By Marlene (Matrikaa) Gast, Yogaratna 

I am grateful for Gurudevi’s guidance in walking the walk each day.  I’m eager to register for the upcoming Telecourse: Enlightenment: Stages & Steps.  Gurudevi is including articles and videos in three self-paced modules. 

I took this course with her “live” in 2015.  It mapped where I was and how to move forward.  I saw that my practices had resulted in progress.  The course illuminated what lay ahead and how to effectively go the distance.   

The yearning is the first stage of the journey.  Again and again I return to this teaching at the beginning of Gurudevi’s first article: 

Whatever you get in life, you gotta want it or it’s not get-able.  Wanting it keeps you in the game.  Patanjali is telling you to put your heart in it.  It’s not just yoga for your body, or yoga for stress, or yoga for health, youth or beauty.  It’s yoga for consciousness.  This is the yoga that will give you your Self. 

My mind still doubts sometimes.  It can make me think I don’t have the right stuff for Self-Realization.  But this paragraph picks me up, carries me over that hurdle, and drops me in Self.  Being there all the time is all I want.  I open inward to the deep yearning.  I am on my way to Self-Realization, no matter what. 

I learned how to act on the yearning, which everyone feels.  Gurudevi’s teachings showed me how to effectively navigate the stages and steps.  Her recordings reassured me that I had the stuff to travel the path.  Finding I had already completed some stages and steps motivated me to keep going. 

In the past, I always downloaded and archived the articles.  Now I’m looking back over the articles.  It makes me eager to take the Telecourse, with new videos from Gurudevi.  I know it is just what I need.  In this form, the teachings will illuminate where I am on the path now.  Seeing any progress is deeply reassuring!  As the destination of Self-Realization beckons me, I’ll be supported in my next steps and stages.