Why Mantra?
I am often asked why and how I came to Mantra.
I suppose the roots of that question live in the pandemic. You see I wasn’t doing well before the pandemic, not mentally and certainly not spiritually. I had no connection to my soul or anything Divine, and I was struggling.
You see, in October of 2019, I finally started coming out of a deep three-year-long postpartum depression. Just as that darkness was finally lifting a little bit, my husband was laid off from his job on Dec 1st. He was our family’s sole income as I was a Stay at home mother to our young daughter. Devastated and financially strapped, he took a job in WA and we left NC and moved cross-country in February of 2020. Now if you remember, COVID was first reported in Seattle in February 2020. Not only were we in a new place where we didn’t know a soul, but the entire world also shut down. I felt numb and lost and kept telling myself, oh it will only be a few weeks or it will be ok. I think then my heart knew my head was lying.
When the stay-at-home order was extended indefinitely that May, it felt like physically hit a wall. My body ached, I couldn’t stop crying, I could feel depression creeping up on me again, and honestly, I had enough. That was my line in the sand, I wasn’t going back. I remember the clear moment when I said in my head what my heart was screaming, “I CAN’T LIVE LIKE THIS ANYMORE!” I just got up and literally went out and sat in my yard and ugly cried for about an hour and released my resistance to healing my own bullshit. More than anything, I needed peace. If I was going to survive and change my miserable existence into a real life, I was going to have to find peace.
The first thing I did was cut off the damn news. I just unplugged and thought; if I am going to be stuck at home, I can at least try to make the best of it. What I did looking back, was start living with intention. I intentionally managed my time and even what I gave energy to. I was super selective about what I watched and took in on social media, I started my days early and had time to myself before my little one woke up, I made sure to get sun and fresh air and I started journaling. When I finished journaling before I went to sleep at night, I wrote down 5 good things about my days. I didn’t know that was a gratitude practice at the time but being aware of the good in my life in such a difficult time like a pandemic, helped. I started following my own intuition because I was forced to be quiet and listen. I couldn’t go out and distract myself anymore. I listened to the noise in my head because I couldn’t cut it down. I started hearing that broken little girl inside of me, instead of ignoring her.
The key thing that began healing me was studying and practicing meditation. It took me MONTHS to calm myself where I could sit and find peace. I didn’t realize then my meditation and spiritual practice were about to explode in a way I had never imagined.
Then…I discovered Mantra.
I actually signed up for a free business seminar with a Kundalini Yoga teacher, named Guru Jagat. There was a song playing while we waiting for her to hop on zoom. I have always loved music. I don’t do TV really, so sound resonates with me on a soul level. The song that played that day was Ant Na Siftee by White Sun. It’s hauntingly beautiful and I fell in love with it the moment I heard it.
I had no clue that there would be any meditation in the teachings and I was building my own businesses and thought why not, I’ll go with this. Well, Guru Jagat sits down and “tunes in”. She belts out with this powerful resonance ONG NAMO GURU DEV NAMO. That business seminar changed my life. I found Mantra that day. I will always hold Guru Jagat in my heart for what she gave me.
Mantras became a secret formula for me to redefine and deepen my healing. My meditation flowed, my reality changed and the energetic environment in my home was different and better by playing them, or chanting.
Mantra made me spiritual, these sacred sounds opened me up yet grounded me in a way I didn’t know was possible. They are my own soul’s personal medicine. My mission is to share how I healed my own heart, life, and soul with Mantra.
