While you may wish for bliss in every meditation, it’s actually the busy meditations that are moving you toward enlightenment faster. Just like a car speeding along the highway passes more scenery, when you’re really zipping along…
— Gurudevi Nirmalananda
From Gurudevi’s full discourse “Growing into Self“
By Gurudevi Nirmalananda
Sometimes you can tell what’s going on inside a person by the way they look. Their silly grin or their wrinkled brow tells you what they are thinking and feeling.
Yet someone can be smiling while thinking negative or harmful thoughts. In poker and in politics, the pathway to success is to hide your true feelings. This can sometimes be true in close relationships as well.
Can you look at someone and see that they are enlightened? This is important because you want to study with the best. They can help you make rapid progress toward your own enlightenment. What is enlightenment like, both inside and outside? Fortunately, Arjuna asked this question for us:
Arjuna uvacha, sthita-prajnasya ka bhasha samadhi-sthasya keshava
sthita-dhih kim prabhasheta kim asita vrajeta kim. — Bhagavadgita 2.54
Arjuna asked, “What is the inner experience of an enlightened being? In worldly activities, how do they talk? How do they sit? How do they walk?”
The next eighteen verses are Krishna’s answer. He describes the process of becoming enlightened as well as how the enlightened being lives.
By divine Grace, all his sorrows are destroyed. With a peaceful mind, he abides in a Divine state of inner steadiness. — Bhagavadgita 2.65
Your understanding of this description begins from your own experiences of a peaceful mind. But what is “a Divine state?” These experiences are pivot points in your life.
I remember being a teenager at summer camp in the mountains. I often sat in a sacred grove that had a view of the valley. It was reserved as a silent lookout point. In the beginning, the view transported me. I felt like I could almost fly across the vast terrain. I felt free.
My experience changed as I returned again, sometimes multiple times daily. It became an inner vastness that was much greater than the view. At the same time, I felt…
So, at the end of your meditation, when you leap up and you get moving, physically or maybe it’s just your mind, you’re blocking your ability to see the Divine in the mundane. You’ve gone back to measuring, analyzing, counting…
— Gurudevi Nirmalananda
From Gurudevi’s full discourse “The Liminal Edge“
By Amanda (Purna) Schmidt
Are you interested deepening your meditation? Support your practice with this rudraksha head garland.
Wear it on your head to enhance your meditation. Designed by Gurudevi, it was handcrafted in Ganeshpuri. The garland features stones in the colors of the chakras. Made with delicate silver wire, a silver OM adornment completes the garland.
This beautiful and unique tool will both uplift and ground you simultaneously. Deepen your meditation experience with ease.
I have consistently been using my head mala for several months. It is resonant with meditative energy and helps me to settle in even more easily. I can feel Gurudevi’s blessing every time I wear this rudraksha head garland. — Karen S.
You have a right to bliss. The bliss of Consciousness, for it is what you are made of. If you aren’t experiencing the bliss of Consciousness, you don’t know who you really are. Fortunately, on this path, the bliss comes early. But it’s not unconscious bliss…
— Gurudevi Nirmalananda
From Gurudevi’s full discourse “The Bliss Comes Early“
Join Gurudevi Nirmalananda in a free Zoom call so you can ask your questions. In response, Gurudevi gives you ancient yogic teachings applicable to your modern life.
Enroll even if you don’t yet have a question. Everyone benefits from hearing the discussion.
These Q&A satsangs are amazing. I am sometimes not clear about my question, so I ramble. Gurudevi listens with patience and full attention. Then she asks me questions that help me finetune my question.
Her answer illuminates what I need to understand and shines light on an effective way forward to solving my problem. I get more than I imagined possible.
This is also my experience when I don’t have a question and just listen to others on the call. Gurudevi’s responses always turn out to be of great value to me as well.
— Terese R.
You know, the teachings are not enough. They must be enlivened by Grace. You can read the teachings. We read them in translation from the ancient texts, and you can read them for decades and never have a real experience. You certainly will get understandings, aha moments, intellectual breakthroughs, but without any real depth. The experience of your own Self is a feeling, not a thought. It is a deep quality of beingness, not a….
— Gurudevi Nirmalananda
From Gurudevi’s full discourse “The Root of Meditation“
By Gurudevi Nirmalananda
The ancient tradition of yoga includes yoga poses (asana), breathing methods (pranayama) and energy seals (mudra). It also offers guidelines for daily living (yamas and niyamas) and focusing practices (dharana).
You can progress to mastery of the energies of your senses (pratyahara), meditation (dhyana), absorption into your own inner ecstasy (samadhi), and even beyond that to enlightenment. All of these practices include a range from the very easy to the more subtle and profound.
One of the simplest and most effective things yoga teaches is to learn how to sigh. Right after a thorough, heart-felt sigh, there is an incredible feeling of stillness. This stillness transcends the world of space and time. It gives you an immediate taste of your own inner potential. Yoga is the science of maximizing that potential.
Yoga also offers study of the ancient texts that describe the nature of your own Being. It includes the science of sound, the inspiration we get from enlightened Masters of all traditions, and the opening of your heart to the divine presence that is always both within and outside.
In Svaroopa® Yoga, we work with the body for your specific purpose of having this inner experience. Everything we do, from the easiest to the most challenging, is for the higher purpose that is yoga itself. Yoga philosophy is embedded in everything we teach.
Excerpt from Yoga in Every Moment, pages 209‒210
By Marlene (Matrikaa) Gast, Yogaratna
When I took Teacher Training Level 1, I learned that Ujjayi Pranayama powerfully boosts the immune system.
Yet I was incredulous when this was my actual experience. It’s categorically stated that there is no cure for the common cold. It lasts for 7 to 10 days. And yet my two “common cold” yoga miracles each healed this minor illness within hours.
As a Certified Embodyment® Yoga Therapist, I’d signed up for a three-day “tune-up” program. I arrived with nonstop sneezing, a scratchy throat and watering eyes. Fortunately, the morning and afternoon of our first day were devoted to a thorough, experiential review of Ujjayi Pranayama.
By early evening, my symptoms were much less insistent. Chanting OM Namah Shivaaya opened our evening session, which concluded with Embodyment® exchanges with one another. The next morning I awoke with a clear head, my throat felt normal and the sneezes were gone.
More recently, I was again “coming down with a cold” while scheduled to attend an evening Ashram satsang. I felt lousy but wanted to keep my commitment. Our chant was the ecstatic “Hare Krishna, Hare Rama.” Within an hour, all cold symptoms, including fever, were gone.
Yoga miracles are abundant in our Svaroopa® community. Teacher-Trainer Swami Shrutananda says she “works in a miracle factory.” Perhaps you’ve read about these many miracles in our Ashram blogs.
All Svaroopa® yoga practices are “spine-centric,” uprooting disorders by melting deep tensions in the spine. These amazing therapies can ease symptoms, speed healing, and reverse even serious illnesses and diagnoses. In “Yoga for Every Body,” August 2014, Gurudevi explains,
When you work with your body as it really is, especially targeting your spine, deep tensions melt and your vertebrae decompress, so blood, oxygen and your body’s own healing energy (prana) bring new life into areas that need it.
My healings of “bad colds” — minor illnesses to be sure — still shine in my memory. From them I experientially learned the power of prana. Now I sense Divine Consciousness arising from within. I know it as the ultimate source of all healing.
Yoga explains that there is something worth finding, but it is located inside. Yoga gives you a peek at it – a glimpse of your own Self. And tools to attune yourself to your own Self – ways to progressively surrender into who you already are. And yoga gives you proof. Proof that there is a…
— Gurudevi Nirmalananda
From Gurudevi’s full discourse “Expansive Experiences“
practice & grace: giving you your Self
revealing the mystery
