By Yogeshwari Fountain

While standing at the sink doing the morning dishes recently, I felt just the slightest lift of my left heel.  Normally I’d read that as a cue to relax my tailbone, pull in my abs and get back into my body.  However, having just read “Being a Role Model,” Swamiji’s and Vidyadevi’s Contemplation article, I had a different awareness.  “Ground your Shakti,” I murmured to myself, feeling a surge of joy and fullness arise from within.

In that moment, I knew it wasn’t just me at the sink, doing, but Consciousness Itself, being me, while doing the dishes.  Simply by feeling my feet again, I experienced my fully embodied spirituality: present in my own Presence once again.  I think this is what Swamiji means by “yoga is about getting beyond theory.”

In “Being a Role Model,” she points out the “Truth” that I am “perfect and divine,” always, no matter how I feel, or what my mind says, no exceptions.  To live this, I need all the practices of Svaroopa^® yoga to keep re-aligning myself to the Self intentionally.  But to know I AM Living Truth itself is an inner shift that develops over time.  While I have blissful experiences of it, clearly I am not established there.  But the Guru is, and because of this, she is the ultimate role model, manifesting the revelatory power of Grace.

All my life I emulated others, looking for mentors and role models to show me how to achieve worldly success, as limited as that was.  But when I met Swamiji, I knew I was in the presence of “Living Truth,” and the road ahead was going to take a sharp turn inward.

The glory of this tantric path is that you must then turn outward, and shine your light back into the world.  While Swamiji continues to model this for all of us, she exhorts every Svaroopi to do the same for others.  I’m often asked, “How many hours of yoga do you do each day?” If only they really knew! Still, being a role model is humbling, as I’ve never felt “better than” anyone.  I’m simply grateful to be on this path of discipleship.  I trust that if I cooperate with the process, and watch my motives for any given action, I will become progressively more uplifted.  I will understand what I am truly becoming, not in a worldly sense, but as embodied Consciousness, Living Truth.