We were lucky to catch up with Manijeh Motaghy recently and have shared our conversation below.

Manijeh, appreciate you joining us today. Can you share a story about the kindest thing someone has done for you and why it mattered so much or was so meaningful to you?

When I lost my son, on June 30th, 2017, my entire world collapsed. My brain shattered into a billion pieces. I had flashes of insanity. I couldn’t think, or understand it. All I felt was pain. Tsunamies of pain and suffering. For the first 35 days, I’d faint in the middle of the day. My brain would shut down. Many people were kind and surrounded me with their love, service, and compassionate ears to hear my sobbing and bewilderment.

But, my Buddhist teacher, Ajahn Pasanno’s, love and compassion were unparalleled. Without his wisdom, his understanding, and his support to help me heal, I could have fallen into a deep dark pit never to see the light.

You see, in learning and practicing the Buddha’s teachings, we learn to understand how life works, and how aging, sickness, death, and loss of that which is precious to us are a part of our human experience. How the suffering we feel around it comes from our mind’s attachments and how to have compassion and peacefulness around difficulties in life. But when my son died, he never even once, said, well the Buddha told us there is death. He never encouraged me to have peace around it. All he did was acknowledge the pain, offer services to honor his life, and give him a most noble place at the monastery to keep his aches.

This act of kindness has a deeper significance for me as a Buddhist practitioner and teacher and my sense of trust and worth, because had he given more lessons on how to be peaceful and accept this immense loss as part of life, and if I couldn’t muster up such peace, I could have fallen deep into self-doubt, shame, and more pain. For a whole year and after, he and his monks acknowledged the pain of my loss, even though he’d never been married nor had a child of his own. This immense compassion healed my wounds deeply and taught me about others’ pain of loss and how to show up to them with compassion and kindness.

I am eternally grateful for understanding life through genuine real experience and the blessings of his guidance.

Manijeh, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m an Iranian immigrant who came to this country at the age of 15 in 1978. It was the beginning of the Islamic revolution and we were lucky to get out before the Iran/Iraq war. Although, my uncle who had been in the States long before us had prepared a comfortable enough beginning for us, life was tough for me in so many ways. Having to adapt to a foreign language, and experiencing stark differences between my rich poetic and philosophical and collective culture where everyone cares for one another, neighbors know each other well and there is no shortage of connection to the individualistic culture of the US, at that age was painful. With no friends, I felt isolated and depressed all the time. And no one recognized it.

Fast forward to adulthood, I went to college, got married, had two wonderful boys, started businesses with my husband, experienced lots of chaos in the marriage, successes, and failures in the businesses, and having to keep up appearances, I felt deeply unhappy. I was living a life that was based on pretenses, like a majority of people in LA do. While looking in from the outside, it was not a problem to be striving for more and more, my soul felt deeply lonely and stuck.

After lots of painful experiences, I finally divorced, continued my education, found the Buddha in an undergrad course, finished my Doctorate in Organizational Psychology, and co-founded a non-profit, Mindful Valley, to teach Mindfulness and the Buddha’s wise and compassionate teachings.

During this time, I met my first Buddhist teacher, Ajahn Amaro, who is an incredible soul and being. When he left to be the Abbot of the Amaravati Monastery in the UK, I found the blessing of Ajahn Pasanno’s teachings, compassion, and goodness and continued visiting Abhayagiri, where he was the abbot; each time driving 10 hours straight to get to so that I could find inner happiness I had been missing for so long.

After a few years, when my then-partner and I separated, I became certified and authorized to teach UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center’s signature secular Mindfulness courses. In 2015 with the help of community supporters, we opened a center in Tarzana, CA, and Mindful Valley opened a DBA called Perfectly Here.

Every year, I visited Abhayagiri, attended 10-day silent retreats, and learned more about how life works, how suffering is in the mind, how to manage the traumas of my childhood, the past, and bad relationships, and how to teach these to others. These visits and Ajahn Pasanno saved my life from the grief of losing my son.

I became able to teach others how to be with grief, and how to suffer with wisdom and compassion for loss. I trained teams and executives at corporations on how to be Mindful, gave lectures at universities, and continued cleansing my mind and heart and becoming more and more connected, balanced, and integrated. I never stopped learning. I got more and more into human psychology, neurology, behavioral development, healthy relationships, Mindful conversations, and taught others.

Going through the Inner-MBA designed by Mindful NYU, Sounds True, and LinkedIn, a nine-month program for creating conscious self, teams, leaders, and leadership, I learned more about the planet, and how our businesses and our ways of life have negatively impacted the resources that give us life.

During the pandemic, I reduced teaching and began writing a book, which began by saying Mindfulness is Not Enough and evolved to telling humanity how we need to develop a 3-Dimensional Life Intelligence. I discovered through teaching and coaching thousands of people what the process was for transformation and devised a five-stage Human Software Optimization methodology, both of which are copyrighted through the US. Copyright Office.

In the past couple of years, my teachings have evolved to a comprehensive model I call Mindful Life Optimization, which incorporates three dimensions of life (Systems that Govern our lives, Planet and Planetary Stewardship, and the Human experience and conduct).

I believe that much of our suffering and unwise living comes from lacking pertinent knowledge of how life works and from living false truths. Every human being should be raised and taught those life lessons from these three dimensions so that we can all live with joy, freedom of heart, and wisely; live with consideration for others and know how our conduct can positively impact the world around us and the future generation.

My clients are all humans but in particular teachers, coaches, therapists, parents, executives, and the youth, and recently I have been hearing a message from my soul, “You need to raise orphans, those who have no one to care for and raise them properly. You must see the children, especially the orphans.” I am deeply touched by this message and want more than anything to establish a Mindful Life orphanage, but wonder how at this age I can pull this off. I am putting this message out into the universe, to offer this unparalleled opportunity for those who can support such an endeavor.

Can you imagine, the child developing a sense of security, love, connection to themselves, the world, and the planet Earth, the sun and the rain, feeling joy and contentment? Taking the first step, being told that their step is on solid ground. That the Earth is holding them, taking the second step without anxiety, with connection and meaning. Every step they learn to take is filled with trust, peace, and a sense of enoughness. Every bite of food filled with gratitude and compassion. Can you imagine them growing up without biases, etc. etc.?

My book is in the process of being edited and soon to be published.

My offerings include Mindful Life Optimization in the form of classes, retreats, and one-on-one coaching. Please visit my website: http://perfectlyhere.org and reach out to me via email, at [email protected]. YOu can also find me on LinkedIn, Facebook, And Instagram. Thank you for reading.

If you could go back, would you choose the same profession, specialty, etc.?

This is a great question. One that comes to mind and we may get asked to at a later age in life. A time when it may be too late or feel like it’s too late to change.

A lot of people may be satisfied with their professions in later life and lots of others may feel confused, unhappy, regretful, and fearful to change. What we have to understand is that compared to most other animals and plants, we humans have it hard. That is because we’re not born with a set programming and design to go become a basil from the seed, an oak tree from the acorn, or a lizard from the getgo. We are born with no skills and knowledge of how to be a human and have to learn all of it. At first, we have no independence on any of it. And with such complexity, we rely on others (caretakers, the community, culture, religion, laws, education, etc) to hopefully provide decent enough resources, love, and guidance. Well, it’s not reliable that we’d get them in a way that is unbiased and aligned with truths of how life works. For that reason alone, it is not reasonable to think back and think, I would have done it differently. How could we have done it differently, when we go through life being told what’s best for us, what to expect, how to behave, and how to find happiness?

So, I believe wherever we are and the process it took to get here was just it. I do wish it was easier, faster, and less painful to get to know the things I know today. Had conditions been different, and I knew what I know today, I believe I’d be happy doing anything, because, I’d be content with doing anything.

Putting training and knowledge aside, what else do you think really matters in terms of succeeding in your field?

I have seen so many trainings at corporations or other settings that provided information, inspiration, encouragement, and even resources for people (customers or attendees) to learn and improve their lives at work or in their personal lives. These do not guarantee that people continue implementing, developing, and growing.

What I have found more significantly helpful in my success is my own level of growth and development in the material I teach, coach, or present. When you know from personal experience how a lesson feels like, looks like, and leads to, in action and reality, you can also guide people through the hurdles on their way. Encourage them to continue and give them simpler tools to work with. Otherwise, people just pay for information and do not fully transform their lives.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://perfectlyhere.org
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/perfectlyhere_org/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/manijeh.motaghy
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drmanijehmotaghy/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHpHOyUx8CJAQU8G_mHXcLg

Image Credits
These are mostly images we have taken ourselves. One of them was taken by my photographer, Gina Ginardo.