Swamiji is appreciated every day by Svaroopis, but yesterday we raised a carrot cake-filled fork in her name and wished her a very Happy 70th Birthday. It was a blissful and sweet day.

Swami and local yogis celebrated at Lokananda in Downingtown with dinner and homemade carrot cake. Annapurna, the dining hall, was decked with bursts of orange from the decorations to the plates and orange bouquets adorned Kailasa, the meditation hall, where an evening Satsang was held.

Rama (Ruth) Brooke and fellow Svaroopis at her studio celebrated with birthday tea and a special carrot cupcake puja after their morning yoga class. They toasted Swami with “Om svaroopa svasvabhava and words of gratitude about how Swami has downloaded this maha yoga, and all its practices so beautifully and for us to enjoy as modern day Westerners.”

Devapriyaa (Denise) Hills shared, “To celebrate I did Arati, chanted with Baba, Meditated and lit some candles on cake. What a blessing that Swamiji was born to be a Guru in my lifetime.”

Carole Balcombe and Jean Glover share “Happy Birthday Swamiji.  Thank you for the Svaroopa Sciences.”

Swami’s Birthday celebration continues!  She’s leading a satsang in the Boston area on Friday night, with cake being planned.  And this Sunday November 20^th at the Calgary GeoCenter where they will share tea and cake as well as collecting a financial donation for the Ashram. Laksha (Elaine) Nesta is “so fortunate that Swami Nirmalananda has made this path accessible to us and continues to guide the community of Svaroopis.”

Namaste, Swamji. You are honored far and wide, inside and outside. Every day.

By Swami Nirmalananda

Time just keeps ticking along, even though what’s inside is eternal.  I don’t feel any older today than yesterday, but the clock and calendar say I am.  So are you.   It’s a little like taking the elevator to the top of the Empire State Building:  you walk in, the doors close, nothing much happens, but when they open again, you’re in a different world.   You haven’t changed, but the world keeps moving around you.  Whether it’s changes in your family, your work or a change in the political structure – you are still who you have always been.  Consciousness-Itself.  You are Shiva.  So am I.

The sages tell us that we experience this contrast every night.  Deep sleep gifts you with brief interludes of immersion into consciousness.  You’re re-enlivened by your unconscious dip into Consciousness-Itself.  This is what makes you wake up refreshed, like a whole new person ready for a whole new day.  Life keeps moving along, but your core essence is the Unchanging Reality from which it all emanates.  Meditation is more important than sleep because it gives you that dip into consciousness, but consciously.

Today is my birthday.  Turning 70 means I have actually already completed 7 decades.  Today is day one of my 80^th decade.  I’m excited!  I’m really looking forward to it!  Yoga’s promise is that it just keeps getting better and, after 50+ years of yoga, I know this to be true.  Even before dedicating myself to yoga, I figured out that each new decade was like getting a job promotion.  More responsibility, more autonomy, more freedom, more impact, more expertise to draw on, more appreciation for the others in my life, more, more, more…

As an American baby boomer, I grew up with, “Don’t trust anyone over 30.”  But by the time I was 25, I could see that friends, already over 30, were so much happier than I was.  They had it much more together than I did.  I began to look forward to turning 30.  And everything did get easier.  Then 40, then 50 – I really have found each decade to be better.

Of course, I benefit from many decades of yoga practice, supporting my body in its life process.  Not to mention how yoga has freed me from the mental-and-emotional baggage I’d been bound by over many lifetimes.  Most importantly, there’s Baba!  His presence in my life gave me what I’d been looking for, fulfilled my purpose for taking birth.  Now I have the privilege of serving you in the same way.

In the intro mantras I sing before teaching, one line stands out today, describing Muktananda, who I am honoring in the chant:

bhakta karyaika dehaya…

(I bow to the Guru) who remains in a body in order

to serve the needs of his devotees…

Once you have mastered consciousness, you can do or not do.  You can be active or still.  You can stay or go.  There is no thing you seek to accomplish, no thing you seek to own, no thing that you want to become, no place to go or to run away from.  What remains?  Why hang around?

Only to serve.

So today, on this anniversary of my birth, I thank you for giving me the chance to serve you.

OM svaroopa svasvabhavah namo namah

By Dhananjaya King

On the Svaroopa^® path, every day is like a pilgrimage without travel. Most people can rarely journey to a holy site. Most days they go places they have always gone. However, we Svaroopis are dedicated pilgrims on a sacred journey inward. Swami Nirmalananda’s teachings guide us in being “grounded and uplifted.” She is always just a thought or mouse-click away, serving as our compass and our map. Through her, our destination is known. This sacred journey, although not always free of troubles, is guaranteed to be one worth traveling.

We are all together on this pilgrimage. Given the richness of the Svaroopa^® Sciences, individual Svaroopis may have different paths, but our destination is the same. We are all headed to the knowing of Self. You need only change your perspective a fraction in order to recognize that everyone and everything shines with Divine Light. Swamiji’s teachings, founded in the ancient yogic texts, promise that fabulous gift.

The power of this pilgrimage etches our minds with Consciousness.  Swamiji has made it her life’s work to equip us with tools for the road. She has given us all that is necessary to live in the flow of Grace. It is our choice to accept the gift that allows the sacred to permeate our lives.

And it is this time of year when we give thanks for such great blessings. Let us give thanks for our Guru who points us toward the Light — our own inner Light and that Light in each and every other being. The practice of dakshina, financial support, is one of the tangible ways we can give back. Our donations, in whatever amount, provide what it takes to support Swamiji and the Ashram. We are supporting the source from which flows all that empowers our individual pilgrimages to the One.

You could argue that, whether you donate or not, Swamiji will do whatever it takes to show you your Self. That, in fact, is true. She has always given to us unstintingly. Yet wouldn’t it be nice for her to be able to do everything she would like, with the resources that we can provide for her to use?

If you contribute already, please considering increasing your contribution. If you don’t contribute now, please consider a donation. I guarantee it’s the best dollar you’ll ever spend.

For me it is about following my Guru’s example. The fraction I give back with a simple monthly donation gives me a sense of walking in her shoes, giving so others can benefit. It makes an immeasurable difference in my sacred journey.

Click here to arrange your donation online, or phone us at 610.644.7555.

By Swami Nirmalananda

Most of the yoga world in America voted for Hillary.  Not everyone, of course!  But those who voted for Hillary are accepting of others, regardless of their race, religion, sexual orientation… and politics.  So they are able to accept the yogis who voted for Donald.  Still, many yogis are having difficulty accepting the election results.  More than half of our voters in this election are on the losing side, with the electoral vote trumping the popular vote once again.  How does a yogi face reality?

The reality is that we don’t know what’s going to happen.  Donald’s supporters voted for him because he’s promised to change things, but he hasn’t revealed how.  Not only those who voted against him, but his own voters are thrust into uncertainty as well.   But uncertainty is part of life, even a predominant theme.  Even when things seem predictable or reliable, they don’t always pan you.   This is something you’ve faced before.

I’m amused by how subdued the media is.  Clearly they are shell-shocked, even mourning for the way they thought it was.  However, that’s not the way it really was.  Or is.  It’s time to use your yoga eyes.  See it for what it is.  Accept that it exists as it does.  Step into an intelligent assessment of what’s going on and make your decisions based on what will be effective compared to what’s not effective.

Today’s reality may not correspond to the expectations you had, or even your hopes.  This is not the first time in your life you’ve faced this.  You may be let down, angry, disappointed or anxious, especially if you voted for Clinton.  Yet Trump’s supporters are similarly anxious, for they don’t know what he will do, and they’ve been through all the other feelings along the way.  How does a yogi deal with such feelings?

Do more yoga.  You’re bigger than any election.  You’re bigger than your fears.  You’re bigger than your past and you’re bigger than what you imagine your future to be.  You’re here, right now.  Be.

By Amala Cattafi, SVA Board President

I did not seek out the sacred practice of pilgrimage. It snuck up on me. In 2001, I took my first Svaroopa^® yoga class, at the suggestion of a friend who found it helpful for back pain. I never imagined that would be my first step on a sacred pilgrimage to discover my Self.

You may have had a similar experience. You simply took a Svaroopa^® asana class, you attended a satsang, you received an Embodyment^® session. Perhaps you simply met Swamiji for the first time, and something stirred. Then you were never the same! And so your powerful personal pilgrimage to your Self began.

I have been blessed to experience pilgrimage with so many of you on a very large as well as a very small scale. I have travelled to the home of our lineage in Ganeshpuri India, bathed my head with the sacred water of the Ganga during the Kumbha Mela, have been moved to tears by the evening arati ceremony in Varanasi, melted into the sacred mountains at Macchu Pichu, and have met and been blessed by many beings in all these great places.

And yet, I get the same experience every time I drive to Lokananda to be in Swamiji’s presence, to listen to one of her recorded satsangs, to do seva (even from home), and to give financial support to the Ashram. What a blessing it is that we can make sacred pilgrimage so easily!

As our American Thanksgiving approaches, I reflect on the pilgrims who traveled to a “new world” in search of religious freedom. They made the brave and difficult decision to leave their homes and search for a new way of life. You, too, are a pilgrim on a journey, but how beautiful that you can do so without leaving home.

Throughout time, yogis have made the brave and difficult decision to search for a new way of living in pursuit of moksha — liberation, spiritual freedom. This is what yoga promises, and provides. You know this because you feel it stirring every time you attend a Svaroopa^® asana class or satsang. You even feel it after talking about your yoga experiences with someone else in our Svaroopa^® community.

You, along with me and other Svaroopis, are on a pilgrimage to your Self. Through your Svaroopa^® Sciences practices, you are the sacred ground in which you find your Divine Self. May this pilgrimage open you to the practice of dakshina, financial support of the source of the teachings that guide you on your own sacred journey.

Our Capital Campaign has been successfully concluded, supporting our physical home, Lokananda.  Now we turn to our Fall Fundraiser, coinciding with Thanksgiving. It gives you an opportunity to take your yoga practice off your snuggly blankets and actively into the world.

I invite you to take a look at your current monthly contribution…perhaps it is time to increase it a bit? Or, if giving monthly is not something that you already do, please consider supporting your yoga and your Swami in this way.

Dedicated monthly giving benefits your Ashram greatly. Your Ashram has the comfort of relying on these monthly donations to meet the monthly costs of providing the services that support you on your pilgrimage. No matter the amount on your monthly donation, you make a sacred monthly pilgrimage into your own heart. As Baba Nityananda said, “The heart is the hub of all sacred places…go there and roam.”

Thank you for increasing or making a monthly gift.  If a single donation works better for you, we deeply appreciate your generosity in any amount.  Click here to arrange your donation online, or phone us at 610.644.7555.

Om Svaroopa Svasvabhava Namo Namah

By Vibhuti King

Seventy years ago on the auspicious day of 15 November, a great being was being born. Who knew then that she would follow her great love of God and find her Guru, Baba Muktananda? Yet she did, and under his love and guidance she became Swami Nirmalananda Saraswati, the great being she is today.

On her birthday, 15 November, we celebrate our relationship with our beloved Guruji. She is the Light that has lit our own inner Light. She is the Light that shows us the way. How blessed are we to know such a great being and revel in the day of her birth!  And what a celebration it is on the inside with the fruits so visible on the outside!

How does one celebrate such a day? Well, my idea is that baking our Guru’s favorite cake, carrot cake, is in order. Tirtha Richards will be making the cake, consciously, while repeating mantra. I am inviting yoga buddies, and we will all begin the celebration by chanting Swami Nirmalananda’s song, Sri Guru Gita. We will meditate. We will listen to one of her discourses on the Truth and take turns sharing what stands out for us in that talk.

To enhance our gathering, we will share stories of how we met Guruji. It is always so much fun to hear these stories! Then drinking chai and eating carrot cake— what delight! But before we dive in, we’ll pause just before taking that first sip and first bite, take a breath and breathe OM Namah Shivaaya into that sip or bite that has become ambrosia, the food of the Gods!

Already we are wishing, “Happiest of Birth Days to you, my beloved Guru. I am so blessed that you took birth this one last time.”

What are YOUR plans for this highly auspicious celebration? Please plan to share it with photos on our Ashram Facebook page. Send them together with the description of your celebration to Sandie@svaroopayoga.org.

By Lajja (Ellen) Mitchell

Strike that title! Instead, make it, “How Japa Continues to Change My Life!”

I am not sure when I started repeating mantra regularly. It might have been after my first meditation course in 2012.  I certainly focused more on it in during my trip to India in 2013.  My first Seva after returning was to be on a team for our community-wide Japathon, a phone event where we all repeated mantra aloud together.  In a multitude of ways, 2013 was the year of japa for Svaroopa^® yoga and for me. I read all the contemplation articles. Frequenting our svaroopa.org website, I listened to Freebie audio recordings on anything japa.  I bought my first mala. And every time I saw Swami that year, I heard her said, “Do more japa!”

I know from experience that japa helps to quiet my mind.  In addition, japa is the vehicle to help bring me into meditation; japa is portable and I can do it anywhere. I say japa when I am happy or sad, when I am in a state of fear or love, whether my life is up or down. Japa can level-set me and take me back to a more centered space. I also say japa right before bed. What better way to quiet the mind at the end of the day? Many times, I dedicate this practice to someone else that I know may need some prayers.

Recently, while waiting for a meeting to start, I started saying japa to fill the time. Japa took me to a deep, calming place. My mind was quiet. It was meditative. I almost forgot there was a meeting to be held.

I now think that I live more in the pause and less in the reaction. I firmly believe that, as one of my yoga practices, japa has helped me to get to this place within. So that is why I say, “My japa practice continues to change my life!”

By Matrika Gast

“The sole purpose of yoga is to reveal your Self within you,” Swami Nirmalananda reminds us. In her discourse “You Are Becoming Great” she describes the diverse yoga philosophies and practices of yoga as having one goal.  They take you to the knowing of your own Self, so you live from your own Self. They let you know when you’re not in your Self and how to return again and again.

It’s hard to see your progress week-to-week or month-to-month. Incremental change is hard to detect. But you can measure your growth by looking back a year or two. You will recognize so many positive changes. Perhaps you have a greater abundance of inner peace and outer harmony with your life situations as they are. If pain led you to begin Svaroopa^® yoga, perhaps your practices have dissolved it. Perhaps they have enabled you to know that, while you have a body and a mind, you are so much more than your body and your mind.

Intertwined emotional and physical pain got me into the Svaroopa^® Sciences. It’s taken me more than a decade of practice to see how ingrained patterns of thought and behavior created all that agonizing stuff.  I now see how the practices clear the way to me being in my own Self. Alas, it’s certainly not all of the time! But I’m in Self enough to know the distinct difference between living from Self and reacting from the delusions and habits of “little s-self.”

When I look back a decade, I see someone doing just enough asana practice to calm down and rest blissfully in Shavasana. That gave me enough inner expansion to plan how to get more from external situations; an essential strategy to fill my gaping well of neediness. Of course, any sense of inner abundance was short lived. I finally figured out that you can’t rely on situations and relationships to give you the More. That well of neediness can’t be filled from outside. For real change, it needs to be gone. Paradoxically, the inner arising of Self dissolves that well.

Right now I am delighted by looking through my window and seeing juncos nibble millet from a bird feeder. But I don’t count on the outside to give me a sense of well being. Letting the Svaroopa^® practices invade my life is creating real inner change. That inner expansion of Self gives rise to gratitude. It makes me want to celebrate progress in this miraculous process. A decade ago I could not have imagined this result.

Celebration and gratitude go hand in hand. From national harvest festivals and independence commemorations to family weddings, baptisms and birthday parties — we celebrate all with gratitude. Delicious food, the light of candles or fireworks, along with gift-giving thread through these events. And all are pervaded by a sense of the sacred.

But what to do when you want to celebrate and express gratitude for a subtle, personal milestone? Unlike public and family celebrations, there are no traditional observances. I am grateful for the practices, for the company of fellow Svaroopis on this path, for our stellar Ashram Teachers, sevites and staff — and for Swami Nirmalananda who brought it all into being. So it makes sense to celebrate and express gratitude in the context of this family, this kula.

As to delicious food, candle light and the presence of the Divine within, I look back one week ago, when Swami Nirmalananda came to Boise ID to offer the gift of Satsang. Forty Svaroopis in all stages of process attended. Without doubt, this was a celebration of the practices and progress of all of us. You could see everyone soaking in her words. Darshan was a completely new experience for most of our group. Yet they came forward with gentle smiles, bows and questions for Swamiji.

Afterward, a brand-new Svaroopa^® yoga student described her experience as “amazing.” She said she had felt a sense of communication with Swamiji that went beyond the words she was hearing. Asserting “She’s the ‘real deal,’” this new asana student signed up for our next Svaroopa^® Vidya Meditation series.

For me, Swami Nirmalananda’s Satsang was the culmination of years of practice to date. For even in the first years of practice, when my progress was scant, my ultimate hope was to bring Swamiji to Boise and thus to spark transformation in many, many others.

As with other celebrations, gift-giving is surely appropriate. So I am planning my donation for our annual Thanksgiving fundraiser, starting soon.

By Swami Nirmalananda

Yoga’s goddesses are not just the beauties on magazine covers and in videos.  The Indian roots of yoga gift us with a mythic reality, incredibly rich and fulfilling, to explain everyday as well as extraordinary events.

Lakshmi and Saraswati are among the best-known Goddesses, each of whom is the Ultimate Reality in a feminine, creative, fertile, productive and powerful form.  Most Goddesses sit on lotuses, rooted in the mud of the earth yet blooming in pristine beauty.

Sunday October 30 is Diwali, Lakshmi’s annual festival.  As a harvest festival, it celebrates the bounty of Mother Earth (Bhudevi), as well as expresses gratitude.  Yet Diwali is not merely about material abundance, nor was Thanksgiving Day meant to be.  In 1789, President George Washington issued the first Thanksgiving Proclamation, establishing it as a day of “public thanksgiving and prayer” devoted to “the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be.”

Diwali is a public holiday in India, with celebrations featuring the fireworks of our Fourth of July, the feast of our Thanksgiving, the gift-giving of our Christmas & Hannukah, and the loud and boisterous parties of our New Year’s Eve.  Everyone gets new clothes and dresses in their finest, with family and public events filling the day, even spanning 2 or 5 days in some regions!

It’s a great celebration.  Yet it’s about the “beneficent Author of all…”  Its roots lie in ancient times, the honoring of life itself as well as the way nature’s bounty sustains us.  Lakshmi is the name given to this Divine Energy of beneficence, the generosity that supports and nourishes all, that which makes us thrive.  It seems unfamiliar to the Western mind because we don’t have a name for something that happens every day.

A seed sprouts, sends roots into the earth and reaches up for the light.  What makes it sprout?  What makes it grow, flower and fruit?

There is an energy, a power hidden within the seed, something that propels an inert little speck to blossom into a living plant — a plant that gives us the food that we harvest and eat.

This Divine energy produces more than enough seeds, not only to feed us, along with a myriad of insects and other creatures, but to provide for its future generations (and ours).  How many seeds does a pomegranate have?  How incredibly prolific!

The sages of India gave a name to this Divine Energy:  Lakshmi.  They honored all the different energies as Divine Energies, describing this world as a Divine Playground, and gave us mystical practices and teachings that promise us the same seeing.

Religion honors the Divine as though it is found outside of you, being in relationship with you, blessing or testing you.  Thus Lakshmi is found in Hinduism, honoring the Divine Nature of the food we eat and all the blessings we receive.  Yet yogis look deeper.  Yogis look for the Divine within.  Thus it is, on Diwali, that yogis look for that same beneficence within themselves, that same blossoming forth in a spirit of generosity, nurturance and blessings.

When you celebrate the bounty that will feed us through the winter, you naturally prepare a holiday feast and enjoy the company of your nearest and dearest.  You also shop the season’s sales, so you can grab more of the bounty for yourself and your loved ones.  This is how the celebration of bounty turns into institutionalized greed, not only at the dinner table but for weeks afterward, all the way to Christmas or through your whole life.

Yet when you celebrate the Divine source of that bounty, paying attention to something you usually take for granted, you stop to honor the sanctity of life and the holy gift of the Goddess.  Then you truly give thanks, not only to the sun and earth, but to the Divine source.  Opening your heart in gratitude is a Divine experience, hopefully one you can share with others who share your acknowledgement of that Divine presence in all.

As a yogi, you go a step further.  You look for the Divine source inside, not only to experience but to act on, just as Lakshmi does, by sharing your bounty with others.   Thus, for yogis, Diwali is a time for giving gifts, a time to support those they care about the most.  It’s not about receiving; it’s about being the ever-flowing font of blessings.  Diwali is a day to honor the Divine within you, as well as the Divine outside of you and all around.  It’s a time to thank Her for Her great blessings — on a day dedicated to Lakshmi. Diwali.

And you could even dress up as a Goddess for the day!  Not as a sex-goddess, not for the purpose of attracting attention, but as a scintillating form of Divinity.  It’s a day to honor the Divine blessings that give us life for yet another year, as well as to honor the Divinity in yourself, that is your Self.

OM svaroopa svasvabhava namo nama.h

image credits (from top to bottom):

• Lakshmi:  www.ifairer.com
• Saraswati: http://www.rudraksha-ratna.com
• Seed Sprouting:  www.the-science-mom.com
• Lakshmi yaj~na (fire ceremony):  Ashram photo from Kerala event
• Dressing as Lakshmi:  www.qz.com
• Swami Nirmalananda’s hands: Ashram collection (on the cover of Namah CD)

by Matrika Gast

Since 1998, I have carefully considered “what’s in it for me” every time I’ve participated in a Svaroopa^® yoga class, teacher training course or retreat.  I’ve had plenty of expectations.  “Exceeded expectations” doesn’t really capture my experience either.  It’s that my mind didn’t have the capacity to envision what I was about to get.

My first Svaroopa^® yoga class was at a teachers’ conference focused on another yoga style.  I thought I was going to get a little time out, but I got noticeable release in my spine, for the first time ever.  A few years later, Swami Nirmalananda (then Rama) gave a Heart Opening weekend in the studio where I taught (a different style of yoga).  I enrolled in the workshop to “support” my colleague who was hosting Rama.  He needed no “support” as the studio filled with nearly 30 participants.  I was the only teacher in that group.

In Supported Fish, everyone was in bliss.  Except me.  My memory still presents me with the sensation of flames licking my sacrum and lumbar spine.  That was my first taste of awakened Kundalini, because a few months later my life started to change exponentially.  My granddaughter was born in Idaho and I soon found myself migrating to live there.  That move put me close to Swamiji’s 2004 Core Opening² (squared) week-long immersion in Montana.  I signed up, expecting to “find my center,” since my move had unraveled life as I had known it.

What I found in Core Opening² was not merely a sense of center, but the beginning of amazing expansion and transformation.  That week-long title’s resonance with E = mc² should have tipped me off that it was time to fasten my seat belt.  It has not been what I expected.  Instead what I have found is being supported by “that for which I have always yearned” — Self.  Wonderment after wonderment has unfolded at the speed of light.

I took Foundations about a year later, and then entered YTT. After full certification as a Certified Svaroopa^® Yoga Teacher, I took Meditation Teacher Training and then opened my own studio.  That granddaughter is now 16 AND she seems to actually like hanging out with me.  After a yoga class with me, her word for her Shavasana feeling was “contented.”

It’s such subtle, even seemingly insignificant events that blow my mind.  Flying home from our annual SVA Board retreat last August, I had a layover in Phoenix.  Waiting at the gate for my flight to Boise, I conversed with a woman flying on to Spokane WA.  I don’t remember how we started talking about yoga, but when she mentioned back pain, I told her about Svaroopa^® yoga and our “deceptively easy, amazingly powerful” poses for spinal release.  I also told her about Francie Light, CSYT, who teaches in Spokane.  I had no expectation that the woman would remember our conversation even five minutes later.  But today I received this email from Francie:

I wanted to tell you that a new student started yoga on Tuesday.  She met you in the Phoenix airport and said that there was just “something about her” that attracted her to you.  So you talked to her and she found me, and here she is taking Svaroopa^® yoga!

Small world, so amazingly miraculous and beautiful.

In the end, that is “what is in it for me,” witnessing the impossible-to-imagine miracles that unfold along this Grace-filled path.