By Gurudevi Nirmalananda

When I moved into my first home, I wanted to make it a haven from the world. I decorated my small apartment with beautiful budget items and hand-me-downs, and I kept fresh flowers in vases as often as I could. I carefully selected background music that created a soothing and peaceful effect. 

Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. I found that I was completely capable of being so overwrought that I didn’t notice any of it. Jon Kabat-Zinn named the phenomenon in a book title, Wherever You Go, There You Are. You take yourself with you no matter where you are. 

There is an important problem hidden in my story. If you want your home to be a haven, you actually see the world as being a hostile place. It may be an unrecognized attitude, but it is there. As you become able to recognize this in yourself, you also see how your attitude creates the problems that you encounter as you go through your life. 

I would love to be able to point my finger and blame the rude sales clerk or the belligerent driver. Yet, I know that I have created it, countless times, by my own actions and attitude. The world is a mirror. It reflects you back to yourself. What you put out comes back to you, the way you put it out and the “why” you put it out. 

As a yogi, however, you must look at even a deeper level, called dependency. You depend on the externals to be just right before you can feel peace. What happens to you if your neighbors have a noisy party? With all your doors and windows closed, you can still hear their happy sound. Are you happy that they are happy, or do you…

  — Excerpt from Yoga: Inside & Outside, pages 1‒2

By Gurudevi Nirmalananda

The physicists and yogis agree that it all began with the Big Bang. That bang emanated energy which became light; the light coalesced into matter. This is a vastly simplified explanation, but it is true — everything is made of solidified light. Even your body is made of light. Even the chair that you are sitting on is made of light. 

You probably think that the Bang was an explosion emanating energy and light into the darkness. If so, you’re assuming that darkness is the basis of existence, with light being added to it. The physicists do not describe it this way, but most non-physicists picture it so, without even recognizing that they do. 

The yogic sages make it clear that something existed before the Big Bang. There was something there, a something that banged. That something was not, and is not, darkness. That “something” is the Ever-Existent Reality. It was and is Self-Knowing Beingness, also called Consciousness-Itself. Named by the ancients in their language (Sanskrit), that something is called Shiva. 

Shiva is light, but the word “light” has multiple meanings. Normally it means (1) the opposite of dark, or (2) the opposite of heavy. Both are true of Shiva but, in yoga, “light” means something else: scintillating Presence, radiant Beingness-Itself, Consciousness-Itself, That which Banged. The most important thing to know is — You are That. You are that light, that Presence, that Beingness and Consciousness. You are that which the ancient yogis called “That.” 

The Big Bang was an implosion within Shiva’s own being, which is why energy contracts to become matter. The Big Bang was not an explosion, with light expanding into a field of darkness. It was an implosion, with Shiva contracting within Shiva’s own being, to contract light into matter and bring the universe into existence. Light — not darkness — is the basis of existence. 

Light is important to you because you are made of light. You already know this, not because of a scientific theory or an ancient teaching, as inspiring as they can be. You know this because of your own experience. You feel most like yourself when you are shining with light. When your eyes twinkle, when your heart overflows, when your words have a melody hidden in them, and when your actions show your generous and loving nature — you feel so natural. You feel like yourself. You are radiant with light in those moments. You are your own Self. 

Yoga offers a tried-and-true methodology by which you stop blocking the light of your own being from shining through. When you begin with the physical practices, you are removing the blocks to your body’s natural state of openness. Your body is naturally soft, supple, strong, healthy and resilient, like that of a two-year-old child. The tensions you’ve accumulated since you were two years old are blockages to be removed. When you do some slow breathing and poses to open your spine, you glow afterward. Because the things you do daily are the most powerful, you need to do your yoga breathing and poses daily. If you aren’t removing the blocks, then you are probably installing more of them. 

Yet you do not have to perfect your body in order to have your inner light shine. Even if your body is imperfect, your eyes can shine and your heart can overflow. Yoga’s most powerful effects are the clearing of the blockages from more important levels — your mind and emotions. Clearing these blocks is the primary purpose of yoga’s practices, so your inner light can shine through your mind. 

When you begin aligning your life with the principles of light by following yoga’s precepts for living, that glow shines more brightly and more consistently. When you deepen your inner experience through meditation and chanting, as well as by studying the teachings, you plumb the depths of your own inner essence to discover the source of light within, the light of which you are made.

— Excerpt from A Yogic Lifestyle, pages 25‒25

By Gurudevi Nirmalananda 

You may have heard that enlightenment is easy — “You don’t need any practices, just know who you are. Just know.” Personally, I needed help with that. I needed lots of help! I got the help so I know how it works. After enough preparation, this is what happens: you just know. 

The Shiva Sutras describes this path to enlightenment, called Shambhavopaya. The word names the process: the upaya (path) of cultivating the knowing-feeling (bhava) of being Shiva (Shambho). It is a feeling of downshifting, like leaning back into your multidimensionality, the ease of settling into your own Beingness.

I teach this process in every satsang and course. I lead you past the fragmentation of your mind to a deeper inner dimension. You feel whole. You shine with light. The trick is this: when the program ends, simply continue to experience your own Shivaness. Instead, you might go back to your mind, with its many concurrent agendas.

For those who get ensnared by their mind, another upaya is best – applying your mind to Consciousness. Since it is your mind that blocks your easing into Shiva-Self, you must work with your mind. This is Shaktopaya, the upaya (path) of working with Shakti (the energy of Consciousness-Itself). 

How do you do this? You fill your mind with the energy of Consciousness by repeating the mantra. The mantra given by an authorized teacher emanates the power of Consciousness. Each time you repeat it, it uplifts your mind and mood. You can liken it to clearing the clouds out of your mind so the sunlight of your own Beingness can shine through.

This is a familiar process if you’ve attended one of my satsangs or programs. I formally give the mantra, and explain both its meaning and how to use it. When you take it with you, your progress toward enlightenment continues. But if you climb out of your… 

By Gurudevi Nirmalananda

Once you know your own Self, it is easy to see the Divinity shing in everyone and everything. Then you cannot label anyone as bad or wrong. Labels disintegrate in the light of Consciousness.

Yet you need not worry that the state of Self-Knowingness is a stage of drunken romanticism. While seeing the Divine in the mundane, you will have clarity about whether something is working well or not. It will be obvious whether someone is focused on their own selfish purposes or giving themselves a higher purpose. You will easily see if they are entrapped in their mind and memories, or if they are living in the reality of the here-and-now. And you will see if they are making mistakes — but it’s OK if they do. After all, how did you learn most of your lessons? You made a few mistakes along the way, too.

It’s easy to understand that, when you become enlightened, you will stop judging others. You will be more understanding. You’ll know when to help and when to back off. That means all you have to do is more yoga and you’ll eventually “get there.” But there is no “there” to get to. It’s all here, right here.

It isn’t enough to merely do yoga, because you need a massive shift in perspective, so that you see life itself as yoga. Relationships are yoga. Food is yoga. This is because yoga is fundamentally about the way you use your mind, which can be yogic or unyogic. It’s time to take yoga off your blankets and mats, to begin addressing your mind. If you cannot yet see God in everything, then at least see that the world is not black and white. It’s time to see the shades of grey. Get beyond the pairs of opposites.

This can be hard if you have always been an achiever. Those who get ahead by getting things right can get stuck in the opposites: “right vs wrong,” working hard to make sure they are always right. Those who have earned other people’s love and respect by always being good can get stuck in the opposites: “good vs bad,” making sure they are always the good one.

Those who learned to win the power struggles are stuck in “my way,” never discovering that others have amazingly good ideas too. Those who found that always being bad or wrong was the way to get their needs met can end up living in this trap for the rest of their life (or even many lifetimes).

Besides the ways you use the pairs of opposites to trap yourself, you also use them to evaluate other people. When you look at your neighbors, family members, or even the other yoga student on the floor next to you, your mind begins comparing. Your mind does this because of Maya, the cosmic power of delusion, making you see this divine world as merely mundane. Maya is the Sanskrit name for Consciousness, when manifesting as the multiplicity of forms and beings in this world. Maya does this by splitting the One into many, by creating the illusion of division and separation. Since your mind is a form of Consciousness, your mind is an agent of Maya. Without you having to do anything to get it going, your mind starts measuring, analyzing, comparing and judging on its own. Everyone’s mind does this.

Different people deal with the results of their analyses in different ways. In comparing yourself with your neighbor, your mind usually finds something wrong, either with them or with you. Whichever direction your mind goes, it puts someone on the bottom of the heap. Your mind usually says one person is worse than the other. This is because the mind’s job is to cut things into pieces — not to respect, uplift or value things. This is the nature of the mind and one of the reasons you must work on it.

Excerpt from A Yogic Lifestyle, pages 8‒10