As a child, Isha Judd didn’t understand human beings — she says she didn’t quite get things like prejudice or war, and she really wanted to change the world for the better. But when the young Australian reached early adulthood, she says she turned away from her humanitarian instincts and instead pursued a career in horse training and racing that was both competitive and very lucrative. When she was 28, she said she lost everything within a period of six months: her money, her property, her father, her boyfriend and two of her grandparents. Her mother also had a massive stroke during that time, which seemed horrible, but which Judd now says was the best year of her life. After she lost everything, she says she rebuilt her life from a completely new perspective, using tools that she now spends her life teaching to others. “I would compromise in life — I had this enormous fear of abandonment, and I was always looking for approval. I would compromise in relationships, I had addictions and I had all these places where I just wasn’t loving myself,” Judd said. “I had a voice inside of me saying, ‘This fear isn’t real and it’s time to wake-up.’ I listened to that voice because it was a voice I remembered from when I was a child. “This is when my system started. The steps that I did to expand my consciousness is what I teach.” Judd is the founder of Isha Educating for Peace, a self-funded non-governmental organization that works with children, politicians, prisoners and people with disabilities. She was recently named Ambassador for Peace by the Argentinean Senate and Citizen of the World by the International University of Cuernavaca, Mexico. Today she lives in Uruguay, but spends much of her time travelling the world, teaching people her system of finding what she calls “love-consciousness,” a state of mind where she says life is filled with love, joy, peace and self-acceptance. “My happiness was always in a future moment because I could achieve and achieve, but it was never enough. Because I didn’t love myself, I didn’t think I deserved love, and nothing was sufficient,” Judd said. “When I went in, I realized all of this and started to come across a place within me that I call love-consciousness, which is a very profound energy of peace and joy and total security and abundance.” She says all humans have love-consciousness at their inner core, but it’s work to find it and to hone it. “It’s like a diamond in a mine — you have to dig into the mine and get all the rubbish out, and then you’ve got to polish the diamond so that it shines through its own unique essence,” Judd said. “This is what I did. I started to remove all the limiting beliefs and fears and reconnected with myself.” Once you find your core, you need to work carefully to nurture it, Judd said. “It becomes like you’re nurturing a baby and you’re the baby. You’re nurturing something internal, and it’s so special and so beautiful that you want to feed it exactly what it needs instead of compromising and going back to these destructive behaviours,” Judd said. Over a period of a year, Judd honed her inner self and since then, she’s spent her life teaching others how to do the same. “My message is that world peace is the responsibility of each individual. Each human has to love themselves unconditionally. We’re always trying to figure out what we can get, but when we feel unconditional love, we start to give and we give abundantly,” Judd said. “In reality, spirituality is just us reconnecting with ourselves and coming back to that place of innocence. We’re all unique and perfect, and we try to change so dramatically to fit in, but ultimately, we just have to be who we are and that’s perfect enough.” She says comfort is an illusion because people become stagnant in their comfort zone. “What humans do is we surround ourselves situations where we feel safe,” Judd said. “We’re so afraid of losing our comforts that we lose passion and we lose drive for adventure and excellence. We don’t walk through our fears, we just choose our comforts and then we despondent and disillusioned with life. Whereas if we’re constantly pushing ourselves, and experiencing new aspects of your being, life becomes a phenomenal adventure.”