A few days ago I felt inspired to write an article about celebration, but I didn’t write down the ideas. Today when I sat down to write, at first I felt blocked due to a challenging PMS state that was passing through my body-mind. My gut felt gripped from all sides, and I thought that I surely could not write anything inspiring in the throes of that state, but then I thought of what my teacher Basil would say: ‘We have to keep doing our disciplines, no matter how bad we feel.’ So, I began writing, and as I wrote, I healed myself along the way… Writing is healing for me, especially when it helps me to remember spiritual Truths that purify my mind of negative thoughts.

One such spiritual Truth is this: The mind becomes that which it dwells upon. This ancient Indian sutra counsels us to be careful where we put our attention, because our energies follow where we place our mind’s focus. So, rather than focusing on the gripping sensation in my belly, I advised myself to follow the thread of celebration; to jump on my cheerful horse calling out, “pdheop! pdheop!” PDHEOP is an acronym I made up recently to remind myself to be patient, detached, humble, enthusiastic, optimistic, and positive.

Invoking the lyrics of that old Kool & the Gang pop tune, “Celebration,” I set about opening my mind to dwell upon the original purpose of this human life: celebration… “Celebrate good times, come on… there’s a party going on right here, a celebration to last throughout the years… so bring your good times, and your laughter too, we gonna celebrate and party with you… let’s all celebrate and have a good time… it’s time to come together… it’s up to you ~ what’s your pleasure? Everyone around the world, come on!”

Merging all of our good times and all of our bad times together in one wild breath, let us delight in listening to our Mother Earth speaking to us. Spring wildness is the precious earth shouting in joy: “Celebrate good times! Smell my fragrances, see my colors, let your hearts sing in celebration of this blossoming season!”

O earth beings, open out to experience your oneness – not just with the creatures with whom you share the land, sea, and air, but also feel your oneness with the stars of the vast galaxies… and with the Love energies that pulse through races of space beings, whose very souls breathe our fabric of existence in and out of beingness. There is not even a tiny molecule separating us from the Whole of Creation. We are all connected in one continuous web of energy and vibration. From a little spider to a tall skyscraper, and from a miraculous human fetus to a shimmering space creature, everything, everything, everything is part of One connected energy. Every thought, every word, every action affects the Whole.

We are here on the earth to love and to celebrate. So many things pull us away from that celebration, but it is now time for us all to focus our intentions on uniting together in One Heart, One Love, One Singing and Dancing Celebration. Discarding the past garments that served as armor, let us adorn our bodies with flowers and feathers and glitter… Let us join hearts and hands, and dance together in celebration of our time here on this living earth.

Let us dwell upon this image: billions of human beings joining together to honor and heal the earth, and all the creatures of the land, sea, air, and space. Let us remember our intrinsic Oneness with everything.

May all beings everywhere know Peace and Happiness

Om Shanti (Peace),

Yogini Tejaswini

Photo of lilacs by orange glass candlight by Teja Shankara.

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Greetings everyone! Here is my current news in brief ~ 

~ I will be teaching a few workshops at the Mystic Garden Party festival in Corning, California this July 21-26. To view my workshop descriptions, go to http://www.mysticgardenparty.com ~ then go to "Workshops, All Bios" and scroll down to the Devotional Dome section. If you can make it to this festival, it will be fun to see you there!

~ My friend Pete is visiting Ashland, and we have been making and uploading videos to my YouTube channel, Yogini Bliss. My user name is 16Tejaswini. To view interviews and chants with me, go to http://www.youtube.com/user/16Tejaswini. (There are now 5 videos on my channel, and there are more good ones on Pete's channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/YogiSinzapatos.)

~ Pete also helped me convert my new book Radiance Rising: Spiritual Practices for Daily Living into an e-book, which is now available on this website store for $4.99. If you order the e-book, it will be e-mailed to you within 24 hours. 

That's all for today.... sending lots of Spring Blossom Bliss to you all!

May all beings everywhere know Peace and Happiness.

Om Shanti (Peace),

Yogini Tejaswini

a.k.a. Teja Shankara

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Yesterday, while waiting for the mechanic to replace my car's battery, I sat in the lobby re-charging my own batteries through writing in my journal and eating a bit of dark chocolate with almonds. After a while, I decided to write out a page of phrases that described me in that moment. Here's what I wrote... in no particular order...

Teja Shankara: open, fresh, new, bright, healer, star, mystic-to-be, kirtan artist (to be), circle facilitator, magnolia, Govinda Dasi, horse, lion, Raven, green, black, cosmos, space beings, Lalla, chocolate, Amma, Durga, Rama, LOVE, Surya (Sun god), Neem Karoli Baba, Reiki Guides, Shiva-Shakti Namo Namah, Sita Ram, Sita Ram, Sita Ram, Sita Ram.

Writing those images of myself in that moment brought me into a state of Self-Love, Happiness, and Bliss. I often talk and write about Cultivating the Witness, that spiritual practice of simply watching ourselves objectively in each moment. Sometimes the witness part of my mind gets a bit too serious, and so writing down those words helped me to witness myself in a more creative, playful way.

Today the sun is shining bright and I enjoyed a nice lunch out with a friend. We then walked in Lithia Park where the cool water rushed over the stones in the creek, and I reflected on the importance of flowing with life. On our way home we stopped in the Enchanted Florist Cafe for a cup of thick liquid chocolate, like the kind they drank in the movie Chocolat. While enhaling the heady aroma of gorgeous tropical flowers, I sipped that chocolate, and again my thoughts turned to flowing with life.

Although I didn't "get much done" on my grand lists today, I did get something very important done: I stepped out of the way of my usual routine, and allowed myself to flow in a fun and spontaneous way. May we all enjoy the flow of life.

May all beings everywhere know Peace and Happiness.

Om Shanti (Peace),

Yogini Tejaswini

Enchanted Florist Cafe and Lithia Creek photos by Teja Shankara.

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In this material realm, change is the only constant. When we remember this eternal truth, we experience detachment and peace. When the spiritual principle of impermanence is so obviously true, why is it so hard for us to remember it? Somehow the physical realm deludes us into believing that it is permanent, even though over and over we experience the truth of impermanence.

We need to accept that the nature of the world is change, but it is challenging to find acceptance when we can’t even remember the principle! So what can we do to help ourselves remember? First, it is important to understand the reason why we suffer when we forget the truth of impermanence. We suffer because of the attachments and expectations that we create in our minds when we forget that things will inevitably keep changing.

Once we understand why we suffer from our forgetfulness, next we need to take actions to continually help ourselves remember. Daily spiritual practices give us regular opportunities for remembrance. One of my favorite spiritual practices is chanting. For over six years I have been singing along with the CDs of popular chant artists such as Krishna Das and Jai Uttal. In my new book, Radiance Rising: Spiritual Practices for Daily Living (available on this website store in print or by e-book), I describe the transformative practice of chanting.

Daily chanting helps me to remember that change is the nature of the world. When I am feeling particularly attached to something, I chant to Shiva, the Hindu aspect of destruction. Inherent in the dissolution principle of Shiva is also the creation principle, because when one thing dissolves, it creates the space for something new to emerge. So when we consciously release our attachments, that opens up the space for detachment to grow within us.

There is an image of Lord Shiva dancing in ecstasy over the cremation grounds. He is ecstatic because when the bodies are burned, the attachments that go along with the bodies also burn, thereby freeing the souls to be in Bliss. In her book The Eternal Truth, Ammachi describes this image of Shiva dancing in bliss, and then she says, “The meaning of this is not that bliss comes to us only after death. Everything is within us. We and the universe are one. Both are equally complete. When the attachment to the body dies in the fire of Self-awareness, we are automatically filled with bliss… Shiva is called ‘the detached one’ (vairagi). Detachment (vairagya) means absence of attachment.” (The Eternal Truth, by Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi, Mata Amritanandamayi Mission Trust, Amritapuri, India, 2006 & 2007.)

So the ability to let go of attachments exists within each of us. It is important that we each take the time to cultivate this ability… in whatever ways help us to achieve more detachment. In addition to chanting along with CDs, I also attend evenings of live kirtan (call and response chanting) whenever possible.

Inspired by my love of kirtan, last June I bought myself a harmonium and asked Amma to bless me to be able to sing and play harmonium. Slowly I am learning this new art form, after a lifetime of believing that I could not sing! At the weekly Radiance Rising Circles, I am even starting to lead simple chants. Last weekend a friend and I recorded a Shiva chant and posted it on my YouTube Channel, www.youtube.com/16Tejaswini. That video is also posted at the top of this blog post.

May we all remember that change is the nature of the world. May we all find ways to release our attachments. May we all experience the bliss of detachment.

May all beings everywhere know Peace and Happiness.

Om Shanti (Peace),

Yogini Tejaswini

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“Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.” Richard Hooper shares this quote from modern Buddhist wisdom in his beautiful book, Jesus, Buddha, Krishna and Lao Tzu: The Parallel Sayings. (Sanctuary Publications, Inc., Sedona, AZ, 2007.) Hooper continues with this insight into suffering:

“For most of us, most of the time, it’s hard to remember that pleasure and pain always go hand in hand. We forget that we cannot have one without the other. So we seek to maximize pleasure and do our best to avoid pain. But the great masters knew that life doesn’t work that way. Everything in our universe comes to us in pairs of opposites, and the opposites are always changing from one to the other. Pain replaces pleasure, pleasure replaces pain, over and over again, endlessly. Nothing in the material universe ever remains the same for long. But when we finally understand this truth at the most profound level, we have a chance to change the rules of the game. Buddha taught that there is a way out of suffering, and that way is to eliminate desire. If we can retrain the mind so that it no longer craves, so that it no longer prefers one thing over another – so that good and bad, pleasure and pain, hot and cold, love and hate are all the same to us, then suffering ceases of its own accord.”

So how do we retrain our minds? How do we unlearn our tendency to prefer one thing over another? Take a moment to reflect on your preferences. Then reflect on how you respond when you feel pain on any level – physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual. Do you run from the pain? Do you reach for ice cream or turn on the television?

When we avoid our pains, we actually prolong them. When we face and embrace our pains, with willingness to go through them, we heal ourselves on all levels. But since most of us have learned to avoid pain, we have to retrain our minds. We retrain our minds through regular, daily spiritual practices. In my new book, Radiance Rising: Spiritual Practices for Daily Living, I describe the daily practices that have helped me to retrain my mind. Written from my perspective as a raja yogini, this pocket book describes basic practices that anyone – of any faith – could apply to their own life. The most important practice that I explain in the book is cultivating the witness.

We can practice cultivating the witness during our sitting meditation sessions and also throughout our busy daily lives. When we cultivate the witness, that objective part of ourselves that simply watches everything we think, say, and do, we learn to accept ourselves exactly as we are in each moment. We learn to accept the full spectrum of all of our emotions. This acceptance teaches us to fully love ourselves when we are experiencing joy and when we are experiencing sorrow. As our witnessing capacity expands, our self-love grows, and as our self-love grows, we identify less with our pains, so we suffer less.

The more we practice witnessing everything that is arising in our beings, the more we begin to remember who we truly are, underneath all the layers of who we aren’t! This is a choice. We choose to keep remembering who we truly are. And we can choose to be happy no matter what temporary state is passing through us.

Happiness is not just something that “happens” to us if we are lucky. We can decide to be happy, and if we put for the effort to be happy, then we will gradually become more and more happy.

What effort are you willing to put forth to achieve happiness? Are you willing to sit in meditation at least once each day for twenty minutes or longer? Are you willing to watch your thoughts as an ongoing practice? Are you willing to love yourself no matter what pains you are going through?

These are important questions for us all to ask ourselves. In this time of rapid change on our sweet planet earth, we can each do our small part to help raise the consciousness of our human species. Since we are all connected in one continuous web of energy and vibration, the choices we make for ourselves really do affect everyone else. Let us each choose to be happy through all the joys and sorrows of life. Let us each spread that happiness to all the beings in all the worlds.

May all beings everywhere know Peace and Happiness.

Om Shanti (Peace), 

Yogini Tejaswini

Buddha statue photo by beggs – CC license

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“Teja, tranquility,” I said when it was my turn during the introductions part of last night’s Radiance Rising Circle. Each week, after we chant the sacred syllable OM three times to set sacred space for the circle, we each say our name and a quality that we would like to call into our lives. After we say our name and quality, the group then repeats our name and quality out loud three times. Hearing our names and qualities voiced by others helps to bring those vibrations into our beings. As the Universe hears our intentions, we witness the power of the spoken word.

Before going to last night’s circle, I was contemplating what quality I wished to call in. I thought of surrender, acceptance, and patience, but those didn’t quite capture what it was that I was needing to bring into my being. Over the weekend, my energy was zapped by some sinus stuff passing through my physical body, and my system was challenged by some relationship issues affecting my emotional body. Even as I felt exhausted on several levels, I also witnessed a certain jittery feeling, similar to anxiety. I called a dear friend and we had a good conversation about spiritual purification.

What does it mean to purify ourselves spiritually? I think it means that we firmly decide to be willing to BE with whatever is arising in our beings, in each moment. When the storms come, instead of running for shelter, we stand firmly, right in the middle of the storm, and allow it to purify us. Most importantly, we cultivate the witness in each moment. The more we practice watching ourselves, the more we come into intimate relationship with our inner beings. Through that intimacy, we begin to experience true Self-Love.

We have to go within to really experience the Love that we already are. This means going within no matter how we are feeling physically and emotionally. This means being willing to accept ourselves unconditionally. Cultivating the witness is a spiritual practice that gradually trains us to love ourselves no matter what is arising in our beings. (I describe this practice more fully in my new book, Radiance Rising: Spiritual Practices for Daily Living. This pocket book will be discounted on this website store through April 10^th, 2010.)

After my crazily challenging weekend, before going to the Monday evening circle, I experienced the calm after the storm. So when I was considering what quality I needed to call in, suddenly the word “tranquility” popped into my brain, and I laughed out loud, alone in my cottage. Hearing the word “tranquility” amused me somewhere deep inside. It was like remembering a good, old friend from the distant past. As I shared with the circle last night, “Tranquility is a word that I hardly ever think of, but I really should think of it!"

What quality do you need to call into your life right now? Say it out loud three times, and witness how you feel when you hear that word. Then watch yourself throughout the day, and notice the vibration of that quality coming into your being. Sometimes when we affirm an intention, such as feeling tranquil, the opposite quality will come up in us, so that we can clear that quality out. If you notice the opposite quality arising in your being, then simply witness it and accept yourself exactly as you are in each moment. Once the opposite quality is witnessed and cleared, then your original quality can manifest in your being.

I am most grateful to the beautiful beings who sat in the circle with me last night and said these words: “Teja, tranquility. Teja, tranquility. Teja, tranquility.”

May all beings everywhere know Peace and Happiness.

Om Shanti (Peace),

Yogini Tejaswini

After the Rain photo by Stop.Imagine – CC license

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Greetings everyone.

Just a short blog today to let you all know that my new book, Radiance Rising: Spiritual Practices for Daily Living is now in print! Sixteen boxes of books are on their way to my cottage door, so I will be ready to begin shipping them out next week. Thank you to those of you who have already pre-ordered copies of the book. The discount for pre-orders will still be available through April 10th, 2010, so order your copies now and save!!!!

A few days ago I received six advance copies in the mail, and the book is so cute. It was amazing to hold the book in my hands at last! Many, many thanks to Gaelyn Larrick, for the awesome cover design, and to Bram Larrick, for the wonderful interior design. I am also ever grateful to the very special yogi angel who made this printing possible by sending me a generous donation. (Remember that 10% of every sale and donation on this website goes to Amma's charitable organization, Embracing the World. www.amma.org.)

Written from my perspective as a Raja Yogini, this Radiance Rising pocket book gives basic descriptions of meditation, and other spiritual practices, that anyone - of any faith - can easily apply to their own journey. A great gift for yourself and for your loved ones!

May all beings everywhere know Peace and Happiness.

Om Shanti (Peace),

Yogini Tejaswini

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