Life is profound only in its simplicity — Swami Rudrananda

In direct contrast to Rudi’s words, I hear statements like this on a regular basis from students: I am living through a psychic purification, karmic purging, ancestral release, mind-bending emotional cleansing. . . I’m doing the best I can in this totally debilitating time, and I am going to babble-talk endlessly about it, so don’t expect me to remain simple and full of clarity of intent right now.

If Rudi had heard any variation of this perpetually-repeated sentiment, he would have forcefully suggested that the individual “Stop talking like a horse’s ass!” Unfortunately, we often want to project all the reasons why we cannot simply live in an open heart.

The Fire of Transformation

Sādhana can be described as the fire of transformation. That transformation happens in the suṣumṇa (the central channel), also known as the śmaśāna, or cremation ground. Ours in not the only tradition that...

Students often wonder where they should direct their attention during meditation and throughout the day — the heart? The suṣumṇa? The crown? The answer is “all of the above.”

Be sure to begin each day by opening your heart. Take a conscious breath as soon as you awake, opening deeply inside as you bring your attention into the heart cakra. After that, your morning meditation will further establish you in that openness so you can begin the day from there.

There is a tendency to rush into activity: we grab our phones to check email and feel the pressure of the things we must do that day. When that happens, we can easily forget to meditate!

After we meditate in the morning, the double-breath exercise helps us sustain this openness throughout the day. This is important, because from openness we are able to stay in contact with the flow of vital force within. We want to establish ourselves in flow so that we can engage the dynamics of life from a place of fullness...

One must seek the shortest path and the fastest means to get back home, to turn the spark within into a blaze; to be merged in and to identify with the greater fire that ignited the spark.
—Bhagavan Nityananda

Nityananda’s words describe sādhana as the process of being aflame with the desire to know our Source. Through our own volition, we are able to reach inside and rekindle the ember of awareness that has almost been completely extinguished beneath the density of our misunderstanding. We unintentionally cover up this spark when we perpetuate our own ignorance, our ingrained belief that we are separate from God. What we say we want most in life is often not what we pursue. Therefore, we must ask ourselves honestly if we are fanning the flame of awareness, or if we are extinguishing it.

The third century saying, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” originally referred to mundane love and desire, but we can apply this maxim to how we perceive the beauty...

Śiva moves through the Sky of Consciousness as the embodied and liberated sādhaka who wears the cloth of joy and freedom, intricately woven with the Divine Thread.

There is no greater joy for me than to talk about God — and specifically, about the perpetual possibility available to each of us to know that directly, in ourselves. The realization of our highest Self is the very purpose of this life, and it is so extraordinary that we can truly recognize and live the joy of that experience moment by moment, every day.

We are the life that emerges from pure Consciousness, from what Bhagavan Nityananda called The Sky of Consciousness. As Śiva creates life, he moves through his own Sky of Consciousness, which is within Him. From the perspective of our nondual tradition, there is only one thing in existence: there is only Consciousness and Its emergent quality of freedom. Tradition also tells us that Śiva manifests all of creation because of the desire to express the overflowing joy...

This year’s Winter Immersion on Maui will be focusing on the 11^th century text called the Pratyabhijñā-hṛdayam. The title means the heart of recognition and it is one of the greatest texts of the tantric trika tradition.

Written by Kṣhemarāja, a student of Abhinavagupta, this scripture focuses on the direct insight of our own divinity — of awareness becoming aware of awareness. What’s especially powerful is that the entire discussion is in the form of a dialogue with the Goddess Śakti, suggesting that She is the supreme power.

The text discusses being absorbed into, or pervaded by, Pure Consciousness, and that there is never a separation between the power that pervades us and the power we use to offer ourselves into that absorption.

One of the key sections is Chapter 18, which talks specifically about the liberation of kuṇḍalinī, that supreme power within each of us. During the two weeks of the program, I will be giving a series of meditations which open...

The 12^th century Kirana Tantra that tells us that knowledge of the Self arises through the relationship with a teacher, study of wisdom teachings, and direct recognition. Most, if not all nondual tantric practices and traditions contain the same message, which is understood as the triadic axis of knowing.

All spiritual growth happens because of grace. The Sanskrit term is anugraha — and although it means grace, it is often translated as the unfolding of awareness to reveal its innate nature. When the pure, innate Consciousness that is the Source of all life begins to reveal Itself to us, it causes us to long for the knowledge of that very Source. Through our sādhana, we discover that our lives are like that of a little stream that flows into an ocean, which, as in the image, seemingly has no boundary between itself and the sky.

This graphic shows the triadic relationship with a teacher on top, and study of wisdom and direct experience on the sides. But you can flip it any...

We often find ourselves in a constant state of doing. We rush to act, and each deed binds us to our limited self-identity and to the act’s consequences — a cycle that keeps repeating itself. Stuck in this loop, we forget to ask, “Who am I?” We also may forget that we can make contact with the space between being and doing where we can simply be.

Having a spiritual life means choosing to live in this still point between the life of being and the life of doing — a place in which being and acting happen simultaneously without colliding or causing a ripple in the other. In Tantric Śaivism, this is called “dynamic stillness,” and within that is spanda, the subtle pulsation of the breath of God. Spanda is the almost imperceptible movement of Consciousness into form. You can also think of it as śakti (energy) expressing itself as the pulsation of pure Consciousness.

Picture a lava lamp — a transparent rectangular plexiglass box filled with...

We’re all familiar with the Ten Commandments from the Bible. I was recently inspired, while supporting a student, to outline a different set of commandments — a list of “thou-shalt-not’s” — to serve as guidelines for how to help free ourselves of misunderstanding and limited identity. Each “commandment” is actually just a suggestion, because, ultimately, all a teacher can do is offer advice!

The Ten Commandments (Okay, Suggestions)

1. Thou shalt not create tensions
2. Thou shalt not react to others’ tensions
3. Thou shalt not project your opinions and judgement onto others 
4. Thou shalt not perpetually attempt to control life 
5. Thou shalt not be obsessed with and driven by sex, money, and power
6. Thou shalt not live in self-absorption
7. Thou shalt not reject the feedback life is giving you
8. Thou shalt not attack others in your mind or in your actions
9. Thou shalt not close your heart
10. Thou shalt not forget to love life and to love...

The fundamental issue I have witnessed in my fifty years of teaching is that people don’t truly believe it is possible to be free. I teach that we are not our minds or our emotions, and that we can live outside of our egos and the perpetual sense of need. But more often than not, students cannot believe this is a real possibility in their own lives. This fundamental disbelief prevents us from discovering the place in us that is free from the mental and emotional fluctuations inherent in limited consciousness.

Consider the image of Viśvarūpa, the Divine Puruṣa. Puruṣa is the individuated expression of the Divine, and the most succinct expression of kuṇḍalinī. The higher states of awareness are depicted in the image, but all dimensions of Consciousness exist within the Divine Puruṣa — from Pure Consciousness, to pure disbelief.

Although Puruṣa includes all levels of individuation, including our minds and emotions, we can choose where to place our attention. Emotions are...

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...