Recognizing I AM the Beloved: An Evolutionary Path Celebrating the Light of Consciousness

By Śruti Malcolm

This book was written at the request of a great teacher in order to support spiritual practitioners of various paths better integrate their spiritual experiences, vijñāna, with an understanding of how and why they happen: jñāna. This is not intended solely as a spiritual memoir. The author shares her personal experiences as an authentic example of a person’s journey of self-inquiry, self-knowledge and self-actualization.

Her use of Sanskrit and citations from relevant treatises ground contemporary practice in an ancient lineage of practice and theory that support the choices we make in our daily life even now. Our journeys are sometimes joyful; sometimes, challenging: all necessary to our personal evolution.

As the ancient grammarians attest, this focus on our individual sādhanā inevitably plays a significant role in the evolution of the planet that is up for anyone who accepts the auspicious responsibility of experiencing the unity of the Self in order to support the diversity of shapes and forms in this breath-taking universe and university of our life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Nov 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9781638292876

Śruti Malcolm

Śruti Malcolm has recently retired from her position as a linguistics professor at a university in central Canada. Throughout her adult life, she has also been a yoga practitioner: student and teacher of yoga theory and philosophy. She revels in all apects of living, learning and creating in this beautiful ephemeral world she calls the university of her life. However, it is her inner revelatory experiences that delight, guide, protect and inspire her on this journey of consciousness towards a constant recognition of her highest Self. These she feels honored to share with you as you follow your own perfect path. She currently lives in Toronto, Canada.

Book preview

Recognizing I AM the Beloved

Endorsements

I am amazed how much faith the author has in her Guru/Highest Self. And how generous she was in sharing her personal life story with all its challenges. It made me believe that I too could learn to trust and strengthen the inner voice of my Highest Self. People have been doing what I am doing for lifetimes. That in itself gives me strength. I am not alone. The book reaffirms the reality that there is something beyond my small, sometimes confused, self that I can lean on. The author’s trust in her ‘inner guru’ and her immense gratitude for her teachers, including her Highest Self, move me to feel that I, too, can call myself the Beloved.

– Roxanne Mackenzie, Actress and Yoga Practitioner

Nov. 30, 2011 6:01 a.m.

Hi Shruti,

How wonderful you wrote the book and yes, of course, I would be more than happy to endorse it. Do let me know when I can see the book and do whatever I can to support you.

– William Hurt (1950-2022)

June 20, 2023 1:32 p.m.

Congratulations on the book and its upcoming publication. I send you best wishes for its success.

–Sally Kempton Meditation for the Love of It. (2023)

‘Hello, I am calling from SMA on behalf of our Guru. She has read your book, and sends her blessings.’ (SMA 2015)

"I enjoyed reading Eat, Pray, Love, but this is the book I have been looking for."

– Sue Williams, teacher of Anusara Yoga

Shruti does not tell a life ‘story’ – she tells life as ‘sādhanā’. Her words spark within us the recognition of what a majestic and meaningful life path we actually are on.

Shruti ne raconte pas une ‘histoire’ de vie - elle raconte la vie comme ‘sādhanā’. Ses paroles nous ammènent à reconnaître le chemin de vie majestueux et plein de sens que nous suivons réellement.

« Émouvant et profondément transformateur. Shruti ouvre notre regard sur l’aspect profond et à la nature sacrée de notre vie - que nous considérons à tort pour ordinaire. Ses paroles servent de vecteurs de lumière qui nous révèlent l'extraordinaire de nos propres vies. »

– Eliot Acuña, teacher of Neelakantha Meditation and Iyengar Yoga

About the Author

Śruti Malcolm has recently retired from her position as a linguistics professor at a university in central Canada. Throughout her adult life, she has also been a yoga practitioner: student and teacher of yoga theory and philosophy. She revels in all apects of living, learning and creating in this beautiful ephemeral world she calls the university of her life. However, it is her inner revelatory experiences that delight, guide, protect and inspire her on this journey of consciousness towards a constant recognition of her highest Self. These she feels honored to share with you as you follow your own perfect path. She currently lives in Toronto, Canada.

Copyright Information ©

Śruti Malcolm 2023

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

All of the events in this memoir are true to the best of author’s memory. The views expressed in this memoir are solely those of the author.

Ordering Information

Quantity sales: Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address below.

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

Malcolm, Śruti

Recognizing I AM the Beloved

ISBN 9781638292869 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781638292876 (ePub e-book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023918023

www.austinmacauley.com/us

First Published 2023

Austin Macauley Publishers LLC

40 Wall Street, 33rd Floor, Suite 3302

New York, NY 10005

USA

[e-mail]

[phone]

Acknowledgment

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who have taken part in the dramas, līlās, of my life. In particular, those whom I have introduced in this book, who have played loving roles in my life and played roles that challenged me. All are great beings, vehicles of the Śakti, who have helped me tremendously in my evolution in conscious awareness.

I have been blessed with wonderful teachers along the way, to whom I am also incredibly grateful: my sons, my parents, the rest of my family, friends, acquaintances, great scholars, wonderful Swamis, the breathtaking Siddhas. In particular, I thank my brilliant Śaiva Śakta teacher of the last dozen years who has taught me so much that I was longing to know about the unbelievable gifts my external/internal Guru has bestowed on me.

I cannot say enough about the amazing Presence who has guided me within and without from first to last without fail. It is She who has re-introduced me to my Beloved, whose treasures of experience and gifts of knowledge are my heart’s delight.

It is my great hope that I have honored their/her/his/my trust. If I have misunderstood at times and made errors, I apologize, and thank you for your expansive patience and compassion, not to mention your extraordinary love, so beyond past imagining, that always keeps me aiming for the Highest Truth.

Dedication

Beloved,

Always for you

Always yours

We are One

"Jaya gurudeva amala avināsī

jñānarūpa antara ke vāsī

Paga-paga para dete parakāśa

Jaise kirane dinakara kī

Āratī karū guruvara kī"

"Hail Divine Guru, pure, indestructible,

dwelling within us in the form of knowledge,

illuminating every step like the rays of the sun.

Let me perform Āratī for the best of Gurus."

A Minimal Sanskrit Pronunciation Guide

(the bolded Sanskrit sound sounds like the italicized English sound)

Part I

Purifying

False Identification

Introduction

As you read this book, you might wonder ‘Who am I?’ to have the audacity to write a book of spiritual experiences and realizations? I am no famous spiritual practitioner, philanthropist or world healer whose celebrity status warrants an autobiography or memoire. I am just an ordinary person with an ordinary life who looked for many many years for a path that felt right to me, and who was incredibly blessed to find one. For the last thirty some years, I have practised what I was taught and told, inwardly or outwardly.

Although I have lived most of my adult life with my sons and a few friends, my life has often felt incredibly lonely, as if I seldom belonged anywhere. I have learned such feelings, a consequence of the malas (see Glossary) are universal, potentially understandable and almost required, in a sense, to propel me to look beyond the temporary relative world to something more permanent although more subtle. They certainly have motivated my sādhanā, spiritual practices, which have enabled me to continue to evolve in consciousness throughout my life.

In retrospect, it seems rather funny that I have spent so much of my life struggling with my understanding of this ‘dualistic’ world, when I now see my struggles had little to do with the ‘truth’ of reality, but only my mind’s limited and self-sabotaging ideas of it. Still, over time, I have come to a certain compassion for myself and others who have the courage to wrestle with such misunderstandings. My Ph.D. certainly pales when compared to the lifelong demands of this greater journey of questioning, contemplating and resolving the perennial questions of Who am I? What is real? What is reality? What is true? Only in the last few years in my evolution of consciousness, have my revised experiences and understandings of my Self and the world helped me reach a more expansive understanding of my role in this non-dualistic reality, where I am neither separate nor special. I simply AM, in a very simple, and at the same time, a very profound way.

Living what felt like a double life for many years in both the ‘external’ world ‘out there’ in the natural prakṛti world of my senses and in the ‘inner’ world or puruṣa (often translated as soul/Self) felt very disorienting, to say the least. It felt as if it were my duty, my dharma, to put considerable energy into both the ‘outer’ world involving my profession, family and friends as a householder and also the ‘inner’ world of my heart. As I see it now, the journey has taken me from limited or ‘false’ identification with the multiple roles I have played in the relative world of my body and mind to ‘true’ identification with my highest, unbounded, eternal Self.

Over the years, I have been given breathtaking inner guidance, as well as experiences, which has felt as if it were intended for everyone. This inner journey, while incredibly delightful some of the time, involves constant reflection, self-inquiry and contemplation that is sometimes very difficult. It is so easy to get derailed and stuck in a web of false perceptions and beliefs, rules and assumptions, from which my limited, worldly mind, manas, tries to make meaning and even control, as it attempts to create an illusion of safety that I can hold on to, when such mental inventions are neither safe nor true. It has been challenging to step outside the mental mazes with which I have bound and imprisoned myself, thinking, misguidedly, they would make me happy. My journey is not finished.

Nevertheless, some years ago, in meditation, I was told to write this book, and I was given the title Recognizing I am the Beloved. I wrote the first draft back then, but did nothing with it, unsure where it was headed despite receiving a precious phone call from my beloved external Guru offering me her blessings after she had read an early draft. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I was told to publish it, once again, in meditation. In retrospect, I begin to understand why I unknowingly waited so long.

The meditation experiences and insights I described in the first draft were very precious to me; yet, something felt as if it were missing. What was missing was my understanding and full appreciation of them. I have no one to blame for this but myself. Early in my sādhanā I was suspicious of intellectual knowledge. It was OK, even necessary for my sthūla world profession as a university professor, but my meditative experiences came from an entirely different place, deep within my heart. I was afraid that intellectual knowledge concerning meditation might interfere with the experiences that came from such a different inner source and filled my heart with joy.

It took me about twenty years of following the practices and teachings of my incomparable external Guru, before my longing to understand my inner treasures finally forced me to move beyond my limited suspicions and find a teacher who could help me take a more responsible role in studying the ancient texts that I soon learned had much to say about what I had experienced. Perhaps I simply wasn’t ready to hold the teachings that earlier teachers may have offered.

My new Śaiva Śākta teacher introduced me to many Sanskrit words and meanings that were relevant to my spiritual journey, but not available in current English. Contemporary linguists realize that language encodes what is culturally significant. This seemed to imply that what I considered important, others did not. As my eyes and ears were opened to ancient texts written long before the common era, I learned there had been countless wise scholars, sages and practitioners who had made a journey not unlike mine. Their words, paśyantī vāc, were revealed during meditation long before written books and universities came to be. Such ancient Sanskrit words (and perhaps the words of other ancient languages) carry powerful vibrations that continue to resonate with our daily life, illumine truths and transform our limited understandings millennia after they were first heard deep within. This is why I have included such Sanskrit words and meanings in this book (please see Glossary p. 276).

My Śaiva Śākta teacher, also a master of Sanskrit, was able to translate the ancient teachings after he, like his forefathers, intuited and tested his translations against not only the time-honored canon of his tradition, but also his own experience of inner truths in a spiritual practice called bhāvanā or contemplation (different traditions have different names for this practice). He suggested that the experiences I had guarded so carefully for the past twenty years were garnered in the ‘lab’ of my practice: vijñāna. What had been missing was the ‘theory’ of the practice, the illumined knowledge of it: jñāna. He was right.

As a young linguist, I had felt distrustful of theory. I valued field work: collecting and analyzing real authentic data. It was not surprising, then, that I continued to value authentic ‘experience’ in my new world of yogic practice. Back then, I thought ‘theory’ was reductive and misrepresentative of real-life experience. Fortunately, over the years as a linguist, my understanding of theory also transformed. From my analyses of authentic linguistic data, I had begun to notice how replicable patterns could be interpreted in a context of linguistic, social and psychological theories. This evolution in my understanding of the contextualizing value of theory supported my taking the next step in my studies of yogic philosophy.

During the next several years, I reveled in the discoveries and revelations that were outcomes of my new studies in, and practices of, Kashmir Śaivism. It was not the particular geographic or religious context that made the difference. Rather, medieval sages like Abhinavagupta had brought together teachings of many traditions, distilling their essence in new revealing ways. It was the ‘universality’ of their principles that attracted me, that resonated with my experience and felt ‘right’, genuine, true. Their applicability helped me better appreciate the extraordinary experiences with which I had been gifted so many years before. What had been concealed was gradually revealed more expansively in the light of consciousness.

Still, it wasn’t until recently, that it finally occurred to me why I had waited so long to publish. Now, a dozen years into my studies of the intellectual and experiential context of my early meditation experiences, the ‘theory of the practice’, the ‘lecture’ to the ‘lab’, so to speak, I could no longer publish a book that was limited to describing the fruit of the ‘practise of the practice’, vijñāna, as beautiful as those experiences were. I now needed to contextualize them with the theory, the knowledge, jñāna, that explained the otherwise unexplainable, that conceptualized the non-conceptual, that began to heal my ignorance and return me to the wholeness, the completeness, the perfection of my Self.

Once again, it appears that my refinement, my evolution as a conscious being, is about finding a balance between what once seemed so different and divisive: experience and intellectual understanding. As you will read in the following pages, my Guru, within and without, has given me everything from the beginning. It has taken me many years, however, to begin to appreciate the enormity of her showers of blessings. So now, in this book I can offer you nothing less than the balance between the knowledge and experience that I am attempting to negotiate.

It is a great delight for me to share my ‘treasures’, my experiences and realizations, with you. My experiences and subsequently, my ‘transmissions’, the highlights of my life, have always felt both personal and public. I would never have been asked to write this book if everything were not meant to be shared; it certainly never occurred to me until I received the inner command. It is more likely that I am just one of many, like you perhaps, who has dared to ponder life’s age-old questions: Who am I? What is my purpose? What is an authentic path? How do I trust? Whom do I trust? How do I live a life fully? How can I be happy? How do I love? Whom do I love?

May the following chapters support your own journey of understanding and recognition. Ultimately, the details of my journey are irrelevant; the book only exists to support you in your own journey. The challenge is that you do the work to make your own discoveries.

The visionary words of paśyantī vāc heard from deep within are intended to strengthen the energetic ripples that help us evolve in our highest truth, rather than succumb to a limited world of false beliefs, doubt, cynicism, self-serving delusion, and ‘truthiness’.

Although few books purify the heart as much as the spiritual practices, I have learned that some words are more than the contracted ego-bound constructs with which we limit ourselves and further our suffering. I have also learned that some books, particularly those written by authors who follow the practices of a great Guru, can support fellow practitioners, sādhakas, in their journey. They too carry a vibration in accord with highest intention.

In this book, you might read things that sound improbable. The stories and insights I have included have surprised and astounded me too. And at times, led to self-doubt and harsh judgement. Perhaps, you too will be skeptical. Your skepticism is welcome. I hope it leads you to self-inquiry and bhāvanā/contemplation in the cave of your own heart. Everything needs to be checked and double checked in terms of your own inner truths and experiences. Such discrimination is key. As I look back over the many years, I have compassion for my early half-baked understandings. Fortunately, they did not stop me, but motivated everything that has followed. I hope you too never stop growing in your evolution of consciousness.

The first time I went to the ashram, when the world of yoga still felt very foreign, I went to a Swami and asked, Whom can I trust? He gave me the perfect response: "Only the Guru, the rest of us are doing sādhanā." And sādhanā, as you will hear, has its own ups and downs. How could it not, when we are all subject to the malas which veil the truth of our highest identity (Self/ puruṣa) with limited and contracted ideas about who we are, the grāhas, and in the process, cause the fundamental root fear, śaṅkā, that expresses itself in doubt, anxiety and all the ‘thieves of the heart’, vignas, which cause our pain and suffering. This book will support your own evolving understanding of such matters, so you needn’t fear getting stuck at times and confused at others.

We may have temporarily forgotten our highest birthright, but it is always available on the inside, and even the outside when we have the eyes to see the perfection, completeness, fulfillment, and freedom of the unbounded and eternal Absolute Consciousness variously called Guru, Self, Beloved, Śiva, Śakti, ātman, God, Christ Principle, Buddha Nature in various traditions. Despite the illusion/delusion of such diversity of methods and names, there is a perfect unity in the experiences of love, revelation, compassion and all the virtues of the heart.

Writing this book has been a completely different experience than writing the scholarly works with which I fulfilled my professional obligations in the past. Writing from my head and not my heart felt so unnatural and so partial; whereas, writing my heart’s delight, sharing my greatest inner treasures in this book is an unbelievable gift to me. I am so grateful. I humbly offer this book to my Guru’s feet (within and without, inner and outer). She has given me everything. Without her wisdom and guidance, I have little to offer. She asked me to write it, so I did. Of course, any errors, or omissions I have made are my own. My journey continues, but my Beloved never changes.

The following chapters are organized primarily in terms of the chronology of my spiritually relevant experiences: from my early life (see Before), to Awakening, to years of experiences as I pursued Sādhanā and Seva, to later experiences of Merging, Surrender, Krama, and finally The Truth of Relationships and My Guru’s Sandals. However, interspersed with this skeletal narrative, are the numerous teachings and realizations I have been given over several years not only by my Śaiva Śākta teacher, but also by my own highest Guru Self as I continue my practices. It seems each time I rewrite the book, I am granted further understandings, for which I am extremely grateful. I have discovered that in much the same way as there are multiple levels of meanings encoded in ancient scriptures, there are multiple levels of understanding experience. My intention has always been to support others as they pursue their own spiritual journey, as they too evolve in consciousness.

May this book be of service to you in some way. May it inspire you to look within and recognize the exquisite treasure of your own Self, the source of highest wisdom. May each of you ultimately experience the perfection of your life in whatever way it manifests. May each of you Recognize your Beloved. The rest will follow. Self-effort and always, Grace.

Before

Childhood

I don’t remember a great deal of my childhood. I guess that tells you something (or maybe just that I have a bad memory). This is not an autobiography, although it may seem so at times. Rather, it is a memoire of what is significant to my spiritual journey, which I sometimes call sādhanā.

I was a middle child, second girl in a farmer’s family, where a boy might have been more welcome. Or at least, that is the story I have told myself, when I was working through first family issues in my twenties, and trying to understand my childhood feelings of invisibility. The boy came a few years later, just before financial exigencies made keeping the farm impossible, and we, now a family of five, moved to a small city for a few years, and then a large city, where we stayed.

Physically, I was small in stature for some time; my sister, a year older, was a head taller. But I was strong enough, liked to play football with the kids in the neighborhood after school, ride my bike and spend hours standing on my head on the front lawn. Eventually, I could stand on my head for ten minutes (yes, I think even this is relevant). But I never managed the front flip, despite trying over and over, and always ending up flat on my back.

At school, I was smart enough to take grades three, four and five in two years. But I never got the grades of my older sister nor my little brother. I guess, in terms of family identity, I was known as the kid who could sing. My sister and I had sung Disney duets: Somewhere my prince will come at church hall functions when we were four or five (Maybe, my challenges assessing and negotiating relationships began right about there?). And in my personal version of family folklore, because I could sing, it seemed to me, somehow it was OK I was not as smart as my siblings.

As a child I remember myself as shy and fearful. I am not sure why. I know I was brought up at a time when emotions were not given much space in family communication, and mixed messages abounded. I had a strong intuition that often told me things that were at odds with what others said. My family seemed to operate contentedly and comfortably in a reality that made little sense to me. Adults told me how I should see the world, but it did not match with my own perceptions and insights. This left me feeling confused and untrusting (see Fear). Back then, I believed the adults: weren’t they supposed to know what was what? So I must be wrong.

Fear

Although I am not going to belabor what I call the first family healing which I pursued somewhat later, I will say that I always saw and valued my father’s ability to talk to anyone of any background with complete fascination and respect. His curiosity and tolerance amazed me. My relationship with my mother was more challenging. Her mixed emotional messages confused me for much of my life, and it took me many years to understand how she expressed her love, not to mention her fear. What I felt was her criticism. How much judgement was hers, and how much I was projecting, I am not sure. My later relation with her changed considerably. Her generosity always astounded me, as did the energy she put into communication and connection. Several people outside the home saw her as extremely thoughtful and kind. Their experience of her confused me further.

Teens

As a kid I loved to dance, and for years I took dance lessons. I remember a highpoint: getting to dance with a recording the teacher had made of my singing Somewhere over the Rainbow. In my early teens, after the school vocal teacher suggested I take vocal lessons, I gave up dance for singing (each child could take one lesson per week). I continued studying for many years, and in my later teens, had delightful experiences singing in several choirs, and playing leading roles in several musicals.

Scholastically, my interest in both the arts and sciences was not surprising given my parents’ interest in both. Throughout high school, I remember thinking that reading literature seemed trivial, reading science made sense. Studying English seemed pointless; studying chemistry and reading physics, especially quantum mechanics, was fascinating. When a high school English teacher suggested I study English, after introducing us to semantics, I thought he was joking (He, like me, ended up with a Ph.D. in linguistics). It amuses me now, so many years later, to remember how reading quantum mechanics, philosophy and religion always seemed to go together for me back then, even when I had no idea why. Now it makes more sense: the common denominator? Energy.

My interest in spiritual questions was not so typical of my immediate nuclear family although my grandfather, who had died before my birth, was a United Church minister, and a few of my cousins eventually followed in his footsteps. Many of my mother’s relatives were teachers and ministers; my father’s were farmers and mechanics. My first family was the only one that moved from the country to the city.

When or why I started reading philosophy, I don’t recall. But sometime, when I was around twelve, I had come across the words ‘maximize your potential’, and these words became my first mantra, although I had never heard of the word mantra back then. I remember reading Bertrand Russell’s The Conquest of Happiness, and Abraham Maslow’s Toward a Psychology of Being in my mid-teens. I loved Maslow’s notion of self-actualization. And eventually a science friend, with a cute little MG, introduced me to the mystical novels of Herman Hesse.

Meanwhile I was asking my Christian relatives questions about life and death, even though I couldn’t find anyone interested in discussing such questions, let alone answering my queries. In my teens I also had experiences that I didn’t know how to deal with. I remember one night being so sure that Christ was sitting at the foot of my bed that I wouldn’t open my eyes because I was too afraid of seeing beyond the material world.

Buddhism was the first religion I started studying when I didn’t find the answers to my questions in Christianity. Although I did not understand the idea of desire, other ideas seemed to make a lot of sense. In my mid-teens I came up with my own philosophy. With a name like ‘pit’ philosophy, you can tell it was not overly optimistic: if you are already at the bottom, you can only go up. Actually, my early attempts at poetry show there was a bit more to it, and my early search was a prelude for what was to come.

My teen years were not my favorite. I blamed a series of ‘wrong timing’ family moves for my solitude and difficulty in ‘fitting in’. During the transition from elementary to high school, I attended four schools in a period of two years. Eventually, I would make a friend at my new school, but usually I would consider her nerdy and second rate; probably a projection of my own insecurities and self-image. Not an auspicious beginning, but one that fueled future fires.

Poems (Teens)

me and all

finding he is like me

and he is like she, as she is like me

finding she is like them, as she is

like he, as he is like me

and finding all are as they, as they are like she,

as she is like he, as he is like me

everything fits, all are like all

all dissolve into one

unity, oneness

now, then, and after

follow the road to the box

walk, don’t run, you’ll get there

it’ll wait

you’ll find it, when it’s time

enter the box and sit in the void

and listen to the unlistenable

and learn the unlearnable

and act the unactable

and leave the void

and wake up tomorrow, or yesterday not today

and go from the box and close the door and forget

and walk

and in time, re-find the road and the box

and the void

again, take the gifts the box offers

this time keep them and

stay in the void and the

knowledge and the

understanding and the

love

you, me and life

begotten

awakening, awareness

wonder, surprise, astonishment

life

love

amazement, bewilderment

intelligence, maturity

hatred, deception, cruelty

love, hatred

knowledge

wonder, surprise, disappointment

awakening, awareness

death

forgotten

Twenties

My twenties, marrying young, moving out, living in the ‘foreign’ worlds of music, modelling and university were perfect, but difficult, as I tried to unearth who I was, apart from my family’s paradigms with their familiar beliefs and values. I remember when I married at twenty-one (we married young back then), I thought ‘now that I am a mature woman, I can leave my philosophical inclinations behind’. Five years later, as I was leaving my husband, I realized that my spiritual interests and psychological evolution were more important to me than I had expected. My husband did not share them.

One of the best things about leaving my husband was the final gift he gave me. It was a beautiful white Royal Doulton figurine: a simple, elegant, female figure with her arms raised to the sky. Immediately, I called her ‘freedom’. I thought, maybe he does know me a little. When I looked at the underside of the figure, Royal Doulton had named it ‘Awakening’. Awakening into freedom, little did I know that was precisely where I was headed.

I took my master’s degree and then my doctorate with a legitimate curiosity in communication and how language worked. It all seemed so complicated. At the same time, I was