There was a man on the top of a mountain in Kathmandu. He was singing and dancing and had no arms and no legs and I wept because I understood his joy for the first time and felt all the gratitude in the universe. Upon closer look, I realized this was not a man dancing but simply a shirt hanging from a clothesline in the wind. What a message from the universe! Aren’t we all just a shirt dancing in the wind! We are empty! We are full! We are made of cotton! The fabric of our lives!

That was a parable! Did you get it?! You are the shirt! You are also me. Now I talk about myself and how broken I was before I found enlightenment. My name is Gita Sarandamanadramadan. But my given name was Amanda Samantha Johnson.

I was born in Palo Alto to two tech millionaires Claire and Peter. We had a modest upbringing (a millionaire in Palo Alto is lower middle class) and I found as a young adult I didn’t appreciate anything. I worked at a pressure cooker company and felt no joy, so I started a new pressure cooker company that made other employees insomniac and anxious and the company was a great success! But I still felt no peace. So I sold my Maserati and put my Tesla in storage and set off to Kathmandu which I had read about in a very well written Buzzfeed article called “10 Amazingly Super Spiritual Places You Should Quit Your Job To Go See.”

That is my origin story. I had not yet discovered my POWER. I find words land more when they are CAPITALIZED. My story is humble. I was meek. I am very much like Professor X of the X Men. Again, I am humble. Very very humble- Oops I am writing at a nitrogen coffee cafe and dropped my purse. It’s a Birkin. It must never touch the floor. Like the Torah. Speaking of the Torah, have you tried Kabbalah? Super fun. All those numbers!- Excuse me, let’s return. I was speaking of my humility. Actually let’s change gears-

Rhetorical question chapter? Do you feel trapped? Do you feel alone? Are you in fact locked in a closet? You do not need to wait for someone to release you from the closet? Do you realize you are the powerful one? You are waiting for yourself? You is you? You? YOU? Exactly.

In Kathmandu I met local humans. They took my Blackberry away. They dressed me in local colorful outfits. I high-fived all of them. Then we prayed. We prayed and prayed and prayed and THEN we ate. The food was very simple and very spicy. I had frequent diarrhea. In the middle of a violent bout of diarrhea I prayed to find peace and fulfillment and I had a vision. My vision was of “a little brown child in the distance and I knew I was going to be that brown child’s mother.” Yes! My vision was Nicole Kidman’s speech in the Oscar nominated movie Lion! She is such a great actress! I cannot believe I didn’t recognize her gifts until now! I was blind in many ways!

Turned out my VISION was more than a VISION and in fact a little boy was across the bathroom and concerned that I was losing consciousness from dehydration. The monks and the boy whisked me off in a helicopter to hospital and I was treated for severe dehydration. That boy SAVED my LIFE. I don’t know his name because I never asked. Life is full of mystery!

So now YOU can SEE how I found PEACE and POWER just from LETTING GO.

THANK YOU and YOU ARE WELCOME. NAMASTE. In Chapter TWO you will discover how YOU need to throw away all of your belongings that are made of metal or glass because those materials are LITERALLY destroying YOUR BRAIN right NOW.