by Linda Sechrist

Panache Desai caught the attention of Oprah Winfrey and earned a guest spot on her Super Soul Sunday show in 2013. That seminal conversation about knowing and embracing your unique purpose inspired his best-selling book, Discovering Your Soul Signature. Even after several years of world book tours and radio talk shows, the visionary thought leader and spiritual teacher is over-the-moon excited about his latest release, You Are Enough: Revealing the Soul to Discover Your Power, Potential, and Possibility. “I feel like this was the book that I was born to write,” enthuses Desai, who will be presenting the You Are Enough Experience, co-sponsored by Aum Shanti Bookshop at 7:00 p.m., March 18, at Athleta Yoga Studio.    

Why do you refer to You Are Enough as an antidote to modern living?

I think of it like I do a piece of antivirus software. It’s written specifically to eradicate the virus of not deserving and not believing that you’re lovable. This is the root cause of why we are suffering. We can go through divorce, challenges with our children, and any personal challenges, but we do not have to equate these to suffering.

What can we do to not suffer?

As I’ve lived my life, I’ve been conducting a 20-year case study on myself and all human beings. I’ve had the good fortune of meeting people from everywhere and from all walks of life. The one thing that I’m good at is pinpointing the source of why we suffer and how we can navigate challenges without psychological suffering. We should experience them fully. When we can do this we are able to be coherent and congruent with them. At that point, we are able to bring our best self to the fore. In bringing that peaceful, collaborative, compassionate and empathic self to whatever is playing out in our life, we are able to meet it and in the meeting of it, a solution arises. Something new emerges. 

What kinds of things can we expect when we know we are enough?

When you realize that you’re enough, everyone else becomes enough by extension. You treat everyone as yourself. You don’t have to hold them to a higher standard or to some ideal. You’re far softer and gentler with everyone because you’re far softer and gentler with yourself. Coming to that acceptance of I am enough, you can take your foot off gas. You can take a breath and just know all is okay. 

When we don’t feel like we’re enough, we can never own and access the love that we are. We’re playing a role, turning ourselves inside out, dressing in a certain way, doing things on social media that are inauthentic to who we are. Why? Because we’re representing the image of wanting to be popular and desirable so somebody will like us and give us their unlimited expression of love. However, when we realize that every experience we have is self-generated, and that we’re the source of every single thing we are experiencing, our sadness, anger and fear, we can also realize that we are the source of love that we are feeling.

When we realize that we’re the source of the love, we don’t then engage in relationships from a place of need. Relationship becomes a choice. The whole dynamic evolves. This speaks to maturation of who we are, because we’re no longer staying in a dynamic that is unhealthy because we’re afraid that the love we’re feeling, because of someone else, is going to go away. Now we prioritize the love that we have inside of us. We recognize that we’re sharing the experience of the love inside of us with another. The other is not the source of that love. 

How do you explain our chaotic times?

We human beings are going through a process of evolution that to a certain degree has been already charted on our behalf. A collective awakening is being birthed in the world. We are all on the same journey in which the essential self is emerging into conscious experience, shifting out of separation and suffering into connection and bliss. Every single aspect of your life contributes toward this greater evolution. Every incredible messenger, teacher and person who has ever had a calling, a passion or love for something that they’ve shared with the world has shortened the distance between where people are and the outcome they are moving toward, which is oneness, or love of self. In the wake of widespread cacophony, pretenses and egoic structures are falling away, unveiling the true reality of love, kindness and human connection. 

Limited Seating. Advance tickets are $85/$95 at the door. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. Location: Athleta Yoga Studio 126 5th Avenue, New York, NY 10011. For tickets and more information, visit PanacheDesai.com.