One easy way to tell if your meditation was truly meditation – regardless of what happened during your meditation, when you open your eyes do you feel different?
Washed clean, rested, refreshed. Settled – meaning centered, free from anxiety, serene.
Perhaps your breath is…
— Gurudevi Nirmalananda
From Gurudevi’s full discourse “Inner Experiences”
By Gurudevi Nirmalananda
How do you know you’re really meditating? The different inner experiences you may have can be confusing.
If your mind becomes still, you might wonder if maybe something should be happening. And if something happens, like inner lights or visions, you may think you’re imagining it or making it up.
If you delve deeper than your mind, a meditative immersion into the deeper dimensions within, you might think you fell asleep. But if your mind is busy, you might conclude you’re not meditating.
If you get insights into the nature of Consciousness or inner answers to life situations, you might conclude that you were thinking the whole time. But if you don’t get any inner insights, and all you did was repeat mantra the whole time, was it merely a waste of time?
So many questions!
There is one answer to all these questions. One easy way to tell if your meditation was truly meditation, regardless of what happened during your meditation – when you open your eyes, do you feel different?
Washed clean, rested, refreshed? Settled, meaning centered, free from anxiety, serene. Your breath is more open. Your peripheral vision may have expanded. You may feel you had stepped out of time, into the timelessness of your own Beingness. Yes, you meditated.
How long does it take to get there?
A minute. Less, actually. For your own Self is right here, right now, in you, being you. Closer than your breath. More intimate than your mind. Present within your own presence, Consciousness being you…
By Gurudevi Nirmalananda
You must develop your intuition, but for different reasons than you suppose. Intuition is the inner knowing by which you know your own Self. It’s called in-sight. However, using intuition for external things sabotages your spiritual progress.
The siddhis (subtle powers) are inner obstacles in the way of samadhi, though considered to be attainments by those with outward-turned minds.
Te samadhav-upasarga vyutthane siddhayah. — Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras 3.38
Siddhis are subtle powers, meaning they are the subtle level of your sensory abilities. When you see a tiger in a dream, you are having a visual experience while your eyes are closed. This happens through your inner power of seeing. Maybe you don’t really see the tiger or other phenomena, but you have a sense of its presence. Similarly, you may say, “I see” when you mean you understand.
When you intuit something, it means you know it without having an external source for your knowledge. You just know. This knowing is the goal of spiritual practice, that you know your own Self without thinking, without theorizing, without belief or faith, without praying or repeating mantra. You just know.
This is the original meaning of the word “intuit.” It comes from English in the 1400s, meaning spiritual insight or immediate spiritual communication. The Latin root, intuitio, means the act of contemplating. All this is very yogic. It’s about insight, the ability to see inward.
There is another type of intuition. This is when you “just know” about external things, like what’s going to happen next, or who is thinking of you, or the closest parking space, or which road to take to avoid traffic. It’s called your “sixth sense.” Don’t do it. Just don’t.
When you apply your subtle knowing to mundane things, you don’t get any deeper spiritually. You won’t get enlightened. And you’ll create terrible karma for yourself. It is a double whammy…
That’s because yoga meets you where you’re at. And if you’re having any trouble with it, if you’re experiencing pain, it’s because yoga is excavating, digging up your own patterns to clear them away and free you from them. In a pose, Svaroopa® Yoga may get into some gnarly stuff. But it’s merely finding what was there and would be causing…
— Gurudevi Nirmalananda
From Gurudevi’s full discourse “Sensory Pleasures“
By Gurudevi Nirmalananda
The first time you chant Shree Guru Gita can be a powerful experience, whether it’s due to the beauty and power of the chant or because your tongue can’t quite wrap itself around the Sanskrit syllables.
You have options about how to participate:
Close your eyes and listen, coasting on the Shakti (energy).
Open your eyes and follow along with the Sanskrit.
Read the English silently while the group is chanting the Sanskrit.
Mouth the Sanskrit words silently, or even breathe into them.
Chant quietly, even if your chanting isn’t perfect.
Open your mouth and sing along, even perhaps using a finger to track each word!
Beyond your experience of the chant itself, notice what the chant does for you. Your “Marker Pose” is your state before and after the chant: what is the condition of your body, breath, mind, and heart?
How do you feel within yourself — at what depth are you sitting within? By assessing these changes, you can determine the value of this practice for yourself.
Excerpt from Yoga’s Sacred Songs, page 149
This is how you use your senses. You get them running around outside — looking this way, looking that way, listening to the sounds, aware of smells as well as the temperature of the air around you. It’s like your senses are roaming out there looking for something that…
— Gurudevi Nirmalananda
From Gurudevi’s full discourse “Your Ten Senses“
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Your mind is capable of blocking Consciousness. Don’t trust your mind. Well, not yet. Not until you know how to use your mind to access Consciousness, and to use your mind as a conduit of Consciousness. You need your mind. You need it to be shining with the light of Consciousness. Only then can you…
— Gurudevi Nirmalananda
From Gurudevi’s full discourse ” The Best Chant Ever“
By Karen (Kumuda) Schaub
Interviewed by Agnes (Aikya) Hetherington
Last November, I had intense knee pain.
I finally was able to move from Massachusetts to Pennsylvania, to be in person with Gurudevi more often.
I had longed to move there years before, but my mother had passed away unexpectedly. It took several years to come to terms with the loss. Only then could I begin the process of clearing out her home to put it on the market.
This physically and emotionally strenuous work re-activated an old knee injury. I was limping through life, doing daily activities very gingerly. Once the house was ready, it sold quickly. I had 30 days to pack and move to PA. Within two weeks of arriving, I decided to begin Embodyment® Yoga Therapy to help relieve the pain. It did that and so much more!
I needed lots of tailbone opening to relieve the knee pain, which certainly happened. But the therapy also radically changed things on the inside. It was a profound experience of deepening into my Self. I began to develop trust around working with my body in a different way.
As my fear of the pain receded, I no longer lived in a state of desperation. Throughout my life, I had felt a constant internal shakiness. Yoga therapy and multiple daily practice sessions of Ujjayi Pranayama filled my reservoir of prana. This brought me to a state of being more settled in my life, having less fear.
Now I’m learning how to keep my mind on a short leash. I set a 90-minute timer when starting a physical task such as unpacking. When my mind wants me to do “just one more thing,” I tell it “no.” If we allow the mind to rule, it’s a very painful process.
By Gurudevi Nirmalananda
Don’t beat people up with your spirituality!
If you were truly a sannyasi (spiritual adept), you would watch the football game with them, serving them by sharing the time with them.
The feeling that you don’t want to be there means you haven’t yet renounced your desire to separate yourself from others, nor your desire to choose your own pleasurable activities. Sannyasa is when you know, “If no one was home, I would meditate, but they are home, so I am going to sit with them.” Sannyasa is renunciation, not rejection and not abandonment.
The good news is that you don’t have to be a sannyasi in order to become Self-Realized! Neither do you have to be initiated as a sannyasi, nor do you have to wait until you age into it. Gurudevi says, “My Baba often taught about the householder-saints in yoga. You can become Self-Realized today in the life you are already living. You have my permission and my blessing.”
How do you weave your spirituality into the stage of life you currently inhabit? You begin with accepting the stage you are in. The bottom line is, “Be Here Now.”
You can focus on “Be,” which is the ultimate mystical Knowingness of who you are. Or you can focus on “Now,” a popular way of pointing you inward toward your own spiritual essence. But you also have to focus on “here.” You are in the stage of life that you are in. Enjoy it.
Live a spiritual life and progressively deepen your spiritual practices. This is a beautiful life.
Excerpt from A Yogic Lifestyle, pages 243‒244
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