1. The Beginning of My Spiritual Journey
In 2003, I began to grow some interest in spirituality and meditation. Before, I was a heavily religious person, a devoted Muslim, who paid close attention to the ceremonial aspects of my belief. Additionally, I was really into philosophy and critical thinking.
I became a bookworm to fulfill my soul’s thirst for knowledge. For several years, I had purchased 3 to 4 books every month; hence, my collection grew into hundreds. However, among those I completed, the most unforgettable were The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield, Robbin Sharma’s series of The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, and The Book of Mirdad by Michael Naimy.
Though reading piles of books had yet enlightened me, I was savvy about spirituality. Moreover, understanding spiritual, technical terms has enabled me to put my authentic spiritual experience into words later.
I started to do tapa brata tirelessly between 2008 – 2013. Tapa Brata is a series of self-discipline training to delay gratification. Fasting and meditating in holy places are a few standard practices of Tapa Brata. Aiming to be enlightened, I visited tons of sacred sites, which among those are; Kanekes Dalam (Banten, West Java), Alas Purwo (Banyuwangi, East Java), and Loksado Forest (South NoBorneo/Kalimantan). My search for enlightenment was so intense that I visited around 100 holy sites in five years. It cost me a great fortune on my sacred venues’ incessant trips. However, all my hard work was futile, and I had yet to be enlightened.
In 2006, I began to learn from two spiritual gurus. The first was mursyid Tarekat Syattariyah in Cirebon, West Jawa, and the other was a Hikmah practitioner. Until now, I still maintain good friendly relationships with my former teachers. We parted ways. Nonetheless, I feel that they were very sincere in teaching and guiding
me.
There were eight other spiritual gurus that I learned from. Unfortunately, one of them passed away in 2013 at 47. With my current ability, I visioned he now resides at the 15th dimension, the 3rd level of the enlightened dimension.
For several reasons, I also left a few teachers behind in my spiritual learning journey. For instance, one of my teachers was jailed due to his multi-million financial fraud. Unfortunately, his victims were his students. To rub salt in the wound, another teacher, whom I previously had considered my brother, accused me of stealing his money. On the contrary, his loyal followers rebuked him as they felt the guru had taken their cash away. I also departed from another teacher as I finally realized that he had leaned heavily on the satanic and other low vibrational, supernatural entities to impress his students. I gave him the benefit of the doubt, but he had shown me I was too naive.
Learning from my unfortunate experience at the beginning of 2016, I angrily had sworn that I would never learn again from another human being. She would have taught me directly if the universe was in my favor to be enlightened.
The fact that my daily life was still chaotic, even though I had a great deal of spiritual knowledge, clearly showed me that something was amiss. There were also times when I felt powerless and hopeless. Simply, I failed to find perennial peace and unconditional happiness.
My oath was the light at the end of the tunnel. I started becoming more aware of reality and understanding my talents deeply. The road was still rocky. Yet, with all its peaks and valleys, I began to grow and move forward spiritually. I also concentrated more on a few inspiring activities, such as writing and publishing many best-selling books. In 2016, I finished writing Medseba, and in 2017, I launched Suwung. In 2018, I brought Sastrajendra to completion, and in 2019, Sangkan Paraning Dumadi was born. I was sure to walk on this spiritual path continuously.
