Your spiritual practices change you in such a way that you radiate Consciousness into the world. Especially your family is uplifted, even without them doing yoga.  How great!  And it means you’re doing yoga for two — yourself and your spouse or partner.  Or maybe you’re doing yoga for three… 

—  Gurudevi Nirmalananda

From Gurudevi’s full discourse “Unconditional Love“

By Gurudevi Nirmalananda

Your own inner knowing is yoga’s goal. This is a knowing beyond thought, beyond logic, beyond explanation or causation. You just know.

Yoga’s inner knowing is different than the intuitive feeling that most people seek. Yoga’s knowing is not about externals, not about problems or other people. It is the Knower knowing the Knower. Your own Self knows your own Self.

The astonishing thing about this is that it is so easy. Even more amazing, you actually already know. It’s only your mind that tells you something different. Thus, all of yoga’s practices are for your mind.

But the practices are not so you can convince your mind of anything. Yoga’s practices pacify your mind, so it gets out of the way.  Your mind becomes peaceful and happy. It is like a dog laying down and rolling over for a belly rub. Your mind loves the experience of your own Self.

Since your mind doesn’t know how to get there on its own, it needs help. The mantra and other practices are not enough on their own. You need an intervention. One who knows can give you the knowing. This is Shaktipat.  It is the greatest gift of all.

I have just summarized the first few sutras of the Shiva Sutras. They assert you are Consciousness, the Self-Knowing Essence of Beingness that is being all while being you. But you don’t know.  And you want to know. So you look for someone who can awaken your own knowing of your own Self.  That’s why you’re here now.

I’ll go through these sutras in Sanskrit as well, thus beginning my theme for the year — Insight into Sutras. These ancient aphorisms explain how life works as well as how to make spiritual progress. Additionally I describe them more fully in my twice-weekly meditation programs. Here we begin with the first sutra…

When you experience love, you feel fulfilled. This is an important part of life, the experience of loving. Your loving of someone does touch the other person, yes.  But in yoga, the point is, that it affects you. So, yoga teaches the yogi to take responsibility for their own mood. To grow up, to get over your childish reactivity, or perhaps your.. 

—  Gurudevi Nirmalananda

From Gurudevi’s full discourse “Loving God“

By Gurudevi Nirmalananda 

Happy New Year! It’s a new start. It’s like the sunrise in the morning, radiant and glorious with colors of light blazing across the sky. May your new year bring you this light — inside.

Your own inner light is the light of Consciousness. I’ll compare you to a snowflake, different from all the other snowflakes, unique and individual. A mass of clouds are blown into place. The water forms into ice crystals and falls from the sky. From the one source and substance, you come into being as an individual.

Yet all the snowflakes ultimately melt back into water – merging into the whole again. In this way, you are a unique form of Consciousness, fascinating, intricate, beautiful, even mesmerizing. Yet your goal is to become water again, to live in the fluidity and flow that is inherent to your being.

For this, you look to your own essence – the essence of a snowflake is water, and the essence of a human being is Beingness. Why is this important?  

Because you’re not yet actualizing the Beingness that you are – you’re not living in the flow of Divine Consciousness and Bliss. You are made of Beingness, and when Beingness experiences Beingness, the experience is bliss – Divine unending constant inner bliss that feeds and nourishes you on all levels. Your goal is the bliss of Consciousness, oh Shiva. To find, to feel, to see and to know your own Self as the one Self being an individual while being the whole.

So here we are at the beginning of a new year, blossoming forth with all possibilities, all potentialities, arising from within, from the source of the universe – your own source, oh Shiva.

You get to choose. The creative power of Consciousness lies intact within you. You can sculpt time into whatever shape you’d like it to be. You can be up before the sunrise, doing yoga and meditation so the inner sun comes up with the outer sun.  

You can bring that light into every corner of your life, basing your decisions and actions in the inner illumination that flows forth as love and creativity. You will easily find compassionate and intelligent solutions, exciting and promising plans and ways to get more as well as ways to give more. 

And if you choose the same-old, same-old, you’ll get the same-old, same-old. Yes, I’m talking about New Year’s resolutions – again.  Some of you have heard…

By Gurudevi Nirmalananda

Christmas celebrates Divine Light in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. While most call him the “son of God,” he called himself the “son of man.” As a yogi, I can describe him as an incarnation of Consciousness, a light unto the world.

Driving down the streets, I am delighted by all the lights on the buildings and in the yards. In the Northern Hemisphere, these year-end holy days come in the shortest days of the year, shining light through the dark.

Hanukkah comprises eight nights of candle lighting, commemorating the miracle of the oil lamps in the rededicated Temple in Jerusalem. As a yogi, I light candles on my altar daily, to honor the Divine outside and inside.

Kwanzaa has the lighting of candles on seven nights, paying tribute to worthy principles that underlie African-American culture. These are unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity and faith. As a yogi, I see these as principles of Consciousness that lie at the foundation of our practice and our lives.

Solstice celebrations date as far back as the Neolithic period, 10,000 BCE. They are found in the history of many places including Rome, Egypt, China, Persia, Peru, Native Americans and more. Stonehenge is built for the winter solstice. As a yogi, I love the light that shines through the dark, especially shining through your inner darkness so that you become an agent of Divine Light.

Each of these beautiful traditions invoke light in their own way. While the principles and stories behind each of these celebrations are inspiring, the participants’ focus is usually more mundane. Family gatherings, gift giving and feasting are important communal activities, but they rarely mention the holiness of the event. When they do light candle or attend a religious service, it is a small percentage of the time that they spend together. Their focus is on each other.

As a yogi, I found that looking outward left me unfulfilled. I tried. I focused on the people. I focused on the candle flame. I focused on the memory of Jesus. I focused on the highest principles of life and the idea of light shining through the dark. And I still felt empty.

All of these celebrations look outward. Yoga’s focus is on finding your own inner light. Thus I confess that I lost interest in these beautiful festivals long ago. My joy is daily. My bliss is continuing. My experience of the Divine is internal, the bedrock of Beingness that supports my existence as well as yours.

Yet I delight in gathering with others – not so that they will fill me up, but so I can see their inner light shining through their eyes. To me, you all glow with the light of Consciousness all the time. This is why I bow. Again and again I bow.