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By Gurudevi Nirmalananda
Integrity is a wholeness that makes you invulnerable.
All the levels of your being and your life are fully aligned. What you say is also what you think and feel. What you do matches up to all your other levels.
No one can undermine you when you live in integrity with yourself. It’s an easy way to live because you’re always consistent, both with others as well as with yourself.
You gain this integrity by using your mind differently than most people do. They look outside for answers but, as a yogi, your mind always looks inward for guidance. Thus, you select your words and make decisions to do things that are in integrity with your own Divine Essence.
Transparency means you have nothing to hide. The old ditty bag that you carried around for so many lifetimes has been completely emptied out, so you have no grudges waiting to be fulfilled, no obsessions or aversions to limit your joy, no “gotta’s” that propel you in slavery to your animal instincts and no neediness to infect your relationships or your decisions.
The radiance of your own being shines through without impediment, allowing you to enjoy the perpetual sunshine inside plus share it with the others in your life…
Excerpt from A Yogic Lifestyle, page 32
By Swami Satrupananda
Yoga cured my back pain. I want the same for you.
Whether it be back or neck pain, migraines or headaches, Svaroopa® yoga can help. Our slow-paced process also does wonders for allergies, digestive conditions and your immune system.
This healing methodology is powerful because it is multidimensional. Yoga works with your body, mind, heart and more. Not only do you get healing on all these levels, they also all contribute to your healing. This makes the changes deep and lasting.
Taking a weekly yoga class gives you so much. Two classes a week more than doubles your benefit. But if you want to be on the healing superhighway, get private yoga therapy sessions.
In a private session, your yoga therapist customizes the practices to your needs. You receive extra support and adjustments. And we can use yoga’s more powerful healing techniques in this setting. Your healing process is guaranteed.
Yoga can help you with your pain. Contact one of our yoga therapist to discuss your healing needs and to schedule your private sessions.
Contact info: info@downingtownyoga.org or call 484-678-2078
By Gurudevi Nirmalananda
The four-fold model of Consciousness details how the One, being formless, manifests into form. As one of his honored names, Shiva is called jagat-sharira, universe-bodied.
Like water becomes ice, yet is still water, Shiva becomes the universe. But he is not limited by it. Nor is he limited to the universe, for he is beyond the universe as well as being in it and being it. You are a form of the formless as am I and everyone you know.
Shiva is also being everyone you don’t know, as well as being everything that exists. Shiva is also everything that doesn’t exist, for if you can think of it, your thought is made of Shiva.
How does this come to be? He coalesces into physical matter through four dimensions. We look at this because my Baba urged us to understand the physical and subtle principles from Shiva to the earth. This gives you mastery over the world as well as a pathway to follow inward.
Shunya — the Void is Shiva’s way of hiding from himself. Since he is Beingness-Itself, he masquerades as Nothingness. In the vastness of his own being, he appears as non-being, like a vacuum. Yet when you experience the void, you are…
By Amanda (Purna) Schmidt
New picture frames from Ganeshpuri are available! This triple-photo frame holds 2×3-inch prints, perfect for small Guru photos.
Gold lotus details adorn the frame’s back side. Purchase it empty or with Guru photos included.
Perfect for travel, it is also ideal to set up in your yoga space! Bring the presence of the lineage Masters with you, anywhere.
Feel the support of Divine Grace, no matter where you go.
By Gurudevi Nirmalananda
You don’t have to become somebody or something. You are already radiant Consciousness. All you need to do is uncover it. Yoga practices essentially subtract away the stuff that gets in the way. They remove the blockages until your own capital-S Self is revealed.
This is why, at the beginning and at the end of programs, I bow to your own Divine Essence. I chant: “OM svaroopa svasvabhava namo namah.” Namo means “I bow to,” and namah means “I bow to.” So I translate namo namah as “again and again I bow.”
To what do I bow? To svaroopa, your own Divine Essence. Yet while I am bowing to you, I am bowing to my own Divine Essence. Because there is only one Divine Essence. The One Reality is being each of us and all of us at the same time.
It is like light that shines through a window with many panes; the reflection on the floor looks like different squares. Yet there is only one light. The one light takes on all the different shapes so it can shine in all the different forms. The One Reality has become you, me and all that exists.
In this phrase, I love the word svasvabhavah. It comes from Abhinavagupta, a Kashmiri Shaivite sage who lived a thousand years ago. He wrote…
— Excerpt from Yoga: Embodied Spirituality, pages 17‒19
By Ellen (Lajja) Mitchell, President
SVA Board of Directors
Arise! Awake! Learn! is the theme for our spring fundraiser. The fundraiser runs April 25th to June 6th. Please join me in supporting SVA and Gurudevi Nirmalananda by donating. Give to the organization that gives back to you.
Our theme reminds me of my story and how I met Gurudevi. I had some protruding discs in my lower back. My doctor suggested yoga and/or acupuncture, so I decided to try both. The company I worked for offered a yoga class at lunch time. I heard that there were blankets used in the class, and it intrigued me.
I went to my first class. I felt taller and something else. I felt deeper inside like I had more space around me. I continued attending the class when I could. Gurudevi says, “With a regular process, your sense-of-self is found in a deeper inner dimension of reality and is less a function of the circumstances around you.” Yes, that is what I received in my very first class, a sourcing from my inner depths. A place I was not used to being. I feel this was my awakening.
I stopped going to classes when my job was transferred to another town. I tweaked my back. I Googled the teacher’s name and found out she also taught in the town I was transferred to! I started attending classes. Eventually, I signed up for a Shaktipat Retreat.
Gurudevi says, “Peace and joy arise from within when your mind stops blocking them.” Yes, that was my experience of that Shaktipat. Such peace and joy. Joy and peace. I wanted more. Kundalini arose and gave me a peek into what could be.
The poses, teachings and meditation have given me more. This is why I continue to financially support Svaroopa® Vidya Ashram. I want Gurudevi to continue to bring these teachings into the world. To quote Gurudevi, “You already know that giving makes you happy. Create a happy life. Live with a generous spirit!” Please join me in giving to Svaroopa® Vidya Ashram.
Click on the button below to donate online through our website. Thank you.
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 Darren Taylor
Interviewed by Lissa (Yogyananda) Fountain, Yogaratna
I used to drive by Downingtown Yoga and Meditation center weekly. I’d see the prayer flags and wonder what it was all about.
Then one day I took a yoga class with Swami Satrupananda. Afterwards she asked me what I wanted from yoga. I said, “Enlightenment, of course.”
“Well,” she replied, “You’ve come to the right place.”
I’ve been on a spiritual search for years. Mindfulness, Christian prayer, power yoga, and spiritual readings have been a part of the journey. But I’d never done mantra meditation before. I had lots of questions, and Satrupananda counseled me on the next steps. This led to my first Shaktipat in May of 2022.
I began to prepare myself for this profound spiritual experience about to happen. It felt akin to a baptism: a transformative spiritual marker on my path. I wanted to do service to it, with respect. I ate a simple and pure diet that week and read Muktananda’s Play of Consciousness. In a dream, I also experienced Gurudevi giving me a shoulder slip! I wondered if this was part of the transmission of energy to come.
At the beginning of the Shaktipat retreat, my mind and body had a little resistance. “Oh,” I thought, “we’re chanting again??!” But I went with it. After Gurudevi’s first touch, I felt pulled up from my base and realigned. I could see a roadmap that Kundalini had implanted inside me. During my meditations, the physical openings were much stronger. I experienced a cleansing, a burning off.
After I got home, I couldn’t do anything but sit in meditation. I was so blissful. I didn’t want to “land the plane.” I wanted to keep flying in Consciousness. Now I’m enrolled in the “Deepen Your Meditation” class and meditating daily. I’m a divine work in progress.
practice & grace: giving you your Self
revealing the mystery
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