Many years ago, more than a decade ago (gosh, I’m old, lol!), I had visited an ashram in a beautiful hilly town in north western India with my parents and another family. I remember sitting in the temple, hearing chants, and saying my prayers.

In fact, famous Indian celebrities like Shammi Kapoor and Priyanka Chopra are believers and visited this exact ashram, including many westerners from Europe, Australia, and the United States.

Being a teenager, I wasn’t very interested in sitting at the temple.

I wasn’t interested in saying my prayers. Since I had no choice but to sit at the temple, I used to spend my time staring at the cute guys (by the way, none paid any attention to me and instead focused all their attention on prayers). I would float into another world in my head and conjure all sorts of dreamy, romantic fantasies in my head about them.

Out of the Blue…

But one fine day, looking out at the gorgeous hills and landscape, I felt this current of pure bliss and happiness run through my body. I remember feeling very peaceful. I remember thinking there is more to life than our physical forms.

It was in that moment that I became connected to my soul and realized that there is a deeper meaning to my life. It was in that moment I had a taste of spirituality.

I was never the religious sort, I still am not. By birth, I am a Hindu, but I don’t follow everything. For example: I eat beef. Today, I enjoy going to the temple or church or any place of worship. They are all the same to me: manifestations of truth, love, soul connection, and humanity.

But after that trip, my spirituality became buried somewhere in me. My teenager years and most of my twenties passed.

Growing up in an upper middle class Indian family in the Bay Area, I grew up attending parties where all anyone spoke about what was how much money they made, stocks, and expensive houses they bought.  Even I got caught up in the rat race. It became important to me to prove I could go to a “good” university and have a “good” job.

That “good” was whatever the definition of the society and family I grew up in. But it never truly ever resonated with me. I always felt I was pretending to be someone else. I was wearing a mask that hid the real, true me.

Well, life has a way of coming full circle. My spirituality became awakened early last year.

I committed to undergoing a deep inner work and process of transformation.  A large part of it was due to the events and circumstances that unfolded in my life the last couple years.  But now I understand why they had to happen.

Because they were designed for my transformation.  The hardest lesson for me to learn is to let go and surrender.  All my life I have struggled with this.  I tend to attach to a person or situation with such might and not want to let go.  As a result, I’m very careful to whom and what I get attached to. 

But lately, it feels as if that’s all I have been doing. Letting go. Releasing. Surrendering. I’ve been releasing many old patterns and ways of thinking. This year, I let go of a relationship, my apartment, job, fearful beliefs, and much, much more.

It is starting to click piece by piece why this is happening. Suddenly, the realization dawned on me: Letting go is part of my spiritual evolution. To peel away the layers of ego to reveal the true essence of my soul.

I have learned my ego has kept me firmly entrenched in fearful, limiting situations and beliefs all these years because the ego is too afraid to surrender. It wants to stay in control.

But staying in control is incredibly exhausting. It requires way too much unnecessary energy and time.

I now want to use my precious time and energy to connect to my soul deeply and complete the work that I am meant to do on this Earth. The work that was decided before I was born. To master the core lessons of my soul in this lifetime.

As I’m learning the lessons I am meant to master, I am letting the path be revealed moment by moment. I am shedding my old skin to let a new Priyanka emerge. I’m not sure where this is all taking me, but I know one thing for sure:

This journey is going to be extremely fulfilling and beautiful. I am going to open my mind to magic and let myself be guided by my inner bank of wisdom.

Have you felt challenges in letting go and releasing? How did it make you feel? What are the beautiful insights you gained from your process of releasing? Please share with me in the comments. I’d love to know.