To view this newsletter in the browser, click here                 Issue #179       A newsletter from Creativegarh to help you live a life of passion, purpose and meaning.         The question isn’t what you are chasing. It’s who you are chasing it for.                     At some point we have realised that instead of living a life, we have started performing a life. We live life as a stage, a feed, a highlight reel - tidying the corner that’s in the photo, not the whole room, going for a run because the watch will log it, not because the body is craving movement, posting the holiday before actually resting on the holiday.           We are not handwriting our own lives anymore but copy-pasting them from what the world applauds. We have lost the plot and have learnt to borrow our dreams not from what the soul wants but the ego desires - from social media, cultural and family expectations and peer groups. We want what others seem excited about. We want what gets applause, not what lights us up quietly.           We don’t just want the thing. We want the reaction that the thing evokes in other people. We want to write the book not because we have a story to be told but because we want the praise, ego kick and adulation that comes with being a published author. We want to be a start-up founder because it sits pretty on our bio, not because we want the messy, uncertain work of building something real. We want a relationship for not feeling ‘behind’ friends who are coupled or married.           We chase symbols of success - the car, the title, the lifestyle - not for the substance they provide, but for the applause they might generate. This is nothing but the silent trap of the ego.           There is one enquiry that gets straight to the truth of your motivation.           Do you want the six-pack, or the admiration? Do you want the business, or the status? Do you want the relationship, or the image of having one? Do I want this or do I want to be seen as the person who has this?           A few powerful questions to ask are: Would I really want this if no one ever found out? Does this desire make me feel expanded and alive, or tight and performative? Am I building a life I can live in… or a life I can only post about?           Would I still travel if there was no social media to post my pics? Would I still write the book if I didn’t have to announce it? Would I still help someone if I did not have to post about it on LinkedIn or impress someone over dinner? Would I still push my child to get 100% if no one really cared or asked in my peer group?           There is nothing wrong with wanting a great body, business or relationship. The question is simple: Is this coming from love or from lack? From inner fire or from outer pressure? From awareness or a coping mechanism to be loved.           The question isn’t what you are chasing. It’s who you are chasing it for.                       When you stop resisting yourself, you stop resisting life.                     A truly magical, unconstrained, uninhibited love affair with life happens when you choose to love your experience exactly as it is. To love both the ache and the terror, the ecstasy and the thrill, the agitation and the pain, the boredom and the restlessness, the joy and the sorrow, the trials and the tribulations, the grief and the elation, the success and the failure.           To make love to life is to receive life fully and surrender to the ebbs and flows without any resistance. Allow. Allow. Allow.           And in this allowing, you find the only way to kill resistance – by not resisting any experience and choosing to own the experience of the experience by your presence and alchemising it into joy. Ask, what is this moment trying to show me about me? Look for the lesson, the boundary, the truth that is being revealed. Turn pain into prayer, complaint into gratitude, control into curiosity.           Sahajta – unrestrained effortlessness – is how the beautiful life shines through. There is the effort of discipline, for sure, but in the showing up, you realise that resistance packs its tail between its legs and goes to rest in a corner. And in this showing up, when you let go of yourself, your identity and your expectations based on that identity, the unimaginable happens. That’s when, in action, lies inaction – when you become a non-acting witness of the magnificence that happens through you. That’s when, in inaction, lies action – when, in your just being the mere instrument, the wondrous life is unravelled for you and everyone you touch with your love.           In this moment, the successes are not yours, neither are the failures. What’s yours in this experience is the experience that allows you to find your own truth. The adulation may lead to an identity you are so invested in, the sorrow may lead to a lack that you have believed in – but everything does lead you back to you. And nothing then is more beautiful than a journey into your own being, to know yourself more, to accept yourself more, to love yourself more, to become more whole, complete and authentic.           Resist no experience and allow others to have their own and even different experience of everything. If their belief troubles you, then that means that you are also living with your belief, which is not the truth – that beneath all this you are the universe. And that, like you, everyone is miraculous, infinite and love.           Life is not happening to you or for you. It is happening as you. When you stop resisting yourself, you stop resisting life.             Our upcoming retreats                         Mandi Sold Out 4th to 10th March     Mandi’s tranquil environment serves as the perfect backdrop for personal metamorphosis, ensuring you return home with a revitalised spirit and fresh perspective of life!   More details         Bhimtal Registrations Open 10th to 16th May     Bhimtal offers a rare kind of Kumaoni serenity. This landscape creates the perfect setting for inner work, allowing reflection to unfold naturally.   More details     Reignite conversation     Mandi Registrations Open 14th to 20th June     Mandi in summer is a calm escapade. Cool mountain air, green slopes, and quiet mornings create space to breath, rejuvenate and slow down.   More details     Reignite conversation           This week, let's revisit     Athoor September 2024                         Experience a life full of purpose                     Purpose of my life is to help people transform their relationship with abundance   Aalok Shah Jodhpur, February 2024         My purpose in life is to heal people through music and industry   Rishabh Jain Kasauli, January 2025               For a daily dose of Creativegarh and our retreats, follow us here:                           Mantra Gold Coatings & The White Paper Creative         Sunita Somani         Pedal On               View Our Collabs for Joy                   creativegarh.com             You are receiving this newsletter because either you have subscribed to it through our website, interacted with us by filling an invite form or because you have asked us to put you on the database. 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