Desh shares an enchanting story of his life that led him to find his Guru. He also shares his experiences as he finishes reading "Midnights with the Mystic".
"There were many questions from Cheryl that I had asked on my own journey from the "Universe" and would sometimes "receive" an answer. To my surprise, the answers from Sadguru completely resonated with those answers / conclusion that "I" seemed to have come to. Some answers from Sadhguru were truly unique which seemed to be very similar to the my own answers. Had I been marked and fed by the Guru even before I had met Him?"
Full post here: http://drishtikone.com/?q=blog/journey-my-guru-sadhguru-jaggi
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Thursday, November 05, 2009
Vidya Warrier's journey with Isha
Vidya offers a heartfelt sharing that is also a nutshell summary of her life so far. Originally shared on facebook, posted here with permission:
As many South Asian children raised in the US, my childhood was doused with the usual dosage of ‘aunty’ parties, Bollywood movies, balavihar classes, Bharatnatyam and Kathak dance, and bhajans. I always stuck out in a crowd of thoroughly American-cultured children with my funky smelling lunch, fashion sense, hobbies and even my accent.
We were drowned in Hindu spirituality and walking into our house was like stepping into a microcosmic India: an abrupt shift into Indian smells and ethos. It wasn’t unusual for my father to disappear for a few evenings to attend some spiritual talk in our nearby Hindu temple, but my mother was never such a kind.
So, that day, when she went for her first ‘yoga’ class, we were all a little confused.
When it was over, we were even more so. Even though I was only ten years old at the time, I could see the mother I knew had transformed before my very eyes. She seemed to carry out household tasks with a new sense of ease and joy about her, singing and laughing along as she walked up and down the house, carrying laundry baskets and rolling vacuum cleaners around. “What’s gotten into her?” my sister and I used to wonder.
As my mother’s interest grew, my father also joined the class. My sister and I, being too young, were always left outside the doors with coloring books and markers. We used to travel all over the country for the classes, just hanging around as our parents volunteered in the program. For us, it was one big road trip.
Time and time again, we saw this transformation in people who came for the program. Friends and family who had seen the change in my parents came for the course. We saw them enter the course in one way, and come out like looking like new blossoms.
As I grew up, like most, I slowly shifted my life into that ever-loved “American” lifestyle, replacing aunty parties with teen parties and bhajans with hip-hop and pop. I learned to curl my hair, paint my face, walk around in teen glory. I ditched all that Hinduism and developed my own views on life. I labeled myself as “agnostic” and stopped going to our Sunday School- a huge step in our household.
Somewhere, I felt there was more to life than what I knew. At the same time, I wasn’t ready to go and sit in a temple and pray to some god to find out what that was. If there was something more to life, why couldn’t it be available to me right at my fingertips? Why should I go somewhere and do something to find it? So like this, I went on through school, experimenting and playing with so many things offered to the modern-day American teen. That yoga class, though it had been a big part of my upbringing, had fallen off the radar.
Meanwhile, my mother was busy, telling all her friends and those interested about this yoga class she had taken. I thought she was absolutely crazy and I didn’t refrain from telling her that, either. Many times, using explicit language to prove my passionate point, I would question her and mock her for this ridiculous kind of obsession she had with yoga. “That’s all you do!” I used to shout, though it was far from the truth. “What’s the point of being your daughter? That’s all you’re interested in!”: the usual cries of an adolescent drama queen.
But I was actually burning up inside. I would throw myself into whatever came my way like I was going to die with it. Dance classes, school, boys; whatever I did, I had to be the best and I had to go with it totally. If I wasn’t the best, I wouldn’t do it, with no second thought. There was this thrill about living like that, that searing burst of excitement that thickens the blood and makes you feel so alive. But that lasted just for a few minutes and then left me back in the same place. Then I would rile myself up and jump again. I was jumping from thrill to thrill. It became so exhausting after some time.
Something in me couldn’t accept that life was just about those temporary satisfactions. As time passed, and I entered high school, this became more and more pronounced. I felt so desperate. I didn’t know where to turn. Teachers looked like they didn’t care. Friends looked like they had no idea. I felt like I was uncovering a big hole in everybody’s life that nobody talks about. “What is all this?” I found myself wondering, and “Who am I and what am I doing here?” Tears came into my eyes. People around me got a little concerned, my boyfriend at the time thought it was something he did. Why couldn’t anybody relate?
I kept thinking, “Ok, so I was born, I’m doing so many things today, and I know I’m definitely going to die. That’s… all?” Everything I knew could disappear tomorrow without any warning. It hit me like a brick that all my friends, my philosophies, my grades, my looks; everything I knew as myself could just disappear tomorrow. What would be left?
So I did what was unthinkable for me at that time- I took that yoga class.
This was not at all my idea of a typical yoga class, with those rubber mats and body-pretzels rolling around all over the place. Nobody was preaching anything or shooting off any beliefs and there wasn’t even anything religious or ritualistic about it. The class was so alive. It felt like a science, but not with anything physical and tangible. It was much more subtle than that, an ancient yogic science which was formulated for me.
It was Yoga, but it was about me, for me, the way I am today, not about some archaic past that had nothing to do with me. As I went through the class, I felt as if layers of baggage I had carried with me were peeling off. Somewhere, some bit of clarity was lit up inside me that I could look at my life and the people around me with such depth. Life became so juicy and rich. I felt clean from inside.
After the class was over, I went back to my daily routine. Everything there was exactly the same, but there was something bubbling in me that was so totally alive. Going back to those same old mundane problems and people suddenly became a joy because I could handle all those things with so much more penetration and clarity. People around me almost thought I was on a drug because smiling, laughing, just being happy became a natural part of my life. It was no longer an aspiration and I didn’t need anything or anyone to make me that way.
As high school came to a close, others started applying for college admissions and looking into their future careers. By default I did the same. But I knew this wasn’t what I wanted in my life. Since the class, something deep inside caught on fire. I wanted more of it. So, as the people around me started packing up and moving to their respective colleges, I packed up and moved to India.
Sharing a “home” with 300 other people in the Isha Yoga Center in South India initially had its challenges. Now, it’s brought me to a point where my idea of “home” is all blurred, not any particular place nor any particular group of people. It is something I am with wherever I go. On a daily basis, I am surrounded by people discovering a sweeter and truer life, while the same thing is happening inside me, too.
Today, the way I live my life has transformed. If I go for a walk at the end of today, I’m no longer burdened with all the day’s drudgery running through my head or some dreadful planning about how to face tomorrow. Somewhere, I've stopped just thinking about my life and started living. I can’t say I know the answers to everything or that I even care to ponder the mysteries of the universe. It’s just that there’s a basic shift in the context of my life, that I know which direction I’m going and what I’m doing with my life. It’s just that shift which is everything. It’s not that I’ve given up hair curling or face-painting, I enjoy that too. But I know it’s not everything. Something has settled so deep that I can enjoy the life inside me and around me, not even really by doing anything. Just being alive. It’s become more than enough.
It’s so simple and so liberating, yet there is a pain about it. I’ve never been a humanitarian kind of person and never really thought about world peace or anything like that. But what has moved within me since I’ve taken the class, the very way I perceive life and myself is too tremendous, I just cannot contain it.
It’s something I feel like just shouting to the world- “yes, there is an answer and there is more to life than the way it seems.” Just by investing a little bit of time on what’s happening inside me, physiologically, psychologically and in other ways, my life has become so rich. It’s not something that’s special to me, it’s possible for every human being. If what has happened to me could happen to more people, something phenomenal could happen on the planet. It's not some utopian idea, it's possible. I've seen it happen to so many people. Just a little bit of attention to their interiority, and suddenly they are finding there is no need or dependence on anyone or anything for their joy. Their aliveness alone is sufficient. Now the way they enjoy the people and situations around them is totally different because there's no compulsion about having those things.
Since moving to India I’ve been involved with the training to teach this Inner Engineering program which changed my life just a few years ago. What is beautiful about the program is it is applicable for any human being. From top-level corporates to people of the villages, it is overwhelming to see all kinds of people shifting to a more joyful and effortless way of living. The entire Isha foundation is run by these people who in some way were touched by this experience. Seeing this, I can’t help but imagining if the world was filled with such people who function in the world not in pursuit of money or happiness, but out of their sheer joy and longing to share this possibility. It's this possibility that I’m giving my life for. I see it is as the most valuable thing a human being can ever have.
As many South Asian children raised in the US, my childhood was doused with the usual dosage of ‘aunty’ parties, Bollywood movies, balavihar classes, Bharatnatyam and Kathak dance, and bhajans. I always stuck out in a crowd of thoroughly American-cultured children with my funky smelling lunch, fashion sense, hobbies and even my accent.
We were drowned in Hindu spirituality and walking into our house was like stepping into a microcosmic India: an abrupt shift into Indian smells and ethos. It wasn’t unusual for my father to disappear for a few evenings to attend some spiritual talk in our nearby Hindu temple, but my mother was never such a kind.
So, that day, when she went for her first ‘yoga’ class, we were all a little confused.
When it was over, we were even more so. Even though I was only ten years old at the time, I could see the mother I knew had transformed before my very eyes. She seemed to carry out household tasks with a new sense of ease and joy about her, singing and laughing along as she walked up and down the house, carrying laundry baskets and rolling vacuum cleaners around. “What’s gotten into her?” my sister and I used to wonder.
As my mother’s interest grew, my father also joined the class. My sister and I, being too young, were always left outside the doors with coloring books and markers. We used to travel all over the country for the classes, just hanging around as our parents volunteered in the program. For us, it was one big road trip.
Time and time again, we saw this transformation in people who came for the program. Friends and family who had seen the change in my parents came for the course. We saw them enter the course in one way, and come out like looking like new blossoms.
As I grew up, like most, I slowly shifted my life into that ever-loved “American” lifestyle, replacing aunty parties with teen parties and bhajans with hip-hop and pop. I learned to curl my hair, paint my face, walk around in teen glory. I ditched all that Hinduism and developed my own views on life. I labeled myself as “agnostic” and stopped going to our Sunday School- a huge step in our household.
Somewhere, I felt there was more to life than what I knew. At the same time, I wasn’t ready to go and sit in a temple and pray to some god to find out what that was. If there was something more to life, why couldn’t it be available to me right at my fingertips? Why should I go somewhere and do something to find it? So like this, I went on through school, experimenting and playing with so many things offered to the modern-day American teen. That yoga class, though it had been a big part of my upbringing, had fallen off the radar.
Meanwhile, my mother was busy, telling all her friends and those interested about this yoga class she had taken. I thought she was absolutely crazy and I didn’t refrain from telling her that, either. Many times, using explicit language to prove my passionate point, I would question her and mock her for this ridiculous kind of obsession she had with yoga. “That’s all you do!” I used to shout, though it was far from the truth. “What’s the point of being your daughter? That’s all you’re interested in!”: the usual cries of an adolescent drama queen.
But I was actually burning up inside. I would throw myself into whatever came my way like I was going to die with it. Dance classes, school, boys; whatever I did, I had to be the best and I had to go with it totally. If I wasn’t the best, I wouldn’t do it, with no second thought. There was this thrill about living like that, that searing burst of excitement that thickens the blood and makes you feel so alive. But that lasted just for a few minutes and then left me back in the same place. Then I would rile myself up and jump again. I was jumping from thrill to thrill. It became so exhausting after some time.
Something in me couldn’t accept that life was just about those temporary satisfactions. As time passed, and I entered high school, this became more and more pronounced. I felt so desperate. I didn’t know where to turn. Teachers looked like they didn’t care. Friends looked like they had no idea. I felt like I was uncovering a big hole in everybody’s life that nobody talks about. “What is all this?” I found myself wondering, and “Who am I and what am I doing here?” Tears came into my eyes. People around me got a little concerned, my boyfriend at the time thought it was something he did. Why couldn’t anybody relate?
I kept thinking, “Ok, so I was born, I’m doing so many things today, and I know I’m definitely going to die. That’s… all?” Everything I knew could disappear tomorrow without any warning. It hit me like a brick that all my friends, my philosophies, my grades, my looks; everything I knew as myself could just disappear tomorrow. What would be left?
So I did what was unthinkable for me at that time- I took that yoga class.
This was not at all my idea of a typical yoga class, with those rubber mats and body-pretzels rolling around all over the place. Nobody was preaching anything or shooting off any beliefs and there wasn’t even anything religious or ritualistic about it. The class was so alive. It felt like a science, but not with anything physical and tangible. It was much more subtle than that, an ancient yogic science which was formulated for me.
It was Yoga, but it was about me, for me, the way I am today, not about some archaic past that had nothing to do with me. As I went through the class, I felt as if layers of baggage I had carried with me were peeling off. Somewhere, some bit of clarity was lit up inside me that I could look at my life and the people around me with such depth. Life became so juicy and rich. I felt clean from inside.
After the class was over, I went back to my daily routine. Everything there was exactly the same, but there was something bubbling in me that was so totally alive. Going back to those same old mundane problems and people suddenly became a joy because I could handle all those things with so much more penetration and clarity. People around me almost thought I was on a drug because smiling, laughing, just being happy became a natural part of my life. It was no longer an aspiration and I didn’t need anything or anyone to make me that way.
As high school came to a close, others started applying for college admissions and looking into their future careers. By default I did the same. But I knew this wasn’t what I wanted in my life. Since the class, something deep inside caught on fire. I wanted more of it. So, as the people around me started packing up and moving to their respective colleges, I packed up and moved to India.
Sharing a “home” with 300 other people in the Isha Yoga Center in South India initially had its challenges. Now, it’s brought me to a point where my idea of “home” is all blurred, not any particular place nor any particular group of people. It is something I am with wherever I go. On a daily basis, I am surrounded by people discovering a sweeter and truer life, while the same thing is happening inside me, too.
Today, the way I live my life has transformed. If I go for a walk at the end of today, I’m no longer burdened with all the day’s drudgery running through my head or some dreadful planning about how to face tomorrow. Somewhere, I've stopped just thinking about my life and started living. I can’t say I know the answers to everything or that I even care to ponder the mysteries of the universe. It’s just that there’s a basic shift in the context of my life, that I know which direction I’m going and what I’m doing with my life. It’s just that shift which is everything. It’s not that I’ve given up hair curling or face-painting, I enjoy that too. But I know it’s not everything. Something has settled so deep that I can enjoy the life inside me and around me, not even really by doing anything. Just being alive. It’s become more than enough.
It’s so simple and so liberating, yet there is a pain about it. I’ve never been a humanitarian kind of person and never really thought about world peace or anything like that. But what has moved within me since I’ve taken the class, the very way I perceive life and myself is too tremendous, I just cannot contain it.
It’s something I feel like just shouting to the world- “yes, there is an answer and there is more to life than the way it seems.” Just by investing a little bit of time on what’s happening inside me, physiologically, psychologically and in other ways, my life has become so rich. It’s not something that’s special to me, it’s possible for every human being. If what has happened to me could happen to more people, something phenomenal could happen on the planet. It's not some utopian idea, it's possible. I've seen it happen to so many people. Just a little bit of attention to their interiority, and suddenly they are finding there is no need or dependence on anyone or anything for their joy. Their aliveness alone is sufficient. Now the way they enjoy the people and situations around them is totally different because there's no compulsion about having those things.
Since moving to India I’ve been involved with the training to teach this Inner Engineering program which changed my life just a few years ago. What is beautiful about the program is it is applicable for any human being. From top-level corporates to people of the villages, it is overwhelming to see all kinds of people shifting to a more joyful and effortless way of living. The entire Isha foundation is run by these people who in some way were touched by this experience. Seeing this, I can’t help but imagining if the world was filled with such people who function in the world not in pursuit of money or happiness, but out of their sheer joy and longing to share this possibility. It's this possibility that I’m giving my life for. I see it is as the most valuable thing a human being can ever have.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Meera shares her IE experience
"It is almost 40 days now, but I plan to continue doing Shambhavi twice a day. I don't know what it does, but I am sure a day will not be the same without it.
I have enrolled in an advance program next month which is going to take 45 minutes(twice a day) for 40 days. That's a lot, time-wise. But I am sure I want to."
Full post here: http://mjaishankar.blogspot.com/2009/10/isha-yoga.html
I have enrolled in an advance program next month which is going to take 45 minutes(twice a day) for 40 days. That's a lot, time-wise. But I am sure I want to."
Full post here: http://mjaishankar.blogspot.com/2009/10/isha-yoga.html
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Celia's mystery visit to Tennessee!
"Well, I've been back from Tennessee for a couple of weeks now, and I have been trying to find the words to describe the wonderful experience I had there. I can't find the words! What I had there is somehow indescribable."
Full post here: http://timpanyoga.blogspot.com/2009/10/namaste-i-hope-you-are-all-enjoying.html
Full post here: http://timpanyoga.blogspot.com/2009/10/namaste-i-hope-you-are-all-enjoying.html
Thursday, October 15, 2009
This one knows about cars...
Caroline Ryder talks about her meeting with Sadhguru.
Full post here: http://carolineryder.blogspot.com/2009/09/meeting-with-guru.html
Do you prefer shackles of gold or shackles of steel?" he asked.
Duh, gold.
He shook his head.
"At least with steel shackles, you want to break free sooner. Steel shackles are much easier to escape than gold."
Full post here: http://carolineryder.blogspot.com/2009/09/meeting-with-guru.html
Friday, October 02, 2009
Breaking logical barriers
Nanditha finds her logical barriers breaking after she attends the Inner Engineering Retreat at the Ashram.
"... It was a total eye-opener ,i mean ive actually begin to see life in a different perspective... theres so much to it , that i'd definitely recommend anyone who is willing and daring to look at life in a slightly different way to go for it..."
Full post is here:
"... It was a total eye-opener ,i mean ive actually begin to see life in a different perspective... theres so much to it , that i'd definitely recommend anyone who is willing and daring to look at life in a slightly different way to go for it..."
Full post is here:
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Becky's love anniversary with Isha!
Becky follows up her sharing with a pithy but piercing poem.
Poem here:
Note: Her posts require a Wordpress account to post a trackback or a comment. Any one with a Wordpress account willing to post a comment on her blog with the trackback entries?
Poem here:
Note: Her posts require a Wordpress account to post a trackback or a comment. Any one with a Wordpress account willing to post a comment on her blog with the trackback entries?
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