Originally from a small town in Finland, I left home at the age of 19, heading to the excitement of a big city; London. During my twenties, in addition to completing a BSc degree in Psychology, I traveled all over the world, living and working in many countries, going through various jobs and meeting many people from all walks of life. By my late twenties I was working with teenagers with mental health difficulties, which was work that I found very fulfilling and rewarding. Everything in my life seemed to have fallen into place and I thought I had got everything I ever wanted from life. Just at that point, and particularly because everything was so seemingly perfect, I hit a deep existential crisis, and I realized I wasn’t truly happy. Something was still missing, though I didn’t know what that something was. In the midst of my desperation I found peace in yoga. It opened a door to something new that I had not felt or experienced in my life yet. Inspired by this I gave up my life in the west, and with the little bit of savings I had, I headed to Asia wanting to devote my whole life to yoga and whatever that brings.
That path slowly opened me to spirituality, and though I still thought that even the mere idea of enlightenment sounded boring, and for sure I would not want that, still I was hungry for spiritual teachings. Hungry to hear that there really was more to life than what it seemed, as I had always known on some level.
I practiced yoga intensely for some years on the tropical island of Koh Phangan, absorbing all the teachings from the yoga school there. However after a few years I started feeling like I was not really advancing anymore, or it was too slow and too sticky. I wanted to go deeper, I wanted to be in my heart, but though as far as yoga goes there was a lot of depth to the school’s yoga, it wasn’t enough for me. I saw how mostly everybody in the school still played their games and it was just another beautiful illusion to get lost in. This time playing a beautiful spiritual yogi on the path. I begun to feel desperate and disillusioned. I felt disappointed how everyone around, including my boyfriend was just wrapped in their own game, and not truly wanting to go deeper and higher despite all the words that were spoken. Essentially I found that no-one really wanted to face their own games and to give them up. Most of all, I felt frustrated with myself that despite my own will to change, I still couldn’t get out of my own programming, the self-repeating patterning I had always lived with, as long as I could remember. Without even knowing what a prayer really is, I prayed. I prayed for a teacher, a personal teacher, who can take me deeper.
That is when Braahman appeared on Koh Phangan, right in the midst of the yoga community I was living in. As soon as he started speaking in the Satsang he was giving, a loud and clear voice spoke inside of me and told me “This is your teacher”. My life changed dramatically from that moment on. In just a matter of a week I became his student, and in another couple of weeks I left the island with him and his other students. For the first time in my life I started receiving true spiritual teachings. Not ones from the books, no ideas and concepts, but true teachings from the heart, from God, from someone who had walked the path himself and experienced it all firsthand. Someone who not only spoke about Eternity and God, but who knew it inside of him, someone who was anchored in that, someone who through their being transmitted teachings. I felt truly relieved that I had found what I was looking for and from there I could just surrender for the ride. What I did not realize though was what a true spiritual path is really about, what it really meant to face my pain and what it would take to let go of the patterning I had been living with all my life. I did not know what it meant to break down all those walls I had built around me to protect me… to protect my wounds, my pain, my ego. And good I didn’t, as I might have backed down if I knew what I had to go through in order to become free.
It has now been over 12 years since I joined Braahman, and during that time I have had to drop all my ideas of who I thought I was. All my ideas of spirituality, the spiritual path and spiritual teachers. Every single idea and attachment to the world as I knew it had to go. In the presence of a teacher none of that can survive, it is the teacher’s job to make sure of that. And Braahman did that with total mastery and ease. The challenges along the path have been more than I ever thought I could manage; and so it is, I was pushed beyond my comfort zone, past the point where I knew I existed. I had to die again and again, in order to be born anew. Every time when I thought that I got a grasp on where I was and what I knew, every time when I thought I had got somewhere and knew how it all works, I was knocked down again, without mercy.
Of course there were many beautiful times too (not that transformation is not beautiful… but maybe in a different way). As much as our ego needs destruction, our heart and our vulnerability, that which is true and genuine in us, needs nourishment. I went through long periods of total bliss, being in love with the whole existence, feeling nothing but God, waking up singing to Him every morning. I learned to be vulnerable and soft again, I learned I can be without the walls of defence I had built around me. I learned about true connection with others, living in my heart, and developed the deepest, most intimate relationships, true friendships, that I have ever experienced.
I learned about Love, honesty, truth, feelings (and showing them), true integrity, kindness, humility, and all that which is true and good in each of us. I opened up to life again. I begun to sing for the first time since my childhood, and poetry would pour out of me at times, though I had never written or understood a word of it before. And most importantly I found my own connection to God again. It is this connection that sustains me, this connection that keeps me going, and that makes life worth living. It is this that gives meaning to my life. What I am left with, in its essence, is the peace and freedom regained through all the transformation, and my connection with God, with myself, which is now my guide.
I have the deepest love and gratitude for Braahman for all that I received and am still receiving from him. It is more than I can say in words, exceeding all praise I could give. I feel humbled by the example he set and continues to set by simply being who he is. The gifts and the Grace I have received are beyond anything I could have imagined possible. I have become a person who is beyond anything I thought possible, and yet I have simply become more of myself. In the last few years with Braahman I have spent more time away from him physically than in his direct presence. I spent long times in India in my gurus’ care, going through my individual transformation and finding my own guidance and independence through it. I learned to honor my feelings, insights and intuition, to discern God’s voice inside of me from the noise of my ego. Above all that though this time instilled in me such an unshakable trust in God and His Divine Perfection, that it is this faith that can take me through anything, any challenge at all that I may need to face. After this period in India I continued my journey to Australia and then Bali. These were essential times to develop my confidence in myself, and they taught me to trust my own feelings and guidance above all else. This could happen exactly because of the intense purification I went through, and the immense depth of awareness that opened and expanded in me through the intense inner work and through Braahman’s presence and close guidance in the first few years with him.
It is now more than 15 years since I left for Asia and started on my journey, and now for the first time since then, my heart has called me back to Finland. To be honest, I never thought I would return here anymore, nor that I would want to. Yet as I find myself here reconnecting with my home land something feels deeply nourished in my soul. I am appreciating the land and the people of Finland in a completely different way than I ever did, and I look forward in seeing what God has in store for me here and what unfolds in this step on my journey.
Through the teachings and the inner work I learned from Braahman I gained the freedom I now have. It is an ongoing work with myself, as well as the gift I can offer to those guided to me for healing. Doing this work and being able to act as an instrument of Divinity in bringing healing to others is something that fulfills me deep in my soul. As I am engaged in my work, giving it to those who need it and can benefit from it, I feel I am doing exactly that which God intended for me, what I came on this planet for in this lifetime. It is an honor and a privilege for me to offer this healing for others and in this way to act as an instrument of God.
In loving gratitude,
Raani
Transformoivaa Sielunhoitoa - Transformative Soul Healing 