Transformation From Within

The Road to Rediscovery is about reflecting on life’s lessons to learn and grow from them. And, of course, take it to the next level to help others who are struggling through dark times.

With 13 years of practice as a Buddhist, Jim Rajan empowers others through guided visualizations and music to help them realize their true potential. He's also accomplished in Reiki, Shamanic Healing, and Mindfulness. Jim shares the total devastation he experienced as a parent when his daughter was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer and not given very long to live. His strength and resolve is a true testament to the spirit of being a parent and fighting for our children's lives.

Here's an excerpt of the episode transcript. You can hear the full episode by clicking the link above.

Aubrey: Jim, hey. Welcome to the show, man. How are you doing today?

Jim Rajan: Hi, Aubrey. Thank you so much for inviting me on your show. It’s a pleasure. I’m really well. I’m really well and raring to go. I think we’re going to have a lovely conversation.

Aubrey: Likewise. Likewise, my friend. Let’s dive in. Share with the listeners where you’re from, your upbringing, and what you’ve discovered, especially in your formative years when it came to identity.

Jim: I’m half Indian, half English, and I grew up in the UK, and I was born there. Identity was something that was very difficult for me to find. When you’re of mixed races – I’m half English and half Indian, so I’m not English, and I’m not Indian. So, it took me many years to find out who I am and what do I stand for? What are my own values? Obviously, I have the values of my family. I have a wonderful family, and I have the conditioning of my country and education and my society.

I, from a very young age, felt unrooted and lost and didn’t understand life or didn’t understand who I was, and definitely didn’t understand how important it is to have a purpose or a mission in life. I just fell through my early years of life up until into my 20s and had no real understanding that the responsibility of my own life is in my hands and no one else’s.

Often, what people do is, we assume that we give away our power to other people, and that’s how life is. But when I began to understand to take care of my own energy and take responsibility for my own life, life became amazing. It took on some wonderfully, subtle new qualities, and it put me on a journey of learning and a journey of seeking spirit.

Aubrey: Very nice. You spoke about drawing your own energy and knowing that to build a life of purpose and your identity, not just an identity, but your identity that has to start from within. Right? A question that I’m sure the listeners are wondering because I think we’ve all been here at one time or another is, we naturally can receive energy from other people – positive energy, negative energy, depending on the words they say to us, the facial expressions, and just the interactivity.

So, we can draw energy from people. How do we start ourselves on the path where energy must be drawn from within to put us on the right track? Does that make sense? I think it happens, but where’s that spark to where it happens from within?

Jim: Yeah. I think, for me, enlightenment, essentially, which is what you’re talking about, came through a lot of suffering. I had various moments of suffering in my life from quite an early age and difficult situations. Those difficult situations made me reflect on this, on this entity that sits here in front of you talking. What is this? Why am I here?

But much more than that, what am I doing? What is the point of humanity? I took a real kind of head-on collision course with a lot of issues that no one could give me the answer to. Everyone who had an answer, their answer seemed a bit too polished or overly organized to draw my energy into something without its being its own specific thing.

I had various moments where I had to really look deep inside and say, “Why has that thing happened to me? Obviously, it’s here for a reason. Everything for me in life is a lesson, and some of those lessons hurt. That’s fine, and they’re supposed to hurt. Life is not supposed to be easy. Otherwise, you wouldn’t learn anything.

I have this vision that no one can prove, but I have this vision that before we come to this life, we decide on certain things that may happen in it. There’s a book called something to do with making contracts with life or something. I’m here to learn lessons, and those lessons, in a way, were freely decided by me. So, I feel that when those difficult times came, it drew me inside to the point where I arrived at my essence.

I am this; I am from this country. I have this background. My family is like this. I have this kind of education. I have all of these stories that I’ve been given, but what’s the story that I’m giving. I’m living a load of stories, but are any of them actually mine? And if not, why not? Obviously, not, so what am I going to do about it?

That took me on a journey to find a mission and find a way of living my life that was of value to other people, but more to me. I’m doing something, even the tiniest little things like smiling at someone, or singing a song to a child – anything. It doesn’t have to be huge, enormous missions of becoming a well-famous whatever. No, just tiny little things in one’s everyday life to show me that there’s a reason that I was given this life, I think. Yeah.

Aubrey: I see. That’s beautiful. It makes perfect sense. The spark can actually be an outward event or something that happens to us with a circumstance or a situation in our life, but the self-awareness that we have, and the growth mindset that we have, that takes over from within as a result of the initial spark of whatever that event is. Right?

Jim: Yeah. For example, I’m very fortunate. My father is of Indian descent, but he was born in East Africa in Tanzania. His parents migrated there because they had no money, and they were told in East Africa that there was a way of making a living. When my father was 18 years old, they had literally nothing, but he had a UK passport because of the Commonwealth.

So, he went on his own to the UK in the early 60s to a country where in that moment it was very racist. It was very closed-minded. It was very empirical, and he built a life for himself. I’m so fortunate to have a story of someone who went from nothing and understood that they could build or construct their own existence instead of just, “Well, this is life. This is existence. Fit in it somewhere because that’s all you’ve got.”

I had that wonderful image. To know his spark, to know that his spark was a better life, a life of opportunity, a need for opportunity that wasn’t available to him when maybe many people around him were happy with what they had or were surviving without looking for anything different. I think that the spark that you talk about, I think everyone has that spark coming to them in many different ways, but many of us, our eyes are closed, or we’re not aware of it, or we’re not ready for it to come.

In the case of many people, there has to be real explosion of, “I’m sorry. You cannot carry on living like this anymore. It doesn’t work. You’re going to destroy your life, and you’re going to have to pick up the pieces.” But in picking up the pieces, magic is going to happen. You’re going to find some wonderful opportunities, wonderful gifts. You will have to go through suffering. It will be difficult, but the greater good is at the other end for you. ..