I wanted something that my parents didn’t want. I wanted something that my school teachers never talked about. I wanted something that wasn’t described in church. Joseph Campbell rescued me from my self-doubt. In a series of television interviews titled “The Power of Myth”, he explained that everyone longs for something greater, but only a few…
— Gurudevi Nirmalananda
From Gurudevi’s full discourse “A New Normal“
Your mind is so powerful. It creates whatever you choose. If you choose to repeat the litany of your pains, you can do this. If you choose to repeat the litany of your pleasures, you can do this. Yet, yoga recommends neither. You see, both of these litanies are still about…
— Gurudevi Nirmalananda
From Gurudevi’s full discourse “Your Mind’s Greatness“
Now you can no longer think of God as something you earn with lifetimes of purity and striving for perfection. You don’t earn God. You are God. You’ve simply been looking in the wrong place. You’ve been looking at the ceremonies, at the rituals, at the mountains, the rising sun, the full moon. Yes, Yes! God is…
— Gurudevi Nirmalananda
From Gurudevi’s full discourse “Sacred Acts“
By Gurudevi Nirmalananda
Yoga teaches surrender. This is how you get enlightened. It is also how you fall in love.
Surrender is how you experience God, whether you’re looking outward or inward. This is why we formally teach the art of yogic surrender in every Svaroopa® yoga class – twice.
In English, the word surrender means you have lost the battle. As the loser, you now stand to suffer even more. Sanskrit has words that mean this but yoga doesn’t use them. Yoga’s texts use different Sanskrit words:
avasrj — to let off, let loose, let go, send, dismiss, abandon…
tyaj — to get rid of, free oneself from…
da — to give, grant, bestow, offer, to hand or deliver over…
parida — to surrender through devotion, to deliver up, to entrust…
sharana — to take refuge, to get help, shelter or sanctuary…
Some of these terms point to becoming free, a central theme of my young adulthood. Others mean bestowing or granting something precious to the care of another. The terms for taking refuge, shelter, sanctuary and protection are also paired with devotion.
King Vatsaraja described this in 1000 BCE in the Kamasiddhistuti:
I seek refuge (sharana) with the glorious Goddess Sundari, the benefactress of prosperity, the secret heart, whose heart is soaked with compassion. She is blazing with an utmost tenacity steeped in joy, and consequently beaming with plenteous light that shimmers spontaneously.
What a Divine surrender! Yet you must go through stages in learning how to give over. Few are able to begin with being wonderfully overwhelmed by the glorious Goddess Sundari. Most start simpler. Bottom line, it is the experience of surrender that yoga values — not to whom you are surrendering. Why? Because each time you surrender…
You long to know your own Self as Consciousness, and to live in the bliss-filled beingness that is your Essence. Yet, you already know at a deep inner level. You already are free. You see, you won’t long for something unless…
— Gurudevi Nirmalananda
From Gurudevi’s full discourse “Bondage & Freedom“
Even if you lived free — no prison bars, no ankle bracelet, you can be imprisoned by your mind. My Baba described it this way, “His own outlook is the thing that shrinks him day by day. As he meditates on and ponders his own limitations, he becomes completely bound.” You do meditate on your limitations. You obsess on…
— Gurudevi Nirmalananda
From Gurudevi’s full discourse “The Bliss of Freedom“
Where are your complaints? They’re in your mind, usually in the forefront of your mind. Repeating over and over, your mind loops around on them. So you look in the space where your complaints usually are, right here, in the forefront of your mind…
— Gurudevi Nirmalananda
From Gurudevi’s full discourse “What is Love“
Knowing about your own Self is not the same as experiencing your own Self. I can talk about your Divine Essence all day, and you may love the theory. But even a moment of experiential knowing stops you, settles you, fills you from the inside out.
— Gurudevi Nirmalananda
From Gurudevi’s full discourse “Unlearning“
By Gurudevi Nirmalananda
When you have just finished a yoga class, you are a more caring and compassionate person. You have noticed this by now.
Compassion is a quality that arises when you have connected inside. It is part of living “inside out,” our contemplation theme from last month, which is the filling of yourself from the inner spaciousness and then living from this basis.
Yoga clears away the inner clutter and eases you into the vast fullness of your own beingness. From this, all the divine qualities emerge in you, including compassion.
When you are not feeling compassionate, it is because you are hungry. This hunger is more complex than a simple hunger for food, though eating a meal does help. You are more kind and caring after you have eaten compared to before. This is one of the great joys of Thanksgiving. The primary feature of the day is the Great Feast, shared with family and friends.
But food alone does not fill your deeper hunger, thus it gets projected outward into your life. It shows up in the push of your day — trying to get everything done. It shows up in your relationships — with you trying to make others in your life happy, or maybe you are trying to get them to make you happy (which is infinitely more complicated).
This hunger or need shows up in your work — as you strive to succeed or to get ahead, or maybe you are just trying to survive the day.
Excerpt from Yoga: Inside & Outside, page 29
Your attachments define you. They limit you. They take hold of you, defining who you are and what you can do. Thus, yoga’s goal is freedom. Freedom from limitation. Freedom from compulsion. Freedom from being driven. You gain yogic freedom by an internal redefinition of…
— Gurudevi Nirmalananda
From Gurudevi’s full discourse “Clinging“
practice & grace: giving you your Self
revealing the mystery
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