A key element of practice is learning to tune into the psychic body with awareness, not the mind. —Ācārya Amrita Devi.

Our practice of Kuṇḍalinī Sādhana fuels that inner vital force so that it can rise through the central channel and connect back to its ever-present Source, the Heart of Consciousness. God created us out of the absolute abundance and joy of His very being, and it is through opening our heart and directing our energy into the central channel (the suṣumṇa) that we contact that fullness. Kuṇḍalinī is the essence of our heart, and it connects us back to God’s Heart.

When we tune in to the psychic body, we are using our awareness, our capacity to feel, to reach into a deeper part of ourselves. The mind can never find the openness of consciousness from which to connect to the central channel. We must therefore learn to feel our heart and the energy of openness, and then use that to move past our body, breath, tensions, contractions, and resistance.

If we use a finger to to...

People resist change because the ego wants life to appear a particular way and we cling to what we know. We want to remain in this comfort zone, even if it isn’t always that comfortable!

My experience as a teacher is that people often leave a spiritual practice when they come up against something that needs to be profoundly changed within them. Instead of surrendering their tensions and making that change, students begin projecting that there is something wrong with the teacher or the practice. I have watched this for forty years.

You have to be conscious and aware. This is why Rudi spoke about “work” and “tests.” We work and work, and then we are tested to see if the deepening awareness we made contact with is really our own. Higher awareness is only ours if we can express and exhibit it in the face of any condition. Everything is Divine. It is a question of whether we recognize it.

Change Requires Flexibility

My teacher Rudi told a wonderful story about a train ride he took in In...

Consciousness in Its freedom manifested the universe. It didn’t have to. Nobody called or emailed saying, “Why don’t you do this?” Creation is the result of God exclaiming, “Look what‘s coming out of My center!” The universe is what emerged—because of the desire, the will to express and experience freedom. This is worth remembering. If this Divine magnificence created the universe out of Divine will, what does that say about you and me? We are here because God willed it.  

What does that say about our will? We should surrender it to God’s will, which is far wiser than ours. We all know that we have a will of our own, and we all experience what happens when we exercise it. The results are not necessarily pretty. That is why I suggest that your life, in its highest, is not about “you.” It is about Śiva saying, “Let’s dance . . . and I need some partners.” We are the partners. Stop trying to control the steps. Learn to follow.  

Even when we deeply surrender it doesn’t mean that some tr...

I often talk about the importance of selfless service as a means of freeing us from the constant demands of our small self, which seeks to sustain its identity. Service allows to move past our attachment to our actions or to our circumstances, and open to a life beyond personal demand.

But the flip side of selfless service is the capacity to selflessly receive. Our ability to live in simplicity is the fruit of truly understanding the incredible effulgence and magnificence of God’s intelligence and allowing it to express itself in our life. We let God show Himself through the life He has designed for us. Over time, we can move effortlessly through everything we encounter, because are open to receiving whatever God wants to give. In truth, giving and receiving are inseparable.  

Our individuated growth is the most profound act of selfless service because we are allowing the Divine to emerge from within us, and this fulfills the very purpose for which God created our life. Wanting to kn...

For thousands of years, seekers in many spiritual traditions have turned toward the figure of the guru—not as a personality, but as a principle. One of the most exquisite scriptural expressions of this principle is the Guru Gita, the “Song of the Guru.” Scholars debate when it was written: some place it in the 17th century, while others claim it existed long before.

But regardless of the date, it is the resonance of the chant that is so significant. When we listen to it in the depth of our heart, the Guru Gita serves as an invitation to experience the liberating Grace that flows to us through the guru, the teacher, the lineage, and ultimately, from Consciousness Itself.

The Guru Principle and the Means of Awakening

The image above beautifully illustrates what is known in the nondual Tantric tradition as the Guru Tattva. In the Shiva Sutras, one of the most important texts of the Śaiva nondual teachings, the process of awakening is described through three means, or upāyas: Śāmbhavopā...

In this holiday season, we often give to charities as an act of service. While this is certainly generous, there is another form of giving that can really open us to a deeper consciousness and propel our spiritual growth.

We have been given the opportunity to know and love the Divine—to experience a lifetime of growth and celebration. In return, we offer our gratitude and selfless service in appreciation for the Grace we have received.

Selfless service, or seva, comes from an open heart and is centered in a profoundly simple place within. The desire to serve arises from the merging of our heart with the heart of God, in a state of complete surrender. Selfless service is simply the natural expression of the love, gratitude, and devotion we feel. We can’t help but think, “How can I give back to the life that has given me this joy?” Nityananda expressed this beautifully when he said, “As is your devotion, so is your liberation.”

Service is a reflection of the awareness we connect to i...

The soul’s pain of separation and the longing to be reunited is equally matched by the egoic fear of being dissolved. This is why it is so important that we remain aware of our power to choose, because we must consciously choose Oneness instead of separation. — Swami Khecaranatha

In the image, above, there is a checklist of how we can choose real freedom in our lives. Let’s look at them one by one. 

1. I am willing to give up my dubious freedom of following dualistic rationale, knowing that I am in fact losing nothing and gaining the possibility of everything.

This is a bold statement but is perhaps the easiest to mark checked! However, we must remember that any commitment we make is meaningless if we fail to follow through with action. In our search to know the highest in ourself, it is our actual unwillingness to live in the commitment that disqualifies our stated willingness to do so.

There is such extraordinary grasping and holding on to what we think freedom is. We have set ...

Each of us must ask, with honesty and humility: Why do I engage in spiritual practice?
Is it to escape pain — or to awaken to joy?

For most seekers, the journey begins in suffering. We are pushed by life’s pressures such as loss, confusion, or loneliness and start to search for peace. Yet as practice deepens, something shifts within us. We realize that the path is not about running from pain but about discovering the joy that has always been our true nature.

In the beginning, pain can seem like an obstacle needing to be removed. But in truth, pain is a doorway. It reveals our longing for something beyond what the senses and intellect can satisfy. This desire to know the deeper Self is the Divine calling Itself back home, within our own awareness.

Pain can be seen as Grace wearing a disguise. It invites us to stop searching outside ourselves and to rest in the awareness that is already whole. Suffering is not punishment but the Divine Self reminding us: You have forgotten who you are...

There’s a timeless question asked in the movie The Wizard of Oz:

“If birds fly over the rainbow—why, oh why, can’t I?”

This expresses a yearning that resonates with anyone who’s ever felt limited by their own experiences, their own perceptions, their own self. It conveys our desire to transcend the boundaries of ego and awaken to a deeper, freer sense of being.

But this longing isn’t about being in some distant dreamland. It’s about right here, right now—in the context of our own daily lives.

The Spectrum of Light

A rainbow is light, refracted into a spectrum of color. And that light, in its essence, is always there—even when we can’t see the full arc.

In the same way, consciousness is the spectrum of all experience. Sometimes we perceive only a fragment, a faint glimmer of color, and mistake that for the whole. But the full spectrum is always present within us, waiting to be seen when we stop limiting our perception of it.

In Sanskrit, this inner radiance is known as prakāśa—th...

People often feel that life is presenting them with more than they can handle. My teacher Rudi said this: “Bite off twice as much as you can chew and then chew it.”

When you come face-to-face with something bigger than you think you want to bite or bigger than you think you can chew, the tendency is to say, “No, I don't want to do that.” But the dynamic is being presented to you by your own Self. That deeper intelligence is offering you some rocket fuel—the very energy that you need to consume and transform into Śakti so that it can make you bigger, create a bigger consciousness in you.

It is only the mind, your thoughts and ego, that says, “That's too big for me.” There’s a classic analogy of how a python can swallow a deer. The python dislocates its jaw big enough to swallow its prey. It doesn't get it halfway in and say, “this doesn't taste very good,” or, “this is too big.” It just relaxes its jaw, making it wide enough to accommodate whatever size it’s trying to devour.

So, for...