From Ego To Light: Your Shift to Happiness

By Rahim A. Daredia and Raymond Aaron

From Ego to Light: Your Shift to Happiness was written to help you find happiness in each day, whether you are a long-time spiritual seeker or are just beginning to explore life’s deeper truths.

Within these pages, author Rahim Daredia shares powerful yet accessible wisdom that will enhance your understanding of the spiritual laws that govern the universe. You will learn how to embrace life’s joys and challenges with equanimity, knowing that you are a perfectly imperfect divine being whose greatness lies within.

Dive into the pages of this book, and emerge into the light of who you truly are, invigorated and inspired to find happiness, today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Apr 14, 2016
• ISBN: 9781772770490

Book preview

Author

Introduction

Work for a cause, not for applause. Live life to express, not to impress. Don’t strive to make your presence noticed, just to make your absence felt. - Quote from an unknown source displayed on the wall of the new Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, Ontario

Welcome to From Ego to Light: Your Shift to Happiness. This book is my humble attempt to pass on to others some of the spiritual insights and practices that I’ve been blessed to receive over the years, which have allowed me to create a balanced and meaningful life. I believe that The One guides us to the information we need when the time is right. I don’t claim credit for this, but it is a phenomenon I have observed in my own search, so I encourage you to peruse these pages with an open mind. I hope that, in some way large or small, this book helps you on your journey to love and truth.

I’m grateful to Raymond for co-authoring this book with me, and for the central role he’s played in my unfolding ability to live my highest and best life. However, my journey with spiritual values began as a child born into a refugee family that knew what it was like to lose everything and start over in life. My parents moved to Calgary from their native Uganda in 1972, fleeing a campaign of ethnic cleansing in which the dictator Idi Amin gave all people of South Asian descent 90 days to leave the country. Like many refugees throughout history, my parents’ experience caused them to treasure those things that can’t be taken away, particularly education. They also placed a high value on what might today be called ‘quality family time,’ knowing that treasured memories of such moments stay with us always. Our family life was always about appreciating what you have and not taking anything for granted, along with non-attachment to material things. My parents were steadfast in their belief that there was no sense becoming overly attached to worldly possessions, when they can so easily be taken away.

These values took on new urgency for me in adolescence, when my father had a heart attack and was given only two years to live. From that time until his death twenty years later, I lived with the constant awareness that every conversation or visit that I had with him could be our last. When we lost him, my spiritual search intensified, and I found myself drawn to books, teachers, and other sources of information that I had not paid attention to before. At the time, I was in a work position that was not conducive to creating balance, but my father’s death prompted me to ask to be shown the way to a life of balance and meaning. I had already been working with Raymond for several years by this time, but now the truth of the Law of Attraction began to show up with greater clarity in my field of view. I’ve since been able to obtain a new position where I can balance a career I love with family and spiritual life. I know this has happened because I asked for it and believed it would be granted to me and, while it is still not perfect, it continues to get better. This reinforces my faith that the Universe will deliver to me what I am meant to see and experience, if I only ask.

Of all the lessons I’ve learned on my path, perhaps the most important is that happiness is in the journey you take within. When I was younger, I treated happiness like a shimmering destination, an oasis in the desert of other people’s advice and expectations. I believed the commonly accepted story that happiness could be found in a good job, a nice car and house, and the prestige that comes with these material acquisitions. When my father died, I felt compelled to re-evaluate my priorities and live my truth at a deeper level. In doing so, I learned to focus on creating happiness in little ways every day, because over time these small steps add up to a fulfilling life journey. That’s why, at the end of each chapter, you’ll find a real world exercise under the heading ‘Live the Experience,’ because it is very important to put the insights this book contains into practice if you truly want your life to transform.

Raymond likes to say that, when we have faith in our vision, the right things will come to us ‘automagically.’ I have found this to be true in my own life, and I’ve written this book to help you take the first steps towards living your vision here and now.

Many blessings on your journey.

Rahim Daredia

Chapter 1

Perspective is Everything, and Everything is God

The freshness of my eyes is given to me in prayer. – The Holy Koran

One of the most important things I’ve learned is that our perspectives are very limited when it comes to judging life events and circumstances. We’re so quick to label some things ‘good’ and other things ‘bad,’ but the truth is that, with our limited awareness, we don’t have nearly enough information to do that. The only one who can see the whole picture is God, whose loving presence inspires all true religions at their core. This is why we need to have faith that there is a deep spiritual reason for everything that happens in our lives. In my experience, prayer is a good way to ask for perspective, to ‘freshen our eyes’ with The Source’s loving perspective. The willingness to take a step back from our own limited viewpoint is what opens the door for greater awareness to arise. It’s a cosmic paradox that we must first admit we don’t know everything before we can receive the insights that expand our understanding. When we argue with reality, we only create suffering for ourselves and others. This doesn’t mean that we go through life passively accepting every circumstance and injustice as out of our control. Rather, it means making a commitment to respond to events from awareness, rather than reacting based on old patterns of trauma and unconsciousness. This can seem like a tall order, but I’ve found that it’s the key to real freedom. If we want to be free, we must accept that our perspective is limited. When we let go of being right, we give ourselves the space to integrate the lessons that life brings us.

There’s a woman named Byron Katie who developed a powerful process that she calls the Work to help people recognize what’s really true for them underneath the false concepts that we all carry. Through the Work, people who are committed to becoming free are able to see that these misconceptions are the true cause of their suffering, not their life circumstances. Once this truth is seen, the lie can no longer survive, and the person experiences a profound sense of peace with what is. Katie, as she is called,