Rajesh Ramani is a spiritual teacher, meditation and life enhancement coach based in Thailand, at the Kamalaya Wellness Centre in Koh Samui. I was fortunate to meet Rajesh after a seemingly random suggestion by a friend, days before visiting Samui for the first time. I feel privileged not just to have worked with Rajesh one on one, but also to have participated more recently in his new workshop, under the umbrella of the Self-Leadership Days. In this conversation, we talk about his journey from banker to monk to mentor, his work at Kamalaya, how to deal with grief in times of a pandemic and the importance of self-awareness and developing emotional resilience. You will probably hear the birds of Samui in the background, hopefully, that will add to the colour of the show. Enjoy!
In this conversation, Rajesh Ramani (on LinkedIn) kindly relates his journey from South India to becoming a spiritual teacher as well as a life transformation coach based in the world renowned Kamalaya Wellness Centre in Southern Thailand.
I ask him about the importance of Self Awareness and he tells me a story about a wood cutter, which leads us to discussing the pragmatic need for us to know who we are and how we understand the world. He then brings up some of the mind's restless movements and how that can be the focus of meditation.
We touch on how he takes everything into account to support the people who come to him, from mental, emotional and spiritual part of their journey and he offers advice to business executives in this time of great challenge, cueing them to put an emphasis on human connections. "Stay away from negativity" he advises, "and invest in relationships."
We then move on to talk about how to deal with grief with the backdrop of COVID-19 and how to release guilt, anger, and other associated emotions. His advice: "Let yourself grieve!"
Rajesh also goes over the new workshops he will lead online and off line, with the Self Leadership Days , the next one being focused on Emotional Resilience, a skill we probably all need to cultivate in these times. We bring up goddesses, Kali in particular, then Carl Sagan “The Pale Blue Dot” and I finish our chat with three questions:
What are you reading right now?
I know you are partial to Netflix occasionally, what are you watching at the moment?
Kim’s Convenience Store
And any final words to share with our listeners?
You'll have to listen to the episode to discover this answer. Until next time, be well and thank you.
Thank you to Conor Heffernan for the music and Joel North for his help in improving our Zoom recording sound somewhat.
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Anne Muhlethaler:
Hi, hello, bonjour, Namasté. This is Out of the Clouds, a podcast at the crossroads between business and mindfulness, and I am your host, not your coach, Anne Muhlethaler. Today, my guest is Rajesh Ramani. Rajesh is a teacher, a mentor, a coach. I met Rajesh about five years ago on a trip to Thailand, where I was lucky enough to do a couple of sessions with him, which were, I'd say, transformational is probably the best way to describe it. We have kept in touch, and I was lucky enough to see him again on several occasions, both in Thailand and in Switzerland, and it's a real pleasure to be able to share this conversation with all of you. I hope that you'll greatly enjoy meeting or discovering Rajesh Ramani.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Hi, Rajesh. It's really nice to see you. Starting from the top, just because I want you to get a chance to explain to our listeners, would you kindly introduce yourself, and explain what it is that you do, in your own words, not in my words?
Rajesh Ramani:
Yes. Thank you, Anne, for having me in your podcast today, and it's wonderful to have known you for two years, I suppose, now, and we've been meeting each other in different places, actually, in Europe and in Thailand, as well. So, to introduce about myself, I'm a spiritual teacher and a life transformation expert, mentoring expert, as we can call it. But these are titles that we all need to use at some point in time. But giving you a background about myself, I come from India, from south India, where I was born and educated in a middle class family, and a bit orthodox religious family. I studied to become a cost and wealth accountant, and I was working in a bank. That was the first part of my career.
Rajesh Ramani:
I was there for around 4-5 years, and in the meanwhile, I had the opportunity to somehow, I would say ... now it would all be like a miraculous occurrence to me. My spiritual teacher, in that period, and then connecting to my spiritual teacher changed my life, I would say. It changed my life firstly in a qualitative way, that I became more aware of myself, I became more aware of what I am inside, and then how I am thinking and how I am relating to people around me, and with myself, and it gave a bigger awareness around my habits and my needs.
Rajesh Ramani:
This transformation that started happening within me, and continued for a period of time, the next few years, which eventually led me to a conclusion one day, that I though, you know what, I can do much more and help more people. My teacher was taking in monks as part of the monastery, so I went in there, and then I wanted to become a monk, so that I can go out and help more people. Because in the meanwhile, while I was working in the bank, I also used all my spare time to go and talk to people, and listen to people. I was also interested in a few social projects around where I was working. I even signed up to go and talk about AIDS awareness, and I was just 21.
Rajesh Ramani:
It was an interesting experience, because I was talking to all of these older people in the villages, and about awareness around AIDS, and I was also talking about health awareness and sanitation and other things. I didn't realize then, but it was the momentum that pushed me towards working with people. And fundamentally, I'm quite a shy to meet person. I'm really not that social, and today, I'm that in my personal life.
Rajesh Ramani:
But I entered the monastery when I was 23 years old, and I had already worked for five years in the banking industry. I come from a family of bankers, so it's not a surprise that I ended up there, but what was a surprise was that I left everything one day, just walked out of everything, towards finding this new life.
Rajesh Ramani:
The journey continued. I was trained in meditation. I was trained in philosophy. I was trained in mostly Eastern philosophy, and mostly trained through personal experiences, transformative experiences.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Interesting.
Rajesh Ramani:
So, the personal experiences ranged from meditative experiences, to energy experiences, to emotional issues, and shifting the way I look at the world and I understand the world and myself. Shifting the way I see the mind and understand the mind. So, we went into the transformational processes, meditating for days on end, sometimes without food, fasting. So, all kinds of spiritual practices, which were helping us, actually moulding us in our own spiritual growth, and also in trying to help out people.
Rajesh Ramani:
And it was not just being cloistered in the monastery the whole time, because after a few weeks of training, then we would actually walk, travel outside and stay with people and run classes, and work one-on-one with them. So, it was a full-on exercise in two ways. In one way, is to keep myself in my own spiritual journey and growth, and in another sense, to go out and share it with people through retreats, or through workshops, or through individual, one-on-one sessions.
Rajesh Ramani:
So, that was my journey for 14 years of my life. Then the organization went through some kind of a schism, so then I found myself asking fundamental questions again about where I belong and what do I want to do with my life? But one thing was pretty clear, was that I want to continue to work with people and help people, and I also want to continue with my spiritual journey.
Rajesh Ramani:
And then, I walk out into the world, and my strength is, what I would say, is to convert all the spiritual teachings and principles to real life, and to help people, everyone, including myself, to understand the world and to find the right responses to the world, so that we life a fulfilled life and a life of happiness and peace.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I appreciate you should say that it's not just for others but for yourself, because when I saw you a few months ago in Switzerland, for that self-leadership workshop that we'll talk a bit more about later, I really appreciated the way that you actually blended your personal experience to help the group understand the presets and the teachings that you had to share, because it made everything suddenly just more digestible, and much easier to imagine blending in to one's own life.
Rajesh Ramani:
Yes, absolutely true, because we understand the world only through our perception, and those are our actual truths. If I speak about what you think, it is not my purview. It is not even my truth. So, my truth is within myself, and my learning is within myself. So, when I work with people, I always see myself not being different from them in any respect. So, every story people come up with, and I say, "Me, too." Because one part of me has gone through that experience, not to the same degree, or not to the same level, but I can see myself in all those experience. If someone says, "I'm a greedy person," I say, "Me, too." If someone says, "I'm comparing myself all the time," I say, "Me, too."
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah.
Rajesh Ramani:
All these experiences are absolutely true. And when they say they are aware, I say, "Me, too." Because all these are human experiences, and we all encompass that within ourselves. So, I think the power of learning comes from one's individual experiences. And if you look at in the past, all learning, in whatever century people lived in, all learning happened through some personal experiences, and even the books that were written were all personal experiences. You see most of the so-called scriptures and philosophies of Hinduism and Buddhism, which I'm much more familiar with, they are all personal experiences of people, what they went through, what breakthrough they got. Those are not textbook kind. Most of them it was an experience. Some of them are still in the textbook style later on.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Sure.
Rajesh Ramani:
So, it is the human experiences of transformation, and only that will speak, because it must be authentic.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Sure. It's story, basically. It's by weaving story that you get to explain philosophy and spirituality.
Rajesh Ramani:
Yes, yes, yes. All stories are also reflections of human nature and human mind, because it's only human beings writing those stories.
Anne Muhlethaler:
It's actually funny, because I listened to the webinar you sent me the other day, and you know what stuck with me? The story of the woodcutter. Do you mind telling that story, because it was really interesting.
Rajesh Ramani:
Yes. This story has been going around in different forms, and basically this story is about a woodcutter, and he was a strong man with a powerful axe, and then he goes searching for employment, and he finds a job and he starts cutting wood. Every day, he would cut a number of trees, and then chop them into small pieces. So, the first day, he cut 10 trees, and then at the end of the week, he could only cut five trees. So, he was a bit concerned about his own ability, so he thinks, what is wrong with me? Something must be wrong with me. Am I not strong enough? Am I not good enough? What is wrong with me?
Rajesh Ramani:
So, he goes and asks his boss, he's like, "Why do you think I am cutting less number of trees now? I think I'm working hard, or harder." And then the boss asks him a question, "When was the last time that you actually stopped to sharpen your axe?" He says, "Oh, I forgot that bit." And then the boss says, "You know, that is the most important thing. You can put in so much effort, but giving time to sharpen your axe, you may feel like it's a waste of time, but that sharpening of the axe improves your productivity, makes it easy to go through what you are doing in life."
Rajesh Ramani:
And the sharpening of the axe, in this context, I would say, is bringing self-awareness, and awareness into oneself, because we as a person, or a being, is a person who is relating with the world around us, and if you don't know who is relating with the world, we will not know what decisions we are taking and how we are relating to the world. So, it is quite essential, not only to understand the world around us, but also to understand the person who is understanding the world.
Rajesh Ramani:
Yes, so that is quite essential. That's why it's really, really important, whatever the job, whatever the nature of the work we do in our life, it's quite essential to know oneself. It may not be to a spiritual end. It may not be towards enlightenment, or any such spiritual needs, but even in a practical, pragmatic need, we need to know who we are, and how we understand the world.
Anne Muhlethaler:
For me, I also saw sharpening the axe was coming back to oneself, rather than only awareness. Maybe it's just a different way of saying some of that.
Rajesh Ramani:
I speak about self-awareness. That's what you are saying as coming back to oneself. It's a self-awareness.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Sure, because we spend so much of our time focusing on the path and the future, making plans, managing expectations, anxiety, hopes, dreams, future, et cetera, which effectively means that we're not present. We're not in the present moment.
Rajesh Ramani:
Yes, true. But see, today our mind is structured and the way we use the mind, the mind is basically a manager, one who knows to manage a situation. So, the mind is also the protector. Its primary purpose is to keep you alive, physically, psychologically and emotionally. So, it goes around comparing, it goes around measuring everything, it goes around predicting future scenarios and trends and everything, so that we feel safe now, and also in the future. The reason it goes into the past is only to predict the future. So, the past and the future cannot be separated from each other. People who live in the past also live in the future. People who live in the future also live in the past.
Rajesh Ramani:
But to make this mind come back to the present, it's an exercise in itself. In one way, it is actually going against the nature of the mind itself. So, living in the present is something that we need to understand much deeper, because it's not just staring at the pot of spaghetti in front of us.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That makes me hungry, because it's almost lunchtime here.
Rajesh Ramani:
Yes, true. No, it is not such simplicity. When people say, you should live in the present all the time, I would say that's wishful thinking. But the truth is, when we say living in the present, it is also knowing how this mind is constantly taking us into the future or into the past. So, because all the thinking about the future and the past is actually happening in the present. Only thing is, we forget. We forget that it's happening in the present, and we get carried away.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah.
Rajesh Ramani:
But if we have the awareness that it is all happening in the present, then we could actually happily sedate and let the mind play all these games of the future and the past, and enjoy it, actually. It is like watching a movie in a cinema. At some point, if you believe this movie is absolutely real, then we either throw a stone at that, or we get upset and angry, or all of those things. But if you're so aware that you're actually watching a movie, and in that awareness, you can actually enjoy it as a movie, as actors, and as people there, and as me. So, it is the same with the mind.
Anne Muhlethaler:
It's funny, you're describing my meditation this morning. I was much more ... it was very movie-like. It was not massively focused. But I quite enjoyed it. I was like, okay, so this is what is going on now. You have this.
Rajesh Ramani:
True. If all you have in your meditation is only a restless mind spinning movie after movie, why not that be the focus of the meditation?
Anne Muhlethaler:
Sure. It was not unpleasant.
Rajesh Ramani:
Exactly. You just see, yeah, okay, movie day, and then we watch it. That is the whole purpose of meditation.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That's a great way to describe it. I'm going to call it, it was movie day today. Yesterday wasn't a movie day. Yesterday was ...
Rajesh Ramani:
Exactly.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Loving kindness. It was meta. But today was definitely movie day.
Rajesh Ramani:
Absolutely. You know, there's nothing wrong about that. Now, how many times in my practices that I have sat through a whole hour, and then I walked away, just saying one statement like, oh, it didn't happen.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That's really good. I like that.
Rajesh Ramani:
Yes. See, I feel meditation is a happening. We can all agree, it is not unlike sleep. You can only create an atmosphere for it to happen. You sit in a proper posture, you shut off the sensory inputs as much as possible, and then you have something to focus, and then it has to happen. So, if we are patient enough with ourself, with attention, with a bit of relaxed posture and feeling, the meditation has a greater chance of happening.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That sounds very wise, and possible now.
Rajesh Ramani:
Yes, yes.
Anne Muhlethaler:
So, I'd love to ask you, maybe just segueing from meditation, how do you work with the people that come to you at Kamalaya? Maybe we could explain to the listeners where you are situated right now in the world.
Rajesh Ramani:
Yes. I live in Ko Samui Island in Thailand, and for the past nearly 10 years, I've been working with Kamalaya in the sanctuary as a mentor. So, as many of you might be knowing about Kamalaya, the sanctuary is this amazing place to be. It is a place where the healing of the body, mind, and the spirit are addressed, not with any overtones of any spirituality directly, or any hard work to be done, but it is more in a gentle space of creating one's own space to learn and grow and transform, and also become healthier with a bit of pampering and amazing food. It is also healing at the same time. Yes, and other different kinds of treatments, to encompass a holistic approach towards living life and healing oneself. So, I am part of that team, and so I work with people on the mental, emotional, and the spiritual part of their journey.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I came to Kamalaya after I saw a friend of mine in London, she came into a conference room, and she looked like she had a blazing sun radiating from within her. And then, fast forward, I book myself to come to Kamalaya, and maybe three or four days before flying, I lived in New York at the time, I bumped into a girl I knew from London called Chantelle, and we go for brunch, and she says, "You're going to Thailand? That's great. Where are you going?" And I said, "Ko Samui." And she said, "Oh, where?" "The Kamalaya." And then she proceeded to tell me that she arrived there by chance one day. She booked herself in just for relaxation, and then after being nicely pursued by the naturopath, who kept on saying, "Are you sure you don't want to see a few therapists and have some massages?" She then ended up seeing you.
Rajesh Ramani:
I remember that.
Anne Muhlethaler:
So, it was really fateful, because I hadn't seen her for three or four years, and I didn't even know she lived in New York. So then, I got to Kamalaya and mentioned that to the naturopath, who said, "Would you like to meet Rajesh?" I thought, sure.
Rajesh Ramani:
Interesting meetings.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Fateful, for sure.
Rajesh Ramani:
Fateful, yes. One never knows.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah, exactly. So, tell me a little bit, how do you approach the work you do with the people who come see you? I remember, during our first conversation, you told me that you worked a lot before Kamalaya with business executives. I know you still have a lot of people that you work with outside of the space of Kamalaya remotely. How do you work with them, and give us a little flavor of what you do.
Rajesh Ramani:
See, I always start with what people come to me with. We don't have an agenda, of course.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Sure.
Rajesh Ramani:
And people come to me with either that they are stressed out, or they have a private, personal relationship issues, or they are looking for what they want to do next in their lives. So, depending on where they are and where they want to journey next, my job is basically to help them look into themselves. And as they look into themselves, I also give them tools to look into themselves, and I also show them how their minds would work. I'm not telling them exactly how their minds work, but I will show them how their minds could work.
Rajesh Ramani:
And see, whenever anybody sees what they are doing is not actually helpful, it's sufficient strength of awareness and attention, naturally there is an impetus to change it and transform. If you realize something you are holding in your hand is actually weighing you down, and it's not actually helping you, when there is sufficient attention built towards that, and then and understanding about what it is causing you, naturally there is an action that arises from that situation.
Rajesh Ramani:
But many of us in life, we end up carrying ideas, emotions, decisions, notions, opinions, either about ourselves or the world, carrying them for longer than necessary. You know, what may have worked for us earlier at some point of time, we're still carrying it 10 years later, and we still believe somehow it is part of us, but it is not part of you. Just because you carry something for five years, it doesn't become part of you.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Sure.
Rajesh Ramani:
It's still not part of you. When that awareness dawns on, either through practices or through workouts, or through just plain contemplation, or sometimes I take them through an independent journey, because sometimes it is not just the thinking, but it's also the emotions that doesn't work. Sometimes it is much deeper than the surface level. So, I help them to look at themselves, understand what they are doing, if it is really helpful for instance, and with these three steps, automatically there is an action that happens. So, I guide people towards achieving, in one sense, their potential. Their potential could be, in terms of achievement, in their career. It could be in terms of their personal, emotional and relationship life. It could be in any area of life that they want to enhance.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That's very interesting. The reason why I was specifically turning to the business side is for a couple of reasons, because I see this in my work life, day to day now, in semi-confinement in Switzerland, that it's really tough to be in business right now around the world, and that there's a lot of weight on a lot of leaders' shoulders, whatever size teams, whatever size business they manage. Given the current situation, are there any sort of practices that you would point for people to support them in crisis times like these?
Rajesh Ramani:
Yes. This is a kind of crisis that many of us never even imagined. Nobody imagined that we'd all be stuck inside our homes. Nobody imagined that we cannot even get a hug or a kiss. And another important area is, most people managed their stresses through getting out, doing something, going to the pub, going for a walk, going for a run, doing all of those external activities through which we manage our stress.
Rajesh Ramani:
But if you take it in the business world, not just as an individual, but as a collective, we still don't know the amount of damage that it has caused. Everyone is trying to put numbers to it, but those numbers are not final, so we don't know. It's like a landslide that has hit us. As we burrow down and we look at it, then we will see what is intact and what is not, and how our behaviour as a society is going to change, how behaviours as individuals are changing.
Rajesh Ramani:
But in my experience, what I see is, people are responding to it in a few ways. There are some set of people who are confined at home, and they are pretty much bored, or they don't know what to do, and they are confined with people whom they are not used to spending so much time, and it's all in their faces. So, that is one kind of suffering people are going through.
Rajesh Ramani:
Other kind of suffering is people who are working harder than earlier, because now all lines have been blurred, or even disappeared, between their personal and professional lives, and then so many people working from home, or they are caregivers, and they're working like crazy. So, there is the other extreme, where people have lost their personal life. Earlier, at least they had some kind of an inkling of it, but now they've lost even that. So, that is also happening on the other end.
Rajesh Ramani:
And how people respond to this situation? People are angry. People are disappointed. Usually when they are angry or disappointed, they have their ways of handling it. Now those ways have also been closed. This is a huge thing, so people are keeping it inside. And then, one gentleman recently in one of my calls asked this question, and he says every time he has this Zoom meeting with his work team, and he sees this seething anger in people. Even as they're sitting in their own living rooms and part of the meeting, there is this anger that comes out as jabbing statements and things.
Rajesh Ramani:
So, he asked me, "How do I ask the coordinator of this meeting to actually help those people handle their anger?" Now, I said, what people actually miss at this point is the human connection, you know?
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah.
Rajesh Ramani:
Create a simple human connection. Then we will descend to be normal again, just in our minds, for a short period of time. Create more human connections. Let it not be like, it's all business, it's all business. Yes, it's only human beings doing business. It's not a few algorithms working with each other. At the end of the day, we are humans, and if we forget that part, we forget or miss out on everything else.
Rajesh Ramani:
And handling this crisis, ask yourself, what is the most important thing? You know, survival always takes over. It's all about, the first survival is about the individual, then the survival of people we are dependent on, so whether it is an institution, whether it is a business, or it is the industry. That's fair. It's all survival mechanism. Yes, survival is really good, but what level of survival are we able to see and encompass? If you can encompass a bigger survival, of a bigger scheme of things, or set of people, then if you are working towards that, and what is the right thing to do in that scenario? Then we will have more space and choices, and better choices can be made from that.
Rajesh Ramani:
If we make it also smaller, and shrink to only my survival, and what about me, me, me? That question dominates a lot. Then we are going to suffer a lot, and then we are going to hurt people right and left. I'm not saying everyone is going to think about only the individual. What I'm saying, if you're already used to only thinking about your team or your business, expand it a bit further. Wherever you are at present in your level of thinking, there's always a shrink that happens when you're exposed to a crisis.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah.
Rajesh Ramani:
Always. Everyone shrinks to a much basic level.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Sure.
Rajesh Ramani:
So, expand. First see, what is the right thing to do? If I'm not thinking about myself, what is the right thing to do? Then go about setting an agenda to do that action. When we work for the survival and the best interests of a bigger society around us, we will automatically be included in that, and we will also be included in other people's circle.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Sure.
Rajesh Ramani:
That means, so many other people are working for our benefit, as well. This is the time to expand one's consciousness, which has suddenly shrunk in the last three months. Expand it slowly and steadily, to see a bigger picture, and then see what kind of action that is possible for me. Don't see a picture which is too vast, where we cannot act. No, it's not like you and I sitting here and discussing about world politics while both of us are not in politics, and have no say in any of those things. So, that doesn't work.
Rajesh Ramani:
But if we can expand to the amount of the circle of consciousness, we can make a difference, and that is where the heart comes in. You know, in terms of crisis, in times of crisis, the mind would usually take over to say, hey, you know what, this is my cup of tea, I have to act now. The heart will be pushed into the background. So, bring the heart forward as well. I'm not saying you should completely function with the heart. It should be a combination of the mind and the heart, the mind going for survival mode, the heart going for expanding mode. So, as we mix and match both, we will find the right response.
Rajesh Ramani:
But in realistic terms, what should I do? In realistic terms, number one is bring more attention to your actions and your perceptions. Number two, stay away from negativity, whether negativity that is projected to us from outside, or negativity that comes up within ourselves. And number three, invest on relationships. One thing that this whole crisis has been teaching us is the importance of real relationships.
Rajesh Ramani:
People who in the past believed that their independence and their space and their own time is all essential, and they live their life on their own terms, suddenly find themselves unable ... completely lonely now. Even earlier, they were lonely, but they were lonely on their own terms. Now, when society tells us, you cannot hug somebody else, or you cannot go and visit someone else, or you cannot go to a pub or a restaurant, suddenly this urge and this need has popped up. This shows, deep inside, we aim to be connected. So, calculate relationships. Use this as an opportunity. Doesn't mean you should all live in the same room and be connected all the time, but the importance of relationships cannot be understated in terms of crisis.
Rajesh Ramani:
And this is a well-known fact based on studies of the past. Whenever similar economic crisis has happened in the past, whether it be for an individual or as a society as a whole, people who had better relationships survive it much better, because they felt they were not alone. They felt supported. Your partner, or your parent, or your friend may not give you the money or the best ideas to survive this, but they may show the strength and the trust in you, and then they may give the meaning and purpose in our live, and this meaning and purpose brings this innate strength for us to overcome these challenges externally. But working on relationships are important.
Rajesh Ramani:
And then, the fourth on that that I would add is, let us widen ourselves and then see the interconnected nature of things. Now, if we want to survive this, we are finding more and more that we have to be interconnected, and we have to work together to get out of this. You know, all of the political conflicts that are happening today, it's all about hey, we're all supposed to be working together, but you didn't do this, you didn't do that. So, we all assume that we are all working together, and then now we are fighting apart.
Rajesh Ramani:
If only we had really worked together, expecting something that, hey, this is something that we have to work together, and otherwise we know the choice or chance, then I think this whole crisis could have been handled much better. I'm not blaming one person or one group, but it is all of us, it's an impetus in all of us. And we don't realize this unless we are exposed to some situation like this. And if understanding the interconnected nature of the people or systems or of -
Anne Muhlethaler:
Nature.
Rajesh Ramani:
Of nature itself, it's a normal understanding, like an ever-present understanding in us. When these kind of crises come about, it will be so easy for us. We just have to regroup fast, because we know how to beat them.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Sure.
Rajesh Ramani:
Yes.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I appreciate that. I deeply believe in our interconnected nature as human beings, and across species on our planet, so that speaks to me a lot. We were supposed to see each other in March, because you were coming back to Zurich to do another workshop. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about Self-Leadership, and what you were building outside of Kamalaya with another couple of colleagues of yours.
Rajesh Ramani:
Yes, yes, yes. We are building a platform called Self-Leadership-Days. When we say Self-Leadership-Days, we give people an opportunity to come together, work together, and grow together. So, when we speak about self-leadership, it is the ability to know oneself, to understand where we arise from, to understand, what are our needs, our expectations, from oneself and from the world? What are our goals, our targets, our vision? And then, how best to prepare ourselves to achieve our own potential. So, self-leadership is self-observation, or self-awareness, plus knowing our goals and our origins, with a target. So, when we practice self-leadership, then we not only work on ourselves, but also work on the team, whether it's an organization, or your family, or your society, every day.
Rajesh Ramani:
And it is not restricted to an individual. It is also for an organization. The organization as a whole can practice self-leadership, and the organization as a whole can observe itself, and how its culture is, how its behaviour, the values of them, the goals. So, when an organization is self-aware, and brings self-leadership, automatically that is a greater level of accountability, responsibility, and right decision-making.
Rajesh Ramani:
So, through this platform, we try to bring in principles from the spiritual world, and the psychological world, from my side, and then my two other partners, who are in the business world, and one is in the education world. So, we bring all of our combined knowledge and expertise in trying to help people, not only in the business world and career, but also in their personal life. The individual cannot be separated from their work. We have people ask me the first thing, like work/life and work versus life. I would say, no, work is included in your life. You cannot separate it that way.
Rajesh Ramani:
So, if as an individual, we need to be fulfilled, we need to be successful, we have to redefine the way we understand success. We have to redefine the way we understand fulfillment and achievement, so then it is possible. The more smaller boxes that we create in life, on the holistic or a complete sense, we could be failures. It's not about achieving in one small area of our life.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah, it's about a life in its totality. Again, it's a very holistic perspective.
Rajesh Ramani:
Yes, exactly. You mentioned about the conference that we were supposed to have in March. The subject was to built emotional resilience.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah, it sounds like the subject that's just really relevant right now.
Rajesh Ramani:
Yes, exactly. This emotional resilience, now I see people who have responded wonderfully well in this crisis. Industry leaders and people from different aspects of life, these people have in one way or another practiced resilience. You know that resilience is the ability to flow, the ability to let go, the ability to not hold on tightly to an expectation or a view or an opinion or an emotion.
Rajesh Ramani:
And that doesn't happen in one day. As I mentioned earlier, when you encounter a crisis in life, immediately, we shrink. Means what? We shrink to our base emotions, our opinions, our views, our expectations, so we naturally shrink. So, unless we have practiced to open ourselves again and again, to let go again and again, the ideas, opinions, views and emotions, and our expectations, we cannot do it in a moment of crisis. So, it's exactly like that. If I've been running 10 kilometres every day, or every week, and then when it comes to one day, someone is chasing me, I can really run longer.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Thanks, that's a great metaphor.
Rajesh Ramani:
It is. And I cannot suddenly start running 10 kilometres on a single day. It doesn't work. No, I'll fall flat after a few hundred meters. That's what happens. We cannot expect ourselves to do all of that thing. So, emotional resilience is a continued practice, but to have an emotional resilience, one should really cultivate one's mind, and we should start paying attention. A mind which is not attentive enough, the mind which is not focused enough doesn't understand what is actually happening, so then we can know ourselves. Well, even you know yourself, then you know that you are stuck in your views. Then when you know you are stuck in your views, then you can exercise flexibility, so then flexibility brings emotional flexibility.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Sure.
Rajesh Ramani:
Then we see that how we caught in either one end of the spectrum or the complete opposite of it. Go through this whole journey, in knowing oneself, how we are stuck. Now, human mind is necessarily stuck in so many ways. But it's also a good thing, because in one way, we want to be sure about life. We want to be sure about our position. So, that's why your mind always wants to get stuck. I like this, okay, I don't want to lose it.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Sure.
Rajesh Ramani:
I want to get it back. Certainty.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Grasping and greedily sticking to something.
Rajesh Ramani:
Holding on to it. Yes, yes, absolutely, and this crisis has pushed us all into this place of uncertainty. We don't know. Nobody knows. All the great political leaders, economic advisors, economic leaders, medical leaders, everybody is giving vague statements, because basically nobody knows. They are just predicting scenario after scenario nobody knows. And this is creating immense insecurity in all of us, and uncertainty in all of us.
Rajesh Ramani:
So, how do you handle uncertainty? Only when we have known how to handle uncertainty in the past. People who have not known how to handle uncertainty, who have just jumped from one uncertainty ... whenever there is an uncertainty exposed in one area of life, they have just jumped to something else that is certain.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Sure.
Rajesh Ramani:
Yes, so they have not been trained to handle uncertainty. Uncertainty in terms of information, in terms of control, in terms of future. So, they're not trained. Luckily for me, from my spiritual training, this uncertainty was always there. Every day was a new day, and every day, anything could change. So, we were exposed to that, even in our monastic life, it was like that, there was nothing certain about life. So, as we went through that for 14 or 15 years of life, automatically, that is normal, like uncertainty, yeah. I expect that this will chance. Okay, it changed. So, I think you don't have to be in the spiritual world to do that. Uncertainty is an educator. It is everywhere, in every area of our life. We just need to pay attention to it, and we need to develop that quality within us, and through these conferences, we give tools to people to do that.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I think I understood, you are working on bringing the conferences online, so that you're not constrained by the current possibly long travel bans that we're going to experience.
Rajesh Ramani:
Yes, we are exploring all kinds of avenues in the online world, as well as doing it in person, because I know that some levels of knowledge and knowledge transfer is much easier in an online setup, but we're going more into a transformational mode, which is what we are focusing on in these conferences, two things come into play. One is the group consciousness. The group consciousness as a whole will help people to make this transition. It is not just individuals' understanding of concepts or digesting information. It's more than that, yes.
Rajesh Ramani:
And the second concept is, also gives a space and time capsule where we are locked in, so that there is much more focus and concentration. For all the upsides of online work, one downside is, you're not sitting together for nine hours in a day, or 24 hours together, on an online setup. After one hour of a call, they all walk out and then go out into a different state of consciousness of a mindset, and that automatically takes away our focus.
Rajesh Ramani:
Some kinds of learning, it is necessary to sit with it, as we say, to sit in contemplation, because it takes time for certain breakthroughs to happen in our mind. Otherwise, the mind just reverts back. We used to say as an example, or an analogy, we used to say, if you want to dig a well to get water, you can't just go digging 10 feet, and 10 feet in 20 different places. Of course, you have effectively that 200 feet, but you don't get water.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Nice.
Rajesh Ramani:
So it is with our effort. When we make effort, the effort sometimes needs tremendous concentration, tremendous focus. We are going to work probably with a combination of both online plus in-person conferences.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That's great. The reason why I ask is, listen, in the situation that we are in, one of the things that has appeared to me, because I have access to technology, that I'm able to actually connect with teachers and friends, and sort of participate with them in certain settings in a way that I wouldn't have expected in the past, because we are on different continents. So, I appreciate what you're saying, and I agree. Having sat in retreats, and sat with you at the previous workshop, I don't doubt that it's better in person, and the group dynamic makes a really big difference, but appreciate that some of my friends who I think, I don't mind saying it here, would greatly benefit and enjoy the emotional resilience workshop. I hope you do something online, because not knowing you, they might have not made the trip from London or somewhere else to attend the workshop. So, maybe you can do a reduced, like a taster version, for people who might want to ...
Rajesh Ramani:
Absolutely. We will be doing that. Even the last podcast, we were addressing those issues, and then we'll be working on more purpose or readiness and all of that, both an online presence as well as a physical presence.
Anne Muhlethaler:
One of the things that I wanted to ask, that's going to come up for a lot of people, I think, around this time, is how to handle grief. Obviously, you remember that the year that I did come to Kamalaya the first time, it was about 10 months after my mom had passed away. Actually, I should ask you, how is your family?
Rajesh Ramani:
My family, they are good, but they are in the epicentre of the virus, actually, so they are in the red zone in India.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Wow.
Rajesh Ramani:
And they are fine as of now. They've been extremely careful and completely locked down in this period. They're doing really fine, and they are much more confident of having, going through this. But it is a worrisome issue, because I'm thousands and thousands of miles away in that sense. It's not just the distance, but it is the inability to reach them if anything happens. So, that is much more scary, and everyone knows that. It's not like ... it's not easy that way. But they are doing very well, yes.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Glad to hear that.
Rajesh Ramani:
Given the circumstances.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. So, some friends of mine have already lost a member of their family in the last couple of weeks. On Sunday last week, I got the bad news that one of my old colleagues had passed away, not from coronavirus, but from cancer. It was a really big shock for everyone, and she was a fixture at the company that I used to be at very early on, and it feels like a whole piece of my life is crumbling away. But I'm very aware that a lot of us are going to be dealing with grief, and I was wondering if you had any thoughts or advice as to how we can consider working with grief.
Rajesh Ramani:
The best way to handle grief is to grieve properly.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yes.
Rajesh Ramani:
People should not be hiding behind concepts of strength, concepts of I can do better than this, kind of stuff. And also, there is no one proper method of grieving. It depends on the individual. It depends on the individual's relationship, the individual's expectations of the world, and from themselves. So, it depends on the individual completely.
Rajesh Ramani:
But having said that, the individual should give themself the freedom to express their grief. You know, this coronavirus time, the grief is compounded not just because of the imminent threat of death, but it also takes away the usual methods of grieving away from us. What happened in countries like Italy, that is much terrible. You can't see your loved ones at all once they walk into the facility, and then you have no idea if they'll be out or not. There are no last words or a last kiss or a last hug, so there's nothing, and nobody gives a hug just in case you regret them. No, they don't do that. So, those are huge losses, and in terms of our ability to close, inability to have that kind of a closure, that adds onto this grief.
Rajesh Ramani:
So, I would say grieve openly, and let yourself the pain and suffering. Do not get caught up into statements of guilt, because it's so easy in these situations to get caught up into guilt stories. Stories like I should have done this, I could have done differently, we could have done something else. You know, sometimes in many cases where you see these, inadvertently, people become the carriers of the virus to the older people in their family. One never knows where you get something. And in those cases, the burden of guilt will be much higher. I could have, I should have, why was I so reckless? Being caught up in all those guilt trips, which your mind will want to, because it wants to find some meaning for what is happening.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Sure.
Rajesh Ramani:
Becoming free of that is essential, because then we are not actually focusing on the lost people in our lives, but we are focused on our own self. It's basically like me, me, me. While someone else has suffered, and someone else has passed away. So, feeling aware of the guilt stories, being patient and kind with oneself through this journey. The reasons of why it happened, how it happened, is not essential. What is more important is to focus on the connection with the lost ones, the times that we spent, the meaning that this person brought to our life. All that is essential. Then we focus and grieve properly. Otherwise, we can part this anger or guilt in some other parts of our life, which is not doing justice either to the other person or to oneself.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That makes sense. I really appreciate that. I feel really lucky, because even when my mom passed away, I never got caught up in the guilt. I think the guilt never really surfaced.
Rajesh Ramani:
Yes. See, the pain of the dead will be there. Initially, the shock will wear off, and then the pain will start coming in, and then it will take time. It will come in waves and waves, so it doesn't have to happen in three months or six months. There is no fixed timing for this. It's just how each individual handles it, and how close they were, and what amount of shock it created in them. So, it has so many factors.
Rajesh Ramani:
I would say, give yourself time to grieve and mourn. Take the time. There is no urgency. It is not like, oh, I should get out of it within a few months or weeks or whatever it is. It's nothing like that. And one important thing that I would say here is, though it is a personal suffering, but it is also a collective suffering.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Sure.
Rajesh Ramani:
We are going through a collective suffering in this regard, as an individual, and as a society, and in one sense, if we recognize that, we will see this kindness and compassion spreading out to more people around us as well, and that way, the weight of personal grief will be much reduced. Most of us get caught up in the personal grief, rather than the actual suffering.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I see that.
Rajesh Ramani:
It will be much better to handle that, yes.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Thank you so much. I think that will be really useful for a lot of people to hear. I reckon that's one of the most precious things that we did together, is sometimes you also need someone else to allow you to grieve in a certain way. Sometimes you need the external affirmation or support that you can let into the tears and the flood.
Rajesh Ramani:
Yes. It is quite essential, you know? In many of our societies, it is such a taboo to do that, and then, people are all in some kind of a museum-like setting, where you are not supposed to make any noises, and you are all supposed to be in a library kind of setting.
Anne Muhlethaler:
You're describing Switzerland here.
Rajesh Ramani:
It is true in many societies, actually, and you know what used to happen ... it still happens in India, they have these professional mourners in small villages and downs, have professional mourners. So, they come in wherever they are, there is a death in some family or something, they come in and then they sing these mournful songs, and then they beat their chest and they ...
Anne Muhlethaler:
Wail.
Rajesh Ramani:
Wail and will weep, and then anybody who is showing some kind of a stoicism in them, trying to be all this, they go and open them all up, rip them all up, and then let it out. The beauty of that experience is, it's cathartic in the sense that they create this atmosphere for anyone to get out of it, and that then if you see them in a few days, everyone is jumping up and down, and there is no hush-hush. It is all like celebration after a few days. So, they could transition. These are kind of agents, as you say, who do that, because it is a norm in society, so it is so easy for people to get out of it.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I like the idea of the professional mourners helping us get the tears out. That's very helpful.
Rajesh Ramani:
Yes, yes.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Get the drama out there.
Rajesh Ramani:
Get the drama out, whatever it is, whether it is tears, guilt, anger. Anything that is there, suppress the shock. Everything, just let it out, bring it out, and then in the heat of things and everything, let it out, and eventually the mind gets into its restful place automatically.
Anne Muhlethaler:
So, while you're talking about that, as you brought in the mourners, it made me think, I don't know why, this is a segue that makes no real sense. The last conversation we had in Kamalaya, we had a really great guided meditation, but we talked about Indian gods and goddesses.
Rajesh Ramani:
Yes.
Anne Muhlethaler:
And it feels like there's a god for every occasion.
Rajesh Ramani:
Yes.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Is there one that you feel, and I mean this in a playful way, but is there one that you feel would be good to connect with at this time, as a source of comfort, or to express the anger or the difficulty we're going through?
Rajesh Ramani:
Sure. Yeah, it is, you can connect to the goddess Kali.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Can you please explain who Kali is for our listeners?
Rajesh Ramani:
She is the feminine aspect of chaos, and then the rebirth of order from chaos. So she is, in a sense, she is the destroyer, but destroyer of those aspects of life which are already dying. So, the universe is a constant dynamic being, in effect, the process, so whenever anything gets stuck and gets solidified, it has to be chiselled away. So, particularly the old and the dying and the rotten, Kali is the goddess who comes with all the spears and the swords and everything, and then tramples upon everything that is dead and ill in that sense. So, it is not about individuals or people, it is about mindsets, ideas, views, systems, whatever it is that is stopping us or stuck. That is where the focus is. So, she's the goddess now, and she's also this angry, bloodthirsty one. That's the good one now to be focused on.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah.
Rajesh Ramani:
But once you focus on that, then she morphs into the other one, the physical one, and the one with silence, she morphs into that one.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah, I had heard that Kali is one of the aspects of Shakti that's very connected to mother nature as well, right?
Rajesh Ramani:
Yes, yes.
Anne Muhlethaler:
And part of what we see with everybody being confined in their homes is that we see our planet has a chance to breathe, so it feels very Kali-like, this sort of sweeping virus that is just locking us in our homes whilst the animals are just going around and looking at us being locked in.
Rajesh Ramani:
Yes, exactly. It is true. As we say, these are different aspects of mother nature. Nature can be so protective and so nurturing in one sense, and then nature has its fury. But you understand the life in all forms, so it's not just like nature is something that we have to overcome all the time. Not necessarily. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. So, we just have to flow with nature, and then we have to create this symbiotic relationship, and sometimes yes, we have to fight nature. Sometimes yes, you have to protect yourself. Some other times, we have to flow with it.
Rajesh Ramani:
I believe, we are digressing a little bit on this, but I believe in the past few hundred years, because of all our machines and every technology, suddenly we, to some extent lost respect for nature. Not respect in a sacred sense, but respect in a power sense. Suddenly, we didn't realize the power of nature. And we thought, hey, I've got this and that and this, and I can turn around rivers, and I can empty the mountains, and I can do so many other stuff, and then we got completely blindsided, in spite of everything we know and understand.
Rajesh Ramani:
That is essential. But all of our strengths, we need a sense of humility. Like the Pale Blue Dot, as Carl Sagan said it. We are just a tiny dot, even to our own knowledge. It's not that we don't know it. It's absolutely known. But we are still that tiny, little dot. So, when we understand that, then we act responsibly. It's not anybody nobody's going to save planet Earth. Planet Earth will save itself. It's just like, how relevant are we going to be in this whole system? That is what we are more concerned about. So, if we want to be relevant, we have to be acting with some kind of humility and responsibility.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah, I like that. To be relevant, find your humility, versus the future.
Rajesh Ramani:
Yes, exactly.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Rajesh, thank you so much for spending all this time talking to me this morning. You are obviously a very ... well, you seem, as you're a teacher, you're a very balanced person. What are you really not good at?
Rajesh Ramani:
A million things.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Thank you.
Rajesh Ramani:
If you can list them, and we could go much more.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Sure.
Rajesh Ramani:
Yes, absolutely. It is only our ego would say we are good at everything. That is absolutely nonsense. We are good at maybe a handful of things to some extent. Even, we are the judge of our own levels and standards. That's it.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Sure. So, tell me, what book are you reading at the moment? Anything that you've enjoyed recently that you would recommend?
Rajesh Ramani:
I've been reading two books, actually. One is on the Bhagavad Gita.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Oh, yes.
Rajesh Ramani:
Which you know, and I've been reading it now, but it's a slow read, because it's not about reading the book, but it's about meditating on it. That's been one, and then the other book was, this week I picked up on the 50 Greatest Short Stories collection from around the world. So, that's a nice book that I've been reading the last few days, I would say.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That sounds lovely.
Rajesh Ramani:
It has everything in it to create a life of great potential.
Anne Muhlethaler:
And then, I know that you are sometimes partial to Netflix. Anything good you've watched lately?
Rajesh Ramani:
You know, I've been trying to watch a few things on friends' recommendations, but then they push me back right away. You know how many series that I've stopped after 15 minutes because I couldn't take on ...
Anne Muhlethaler:
Is it the commitment or the violence?
Rajesh Ramani:
The violence. Both. A little bit of violence, but then I think, am I going to spend four seasons, like 40 hours or whatever it is of my time on this story? Then it kicks in. But I've been keeping myself watching something lighter. I've been watching something called Kim's Convenience Store. Some kind of a comedy from Canadian comedy.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Cool.
Rajesh Ramani:
Yeah. That gives me feel good.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Okay. I get that. Is there anything else you'd like to add to anyone who's listening?
Rajesh Ramani:
One thing I would like to add here is, focus on two aspects of life. The first aspect is to strengthen your awareness and your attention. The more we know, the better we are informed about ourselves and the world, the better our responses to life. It is quite important to be more aware.
Rajesh Ramani:
And secondly, be kind. There are a million factors that are functioning upon us. We are not the centre of the universe, and even within this world, we human beings are also part of this big recycling system that has been happening. Even in the emotional and the mental sphere, there are so many factors. So, be kind. Be kind to yourself, and see the other person next to you is also caught up in the same mess, be it mental, physical, or emotional, and then be kind to them.
Rajesh Ramani:
If we practice these two things, we will have a much, much, much better life, and all our responses will come from a greater place. That brings humility, that brings gratitude. That brings all the other stuff that is necessary for life, and that brings enormous success, which we can all partake in.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Thank you.
Rajesh Ramani:
Thank you.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That's beautiful. If people want to get in touch with you after this ...
Rajesh Ramani:
Then can find me, my LinkedIn account, which I am active.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Sure. Okay, so I'll post it in the show notes, as well.
Rajesh Ramani:
And also, they can find me at Kamalaya in Ko Samui, Thailand, or they can also find me on SelfLeadershipDays.com.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Fantastic.
Rajesh Ramani:
They can find me through you.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yes, absolutely. I'll put all of these links in the show notes.
Rajesh Ramani:
Yes, please do.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Great. Thank you so much.
Rajesh Ramani:
Thank you.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Have a wonderful rest of your day.
Rajesh Ramani:
Thank you.
Anne Muhlethaler:
And hopefully, we'll speak again very soon.
Rajesh Ramani:
We'll speak again very soon. Thank you very much. Bye-bye.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Bye-bye.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I hope that you've enjoyed my conversation with Rajesh. You can find more details about his project, SelfLeadershipDays.com. He will be offering some online courses later on in the year, if I'm correct, particularly around the subject of emotional resilience. Of course, you can also find further details about him at Kamalaya.com. All details are included in the show notes.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Feel free to rate and review this podcast, and of course, subscribe. Until next time, thank you again for listening. Be well. Wash your hands. Continue to social distance. All of that good stuff. Thank you.