After delivering over 2,500 presentations on a broad spectrum of subjects related to Personal Development—self-knowledge, mind training, happiness, human potential, mindfulness, emotional intelligence, meditation, compassion, non-dual awareness, relationships, self-realization, awakening of consciousness—and living as a full-time teacher/facilitator for 25 years, I came to the realization that the underlying principle behind all life experiences is simply this:

The external world is a reflection of the internal world. Inner states of being are the real causes of the way we experience life. To truly change our life, we need to first change within.

Having earned a degree in Aeronautical Engineering and worked in the field for a few years may have helped me to become a keen observer of the relationship between causes and effects, which sometimes lead us to misperceive effects as if they were causes. The same happens in life. We tend to believe that what is happening in our external life is what drives our psychological processes, but it is quite the other way around.

I also used to mistakenly believe that when I was not content with certain aspects of my life or with certain people around me, then I needed to change or fix them.

Now I see that in those cases what needs to be changed is my self-awareness and the way I look at those circumstances.

It was in one of those places where I lived in Asia that life arranged to bring my life partner and I together. Budkhand (Tibetan name meaning “female deity of awakening”) or simply “Budhi”, a lotus flower from Mongolia, was one of my long-time students who later became a teacher like me. We now work together as teachers/facilitators of wisdom teachings aimed at raising humanity’s level of consciousness through the realization of our Oneness.

Most of the presentations we delivered as well as the meditation practices we guided were meant to help our students and fellow travelers on the way of awakening to realize what our true Self really is. Though many of the teachings we found along the way were dualistic in nature (light vs darkness, soul vs ego, good vs evil, spirit vs matter, etc.), the non-dualistic ideas of Vajrayana Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta resonated with us more than any other.

During the years I lived in India, I had the opportunity to attend hundreds of hours of teachings from the Dalai Lama. In particular, I attended an intensive 10-day-long retreat with the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala in which I received the Gyalwa Gyatso initiation, which was my first real experience in Oneness.

What you experience in Oneness is the union (yoga) between the personal self (the temporal part of me that includes the physical body and personality) and the atemporal Self, which is the conscious awareness we all share in Unity. In Oneness we see ourselves and life in a completely different way.