It all happened by accident really. Sharon had met Donna at a nearby coffee shop in Ubud, and they started talking. Turns out Donna had recently been to India, Rishikesh to be precise, and studied Vedic Astrology whilst also doing Yoga Teacher Training. After Sharon mentioned my interest in the topic, Donna dropped off her Astro-Psychology materials for me to take a look at. It only took me a few minutes to figure out that this is something I also needed to learn more about. As someone who is interested in how the human mind works, I instantly found myself wondering whether Astrology could indeed combine so seamlessly with modern Psychology.
I had to find out for myself, and all of a sudden I was booked into my one-month intensive ashram experience in India.
The difficulties of self-knowledge
Living in Ubud, it is common to meet people who are looking to better understand themselves. I am always impressed by those who do, because it certainly isn’t an easy journey. But how? Often, we aren’t always the best judges of our own character.
Intuition is a great starting point. However it is not necessarily easy to know whether we can rely on our own intuition, it can take time to build this trust.
Personality assessments like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator are popular and have been around for a while now. However they assume that we are able to answer the questions in an unbiased manner, which is an unreliable assumption.
The thing that Astrology has going for it (and I am talking about Vedic Astrology specifically) is that there is no such bias that comes from self-completed assessments. If Astrology was in fact a predictor of personality (and I will get onto that shortly), it would be a far better starting point to understand oneself.
And so off to Rishikesh I went.
I am now even more convinced
Dr Gaurav Agrawal is the author of what is now one of my favourite books - The Principles of Astro-Psychology. He been a Psychology Professor at a University, and started learning Astrology from his father who was an Astrologer. Is it any wonder he has become an authority in Astro-Astrology.
As I settled into Rishikesh life in the middle of winter (it is at the foot of the HImalayas so COLD), I commenced my studies. Each day I seemed to ask a variant of ‘does this really work’, and each day I became convinced that the answer was yes.
Why?
Vedic Astrology, like sister-science Yoga, is largely about the mind and the Samskara’s (Sanskrit for tendencies, impressions) that tend to govern our behaviour and choices. I refer to this now as a Karmic Blueprint that we inherit at birth. Having already studied Vedic Astrology, I was already convinced of the accuracy of the science. However it was at this month-long stint in Rishikesh that I became convinced of it’s ability to truly understand personality.
It’s now just one of the tools we use here at The Juicy Effect to help our customers to better understand themselves and make great future decisions. Of course, the proof of anything is the results it achieves, and this is why I am convinced in the power of this technique. Many people who come to see me are a little skeptical at first, but leave convinced that this it has been helpful in their journey to understand themselves.
If you haven’t had a Karmic Blueprint reading, contact us and check it out for yourself. And if you want to study something interesting, head to Rishikesh for a month.