I grew up in a tough neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey, and I developed an emotional callus to protect myself from pain. Being surrounded by people with negative coping skills, always walking around on red alert, I felt numbed by violence that most other people would be shocked by.

Even then I was a happy person, but it wasn’t appropriate to show it. If you’re really happy in certain areas where I’m from, you become a target. You have to be careful about what you express and when you express it. I was in so much pain because of that.

I made a choice that I was going to be happy no matter what the people around me thought about it. To be honest, it was coming from an aggressive, warrior-type attitude, and if anyone challenged it, they were going to be met with strong opposition.

I was always looking for ways to develop myself, so when I saw Dr. John Hagelin speaking about Maharishi International University [formerly Maharishi University of Management] in the movie What the Bleep Do We Know? I decided to visit the campus for a Visitors Weekend. I enrolled as a student and learned the Transcendental Meditation technique in January of 2009.

I made a choice that I was going to be happy no matter what the people around me thought about it.

Coming Home

The first time I did the TM technique, I felt like I had come home. Tears ran from my eyes because I felt so deep and so connected. I immediately felt more rested and had more energy during activity. All of my activity during the day, the classes I was taking, became such a joy that they didn’t feel like work—they felt more like nutrition to me.

After starting TM, a lot of the emotional numbness dissolved, and now I have a level of sensitivity that I didn’t have before. I learned that my happiness didn’t have to be backed by aggression and pain. Now it’s easy, spontaneous, and effortless for me to feel happy.

There’s an extra liberty, too, where I give myself the space to feel whatever I am, even if I’m angry or I’m sad. Although it just happens that my dominant emotional space now is bliss, if some other emotions are there, I don’t suppress them. I allow them to come out, but of course with a filter so I’m not hurting others with my self-expression.

The first time I did the TM technique, I felt like I had come home. Tears ran from my eyes because I felt so deep and so connected. I immediately felt more rested and had more energy during activity.

The Next Step

By the fall of 2009 I started the TM-Sidhi® program, which helps develop the ability to think and act from the deepest, most powerful level of the mind, pure consciousness. My life had changed so dramatically when I started Transcendental Meditation, and with the TM-Sidhi program that just escalated. Now what’s happening is bigger and better than what I ever expected. It’s almost like any desire I can think of, the universe is upgrading it and delivering it to me.

As just one example, last year a friend and I walked by a poster for a Rotating University trip to Peru starting in three weeks. It felt like the poster called out to me. I said to my friend, “It says there’s one seat left, and I feel like it’s for me.”

I immediately found the faculty advisor running the trip, and he said the only problem was that the deadline was that day. He didn’t give me much hope, but he sent me to financial aid, and miraculously, by the end of the afternoon, I had the funds I needed and was signed up for the trip. And it turned out to be a life-changing event for me.

Now what’s happening is bigger and better than what I ever expected. It’s almost like any desire I can think of, the universe is upgrading it and delivering it to me.

Life Can Be Easy

Everything in my life is working in a beautiful, synchronistic order, and that is definitely a result of continually dipping into the transcendental field, and then creating from that finest impulse, which is what we do when we practice the TM-Sidhi program.

I keep a goal book, and right before starting TM I had written that I want to be surrounded by the best people and places and things ever. After I learned the TM-Sidhi program, I realized that all of these things are coming to fruition.

Now I’m beginning to understand how life can be so easy, so effortless. We just contact the pure intelligence within, and we can have our heart’s desire show up at our doorstep.

Find out more about Maharishi International University ►

Learn more about the TM-Sidhi program ►

Now I’m beginning to understand how life can be so easy, so effortless. We just contact the pure intelligence within, and we can have our heart’s desire show up at our doorstep.