Acharya Shunya is a spiritually awake internationally renowned and awarded spiritual teacher and scholar of nondual wisdom (Advaita) and a classically-trained master of Yoga and Ayurveda. The first female head of her 2000-year old Indian spiritual lineage, she has dedicated her life to empowering health and elevating consciousness worldwide. She is president of The Awakened Self Foundation with its headquarters in northern California, and bestselling author of Ayurveda Lifestyle Wisdom (Sounds True, 2017). Her latest book “Sovereign Self , Claim Your Inner Joy and Freedom with the empowering wisdom of the Vedas, Bhagavad Gita and Upanishads” (Sounds True, 2020) is being claimed by experts as a masterpiece on eastern psychology and spirituality, now available for preorder.
Acharya Shunya is a sought-after speaker, delivering keynote addresses to audiences that include the National Ayurveda Medical Association, University of California, Berkeley, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Stanford University, Kripalu, Sedona Yoga Festival, and 1440 Multiversity. She serves as an advisor to the Indian Government in matters pertaining to global integration and cultivation of Ayurveda and Yoga. www.acharyashunya.com
Welcome everybody, welcome to Spiritual Biz Chat for Spiritual Biz Magazine, and today we have joining us spiritual teacher Acharya Shunya. Welcome, Shunya, thank you for being with us, how are you doing today?
Acharya Shunya: Thank you and I am doing wonderfully today and every day it seems, nowadays.
It’s a pleasure to have you here, Shunya! Could you share the story behind your personal journey down the path to your current life’s purpose and work?
Acharya Shunya: I am fortunate I was born in India to an extraordinary family of meditators and contemplators of the highest Truth- the truth of our non-dual Self.
The Self I am talking about refers to the light inside you that never dims, no matter what dims outside. There is a life force within you that is ever radiant, whether this body dies or is diseased. This light, this beauty within, is the Self; the innermost imperishable essence of all living beings; an unbounded yet commonly shared consciousness that transcends the perishable personality. The Self is awareness itself: forever self-aware, sovereign, awake, joyful.
And fortunately, I did not have to leave my home in quest of a master teacher who can impart me wisdom to find my own true “Self.” Karma insured I take birth in a family that has been imparting this exact wisdom – yes, for at least 2000 years, my family has been showing humanity a joy-filled path to aligning with our Greater Self as well as abiding health of body, mind, and soul.
And today, I share this same transformational wisdom with my international students and readers worldwide. And as the first female lineage holder in a 2,000-year-old line of spiritual teachers, I am told I provide a rare opportunity to receive authentic Indian spiritual teachings from a genuine Vedic master—one with a distinctly down-to-earth, feminine style who never lets us forget that our humanity is to be embodied and enjoyed!
Thanks to the knowledge I gained, my true Self is expansive and internally joyful. I feel that I am worth the expansive space my true Self inhabits on our planet, not the small place where my ego (small self) sometimes dwells. It brings my soul all the joy to see this life work out on the world platform, helping so many more souls see their true nature and become empowered by it!
How inspiring! Congratulations on your newly released book “Sovereign Self”! That’s a huge accomplishment! What was the inspiration behind this book and its title? What do you think sets your book apart from other spiritual books about self-empowerment out there?
Acharya Shunya: Thank you. My newest book Sovereign Self: Claim your Inner Joy and Freedom with the Empowering Wisdom of The Vedas, Upanishads, and Bhagavad Gita (published by Sounds True in December of 2020) embodies awakening teachings and practices from ancient, enlightened men and women of India, known as the Vedic seers. Their wisdom was preserved in a body of sacred literature known as the Vedas (VAY-duhs). These texts provide access to their original understanding of “Self.”
The Vedas explain that we are always free, eternally peaceful, and whole. We have simply forgotten our spiritual truth. Right knowledge to correctly perceive ourselves is important if we are to recognize who we really are; if we are to lead a truly joyful and expansive, fearless, and sorrow-free life. Our true limitless nature can emerge from within the shadow. And this process happens again and again. Birth and rebirth within the same life. The clouds part, the sun emerges…
But until we have awakening and liberating wisdom by our side, we remain identified with our worldly smallness. We keep looking for happiness, wholeness, and fulfillment outside of ourselves. This forgetfulness is the root cause of sorrow and psychological bondage. Self-discovery and self-realization must be humanity’s priority, even amid the many daily roles we play. We must recognize that we remain infinite, even while living out our finite stories.
In Sovereign Self, I am trying to help my readers end this spiritual forgetfulness. To remind them of their latent spirit powers as non-dual Self, and transmit, from my soul to theirs, the teachings and practices that have delivered me from darkness to light, from bondage to freedom. I awakened to discover something beautiful inside me, and now I believe, my readers will too!
Shunya, what do you hope for the readers to take away after reading your book?
Acharya Shunya: I feel that we humans have accepted a shackled existence (far too quickly). Many of us feel our life is simply a jail sentence. We disappoint ourselves. We don’t necessarily even like ourselves. We go about life imprisoned in our false beliefs, confirming our imagined personal limitations. We beg for freedom, recognition, and love from others, forgetting that our happiness, acceptance, and worth are up to us: that they are achieved through an inward journey toward the Self, never outward. We don’t recognize the truth that we are the ruler of our own lives, in full command of our own experience. This book will give my readers the tools to reclaim a sovereign life from within.
I share with my readers that we must give ourselves 1000 chances. Actively envision the life you want to live. Be willing to rebirth your dreams. Don’t remain stuck defending dreams you had dreamt a long time ago. Those old visions have done their job already – they have already birthed the new you, the one who can now dream the dream that celebrates you, honors you, and sets you free to shine your light in all its fullness. You owe no one explanations for why you dare to dream what you dream. Dreaming to me is about freeing up your soul right to change your life scripts, soar in the sky of internal freedom.
My inner permissions have transformed my life, and I continue to fly in open skies internally. You too can simply go ahead and dream the dream that aligns you with your highest Self and introduces you to the best most sovereign of yourself today.
In fact, absolute authority over your inner world is your spiritual birthright.
I hope that readers of my book will walk away with this message – not only intellectually transmitted to them but activated received within their hearts as an emotional conviction.
By the way, my life was not always sovereign either. For a while, my mind was plunged into the depths of darkness, devastated from sorrowful relationships, despairing from the sudden deaths of people I loved, and disheartened by the shocking curve balls that life can throw our way. Yet despite everything — even losing my sense of worth for a short time along the way — here I am. I feel the power, wholeness, and joy of being alive! These are not mere words. This is my visceral experience of my own self-worth after I regained the sovereignty to write my life script anew. I don’t regret my learning curve, my mistakes in the past. I am proud to be mentally and spiritually sovereign today, and I believe my readers will be too.
What kind of advice can you give to someone who wants to write a book but is afraid or hesitant to for any reason?
Acharya Shunya: The best way to overcome hesitancy is to begin writing a few pages every day without a plan. Jump into the river for the sheer fun and delight of it, without too much thought, and then figure out how to swim! And here is what I believe. Every book has a resident spirit waiting to lead the brave (the ones willing to get wet) forward. The spirit of the book shall show you the way forward once you happily and cheekily get wet. Have fun rather than get paralyzed trying to have the perfect first draft. I write several drafts and each version shows me what I need to see.
What is your ultimate goal with your work? What is your mission? Your dream? What are some projects that are on your mind and that you are currently working on?
Acharya Shunya: Most of us assume that there is only one way to lead a life when truly, there lies before us a dynamic breadth of possibilities and ways to leading our life. The options before us are especially significant when we are learning to lead our life as a Spiritually Sovereign Being: with boundless soul power and joy versus merely living out the roles, the world allocates our body to play (and letting ourselves be defined and designed by those roles).
Therefore, I carry in my heart a desire to help more and more people awaken to their true soul potential. I am doing that, not only through my bestselling books like Sovereign Self and Ayurveda Lifestyle Wisdom but also through The Awakened Self Foundation, with its headquarters in the Bay Area of Northern California. This is a learning, empowering, and awakening platform that I founded with the explicit aim of forwarding the timeless Vedic teachings that enable all humans to attain their full potential as healthy, authentic, and awakened beings. Our courses and training support the emergence of radical personal wellbeing and health and forward the evolution of the individual and collective consciousness, ushering a greater planetary awakening.
Is there a final message you want to let our readers know? Or just any last little words that you have for them?
Acharya Shunya: I just want to say this to Spiritual Biz-Magazine readers: Bondage and freedom, power and powerlessness, all occur in the realm of thought. By understanding the mind and its deepest tendencies through the lens of Vedic wisdom, we can free ourselves from sorrow and reclaim our joy.
Therefore, every once in a while, you must deliberately unsettle what you have become too settled into for the sake of the world or your worldly relationships, be it a role, a script, an image, or even a career path. Actively dismantle expectations to make sure your life has not become all about meeting scripted expectations of what you and your life should be all about. Do it so that you are always in alignment with your highest Self and not the falsehoods you have come to identify within the course of time.
And if you do check out my book, I am confident that a beautiful, light-filled, powerful, and awakened Self awaits you on the other side. You, too, can be the master of your destiny, just like the thousands of people I have helped awaken to sovereignty worldwide. You too can experience significant mental and spiritual autonomy. With the aid of the Vedas’ timeless wisdom, you can play a role in shaping and awakening planetary consciousness. Take this opportunity to reexamine your assumptions about yourself and awaken to what lies within us all.
Thank you, Shunya, very much! It has been such a pleasure chatting with you today!
Acharya Shunya: Thank you very much!
