What are you hanging on to?  Let me put it another way. Anything that you’re hanging on to, if God wants you to have it, you will still have it when you surrender to God. God wants the best for you…

—  Gurudevi Nirmalananda

From Gurudevi’s full discourse “Surrender to God“

What do you do when there’s nothing left to seek? There’s nowhere to go, nothing to gain, for it is all already found within, oh, Shiva. Instead of looking for something to get, something to fill me, I am already full. So, I look for what I… 

—  Gurudevi Nirmalananda

From Gurudevi’s full discourse “Sanctification“

By Gurudevi Nirmalananda

At the beach, I revel in watching the waves rolling onto the shore. Each has its own personality. One wave is taller but another is wider.

One wave washes farther up the shore. Another gets swallowed up by one coming from behind. Yet they are all made of the same ocean water. They are all the same while they are all different.

Like this, Shiva is being everything in the universe. Every individual and every single thing is different from the others, yet all are made of Shiva. Shiva is having a glorious time being multifaceted, like a bride wearing three different wedding gowns at her wedding events. We love the play of the differences!

While Shiva is having a good time being you, you might not be enjoying it quite so much. Your focus on differences creates a “pushmi-pullyu” effect. Simply look at a serving platter full of cupcakes. You can get caught up in which of them will be most to your liking. But if someone beats you to it, you might have a few words to say or maybe a plan for payback. Unfortunately, things can escalate, even get out of control quickly.

Yoga says, “Look within. Find your own essence — see the One Divine Reality hidden in all.” Then you delight in the superficial differences. Your experience is like turning the wheel on a kaleidoscope, getting ever changing colors tumbling in the unchanging ray of light. And you get to eat your cupcake.

One way to work on your inner deepening is based on a sophisticated understanding of how energy becomes matter, including the physical matter of your own body.

You delve into your own experiences, exploring the cosmic process in reverse. You expand your awareness in a meticulously step-by-step process.

Sharire samhara kalanam. — Shiva Sutras 3.4

Dissolve the tattvas, each into the preceding, to realize the highest tattva, Shiva.

An easy example is vision. While you are seeing an object right now, perhaps words on a page, this is because you have the ability to see. This capacity of seeing is more subtle than any single object upon which you gaze. In this awareness, you have now expanded inward, dissolving from a single visual into your capacity for seeing. Each of these levels is a tattva (principle of Consciousness).

Delving into your ability to see, you realize that it is merely one type of perception, utilizing only one specific sensory capacity. Perception itself is greater than any single sensory pathway. Exploring into perception itself, you encounter…

To discover who you are is the purpose of meditation.  It is an inner exploration that takes you deeper and deeper within.  But at the end of your meditation, your peripheral vision is wider.  Your focus didn’t shut you down. It opened you up.  Your capacity for caring, compassion…

—  Gurudevi Nirmalananda

From Gurudevi’s full discourse “Peripheral Vision“

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“