path and we are very, very, much dedicated to it and very much dedicated to service, it can also get a little confusing because maybe not everyone's meant to be a one-on-one energy healer or this or that…there’s all of these different ways we can be of divine service in the world. And I think you're finding a cool path.
Chris: So that's a really, like, it's a really intricate question because you asked me what led to me coming back to school because it kind of found me. So when I moved from Texas to California, I had a transition to another sponsor in my recovery program. And that sponsor that I found, he was a therapist. And he's an alumni of the school that I'm going to. And so every time I would process steps with him, we would do so much work in an hour that I felt like I owed him money.
And I was just like, I want to be able to help that magnitude. I want that capacity. And, you know, I wanted to enhance what I can offer. And so, what I learned that he was going to a Christian to a Baptist University, and initially, I was like, I don't want to be part of that. Because a lot of my journey, a lot of my story, is that my disease of addiction spawned from religious trauma.
I was raised Catholic, and there was a lot of resentment in the realm of Christianity. And so long story short, I had to go to India to step back in a way for my life to come to the decision, and my committing two and a half years in my life, or the rest of my life, to this path, or not.
And there are a lot of different messages throughout the journey in India. But the primary one was a sense from Jesus that you are supported. No matter what occurs, no matter what you decide, you're supported.
And so the decision to come and go to this Baptist University became a decision of be walking a path of healing, of my own, where are my prejudices?
Why are they there? How can I heal that? And it almost takes my breath away to reflect upon, depth and the intricacy and the growth have been unspeakable. How it's taken me into the corners of how my arrogance, the thinking I know better… forgive my own ignorance and meet anyone no matter where they are in their spiritual journey exactly where they're at.
I see you, we are brothers in Christ. We have a different type of quality of path but we're still all the same in our essence… And how can I find union rather than separation?
Jenna: Yeah.
Chris: And past 13 weeks is not even been about becoming a therapist… that’s the goal and all, but there's been so much more to it than just that.
Jenna: I think that's incredible.
I think that is an incredible reflection that you're getting in this experience… like this incredible opportunity. We end up on this journey, and we think about the destination and then all of a sudden we're finding our own healing and then feeling this sense of separation from others because of that and then we have to like work through that.
And I think it's incredible that you've had this experience in school like being able to do that and then also in the process healing some of those old wounds related to religion and Christianity in particular. What an interesting evolution to then find yourself reconnecting I guess or
maybe for the first time truly connecting with Jesus, that energy, Christ Consciousness. And just what an interesting kind of full circle experience.
Chris: Very well-interpreted. Thank you for your help, how perceptive you are in that.
Jenna: Thank you for sharing so openly and also talking about that trauma related to religion.
Yes, there's been so much distortion that has happened on this planet related to religion.
Chris: Yeah.
Jenna: Yeah, stuff we did not want to experience and think it's brave to talk about that and to speak out about religion or organized religions having caused that in some cases and how we heal from that.
12 Step Program as Practical Spirituality
Jenna: You mentioned the 12 steps when we talked… most people have heard of that, but I don't think we really know what that's about and how that was really this bridge back to God, back to finding this greater power, this greater sense of support.
0I want to go back to the India trip and talk a little more about that, but maybe you can describe how the 12 steps are a framework for anyone who is in the darkness and finding their way out.
Chris: Yeah, you are great at asking the big questions, but my mind goes into a lot at different… how can I make complex answers simple. Because you can look at the 12 sets from many different levels of frequency, there's lot of yogic wisdom within the 12 steps… for instance, like Santosha, contentment, is directly in the serenity prayer, God grant me the serenity to accept things I can't change and the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference. Just acceptance and contentment. And within the 12 steps, an important key foundation in my recovery program is to be of service.
Self-lessness is so essential in working a healthy program, and this is all my opinion, but because selfishness is a part of our disease, by the vernacular, and then is also, you can see statements like that within yogic lore as well, ego, pride, jealousy, anger.
And so, again, I'm trying to keep it simple, my mind wants to get into the complexities. 12 steps brought me to a room of people in a way where I could share about a higher power and not feel like this is right and this is wrong.
This is how we speak of it here. It's how we don't speak of it here. In the rooms of N.A.
In narcotics anonymous or alcoholic synonymous, your higher power is the higher power of your own understanding. That piece has healed me and honestly, that's my journey.
And having the steps to go, it's 12 steps, it's not 12 leaps. When I first got clean, I wanted to be perfect. Like I wanted to fix everything in this irrational way. And the 12 steps bring these step-by-step to look at the layers of what makes me who I am. And it helped me understand the nature of my disease. It helped me understand that I'm not a bad person. I suffer from the disease, of which there is no known cure.
And that was a very healing idea too, because the church wanted… I was banished, I was not welcome, I was just, I was not met with the love that I needed or the compassion I needed or the forgiveness I needed.
And narcotics anonymous gave me everything that the church was supposed or claims to live by. And that's not no to say that all churches are bad or anything, but the rooms of narcotics anonymous created an atmosphere for me to heal.
With a higher power and the healer connection…you can heal the separation and and I believe that it's a path to liberation as well. Because once you finish the 12 steps, you go back and you do it again. You continue like, this is a life's work. You never come to a place of arrival. You never come to a place of all right, I'm cured. Every time you go through the steps, you find a layer deeper. In the terminology that it uses, you identify character defects, and you choose spiritual principles. Each character defectors, a spiritual principle that is an antidote, and integrity was a very crucial one for me, because self-deception is also part of our disease. I was great at misleading myself for rationalizing behavior, all these intricate imaginations. So, and that conspire a lot of control so quickly when our ego gets involved and then there's selfishness and all that stuff that leads to that negative spiral. So yeah, and you know, I was able to meet my negativity, it was compassion and kind of accept like, hey, these are ways you used to behave, would you like to try something different?
You don't have to, these are all suggestions, you know, you choose to work whatever program you want to work. I was just so accustomed that at a young age to be forced to do. You need to do it this way anything other than you're banished.
I needed a different, I needed a different, a friend, I needed something different to help me out.
Jenna: And it sounds like this is… what feels different, I guess, about this approach… is that there isn't all of that orthodoxy and rules and regulations and stuff around you. Your higher power or how you ask or what you're supposed to do or not supposed to do, which comes with other organizations. It feels like this really was an experience of total acceptance with the right guard rails that help you connect the dots yourself on how to start shifting the behavioral patterns, how to start shifting your world view, how to start shifting how you meet those parts of yourself that are quote unquote defective, that we want to evolve. Like it sounds like a very compassionate approach to helping someone connect those dots themselves in the way that feels right for them.
Chris: Yeah it's a path of transformation.
Jenna: Yeah, I have a friend who has been part of NA for the years now and I'm so grateful to have learned about it through this friend and to now be deepening my understanding of it through our friendship and just seeing her transformation… Wow. Like I believe it saved her life too.
Chris: Absolutely. A hundred percent. There's something in that approach that it's so that's so practical. Yeah. There was something there's there like a granted like there was a lot of wisdom in the group of this lineage, there's a lot of wisdom in a group of youths, but I was needing a practicality of how do I apply this in the daily day to day. Like, I can't be in this… I can't be in a state of meditation throughout the day.. I'm not at that stage, but, you know, where was that?
I needed some practicality, yeah. And, in this world of science, And all of the stuff in our civilization is in some way, a lot of it is serving to pull us back into those negative behavioral patterns or negative programming.
Jenna: And so yeah, like there is something I think so important about finding, in addition to, you know, spiritual lineage is like, you know, the one we're connected in. There's also this incredible value of finding other very practical, psychological and spiritual approaches to daily living, daily behavior and shifting those patterns over time.
Renunciation Versus Living in the World
Chris: Yeah. Yeah. I think in my early stages, when I started changing, do you talk on a regular basis? I had this idea. There was a tension in me that was like, I thought I had to live a life of a renunciation to find development.
Jenna: Right.
Chris: And in that like, renunciation, it created this like spiritual bypassing that it's like no negativity, like, I don't know what was going on in my head… but there was something about going on the power journey to India, where Sri Kaleshwar, Divine Mother, at Penukonda really kind of sat me down and said, “look, you don't have permission to live a life of renunciation. You've done that before in past lives. This life is your spirit duty is to interact here.”
And that brought so much peace and clarity, because I was like, all right, I need to find a way to just get away from the world, I can't be in the world. From the things and so Baba just held my hand. He was like, “look, you can't stay here.” You could come here once or twice a year to rejuvenate your work, your work is in the world.
And that was so reassuring to like accept and relax into my Dharma.
Jenna: I think that's awesome. I think that's like also a harder path. I've reflected on this a bit this year as well… that it becomes very easy to engage in spiritual bypassing. You know, and this world needs awakened enlightened people deeply engaging with the darkeness.
And you know, we're not to run away from it. We're supposed to heal ourselves, but then go back and help the others, you know, who need out or even in the process, you know, stay connected, you know, to the world around us.
Chris: It's, it's, yeah, it's, it is the work right now. I think that so many of us are here to do and it's harder to do that.
Jenna: It's harder to heal while you're living life in the world, but it's also important. So I applaud you for that.
Chris: I applaud you as well. Thank you. Thank you.
Meditation in the Vashishta Caves
Jenna: You mentioned an experience with Jesus when you were in India and this kind of transmission, message that… you're accepted no matter what, but what was that like, where did that happen?
Chris: You know, it wasn't only at one location. It was kind of a different, there were different stages and different places. But the one that comes to mind was when we went to the caves, the yoga, the Vashishta caves. And I believe there was Vashishta’s wife who had a cave that was just up the way from his cave. And that was the cave that Jesus was fond of meditating. And to sit in that cave, it is still hard to speak about, you know, I don't always feel permission to speak of it, but yeah… to be in that depth of stillness, I feel, it just brings me to a place like, it's ineffable. I don't know how to describe, because with, let's say, let's see if it's metaphoric and illustrated. When I sit for the Gita, and I'm alone in my room, let's say it helps me come to the depth of like 50 feet into the ocean, consciousness. When I was at that cave, I felt like I dropped into a depth of like 2,000 feet. Time wasn't present.
And I brought my doubt, I brought my doubt into that level of depth. And I felt the supportive presence. I kind of felt a sense. It wasn't an actual sense. I felt whatever the feeling is and somebody puts their hand on your shoulder.
And they give you this sense that you’re supported regardless of what is chosen. Do it with fearlessness. And after that experience in that cave, I just thought I will never be the same. I will never… the experience of the physical.. it's taken on the very different qualities since that level of reassurance was offered.
Jenna: Wow. Wow. What a beautiful transcendent moment. I know it's you mean that there's some moments that you can't really put words to. And some transmissions that aren't even like, it's not like words, it's not, you know, it's not even a message..
Chris: Or image
Jenna: It's just, it's an energy, it's a presence.
Chris: Yeah, a sense…. yeah, when we come into expressing in words, the deeper layers of subtlety, words are almost too dense to capture.
Jenna: Yeah.
Chris: That's also something subtly.
Jenna: I think that's why we've had these ancient mystery traditions and initiations that give us these opportunities to experience the divine for ourselves because there is that threshold where words don't do it just us anymore.
And to remember that state of oneness and that that to remember to truly like at a you'll cellular level remember our connection with God. It's like we have to have those experiences. You can't read it, you can't hear it. It's like you have to feel it and be it.
Chris: Yeah. Even in that statement, our connection with God, it's like a duality in that our connection got like, the only way to express that effectively, I feel like I would need like a singing ball to just hit, or just Om, you know. Because the closer we get to expressing oneness, the more that words are just these kind of clunky.
Jenna: Totally. Dave had actually talked about that in a Satsang last week, where it's this idea of the mind takes us into separation.
Chris: Right. Right. Right.
Jenna: That state of oneness, that state of Divine you feel that, you express it, you channel it not from the mind.
Chris: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I love I love that you brought that in because it it seems like when I do any type of sound bowl healings or one on one Sai Shakti healing sessions or Reiki, I feel like the ability for the person and with to come to a state of No mind or stillness, is where that's soulful restoration becomes possible.
Jenna: Yeah.
Chris: There's so many tools in the Western world that still They don't disengage. They don't still the mind as long as the mind's active…mm… there's a level of depth and artistry and this level of healing that requires the practitioner to have the ability to still the mind to a state of no activity.
Jenna: Yeah, yeah, I love that you brought that up because I think that at least for me on my that was like the first major challenge. You know, was how do I just get this thing under control? How do I just get this mind, to 1) not think, negative stuff and go down the negative spiral, but then also how does it turn it off? You know, like I don't think we w talk enough about that sometimes like just how overactive our minds are and how negative they can be, you know, and how many thoughts we're having that are thoughts of separation rather than thoughts of unity and love.
You know, when I started to unpack that I was like, oh my goodness, we have a major problem here. You know, once I recognized, yeah, we need to be able to turn my mind off. You know, how am I gonna do that? Like how do I even get in that deep state? Yeah. Yeah. And for you the Gita practice was really that like anchor for you at anchor.
Chris: Anchor. Anchor. Yeah. As long as I know that within each 25-year period, I will return to that state of stillness. I'm willing to do anything with the activity of my day. I know I'll come back to the stillness. I don't care what's suffering I'm around. And that is all I am around at the detox center. It is extreme anguish, extreme grief, extreme hatred towards God or I'm not like I am in the deaths of suffering.
And I don't mind it because I know that I'll come back to stillness each day. And so I have the capacity to meet people there and like, hey, did you know, have you heard about meditation?
Let me hit the cymbol for you. So like what I love about what I do is that I'm kind of like at the gateway. I'm kind of at the entrance of people who have no experience with meditation. They try to sound more. I do a reeiki with them or I do some modality with them. And they're like, oh my god Chris, “I want to know more. I didn't know this state existed.” And I'm like, try this practice, try this book, try this. And so I just am meeting people where they're at, and it's so exhilarating. I love what I do. Every day it's a blissful miracle.
I can't even, you know, I just bow in the honor and privilege and for the opportunity to exist here. It's the thoughts, I’m just overwhelmed with gratitude.
Jenna: You are definitely a vessel for miracles. And I think that one of the beautiful things to reflect on, on this path is like once we've, once we've gone far enough with our own journey, we can be these vessels for other people's miracles and we don't even know all the ways that that's happening.
Chris: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and I'm not the doer… Chris is not the doer. I am like it just occurs and I'm part of it.
0:46:53 Like I just I just had this sixth sense where I'm kind of magnetized when somebody might be, I don't know how to describe what occurs in my intuition when I'm at the facility, but sometimes it's like just me listening to somebody, just to look into their eyes
and let them pour out their pain. Is healing. Yeah. Yeah. And Miraculous.
Jenna: Totally. Yeah.
Chris: I mean, what's happening?
Jenna: It can be that simple. Super simple. Just being present with another, since we have so many situations where that's not the case, or so many, you know, settings or communities or organizations where we're not given that opportunity to just share, what's been deep…
Chris: yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and there’s something so healing when somebody shares something that they feel just like, “oh my god, I can never be forgiven for this anger, like whatever harm that I caused” and I meet them like “Me too. I've done that too. I've been there too. You're not alone.” When the world has met them over and over with like, oh, you're too much. I love the opportunity to just kneel down and say, “Man, I've done some messed-up stuff too. You're not alone in that right.” And those two words, those are two of the most healing words that I've heard and the room's for me is me too.
Cause so often we separate ourselves with this like, “I'm destined to go to heaven. I will not engage with this darkness over here” and I think that creates so much suffering. Unnecessary, unnecessary suffering.
Jenna: Totally. And that just brings us back to that concept of unity, like what you just articulated there that that moment of like me too. Like I'm with you. I've been there. I see you. Right. Like there’s nothing to hide here, you know. Like that is seeing God and another. That is that is allowing the reflection, the true reflection of God to start to come through.
Chris: Yes.
Jenna: And like that's simple. Like I think this is maybe this is a good lesson, wisdom, to wrap up on what you mentioned a couple of times throughout our chat… making the complex more simple… and we can, you know, we can make these spiritual journeys and spiritual practices so complex when it's that simple. Like what you articulated about just meeting another with that kind of empathy and love and acceptance.
Like you don't have to do any other spiritual practice, it's other than that. And the divine is going to take care of what needs to get taken care of.
Chris: Truth. Yeah. True. Yeah. Yeah. Take it out of my hands. I'm not the doer.
Receiving a Spiritual Name from the Divine
Jenna: Yeah. Yeah. Such amazing wisdom, Chris, Ishwarananda. Maybe you can wrap up by sharing a little about how that name came to be.
And how you became the new version of yourself as Ishwarananda, how’d that happened>
Chris: I mean, it really has just been this constant process of transformation, the constant process of like disidentification with what's not real. Honestly, the name is Ishwarananda, which is Ishwara, is a gentle form of Shiva. And Ananda stands for Bliss. And then the Guru Gita's chant is a chant to Shiva. So Ishwarananda is kind of… it’s a name that is still in the process of being integrated and sustained. But being like endowed with this identification happened when we were in the Himalayan's, and I'll get chills just thinking about it, and almost like I'm going to cry.
We were in Himalayan's, and if you've ever driven to the Himalayan's, there's landslides all over the place, and it's really hard to kind of like navigate some of these landslides, and so we got stuck behind the landslide as we're on our way to Kedernath, had to turn around. And we're going to go back to the hotel, and then there was another landslide. So we're now in this spot on the Himalayas, stuck between two landslides.
Then we find this one not a gas station. It was kind of like a convenience store. That was overseeing the Ganges, oh, mama Ganges. And, you know, it was so Divine because usually people would be kind of in a state of panic in a place in a time like that, but we were all on other worldly peaceful and calm.
And we were at that convenience store for, I don't know, five hours, maybe. And since we were there, I just kind of decided, like, okay, it seems like I'm going to have an hour to chant the Guru Gita. I might as well do it here. I found a rock over looking at the Ganges. And I chanted the Guru Gita.
And there's just such a sweet moment of when I got to the meditation of the end. I could feel the name being offered to me. I could feel like Ishwarananda kind of dropped like a drop of nectar from somewhere other than here. And when I could feel that drop of nectar touch this soul, a thousand motorcycles start driving down this Himalayan road and like the landslide was broken open and the stream of motorcycles arrived and it's all this commotion. And I went from this like unbelievable peace, to this incredible like Bam, you have arrived. It was just this like Holy moment and you know that's how it began. That was the origin of that that name being offered.
Jenna: Wow.
Chris: And it wasn't, you know, and it wasn't totally got back to the states that it told Ramakrishna about it. And I was kind of like, you know, so this name kind of arrived, like, I was like, but I know that I still have more spiritual sadhana to do. I'm nowhere near any states of liberation and he was like, “Chris, you could keep on, you keep on going with that unworthiness story. I’m calling you Ishwarananda.”
Jenna: Good for Ramakrishna. Love it
Chris: Yeah, I needed to own that with confidence because that was gifted to you.
Jenna: Awesome.
Chris: And so he's like, you know, the next thing you need to do is shave your head and offer it to the fire and offer your life to God. And, that's here we are, you know, continuing to integrate that name.
Jenna: Amazing. Amazing. And what's interesting, I just find it interesting that, you know, that's a Shiva name and then this like procession of motor cycles and all that power and action. Like that’s such Shiva energy coming through.
Chris: It was intense! It was like a snake of motor cycle. Thank you for giving me the opportunity in that story.
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