How I Met My Guru

Om Guruve Namah - I bow to the Guru

They say the guru finds the disciple when the disciple is ready. Looking back now, I understand exactly what that means.

Twelve years ago, I was searching for something I couldn't name. There was a quiet restlessness in me, a longing for something deeper that I simply could not find in the world around me. So I kept diving inward — into my yoga, my meditation, my prayers — holding onto a faith that what I was seeking was also seeking me.

Then one day, completely unexpectedly, a book appeared in my Amazon recommendations. Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda.

If you have ever come across this book, you will already know that it is no ordinary book. First published in 1946, it has never once gone out of print. It has quietly, profoundly changed the lives of millions of people across the world — seekers, scientists, artists, and visionaries alike. Steve Jobs was one of them. He read it as a teenager, returned to it again and again throughout his life, and when he passed, it was the only book saved on his iPad. At his memorial, it was the one book given to every single guest. For a man who changed the world through technology and vision, this was the book he held closest to his soul. That tells you everything you need to know about the power held within its pages.

I didn't know any of that when I first saw it in my recommendations. I just felt pulled toward it in a way I couldn't explain, so I bought it without a second thought. From the moment I opened it, I couldn't put it down. What struck me most was that it didn't feel like reading — it felt like remembering. As if these words had lived in me long before I ever found them on a page. A deep, unmistakable recognition washed over me, and I felt it in every part of my being — that I had found something, or perhaps, that something had finally found me.

I went on to become a member of Self-Realization Fellowship, immersing myself in Paramahansa Yogananda's teachings and eventually receiving initiation into the Kriya Yoga program. The more I learned, the more I felt certain of something that stretches far beyond this one lifetime — that Paramahansa Yogananda has been my guru across many lifetimes. It is a feeling unlike anything I had experienced with any other spiritual path or teacher I had explored before him. There is a before, and there is a very distinct after. The person I was before finding this book and the person I am now are not the same. That is what a true guru does — he doesn't just teach you, he transforms you at the root.

He is with me always. Not as a memory or an idea, but as a living presence — a compass that guides me through everything life brings. I cannot imagine navigating this world without him, with all its directions and noise pulling you a thousand ways at once. And he reminds me of this in the most beautiful, unexpected moments. Once, we were out as a family — my husband and our two girls — having dinner at Dishoom in London. When we were seated downstairs, I glanced behind us and there, on the wall, was a picture of him. In the middle of a perfectly ordinary evening, in a busy London restaurant, there he was. Watching over us. That is just how he is. He shows up, again and again, in ways that take your breath away and make you smile to yourself because you know — you just know.

Not every soul comes to a guru in this lifetime, and that is perfectly okay — sometimes our highest self is the very guide we need. But if you have been feeling that quiet pull, that restlessness, that longing for something deeper that the world just cannot seem to satisfy — trust it. Don't dismiss it. That feeling is not emptiness; it is an invitation.

Trust that if a guru is meant to find you, they will. At exactly the right moment, in exactly the right place, when you are truly ready. The path has a way of meeting you right where you are.

And when it does, your whole life will never be the same.