Who am I? and Why am I here? are eternal questions that fall upon the lips of even the most brave and fearless men and women. It is not for lack of courage that we cannot answer these questions; it is for lack of self-pursuit, the continuous thirst for a real connection between the Self as we have always thought of ourselves to be, and the real Self, who we fundamentally are as a full human being, not what we’ve acted out over these years.

There are myriad labels human beings attribute to a person’s personality, work and life. In order to make sense of life, we oftentimes revert to the most simple descriptions, boxes and categories in which we can easily determine a person’s worth in comparison to the rest of the national pulse, or simply as we call, the whole of society.

Whether we regard these labels as all-encompassing is certainly a choice of the person herself. My question is, however, will we live within the limits of these self-addressed labels?

In the past, I have enjoyed defining myself as a certain person and persona in society, one that is filled with expert knowledge, top-of-the-class achievements, literal medals, trophies and certificates that all pointed to my self-worth, my likability, my perceived success in life. If I attained this and that by age 25, I am on the right track, I thought. But on the right track of what? That is the question. I answered it, despite it being one of the most difficult things I had to come face-to-face in all my life. What I had to come face-to-face was myself.

As a global nomadic Truth-seeker, I travel and live in various places in the world. I tread many miles across foreign land, embracing uncertainty, ambiguity, and a non-fixated point of return, home, theory and philosophy, not because I aim to puff up my ego, self-proud of the fact that I have this many stamps in my passport, with all these pictures I snapped to boot. I travel because I am re-creating myself. I travel because I seek the Truth. I am no longer the woman I was two years ago, and for a very good reason too. As we self-evolve, we naturally adjust our needs, desires and wants in life. We progress, because if we didn’t, we remain stagnant, or far worse, we regress and revert back to our former habits, our former delusions of what our Self ought to look like.

Vairagya is Sanskrit for letting go at the deepest level of the human soul. It is about mentally detaching ourselves from worldly objects and concerns and letting go of our thoughts that form our reality. These thoughts, they are veils. They are veils that cover our real selves. I embrace vairagya in my physical life so that I can access my higher Self, a union with the Divine. I do this through a fundamental shift in my attitude in life, my mentality, and an unvarnished listening to my heart.

I am a naturally intuitive person, self-aware of my body’s needs, my spirit’s longing, my heart’s desires. It isn’t what I do exactly that makes me the person I am. It’s how I go about doing things and living my life that comes back to who I am at the most basic core. Rather than seek others to fulfill a certain longing, I become that person. Rather than seek a teacher that can teach me everything I want to know, I become that person. Rather than seek a mentor with the ability to discern what’s best for me, I become that person. Oftentimes, we are quick to use others as a crutch in order for their involvement in our lives to complete who we are. This is our current human nature. But it was not how we are made to be in the first place. We co-exist, we don’t necessarily co-depend.

Every day, we run around, ticking boxes off, making phone calls, completing errands, piling on more work on top of an already heavy load. We run around stressed, depressed, angry, impatient and unloving. We run until we can run no more, and then, we die. In between the running around, we may come, at one point or another, to face ourselves, and usually society has a nice term for this, calling it a “quarter-life” or “mid-life” crisis. It is a crisis in their eyes because they think the person is just too bogged down by all of life. And they are correct in their assertion. But what they neglect to ascertain is the fact that this person was fortunate enough to meet herself at a critical point in her life, so that she may at least give herself another opportunity to correct course, and to align her true Self with her current one. Some people never have a crisis, and thus, never realize their true purpose. They don’t even know who they are and why they are here. And then, they die, having been highly productive all their lives, but never honestly going to the depths of their soul and becoming the person they were meant to fully be.

We are extremely powerful beyond our own comprehension. I am but one woman harnessing this power, tapping into my divine true Self, as I commit to seeking the Truth all my life, until my very last breath in this world. I want to exit knowing I lived my all, not experienced all, for quantity and sheer diversity of experiences can play upon the ego, but with any situation, experience and relationship I cultivate and have, that I embraced it truthfully and wholly.

This is all I can do, and shall ever want to do. This is me, all of me.

Nina Yau
07 November 2011
Bangalore, India