http://www.tehelka.com/story_main43.asp?filename=Ne311009deceptive_piety.asp
Sharon Clarke Sequeira
Sharon Clarke Sequeria, a former model spoke to Suma Varughese
"I moved into spirituality via modeling and motherhood," says Sharon
Clarke Sequeria, 28. Perhaps not a route prescribed by the shastras or
ancient texts, but given the extremity of artifice in modelling,
definitely a pressure-cooker path to the Truth. Not that spirituality
was an unknown quantity in her life. Indeed, her rapid ascent up the
glamor world in Mumbai, India, via the Navy Queen and Miss India First
Runner Up 1985, titles that made her a top ramp and photography model,
as well as a Lakme face, in the early 1990s, ran parallel to an
intense spiritual quest awakened when she was just 14. The occasion
was a retreat organized for Catholic students by her school, Fort
Convent, in Mumbai.
She found herself grappling with the question: "Who is Jesus?"
Suddenly, feeling a gentle arm on the shoulder, she wheeled around to
find the personage under dispute himself, telling her: "Don't look for
me outside, Sharon, I'm within you." For a Christian accustomed to a
Heavenly Father, this was a revelation. Perhaps, not coincidentally,
this was the beginning of a path that lay in synthesizing Christian
thought and Indian spiritual practice.
Her guide in the quest is Dr Jayant Balaji Athawale, an autohypnosis
expert and founder of the Sanatana Bharatiya Sanskruti Sanstha, which
approaches spirituality scientifically and mathematically. Spiritual
levels are calibrated in percentages, as are the merits and demerits
of various spiritual practices like breathing, meditation, or the
organization's starting point, chanting.
Chanting Hail Mary for two years (members of different religious
groups are encouraged to use the name of their individual God),
yielded Sharon dramatic dividends. Today, few events or people upset
her: anger seldom arises, and she has transcended her extended love
affair with food that sent her weight soaring from 58 kg during her
modeling days, to 95 kg. She is now down to 68 kg.
Her threshold to bear grief and pain has risen. Even her pulse rate is
an incredibly low 46. All this through a love for God that grows more
intoxicating by the day. Sharon's quest for the indwelling God moved
her away early from Catholicism. She recalls attending a retreat when
she was 20 that struck her as being a spiritual kindergarten. "When
invited to surrender their most precious belongings to God, many
cried, I couldn't understand it. Everything I had came from God in any
case, so why should surrendering anything be a big deal?”
God was the final authority. She finalized her marriage with
photographer Denzil Sequeira only after receiving divine sanction.
"While praying at the Blessed Sacrament Church, I was told that we
were already married. Another time, I saw a ring suspended in a shaft
of light." She even withheld kissing Sequeira until she had got the
divine nod. Such an uncompromising moral code led to conflicts in
modeling, where her refusal to bare often met with vigorous
opposition.
Through her spiritual initiation by Dr Athawale, her material desires,
such as becoming India's No 1 model, became sub-limited by a growing
love of God. Motherhood temporarily dampened her fervent progress, but
after plumbing the depths, she came back with a vengeance two years
ago, buoyed by Dr Athawale's prescription to further her growth
through teaching others.
Her most cherished spiritual milestone occurred in 1994, while
attending Guru Purnima, an auspicious day, at the ashram of Bhaktaraj
Maharaj, Athawale's guru, in Dhule, Maharashtra, India. She recalls
the guru darting a look at her akin to the look of God, "brighter than
a thousand suns". "I knew then that I would be dancing only to God's
tune and not that of others," she says rapturously.
