By its capacity to create in a state of absolute freedom, Love is an observable power. Love is its own proof, requiring no other.

Parts 1 and 2 of this blog have focused on the role of devotion and gratitude in spiritual life. In the context of that discussion, let’s consider why love is the third important aspect of our sādhana. 

Love is a vital ingredient in what we might call “the cocktail of heart enzymes,” which digests all tensions, patterns, contraction, and most importantly, all resistance to being freed. This mix of devotion, gratitude, and love comprises the nectar within the heart, and its rasa is bliss. However, like when creating cocktails, if you add only one or two of the ingredients, the result is not the drink you are looking for. The flavor and effect changes. 

We each need to discover that unwavering devotion, unshakable gratitude, and unconditional love. When we can combine those in our own heart, it dissolves all...

The millions of stars in the cosmos do not equal the number of reasons we create to not do our sādhana.

In Part 1 of this blog series I discussed several aspects of devotion. One of the key understandings is that devotion is not a gooey sentiment but a conscious response to grace; it is the recognition of the incredible gift from God that has set us on the path to knowing our highest Self. 

Engaging in sādhana is our response to grace. If sādhana is the vehicle in which we drive to follow that light, then devotion is like the chassis of the car. Devotion must be an unwavering commitment to doing our practice — to digesting our tensions and freeing ourselves from our own contracted mind, every time those things show up. And those things are going to show up regularly!

Freedom is flowering within us because of grace, and it will bring to the surface every barrier and misunderstanding to the very freedom that grace is calling forth. So our devotion must include the...

The revealing of higher consciousness is the flowering and maturity of my years and tears of devotion to God. — Acharya Nityani Devi

In all discussions of sādhana, it’s easy to interpret a statement from either a dualistic or non-dualistic point of view, when, in fact, duality exists within unity. This applies to the topic of devotion to God, as it may appear that we’re devoted to something other, when that’s not the case from a nondual perspective.

We can look at it this way: The relationship between devotion and Oneness is the living experience of immersion into God’s heart. God can be both the sole reality of undivided Consciousness as well as the object of our devotion and longing, and these are not contradictory. God is our essential nature. Any apparent duality dissolves when we recognize that immersion in Oneness is achieved by intense love and bhakti (devotion) — and while the dynamic pulsation between the two experiences contains many...

The wave is simply the energy of the ocean, the power that displays itself as the ocean breathes and pulsates. The ocean, the wave, and every distinct drop of water are the same. Yet we think of our individual existence as being like a drop of water that is separate and different from the ocean. We perceive duality where none exists. —Swami Khecaranatha

The purpose of our sādhana, and the very purpose of life, is to know pure Consciousness as our Self — to have the permanent experience that we are not separate from our divine Source. Nondual tradition describes this profound transformation as one of being absorbed by our Creator. Nondual means there is only one: that everything is happening on the field of a single Consciousness, and while we are like a drop in the ocean, we are not different from that ocean.

This view (darśana) of nondual tradition is a singular message that so deeply resonates in us that it impels us to know that truth as our own, not just something...

Sādhana is the intent of freedom that transforms confused understanding into wisdom, contraction into openness, judgement into insight, and mind into heart. All hesitation is incinerated in the fire of commitment.

In the Tibetan Vajrayana tradition, the term “liberation upon seeing” has two meanings. One is that liberation comes when we truly see our misunderstanding and limited perception — and our willingness to live in and defend that confused state. But it can also mean that liberation occurs upon seeing the guru as Awareness.

What is so powerful about those two statements is that they are not actually different. In fact, the entire interaction with a teacher is to create a mirror that reflects back to us our own misunderstanding so that we can know it for what it is. Left to our own devices, we don’t have such a mirror and remain trapped in our opinions, confused state, and contracted heart. We are unable to see beyond that.

The Relationship with Pure...

Consider the (mis)adventures of Wile E. Coyote, who is perpetually chasing the Road Runner. As the chase reaches the edge of a giant canyon, Mr. Coyote barrels over the cliff while the Road Runner stops short, watching his nemesis fall. An incessant chase. . . and perpetual near miss.

This is not to say that reaching for things in life — relationships, careers, or anything else — is necessarily bad, or that these things are not part of the search for God in our hearts. But one of the things we incessantly chase and get tangled up in is relationships. Instead of allowing our relationships to be the expression of life’s abundance, we get caught in the chase.

Attempting to find fulfillment, happiness, or joy anywhere outside ourselves stems from our misunderstanding, based on dualistic consciousness. As nondualists, we must come to realize that everything is an expression of the simple, profound beauty of life, and we should endeavor to cultivate and celebrate that...

There is only one key to being absorbed into the Divine — and only one key in spirituality — and that is surrender.

The true essence of surrender is the surrendering of our will, and the greatest act of our free will is to surrender it. We all have the choice to surrender, but when we decide to make that choice is a critical point in our spiritual freedom. Make it early, make it late, but make it. We make it not because we are forced to, but because we celebrate the opportunity to give our life back to God. I believe that the joyous offering of ourselves back into our Source is the highest expression of free will.

Tantric tradition discusses the progression of our spiritual life in terms of the means of practice, called upāyas. The highest is śāmbhavopāya, which is the path of awareness, the path of will, and the path of Śiva. A concise way of combining these elements is that it is the path of Śiva’s will to express His own innate awareness in us, through us, and...

Surrender is the conscious offering of oneself back to the Self. — Swami Khecaranatha

Samvitti’s words, the ego appropriates the Self, succinctly explain how the limited part of us called ego perpetuates its own existence through the freedom of choice given to all individuals.

The ego binds us in separation and suffering — in an unwillingness and inability to know the pure joy of our Source, which is ever-present within us.

God’s pure, infinite Consciousness has within it every level of consciousness, even the limited level of ego. We are always part of that Unity, but because we are attached to our separate identity, we must surrender that self-image. This must be a conscious act of offering ourselves back to the very power of freedom that gives us the capacity to offer our selves back!

What does it mean to surrender something, and how do we surrender the mind, which is the agent of ego? There are three conscious acts of surrender:

1) Surrendering Something

As students, we have a responsibility to continually connect to the depth of refined energy that is transmitted through the teacher. This requires some discernment, because the energy that moves through a lineage is perpetually purifying and refining itself.

In any authentic practice the energy is like water running down a mountain, finding its own path. As it does so, it purifies its external connection, as well as the people that it is drawing to itself. This is a continuing source of nourishment for those who can connect and attune to the changing energy.

Unfortunately, as that shift takes place, everyone’s drama, resistance, and a myriad of reasons for not making that shift seem to arise and be perceived as valid. We must therefore be sure that our commitment to growth is expressed through disciplined action. It’s not enough to have the abstract desire of wanting to know God — we must cultivate the disciplined capacity within ourselves to not be caught in the...

Making contact with the deepest dimensions of the central channel activates powerful energies within us that will purify our entire psychic system. Due to that enlivenment, we may have to be patient and allow the rippling effects of that process to change us.

To understand why working deeply may cause some volatility in our lives, we first must explore the nature of the suṣumṇa, the central channel. The suṣumṇa is the core of who we are. Śakti, the dynamic power of God, expresses our life through the descent of kuṇḍalinī into this channel; it creates, sustains and nourishes every aspect of us.

Accompanying this individuation is a forgetting of who we really are. We experience separation from God and become consumed by our mind and emotions. We get caught in trying to control life by changing the conditions we face, which only reinforces the perception of duality.

The purpose of sādhana is to remember that we are not separate from divine Consciousness. The awakening and liberation...