SA
Hi dearest Aditi, how are you?
A
Hello my love! I am well! How are you?
SA
Oh my… I’m! A lot of things. Week after sitting with grandmother Ayahuasca, and now the Full Moon in Cancer, it’s been a lot of ~moving through it~ so there’s that. It’s not been an easy last couple of weeks, but I’m finally emerging.
I’m so excited to talk to you though! This has been a long time coming and I’m truly honored because you and I have done so much deep work together. So, I wanted to start kind of at your genesis… How did you start all this?
A
I am unsure where to start, because I always go back to the womb and maybe that feels too far back. But, for as long as I have been incarnate on the 3d physical plane, I have been surrounded by spirit and religion. I am super fortunate to have a relatively uncomplicated relationship to spirituality, because my grandmother was so fluidly religious and spiritual. I grew up watching her pray, read and write scripture, sit for meditation twice daily, and she just made it seem easy and feel good. My mother was and still is active in a Buddhist community called the SGI (Soka Gakkai International) since I was a kid, and it was really normal for people from different backgrounds to be in my home, praying and chanting together. I rejected Buddhism and Hinduism as a teen who desperately wanted to be white, but ironically reading Tarot cards as a teen was an important part of my spiritual practice and led me back to my roots in my twenties. Does any of this make sense?
SA
This makes so much sense! I didn’t put all of this together, though I kind of knew the relative story of your awakening. Was there a moment for you that felt like that? When everything just clicked for you?
A
Mmmm. The first time I sat to meditate I knew I was doing something really special. I was in my twenties when I started meditating seriously, but I remember sitting with my grandmother when I was four or so, and it felt so nice. So safe. When I was 23, I sat my first Vipassana course and that’s when it all came together in terms of my spiritual commitments. I could put Tarot and meditation together in a new way after that experience.
SA
Yeah I feel like I was there to witness that. I mean we first started to really become friends as we started working with each other in these spiritual dimensions… and, I think you know this, but the reason I first came to Montreal was to do Vipassana on 12/12/12 and I didn’t end up sitting, LOL, like literally I cancelled the day before because I was like there’s no way “I’m going to survive ten days of sitting in silence.” Like the horror of not being able to write or read. God I’m still uncomfortable thinking about it. I maybe felt a bit of pressure to “find myself,” back then. I’d just ended a 3 year relationship and I couldn’t afford to live in New York (and wasn’t allowed to legally) anymore. So I was coming back to myself. Anyway I’m glad I trusted my gut on Vipassana. I’ve always admired your voracity for spirit, to attain spiritual knowledge. I think in that sense, we kinda grew ourselves together (not sure if that feels accurate for you, too) but I’ve definitely felt that having someone that’s felt like a spiritual comrade has made me put words to so many lost and inexplicable feelings about being on this path. So thank you. Tell me how you started to merge meditation and tarot… and how that led to where you are today.
A
Ah, babe! 1000%! I am so fortunate to have you in my heart and on my spiritual team. I love that Vipassana anecdote, and as an aside, definitely interested in exploring the timing of that astrologically LOL, but yes another time. So, there’s an important piece that bridges meditation and Tarot and honestly I have some shame around it… it’s weed!!!!!!!!! I remember when I first came back from my first Vipassana, I vowed never to consume cannabis again ( L O L ) and of course that backfired. I went through this dark night of the soul style shame spiral after a day of overconsuming weed, and Tarot helped me come back to a stable place. I pulled cards to reassure myself of my connection to Source (though I probably didn’t think of it like that then), and eventually I pulled myself out of my shame spiral to sit and meditate, even if I had consumed weed recently. Sometimes when I smoke weed, all I want to do is meditate. It is a very nurturing plant in my life. When I started reading Tarot for others, my relationship to cannabis changed too because it was OK for me to be stoned during a reading!!! Maybe that sounds crazy, but it all felt normal and good and like I didn’t have to force myself to be perfect or pure. There are three pillars to my spiritual praxis: meditation, spiritual study (which includes Tarot) and … weed bahaha. Moreso the way that weed helps me get in touch with my curiosity and joy. It helps me love myself and not be so hard on myself! This feels totally crazy, but I trust there is some sense in it.
SA
I actually want to talk about the shame spiral… Last year, I called myself a stoner to Jyoti (my ayahuasca teacher) and she basically slapped me with her eyes. I was so embarrassed (and have since learned a lot about why some schools/spiritual lineages don’t like a cross-contamination of medicines, while others like the Santo Daime for example, do…) anyway… I carried that shame for a while. Maybe all of 2020, lol. But it also helped me examine my relationship to Santa Maria (which is what I’ve decided to call it all the time now) and made me understand that I have spiritual agency and autonomy. You get to choose how you want to practice as long as you’re being intentional, self-aware and respectful.
Actually, just this retreat, I was talking to one of my ayahuasca siblings about Santa Maria, and she was the first person that really inspired me to think more deeply about how we interact with the medicine… She smokes everyday, and has found a deep reverence for it, as (another sibling pointed out, shout out to adélàjá) it’s actually the Divine Feminine… and potentially the reason why we have this relationship to the medicine is because it has been misused (much like the plight of the feminine) and abused. (Of course gender isn’t a binary, but I like the way that nature understands gender dimensions and what is read masc versus femme). So smoking Santa Maria, and praying with her, is actually to have a deeper communion with the sacred feminine. One way to think of weed liberation is to also think of the liberation of the matriarchy, and the values of matrilineal societies. I found that so moving and it’s been a life-changing (though preliminary) shift for me. I think for a while I’ve been trying to really think about what feels good and to not force myself to be what I’m not. Studio Ānanda is a synthesis of this as well, to talk to folks about how we can heal and be well collectively, without this puritanical (white) gaze that forces us to all subscribe to one point of being… when we are so fucking complex! I don’t want to be small anymore.
A
MMMMMMMMM! Yes, I have chills! I love that connection. I have been cultivating a prayer practice to the Divine Feminine this year, and I have never made that connection explicit before, between Santa Maria (<3) and the Divine Feminine, but it feels deeply resonant. When I consume cannabis in prayer and as medicine, I feel so supported and held. Of course, there is the potential to indulge in it in a way that is harmful, but I appreciate this reminder to frame my relationship in terms of harm reduction, because our collective relationship to the Earth, our Mother is so challenged right now. I think the beauty of praying to Divine Mother is that you don’t have to lie – you can tell her I am feeling like shit, my life sucks, I hate x y z, and weed definitely helps with the practice of being honest with myself. Lately I’ve been having a recurring dream where I am shown a cave floor and I hear a voice telling me “this is who you are” (LOL, I know) — and this conversation feels like a key to decoding that message for me. Santa Maria helps me to receive all of life’s abundance, to slow down and luxuriate in my humanity, as does prayer and meditation, and it has been possible for me to hold so much more space for others as a consequence. I vacillate between thinking of myself as a stoner and the reincarnation of a Himalayan hermit with a beautiful ganja crop. I feel like it’s an open secret in many spiritual communities that people smoke, but there is such a generational divide, I feel in the way that we relate to it… like, I could never really talk to my parents about my relationship to the plant, but I’m sure my ancestors were down. How many generations back, I wonder!!
SA
Yeah I really like this idea of thinking back to our ancestors and how they interacted with this plant, or plants in general. I’ve actually been trying to really get closer to my indigeneity recently, and as you’ve known me over many years, you’ve seen my struggle with family and culture. In some ways, I kind of wish I had more of a classical upbringing, but I think being raised with/ in abuse and also being raised by a Marxist with Sufi tendencies my understanding of faith was so complicated. My mother through the years has become more and more religious, in a way she never was. I think this really traces back to how Bangladesh has completely changed, and been ever-changing since the Liberation War, so her awareness of who she is so convoluted. Now there’s a rise of Wahhabism throughout the country, which makes sense when so many displaced people, who haven’t even begun to uncover the layers of trauma they’ve experienced from post-colonial British India, let alone Partition, then the devastating war in 1971—it’s a lot. I feel so much for my people, but also feel so dislocated by it all. The overwhelm gets to me too, where do we even begin to understand where we’re from? How have you done that yourself, as another South Asian person?
A
I am in admiration of your commitment to looking at your roots and how your peoples’ history informs who you are. Honestly, I have a very compartmentalized relationship to any sense of indigeneity I might tap into, partially because the way it gets discussed in my family is through the lens of Hindu Nationalism, and I find it very distressing. It pains me to think that the cultural identity of my ancestors, in the generations during and after British Colonial India, is laced with shame and power politics. Currently, I’m doing my best to have compassion for family members who exhibit some really frightening political views while holding space for my own guilt around the relative privileges I experience. I hesitate to take up space with that guilt because, I mean… it feels like something to process outside of public discourse, but lately, it has felt more urgent to have those conversations with people in my family, and I think there is a space in which others who are feeling this way can come together and process that guilt without centering it… it’s just… in process/progress right now…
SA
Yes, I absolutely understand. It’s such a complicated thing but thank you for your honesty about it. This is definitely something I’ve been trying to think about more, how to appropriately decolonize, and also how to have compassion for folks that are adently stuck in their trauma, without necessarily thinking how they perpetuate that trauma on everybody else. I know a lot of Indian friends recently have talked to me in secret about their families descent into Hindu Nationalism/ Fascism, and I wonder if you have any advice for folks that are having a hard time adjusting or doing the due diligence with their families to heal.
A
It’s so interesting to listen behind the political claims and hear the trauma. I think it takes a lot of time cultivating calm within yourself to be able to hear someone else saying something hateful and not react. Sometimes, when I hear certain family members pushing an agenda on me, I bring in the breath and mindfulness practice first. If I’m honest with myself and I’m also triggered, I don’t respond right away. Usually, it’s my dad sending me a video of some angry Indian dudes and uncles on YouTube, which I cannot get through without wanting to throw the phone across the room. I usually don’t respond to the actual video content, but instead ask him questions about our culture that feel important to me, because I think, underneath some of his political rage, is a worry that his kids don’t want to be Indian and that we have internalized the dominant narrative in so-called North America about Hinduism as Other. When I ask him questions about stuff I genuinely want to know about, we are able to have conversations that feel a little more loving. I know I can’t change him or any of my family members’ beliefs, and I feel like arguing with him will only be more painful for both of us. It’s so different for everyone, and it’s taken me a lot of inner work to get to a place where I have a relationship with my father enough that I can do this, and it’s still a challenge honestly.
SA
Yes, it’s truly powerful, thank you for doing this work for your lineage. In Native American traditions there’s this concept of seven generations, which is “usually attributed to an Iroquois law outlining the responsibility for the sustainability of future generations. It instructs that when important decisions are being made, one should consider their impact on seven generations into the future,” as well as the past. I’ve been thinking about that a lot, how it’s imperative I heal for my family. That’s why this work is so deep, it’s immense, and watching you try and heal with your father over the years has moved me a lot. Just recently, I’ve started really reframing how I think about my mother, and how I talk about her. It’s complicated, but we owe them compassion when we have all of these resources, when we know so much about how to heal.
How has this awareness about your lineage evolved into your Akashic and Astrology work as well?
A
Oh, I love the concept of seven generations! It is so inspiring, thank you for the reminder. The piece you brought up around resources is so key for me, because so many of the resources I have access to are spiritual. And I feel this unspoken continuity in my spiritual practices that I am so grateful for, and it’s something that has survived the wretches of colonialism. As I write this, I’m overwhelmed with gratitude for the spiritual work my ancestors have done and the material work my elders have done to offer me this life! Ah, it’s so beautiful. Just reveling for a second. I feel so blessed with the power to reimagine tradition going forward, and spiritual study – which includes my current work with Astrology and the Akash – is an important part of that.
The Akashic and Astrology work feels like a re-remembering. When I first started studying astrology it felt like I had encountered astrology before in some dusty cobweb of my consciousness and it made so much sense, it was inexplicable. When I studied my chart, I learned that many of my placements indicate a love for astrology, LOL, which is so typical of astrology – telling you things you already know about yourself in a fresh way. I got into sun-sign astrology in my early twenties, and when Chani Nicholas became more popular I started following her work and taking her classes. Her approach is rooted in Hellenistic Astrology, which has a lot of overlap with the Vedic tradition. I started studying Hellenistic and I can’t stop, I’m obsessed. There is historical evidence, too, of Indian and Greek astrologers influencing each other in the first century AD, through a book called the Yavanajataka, and I feel there is something in my spiritual lineage of having studied astrology in multiple past lives.
I recently came across Maryam Hassnaa’s New Earth Mystery School at the start of the pandemic and the way she talked about the Akash felt surprising to me, because she was describing internal experiences that I was already having, but I never thought of it as the Akash, I was just into my imagination. When I added a little more structure to my visualization and daydreaming practices (if you can really call them practices… though I guess you can), I realized I was accessing the Akash! And I think it’s something we all do in different moments when we connect to our Higher Self or our inner child or our spirit guide team.
I started talking to my mom about the Akashic realms — she’s really into Sadhguru, , and I realized there must be a connection in my lineage to accessing this ethereal space. There are many Sanskrit chants that talk about receiving blessings from different parts of the universe, and Hinduism, at least as I understand it, is endlessly psychedelic. I think there is something really empowering too about feeling the embrace of the universe, and that’s what my Akashic practices help me feel — that wherever the original Source of all creation resides, it’s with me as I’m on this earth, permeating every piece of my being. I think as a child of diaspora, it’s a practice that connects me back to the land of my ancestors, knowing that they saw the same sky and connected to the same Source.
SA
It’s kind of wild because in Bangla “akash” means sky. So this feels fitting, the portal you’re entering is literally Grandfather Sky… and how beautiful that it’s also bringing more attunement with your relationship to your mother! This makes me so happy. I think ultimately, what’s been so liberating about our individual and collective spiritual experiences—and this mapping that we’re doing—is that each time we find a new medium that resonates it brings us closer to ourselves, but also that we are beginning to unveil so much about our past through it. I’m learning and piecing together my ancestry through this work, to shine a light on them and to also release them. The first ceremony I sat this year was just so epic and painful and I was essentially told to channel the vibrating energetic trapped in my body (that was activated after I took the medicine) right into the center of the Earth. It was so wild, it felt like a literal shamanic excorcism. And so extraordinary. And so painful. But I gained such an awareness of myself through this experience, through this sacred medicine of Ayahuasca, inside of a tipi from the Arapaho Nation, on the soil of unceded Miwok land, where I can gain a better understanding of familial and physical trauma from Bangladesh. Fucking wild.
Thanks for this conversation. There’s so much more to say, but we’re coming to an end. I I have one last question, what are a few things you have been doing recently (reading, routines, anything) that’ve been really healing for you?
A
Thank you for these questions, babe. Really important ponderings and I am going to marinate on this conversation for many days to come.
Lately, I have been doing my best to keep things simple. I have a long list of things that nourish me, and I try to do one every day. A few favorites include singing loudly — sometimes just scales, but it feels so good to exercise my voice and let it be heard. I go for walks and try to find a slightly different route in my neighborhood each time. I pray to Divine Mother, especially when I am feeling at my wit’s end, just lying on my soft carpeted floor, letting my body be held by the bones of my home. Drinking tea, esp nettle and tulsi, is a forever ally. <3
Aditi Ohri is a student of life, lover of mysteries and total weirdo. She spends her days coding, studying astrology and chatting with the Pecan trees around her house. She currently lives with her partner and a grumpy but good-natured cat in so-called Austin, Texas, on the land of the Tonkawa people.