Different & Unique

By Andreea Serban

"Even one single person can see something from several perspectives, depending on the moment, because life changes and everything is different. We don't have a single way of being, we have several – and just as every moment is different, every person in our lives is different, depending on the moment; just as life changes and we are part of it, life is part of us as well, and we have different perceptions depending on the state of our souls. You perceive life in one way when you think positively and in a different way when you think negatively.
Now is the time to become aware, to remember that we are different and to avoid the reductionist thinking that says simply making a difference is enough.
Difference is regarded from the perspective of those who now understand that, as a founding principle of the intention to build a better world, this isn't the difference as a concept relating to comparison, but difference as a conceptual basis to discover the uniqueness of every man."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Andreea Serban
• Release date: Jul 12, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301648856

Book preview

Dear reader,

We are born with an extraordinary potential and with the ability to train our minds and bodies to be unique, to be special. But the schooling we receive in life gradually cancels out our uniqueness through an education which is much too general to be able to explore our talents. Many teachers become dull and end up too tired to teach, which means they can no longer be sources of inspiration. The situation only grows worse, because we are conditioned to submit to other people's opinions and expectations.

Thus, we grow up, we become part of the gray mass and we end up defining our behavior in statistics. For example, in the medical profession (I am referring to my own career), patients are considered statistics and they are treated as such. All of us become numbers in a huge statistic. Therefore, when you have cancer in an advanced stage, doctors consult statistics and tell you how long you can expect to live. They don't tell you it's an average, they make it sound like an immutable fact. Because we are trained to believe in authority, we accept this estimation as being true for us and we transform it into a guiding principle in our way of thinking. All my cancer patients who survive choose to be different, to not think of themselves as statistics, but to fight and believe in their uniqueness. Because of that attitude they not only survived, but they regained their health and vitality completely. In actual fact, the disease offered them the chance to take a step back, to see themselves better and to discover their strength.

The word educate comes from the Latin educere, which means to extract, to bring to the surface. In order to be different we need to be educated - we need to bring to the surface the talent hidden in each and every one of us.

The ancient Vedas, the fruit of the spiritual science of India, the oldest spiritual science, speak about the energy centers in our bodies, the chakras. There are seven such centers, the heart being the fourth (the nucleus). Each center must reach its equilibrium for us to become aware of our whole potential. To achieve this, we must develop our consciousness and overcome the challenges on each level.

The first level is connected to the fear of life itself, the fear of being different and the fear of failure. This is where you find the courage to go your own way in life.

The second level is all about freeing yourself from the habit of pleasing others and of remaining stuck in the comfort zone of the gray mass.

The third level is the point where we start having aspirations: dreams, but lacking the commitment to act on them. Many people remain stuck at this level.

Then the fourth level (the level of the heart) is connected to our power of accepting ourselves and to becoming aware of our uniqueness, of daring to be different, to follow our heart down the road towards achieving our true potential. This is the path down which this book takes you.

The next level, the fifth, is the level of commitment, which refers to building the discipline which will help you follow your path and stay on it.

The sixth level refers to the wisdom which you obtain from experience. Once you get here you no longer hurry things along, you trust your intuition more and you know that the best method is always that of following your heart, no matter what others tell you.

On the seventh level you aspire towards perfection: you no longer react according to circumstances, but answer from the perspective of your own inner peace and silence.

In the pages of this book, you will find methods to practice the principles exposed by Alina and Andreea, who devoted themselves to this road filled with challenges and who inspired thousands of professionals to escape the conventional and make the difference in the world.

We need people who live in harmony with their hearts and who aren't guided by principles based on greed and thirst for power.

This is how we will create a different world for all the generations to come. This is my path and I hope it will become yours.

Farewell and may you stay on your heart's path!

Author,

Dr. Roy Martina

PART I. Different People

A New Paradigm: Be Different

What would life be without new challenges? Novelty kindles the fire of knowledge and awakens curiosity, inventiveness and intelligence. Therefore we will begin by offering a challenge, an exceptional one that will rescue you from the dull greyness of daily life. We invite you, dear reader, to consider a new paradigm, one that focuses on accepting all the different sides of you, one that aims to fulfill your uniqueness. Each of us is unique and each of our inner selves has a number layers. We are a whole within the whole of Creation.

This book is a testimonial born from our experience as twins, an experience that made us relive the difference of uniqueness.

We are single cell twins, created from a single manifestation of the divine source and, despite that, we are not one and the same. That is why we aren't writing a book about twins, although there is a connection with that subject because, as we were saying when we were invited to speak on a TV show, each of us has her own inner twin – by which we mean our profound selves. We are more than anybody can perceive and more than we ourselves know.

Be different wishes to be a concept, a way of life and a new paradigm, one which will help you contact your profound self, which will lead you to your inner twin or, in other words, which will allow you to know as many aspects as possible of your own self. Only in this way can you live the life you are meant to live and not the one meant for somebody else. Only by becoming aware of the aspects of your inner universe and by accepting them can you reach fulfillment and only by contacting them can you have a life that is healthier, more beautiful, more peaceful and in harmony with your own values.

You are a different, unique being and you are part of the diversity of creation, united in a single heartbeat of the universe.

You are different. And any other person you meet in life is different. We are unique, we are different. But how can you get to this different inside of you? It is the path that we wish to offer in this book. In presenting our vision about the art of living a more beautiful life we will use keywords which, at a first glance, may seem quite novel: the different inside you, the access code to your power of being different, to make the difference and so on. But that is precisely the meaning of the paradigm that we called Be Different: to convince you to talk, think and live differently. After you read the book you will certainly know what these phrases mean to you – and to you alone. Their essence, however, is in our advice and urge: Be Different! Start living a singular life and you will manage to help others remember that each and every one of us has the right to enjoy a different life.

You will find these terms on many of the following pages, and their definition (as we see it or as other authors see it, depending on the situation) will appear in several footnotes.

This book expresses our conviction that, today more than at any other time, it is necessary to remember that we are all different, that we must respect our differences without wishing to change one another. Instead, we must accept and love our differences. At the same time, we wish to emphasize the importance of living in the present by acknowledging that each moment of our lives is different. Life is movement. It is the movement of the different interior that wants to be in harmony with the different exterior – with you, with me, with the water and mountains, with the trees and animals, with the entire difference that was created by God, with God Himself.

When each of us will begin the change in ourselves, we will no longer quickly resort to judging our peers, we will no longer have expectations of them and, consequently, we will no longer suffer in our relationship with others. We would like the following pages to be a catalyst for the reader, so he or she could become more easily aware of their uniquely different condition. You yourself, dear reader, are a gift from God – but you mustn't forget that, just like you, any other person (you mother, father, child, friend, neighbor, lover, employee, partner) is different and unique, even though that person shares this divine origin with you.

When each person will understand everything from this perspective and every single man will feel at peace, without having expectations of others or judging them, only then will each and every one of us be able to bring a real contribution to the building of a different world. Before you ask someone else to do this, acknowledge the reality that is starting to shape itself before you. Become aware of what makes you different before asking someone else to be different. Only then will you allow likeness to exist – the likeness between one's beauty and another's, our likeness, the likeness that we all have due to the oneness of the divine source within us.

There are moments when we think we know everything, when we believe that we have nothing left to learn or discover about ourselves. We believe that we know enough about us. They say that each of us has his own destiny, his own path in life, his own fate, that we all choose our own way. There are many sayings of this sort which reminds us that we are unique.

We agree that we are one of a kind and that each of us has his own way in life, but we all have our very own path to take: the path to deliverance, to a happy life. Everything that happens in this day and age has the purpose of making us forget that we are unique, that we are all different and that each of us has the right to a better life.

The Be Different paradigm takes you out of your (actually fake) comfort zone in which you've wallowed your entire life. What does it offer instead? At first, a great agitation, a beneficial type of unrest. Because now you cannot look at the world around you with the same uncaring eyes. For example, you will be profoundly saddened by this disaster we, humans, have created while spending our time running around in order to satisfy our selfish needs – needs which are often superficial and frivolous – instead of arranging the necessary space where we can unite with the different within us so that we can allow everyone to express their own truth.

But this state of agitation, of unrest, of discomfort towards the passive, uncaring state that we cultivated until not so long ago, is quickly followed by the feeling of finding oneself, of understanding our own truth and adapting to it. When you understand that everybody is different, you discover new abilities. For example, empathy appears when you understand that everybody is different, that each of us has a different way of thinking, a different angle from which they see a situation, because every person has their own life experience. You might realize that there is nothing left to do but to understand yourself better, to accept that you too are unique, but at the same time you will respect other people's different values. Then you will give up on futile expectations, you will understand that you can change no-one, that everybody is unique and that, in this way, every person becomes the creator of his or her own life.

Be Different – A Wager You Cannot Lose

The new paradigm is like a wager you're bound to win. It's akin to Blaise Pascal's wager, but on a different scale¹: you have nothing to lose if you choose to be different, to think and act differently. You might have little faith in your ability to change your life and then, in the worst case scenario, you will go back to the starting point. Or you can have faith in your desire to change and you will win the opportunity of your life: that of meeting yourself, of being faced with your own truth, free from selfishness, from illusions, from those baseless expectations which you had towards a world that labeled you, that fit you in its fixed patterns, which tried to place you in a Procrustean bed built according to measures that are entirely foreign to you.

Therefore, this is another wager you cannot lose. There's more than that: everybody wins. In the new paradigm, you will no longer blindly follow the life patterns that the outside world imposed on you. On the contrary, you yourself will become a model of living, of accepting the difference (between people) and of accessing that which is different (in yourself). But this can only happen when you accept that we are different and that we can learn from one another. By accepting, you also gain new experiences and see things from a different perspective than you were used to.

1. Blaise Pascal, Cugetări, Editura Ştiinţifică, 1992. According to Pascal, we can bet on whether we can believe in God or not: If you gain, you gain everything; if you lose, you lose nothing. Therefore wager without hesitation on His existence.

Therefore, the access to the power of being different gains a singular meaning when this gesture is made by as many people as possible. To return to Pascal and to invoke Eastern Christian tradition as well, this is similar to how you cannot save your soul alone, but must do it in communion, along with your fellow men, together with them.

Observe your role in life. Try to understand that you can always be a winner: you can defeat your own pride, defeat your ego and thus become closer to your fellow men and to God. How much the universe of a human being can enlarge itself when it also accepts another person's universe! This is the path that allows new qualities, such as empathy and compassion, to bloom inside you. You feel that you become enriched, your universe grows and new opportunities arise.

It is said that every man has a model in life, but imagine how it would be if every man, if every experience should actually be your chance for you to become your own model. This is possible because when you grow new dimensions, new sides of your being, they become a model, they give you the impulse to trust yourself and your unlimited resources. When you come to understand that everything is different, that every person is unique, you won't manage to miraculously understand everyone, but at least you will accept them as they are. And this is a huge accomplishment in itself.

As we were saying, our inner universe is unlimited; it represents a sort of mise en abyme¹ of the outer universe. Within ourselves we can find everything that surrounds us, brought down to a human scale. Human beings have incredible abilities. The great inventions, the discoveries that changed our lives were made by people like ourselves. Think of a few illustrious people you admire. Maybe you're thinking of Socrates, Da Vinci, Einstein, Pasteur, Gandhi, Mother Theresa and many other great people. Maybe you also admire a few individuals who acted in silence, humbly, not trying to make a name for themselves, but to help others. All of them acted differently; their whole life is different from that of common people. But they, too, were people such as yourself. Who is stopping you from making the difference in this way? Express yourself through the difference that arises from your uniqueness!

We Are Different! We are Unique!

A single cell having the right to different lives. This is our conclusion as twin sisters, after years of experience, of questions and expectations. We reached it during a privileged moment: when we accessed our consciousness in the most profound sense of the word. To put this in other words, we understood and accepted that we are different. Ever since then, our lives have been entirely different. And we are happy.

Today, after years of analyzing our relationship, we realize that our vision on twins was merely a conviction that had been waiting for us when we came into this world and which left its marks on us.

Those around us always had the same expectations of both of us, as if they thought we were entirely identical. Often they even said our names together, calling us "Alinaandreea". Actually, parents, friends and the society have certain expectations of you, of all of us. Even if we are identical twins and they say that our genes are completely the same, our behavior, our way of expressing ourselves and our way of thinking are different. Many published studies have shown that – aside from DNA – twins have certain things in common, even if it isn't clear what those are. It is said – and it is true – that twins are born into an environment in which things are already expected of them. Our parents and those around us expected us to be similar and they frequently treated us as if we were the same person. We have been together since before we were born and then, living together, we learned to perceive each other. The two of us came into the world together, but, actually, all of us are together since before we were born, simply because we come from the same source, because we are God's creation. And if the two of us had an understanding to meet here as

1. French term (mise en abyme - placing into the abyss) that describes the visual phenomenon of two opposite facing mirrors reflecting space. In the history of art and in literature, the term refers to a technique in which an image (a painting, a sculpture, a literary work) contains a smaller copy of itself. We refer to this meaning in our text.

twin sisters, then all human beings have come to honor an agreement, which means that here on earth we must learn to feel each other and not distance ourselves through judgment, separation or lack of acceptance.

I don't want to get into details concerning the study on twins. What we want to remind you is that, although everything is born from a single source, each of us has the sacred duty to reunite the whole through his own uniqueness. This is our opportunity to enjoy the experience of our uniqueness in unity.

If we apply this new way of thinking that we call the Be Different paradigm in our everyday lives, it will help us to stop perceiving the world from the perspective of separation, of individualism. The simple thought that my moments, my problems, my fears, my joys and generally any experience of mine can become, at another time, your experience as well, cancels out the fear of being judged or of judging you for what you feel.

The fact that each of us allows himself to experience his uniqueness in different ways, just as he chooses, just as he feels he should, brings us all closer to one another within the beauty of divine uniqueness.

Remain Inwardly Awake

When you are in harmony with your own truth, you make choices that concern your soul, not your mind.

We come across so much information, so many temptations and so many different opinions that we might doubt our own opinions, our own feelings and experiences, our own uniqueness and we end up doubting our own selves and not understanding anything.

Why does this happen? Why do we feel a need to ask for somebody's opinion, instead of relying on our own intuition? Does another person know what would be more convenient for us? Maybe they see things from a different perspective, but can they actually offer better advice? The truth is that we weren't raised to listen to our intuition in order to choose what is best for us. Who, except us, can know what is best for ourselves?

What would be good for you now? What do you really need?... Who can know better than you do? But this is the way we've been taught. We have been taught not to trust ourselves, we've been told that we need a different opinion, another perspective, another example – which, however, take us away from our uniqueness. Another person's opinion is often a way of becoming estranged from yourself, because it can make you doubt your own person, your own instinct. Can somebody else know what you need better than you do? When you want to be like others, when you want to compare yourself to others, you risk not living the uniqueness of your life. When it comes to your own achievements, if you imitate somebody else's life, not living according to your own authentic model, it is obvious you are faced with an illusion. And this happens because this isn't something you yourself created, something that you yourself have lived, it isn't God's manifestation through you – and, especially, you don't allow yourself to be guided by your own inner navigator, that guiding star which leads you to fulfill your mission here on earth. You have come here, to earth, with a gift. And the essence of the gift is giving. Share your gift with others and you will fulfill your life's purpose. Your uniqueness will help others to become different in their own way. It's something you mustn't forget.

The gift within us manifests itself in several ways. If you truly understand what being different means and if you can really kindle that power within you, the power to manifest the divine gifts that you have received from God, then you are a free spirit. And when we say free, we refer to that freedom which offers you space inside yourself. Knowing how you can enter it and access, be aware of that divine power, that is liberation. And then you become aware that you don't need to accept anything outside of you, whether information, opinions or suggestions, without examining it through your own consciousness. By doing this, you can use the different inside of you as a filter which sifts through any type of information, any lesson and, generalizing, absolutely anything that approaches you from the outside.

Remain inwardly awake! You only have access to what you are, to the different within you, within your own self.

On the day I achieved this liberation, I truly felt life. It was just another day of my life, of our life. It differed from other days, but not because something special was about to happen, just because it was another day. A new day is one in which you are offered the gift of deciding whether to live or die. For me, that was the day of both death and life, of extinction and rebirth – two opposite feelings in the same day. After years of inner conflict, of questions, repression and expectations, that would be the day in which our old, fake life ended, clearing the way for a redeemed, liberated existence which allowed happiness. I never told the details of that moment to a single soul. Not even my parents know what it meant to me.

It was a spring day. Just as trees were in bloom and flowers wished to take their part among the beauties of life, my soul blossomed as well.

Until that spring day, I kept expecting my sister to understand me. But I didn't even know what it meant to be understood. I simply had the feeling that I didn't live for me, but for her, that I wasn't living my own life, but using my life as an extension of hers. I didn't feel as if I were myself. I felt as if I were her. Picture yourself driving a car at night with the lights off. You drive in complete darkness, without seeing a thing. But your lights are off not because they don't work, but because you don't know how to turn them on. At one point, the car crashes into a tree and stops. And on that day, my vehicle, my life, really crashed, it really reached its critical point. I hadn't turned on the lights of my soul. I was going through the darkness and I wasn't led even by my inner guide. I was only focused on my sister. I lived in the energy of concern for her. For me, it was only she who was important, not I. I said I could die for her and I wasn't interested in being well myself. If she was well, then I was well. It was my life, but everything I did, I did while trying to figure out what was best for her. Nothing else mattered.

It was how I thought and acted in life. I don't remember where I'd learned to be like that. Now I understand that even a single word you tell a child can affect that child's entire life.

But then came the day when my soul blossomed. I had been running from myself. It had been a year during which I had felt some very strange things. I'd suffered from panic attacks and I seemed to hear an inner voice that kept whispering to me: You are different, you aren't her, you are unique. You are different. You cannot be her, you cannot know what is best for her. You cannot control somebody else's life. You must take care of yourself. You are love, you are unique, look at yourself, love yourself. Love yourself and she will feel your love even stronger.

Every night, I wrote those inner experiences in my diary. As the year went by, the diary kept being filled. I didn't write, it itself wrote, telling me the most important things in my life.

It was a peaceful, calm weekday. We were in the car, going towards the office, when, because of a single different opinion, my sister and I had a strong, completely irrational fight. She was driving and I told her to stop the car. I got off and ran. I kept running and running and crying. I didn't want to stop. I didn't know where I was running, or why I did it, or where I was going. She drove slowly by me, trying to stop me and talk to me. Then she got down from the car and tried running after me. She couldn't manage it. I think that if I had been participating in a marathon, I'd have won the gold medal. She climbed back into the car and tried following me. I went down some narrow streets and managed to lose her... I kept running until I reached the city's train station. I climbed on the train towards my home town. I felt the need to throw myself in my father's arms. I didn't have any logical reason to do so, nor anything to say. I only had an immense and dire need to do it, which was stronger than any other feeling.

I felt that way, back then. I climbed on the train and sat in the back of the wagon, exhausted. I was crying and I walked into the first empty couchette. I only wanted to be alone. Although I was going towards my father's place, I wanted to be alone, I didn't want to talk to anyone, I didn't want to explain my feelings. Even so, my sole wish was to be protected.