Faith Rose

My father’s anger. It caused me to hide and live on the edge of fear. He never hit me, but the cutting anger in his voice would slice through me like a knife. He had a way of twisting things, so it didn’t make any difference if you were right or wrong. I never knew what would upset him, so I was always afraid of him, until I was 17. That was when I finally yelled back. For the first time, I saw my own buried rage. I was shaking from the outburst. I marched to the front door, threw it open and slammed it behind me. I walked for a long time until I cooled down enough to go home. I was sure he was going to be even angrier when I came back. I stood outside the front door, gathered my courage and boldly opened the front door. I shot a glance in his direction. He was still in his reclining chair, newspaper in front of his face. He never looked up. I walked upstairs to my room and shut the door behind me. Breathing hard, I sat on the edge of the bed, confused and empowered. I stood up to Dad, and, as I saw it, I won. That night I gained strength and courage I hadn’t known before. But I also unleashed the ugly face of my own anger that took lots of meditation, personal growth and most of my Life to subdue.

It springs from deep in my heart. It’s my Soul calling, to sing with wild abandon of my Love for the Divine. I didn’t know this yearning existed until I met the highly evolved being who became my Guru, the one who was capable of guiding me to the Love and Bliss that lives within me and within all of us. Experiencing the Love that poured from him, I wanted to experience it myself. The process of opening myself to my Self, began with meditation, playing harmonium and singing to the Divine. The magical part of this is that I took piano lessons as a child and I was never able to get my left hand to synchronize with my right, which seemed to naturally know what to do. When I found the harmonium in India, it was obvious this trait was from a past-life connection—the harmonium keyboard is played with the right hand only and you just pump the bellows with the left!

I get completely absorbed in the story. I re-live it, every detail. It amazes me how clear all the memories are. I’m able to recall them in such detail, it makes me aware how powerful my experiences have been. I feel Joy, Love, sadness, regret, Inspiration, Awe, and most of all, Infinite Gratitude. I take full responsibility for everything, all the decisions—good and poor, the times I follow Inner Guidance and the times I don’t. My Life is totally my responsibility. Writing the memoir helped me accept it all and see even the hardest lessons as Gifts.

It’s helped open me to the Reality of Unlimited Possibilities. It’s one thing to think that maybe ETs are real, it’s another to know it. It wakes you up to how amazingly profound Life and this Universe is—it’s beyond Awe-inspiring. We are incredibly Blessed to be living in a time when we've negated the question: “Are we alone?”, that there are civilizations hundreds of thousands and millions of years more advanced than ours, living in multi-dimensional realities. “We”, as a collective, are also Waking Up to the Realization that we live in a Connected Universe, and, ultimately, nothing is going to work unless it works for everyone, everywhere.

Our lives! And we were asked so many times. My Soul partner Ken was a gifted story teller, and whenever people heard some of the amazing stories of our lives, they’d always say: “You’ve got to write a book.” Over the years we’d make attempts, but we were always engaged in our next amazing adventure. Then caretaking Ken during our last years together, there was no time to think about it. But, as the intensity of caregiving grew, the level of my surrender grew, breaking down every wall I had left. When Ken left his body, I crumbled. I always saw myself as strong. I held so much for so long to be there for him, I didn’t expect the tsunami of Grief that gripped me and tossed me around like an untethered kite in the wind. A few times I didn’t think I would make it through, but I could feel something so Alive inside of me, I knew I had to honor it. I became determined to transform the Grief into Gratitude and bring all the Love between us with me. That was when I started writing. I knew I had to write our memoir. I thought I was writing for people who would get something precious out of reading about the incredible paths of our lives: how we broke out of cultural molds, not knowing this was essential to finding one another and letting our Destiny find us; the sacredness of our relationship; our service to this extraordinary God-realized yogi we were destined to serve by a pre-incarnation promise unknown to us; the ego-driven, stubborn decisions I make that bring me such intense lessons, and yet still I succeed to fulfill my Destiny. My editors say this is what makes our stories so relatable to people and gives them hope. I hope so, because I don’t hold back, I reveal it all. Writing our stories turned into huge therapy for me. It allowed me to consciously absorb myself in the wonder of our lives and in my grief of losing Ken. What I didn’t expect is that this full immersion is what allowed me to transform it all into Immense Gratitude. The book is called Let Your Destiny Find You, because that’s what we did. We didn’t set off with some idea of how we were going to fulfill the mystical visions that brought us together. We simply let Life show us. (I say “we” because Ken also contributes to the book.) Our journey was the opposite of the planned, goal-oriented life our culture drums into everyone. Because of that it was total Magic. We’ve lost the Magic of Life by trying to plan it all out. We want people to know how Magical a Life of following Guidance and allowing the Unknown can be. The reviews we’ve received shows we succeeded.

Wow, that’s a hard question, because I still don’t think I know much about the spiritual wisdom of India, it’s so deep. What drew me is the teaching of my guru Shivabalayogi Maharaj. His teaching was simply to meditate, go within, get our own truth and trust that. I meditated for eight years before meeting Shivabalayogi. I wanted to go deeper and I was seeking a teacher who could take me all the way to Self-realization. If that’s what you’re seeking, you need a guide who’s already there, who’s gone through the process. We met him in 1988, before meditation was mainstream in America. There’s meditation teachers on almost every corner now, but they don’t have the power to take you anywhere. That’s a huge difference. When we went to India I knew nothing about India’s culture or history. I read Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi and something within me woke up. I found myself yearning to meet a Babaji like the one he describes.

When Ken and I were guided to Shivabalayogi, I knew he was the one I was praying for.

I’ve never written a novel. Let Your Destiny Find You is Ken’s and my real life journey, and it’s all true. There’s nothing exaggerated or changed, except a few names for people's privacy. Fears while publishing my first book: it’s both scary and liberating. To let your hair completely down and really tell the truth about yourself is rather daunting. I've wondered what people will think. Whether they’ll think I'm a fraud because I've spent so much of my life talking about spiritual growth, personal evolution and Consciousness, and I made so many dumb decisions and learned everything the hard way.

What’s most important to me about my own work? That people take away at least one thing that has a Life-changing influence or positive impact on their Life. If I didn’t think our story could do that, I wouldn’t have published. The inspiring reviews it’s receiving are treasures to my heart. They're how I know our story is making an impact.

The main criticism that’s been hard is not about my writing, but about what content to include and what to cut. It might be easier with a novel, but when it’s the story of your life, you’re pretty attached to it! It’s hard enough to write about certain parts of your life you feel are important, only to have your editors tell you they're not important to the story. As I get more distance from the actual writing of it, I see what they’re saying more clearly.

I think that depends on the person, what they’re writing, and how much influence they already have. There’s a lot of authors pumping out books now like popcorn. There’s nothing really new in them, but they already have a following, and they re-package the information for their readers. I’m not saying that’s bad, but a memoir takes living a lifetime, or a big chunk of one, before you can start writing a book. And as an unknown author, you’ve got an uphill challenge to get noticed. The actual writing of Let Your Destiny Find You took me three and a half years. The living part of it, well, I just turned 73 and the sacred relationship with my Soul partner, which is what the book revolves around, was over 31 years. I published in October 2021, and I’m only just starting to market. I hope it doesn’t take that long to get noticed!

I don’t read romance novels, so I’m not a good candidate for that question.

Autobiography of a Yogi by Yogananda.

Write away! Writing is a great way to express yourself, learn from your Self, expand your creativity and your ability to communicate. But if you want to publish, make sure it’s important to you. It’s hard work.

It’s been encouraging to see how AllAuthor promotes new authors by helping authors create visibility and success. The site itself is easy to navigate for both readers and authors and has several easy to use tools to help authors promote their work.