As a child throughout her 20s and mid-30s, Amoda Maa suffered from chronic depression. She then traveled to India and her life shifted in unexpected ways. She says it was like dropping a rock into a pool. “Something fundamentally changed… My whole relationship to life and to the way of seeing completely changed. It had nothing to do with an intellectual understanding or even a spiritual understanding. It was like the veils of perception came undone. The scaffolding of the separate self, the me, came undone. And that was the beginning.” She encourages us to loosen our grip and soften the way that we respond to life. She shares how the fundamental nature of reality and of who we are is open awareness. It is nondual, without beginning, without ending. It’s timeless, eternal, everywhere and nowhere.” She also speaks of the paradox of duality and nonduality, the ups and downs of life, the loss and gain of life. “Duality exists within nonduality.” She speaks about ending our argument with reality and meeting it with kindness, tenderness, and openness. “That is the beginning of transformation.”
