A famous Hindu chant is often chanted in yoga studios and training worldwide. The words are “lokāḥ samastāḥ sukhinaḥ bhavantu.” While the word "sukha" is usually translated as happiness, giving the mantra the meaning of "may the world be happy," there is a more meaningful etymology to this word that is particularly significant at this time.

"Sukha" does mean joy and delight, but there is equally, or perhaps more strongly, the sense that it refers to ease, comfort, and coziness. Consider regions around the world where people are struggling with the necessities of life under the daily threat of war, oppression, or violence. One way of holding them in our prayers is to ask that their lives ease up into a more comfortable existence.

In this guided meditation, taken from our Yoga of Sound Immersion, you will engage in a simple yet powerful prayer that embodies the spirit of the Vedas. It is designed to be accessible to everyone, even those without knowledge of Sanskrit,...

Yoga, Tantra, and the Vedic experience, which we engage uniquely in our Yogic Mystery School, is about heightened consciousness, which, in turn, is related to several factors or variables.
 
From everything we have discovered through human psychology and the Age of Enlightenment in the West, our psychological health and emotional well-being are crucial factors influencing our everyday consciousness. And suppose there is a state of consciousness that is more evolved, significant, higher, and more profound than our everyday consciousness. In that case, that state cannot be entirely disconnected from our self-awareness born of our physical and psychological development. In other words, there has to be some connection, a living connection, not an arbitrary mental assumption, between all types of consciousness.  Since John Welwood's seminal discovery of spiritually bypassing, we now know that someone deeply engaged in spiritual practices could avoid addressing their emotional...

RUSSILL: On a day like this, we wanna wish everybody who identifies with Christianity a very blessed day, because this is a day that is so special for anybody who has grown up Christian or who has been born into a Christian family, or someone who is actively a Christian.  

ASHA: And we also like to wish people of all faith or no faith that this day, may this day be a day of resurrection for you and whatever that you feel needs new energy. We wanted to offer a simple message to everyone in the world, regardless of your faith.

TODAY, THE INFLUENCE OF EASTERN SPIRITUALITY IS STRONG IN OUR LIVES

RUSSILL: At the present time because of the deep influence of Eastern spirituality, for me personally, today is a day to meditate upon the light. We, in our yogic mystery school, we've been studying the Gayatri Upasana, which is such an incredible practice in which we meditate upon the light, we pay attention to the light.

In St. John's gospel, there is the strong influence of what is...

Maha Shivaratri is "The Great Night of Shiva." What does it mean? What should one do on this night? Who, or what, is Shiva? The auspicious time begins the evening of March 08 and continues until March 09 sunrise. There's more information below on fasting time, if that's a component you wish to add.

MENTAL PREPARATION

First, Shiva is a name for Ultimate Reality. For instance, we might use the word "God" to refer to this Ultimate Reality as the source of the universe. God, as a word, generally refers to the personal sense of this Ultimate Reality but is often anthropomorphic, described in human terms with human projections, which, for some, if not many, can be a turnoff.

In Shaivism, Shiva is both a personal God and the Ultimate Reality, which, in Hinduism, has a tremendous cosmic existential aspect, spread out throughout the entire universe, present behind the light of stars and the movement of galaxies. We seek to engage and encounter this extensive experience of consciousness on...

Peace is always within our reach, depending not on what is going on in our lives or the world but on our fundamental, prevailing attitude. Regardless of the concerns that arise in our minds and cloud our hearts with anxiety, all it often takes is a turning around, a shift in perception, to realize that peace is intrinsic to our innermost nature, our deepest Self. Yet, this is easier said than done. It requires a process to train ourselves to recognize the quality of peacefulness as it manifests in us and as we manifest it in our consciousness through deliberate intention. This 10-day process invites us into a daily practice and perspective to exercise the intentional application to manifest peacefulness in our consciousness and to learn to recognize and relish what that feels like physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. 

In his core message, Jesus used an interesting Hebrew word that many of us find hard to swallow because it carries a sense of reprimand and...

Each year, for the past twenty-five years, we’ve taken our pilgrims to a snake temple on the outskirts of the local village. This is no ordinary temple. Upon entry, we are greeted with an image of a beautiful goddess hooded with a five-headed serpent and the body of a snake. What is remarkable about this temple is that a live serpent dwells here in the form of a female cobra.

Eggs and milk are left out daily and are consumed by the snake that dwells in a large mound covered with turmeric as a sign of healing and worship. There is also a stone form of the goddess inside, upon which the priest pours liquids for special pujas. He performed a rather remarkable ritual for us, during which we chanted many of the mantras we use in our school, along with mudras, to engage the experience.

The original snake cults that are also associated with fertility cults continue to be integrated into the Tantric form of Hinduism that dominates popular Hinduism today, especially in our native state...

A few days ago, we performed Rudra Abhisekham on the river bed. The waters of the holy river Cauvery are controlled by a dam in order to distribute the water over many fields and villages. It is a wide riverbed with gorgeous river sand in areas that make for amazing spaces to meditate and conduct spiritual practice.

The effect of this ancient form of worship is to generate a powerful wave of positive energy that, in turn, removes negative vibrations. The Shiva Lingam, which is the focus of the puja, emanates a distinctive vibration for which mantras from the Yajur Veda are chanted, in particular, the Sri Rudra Praśna.

Around 6 pm, on a full moon, we gathered together on the river sand to pour milk and make other traditional ablutions on the Shiva Linga, offering flowers, incense, and fire. It was a magical experience, especially to sit as a community in silent meditation after the ritual was completed.

The Rudra Praśna is a collection of eleven anuvākas (sections) comprising the...

Bede Griffiths would often tell us how important it is to live close to nature, which is why he designed a lifestyle for the monk modeled on Indian village life.

So very often, when we encounter nature, we want to engage the experience through the lens of our phones and cameras, documenting the encounter instead of experiencing it.

Can we experience our experiences as experiences?

If you want to explore what this means, try and become aware of how much of the human experience you are having at any moment is consumed by descriptive and inferring thoughts, images (of others one might be connected to), projections into or away from the immediate experience and associations with other matters, even if related to the experience. 

Imagine the ability to experience an experience, no matter what it is, with a minimal amount of thoughts, associations, projections, and imagination. What would a peach, or some wonderful fruit, taste like? Even the simplicity of eating something...

Our most recent experience was an extraordinary fire ceremony known as homa, havan or yagna. We’ve experienced countless ceremonies like this over the years, but this one was different and amazingly powerful.

First, the ceremony began with a ritual that we learn in our mystery school. This powerful healing Tantric ritual fashions tumeric into an shape that is representative of the remover of obstacles (Vighneśwara). Many of us turned to each other in recognition as we noted that procedure and the mantras that we’ve learned to chant.

The next part was the fire ceremony that began with the homa nyāsa followed by the homam, which was extraordinarily powerful. It was to the Ultimate Shakti, invoking Her as Brihadnayaki (the ancient leader).

Although we have learned to offer mantras and offerings in the sacred fire, there was a fascinating vibration during the priest’s rendering of particular mantras, mudras and offerings, something that cannot be put into words. Some...

OVERVIEW: ABOUT THIS BLOG

I've put quite some thought into this insightful blog that can help you discern the best approaches in your meditation practice. The approaches are those that stimulate creativity and productivity in contrast to those that take us into depth consciousness and mystical relationships.

There's quite a bit of insights in the blog for teachers, coaches, and healers, as well as professionals and everyday spiritual practitioners. You will need to read the blog to understand the concluding recommendations on why it is best not to engage both approaches simultaneously.

FUNCTIONAL MEDITATION VERSUS MYSTICISM

The word "meditation" is most often used in a generic sense to mean any type of spiritual practice. Since the Herbert Benson study at Harvard, practices that elicit what is called the "relaxation response" have come to be the benchmark for meditation practices. Any practice that helps you lower your stress can, inversely, increase your productivity and...