I am currently the owner of two small businesses. One is a digital accessibility consulting firm, and the other is reflective of my creative side, where I illustrate, paint, and create affordable custom jewelry. This blog is part of these creative expressions aided by my degree in Commercial Art (obtained prior to personal computers’ omnipresence) and several generations of artists in my ancestry. My collective experience has allowed me to excel in designing and creating websites and web-based applications, with emphasis on good user experience.
Gradually, I became aware of the importance of the digital accessibility of these products. For anyone who may not be familiar with that term, digital accessibility assures that people with different types of abilities (low vision, blindness, hearing impairment, motion or cognitive constraints, etc.) can also use a web site or application easily and without difficulty. I am passionate about this. It is proven that digital accessibility makes any design a better design!
There have been many significant life-changing moments in my journey. The most significant of them was when I learned Transcendental Meditation (TM). Learning this technique not only helped me heal from a chronic back pain, but it also helped me grow in self awareness and spiritual awakening.
I used to suffer from chronic back pain prior to being a teenager due to two hard falls down a flight of stairs. The result was two deteriorated disks by the time I was a young adult. For those of you who suffer from such pains, you know that the daily stresses of life can exasperate the situation and make them even worse. We, however, learn to cope and live with such discomfort. In my case, 6 months after I learned TM, those pains were miraculously gone! They did come back sometimes. But, not for long.
In the meantime, TM was also healing my mind. At the time, I was not conscious of it. It wasn’t for another two years before I began “seeing” the results. I began understanding where the wounds of my soul had originated. I began to understand why I was behaving in certain ways… and many times out of fear and insecurities. I began, gradually, facing my fears…and, facing myself. Many times, I didn’t like what I was seeing. But I was seeing! Thus, I was able to work on changes.
I need to clarify that my spiritual awakening is only at the level of me being aware of my own behaviors and actions, and trying to improve as best as I can. Needless to say, the improving part is a life-long process as well. This evolution also helped me a great deal with my career. I will write about this in different stories later.
This process has also helped me become a better listener, and consequently more compassionate and empathetic. Through this spiritual growth I have occasionally experienced intuition at finer levels such as feeling oneness with people and nature, and experience unconditional love even towards those who are not my friends. Even in fleeting moments, these experiences have felt so joyful and liberating.
I strongly believe that it is important that we always look inward first. There are those who go through their entire lives not looking inward. Those are the ones who are quick to point fingers and blame others, before they will take responsibility for their own actions and behavior. I realize that this is not easy. But it truly is liberating. Why live a life in constant fear and frustration?
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