Acharya Vandana's  Weekly Inspirations

The beginning of each year beckons us with possibilities. There is a feeling of expansiveness, hope, and renewal as we turn the corner on the past and make plans to welcome the new year. While we may have goals such as finding a more fulfilling job, beginning an exercise program, or eating healthier food, let’s also consciously consider intentions that feed our souls. 

Why do we want to include soul intentions? Unlike the thought-limiting ego mind, the soul knows that any worthwhile intention is possible because we are the illumined consciousness of the Source of all. We could commit to deepening our daily meditation practice and time in silence to better hear divine wisdom guiding us from within. We could study scripture or increase our conscious awareness of our thoughts, words, and actions so we can live in the Truth of the Self. Or, we could practice selfless service to others and make lifestyle changes to enhance the health of our planet to attune in the Oneness that enlivens us all.

To support our conscious entry into 2024, join Yogacharya O’Brian and CSE teachers for the Kriya Yoga New Year Retreat from 01/04-07/2024. Or, join Yogacharya on 01/07/2024 for an afternoon program, A Ritual to Begin the New Year. Both events are available Online and In-Person at CSE. Please see the announcement below for more information and the registration links. Whatever 2024 intentions we have, may we follow the unlimited call of the soul and use our lives to be the change we want to see in the world in 2024.

Join us at Blue Lotus Center onsite (Wednesday evenings only) and online (Tuesdays and Wednesdays). Experience a time of meditation, study, contemplation, and divine remembrance with others devoted to realizing and thriving in our innate peace, love, and wisdom. Contribute to the realization of peace in our minds, our hearts, our families, our community, and our world. Blue Lotus Meditation & Yoga Center welcomes sincere seekers from all backgrounds. Beginning and experienced participants from all traditions are welcome at all gatherings. 

Throughout our metaphysical Advent journey, we have patiently waited and consciously prepared to spiritually awaken into our essential wholeness symbolized by the Christ Consciousness born on Christmas day. In the birth of our inner Christ Consciousness, we stop living as human beings seeking a spiritual experience. Instead, we boldly claim our place in the Divine Plan of Wholeness as spiritual beings here for an earthly experience. No longer defining ourselves by earthly “success” and “failure”, we realize that even perceived missteps can serve as transformative opportunities to reclaim our divine inheritance as spiritual beings. This shift of consciousness can birth divine possibilities beyond the mind’s comprehension.

For beings from all faith traditions, it is my prayer this Christmas Eve that we return, rest, and rejoice in the peace, power, and joy of the soul. During this holy season, I invite you to join me daily and take a few quiet moments to reconnect in the peace, love, and wisdom at the core of our being. Amidst our busy minds and lives, let us choose, again and again, to be less reactive to circumstances and more consciously responsive to the impulses of our soul's hope, joy, and healing. Each one of us is already a divine light luminous with the radiance of the One. Let’s let our divine lights brightly shine!

Join us at Blue Lotus Center onsite (Wednesday evenings only) and online (Tuesdays and Wednesdays). Experience a time of meditation, study, contemplation, and divine remembrance with others devoted to realizing and thriving in our innate peace, love, and wisdom. Contribute to the realization of peace in our minds, our hearts, our families, our community, and our world. Blue Lotus Meditation & Yoga Center welcomes sincere seekers from all backgrounds. Beginning and experienced participants from all traditions are welcome at all gatherings. 

Our daily meditation practice is particularly useful during this busy time of year when our distracted minds can lose sight of the holiness within and around us. Meditation calls us to stop, turn within, and be restored in our inner peace and radiance. During meditation, we focus on a single point, such as the breath, to steady and calm the body and mind. We return to this point of focus as often as necessary to quiet wandering thoughts.

Beyond a quiet mind, the promise of our meditation practice is deep communion with the true Self and Its joy, peace, and wisdom. With repeated daily practice, our inner silence reveals that we are not the mind or the body. We are something so much more. As we fully surrender into the silence, we can experience the divine remembrance that we are enlivened, blessed, inspired, and healed by the Source of all that expresses as earthly and spiritual. We are divine, eternal expressions of Spirit Itself!

Join me along with other CSE Acharyas and Ministers at CSE this morning for the special Winter Solstice service. Experience Oneness expressing Itself through different spiritual traditions. Meditate and be nourished in a spiritual community dedicated to the remembrance of the Divine that indwells us all.

Join us at Blue Lotus Center onsite (Wednesday evenings only) and online (Tuesdays and Wednesdays). Experience a time of meditation, study, contemplation, and divine remembrance with others devoted to realizing and thriving in our innate peace, love, and wisdom. Contribute to the realization of peace in our minds, our hearts, our families, our community, and our world. Blue Lotus Meditation & Yoga Center welcomes sincere seekers from all backgrounds. Beginning and experienced participants from all traditions are welcome at all gatherings. 

This is an interesting time of year. Around the world, it is a deep, holy, contemplative time in Spirit. It is also a bustling, busy, maybe even stressful time as well. This holy time calls us to peace in a world experiencing conflict. Making time to meditate amidst all this, and our own busy lives, might seem like an unrealistic stretch. And, yet, Paramahansa Yogananda, a beloved Spiritual Teacher in this tradition of Kriya Yoga, tells us that taking time to meditate daily is exactly what we need right now.

We use our daily superconscious meditation practice to arrange conditions within and around us, so we can experience the innate peace, wholeness and deep joy within us. We find a private physical space to sit and use time tested meditation practices to quiet the mind. As we open into the stillness within, we can experience peace and bliss of the soul. Living from the soul can empower and inspire us to be the peace, love and wisdom that we are and that is so needed in our hearts and in the world now. 

Join us at Blue Lotus Center this Wednesday evening for “Meditation for the Holy Days”, a remedy for holiday stress originally offered by Yogananda, 90 years ago. Take a break from your busy schedule and experience an extended time of deep meditation and restoration in the silence of your soul. Gift yourself a sacred time of divine remembrance in your true, essential Self. Join us for part or all of this extended evening of meditation. Beginning and experienced meditators from all backgrounds are welcome. Please see below for more information and special early starting time this Wednesday. 

Join us at Blue Lotus Center onsite (Wednesday evenings only) and online (Tuesdays and Wednesdays). Experience a time of meditation, study, contemplation, and divine remembrance with others devoted to realizing and thriving in our innate peace, love, and wisdom. Contribute to the realization of peace in our minds, our hearts, our families, our community, and our world. Blue Lotus Meditation & Yoga Center welcomes sincere seekers from all backgrounds. Beginning and experienced participants from all traditions are welcome at all gatherings. 

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The dictionary defines a pilgrim as “a person who journeys to a sacred place”. Our most sacred journey is an inner one, to the realization of the true Self. On this spiritual pilgrimage, what we choose to leave behind is just as important as what we take with us. We unpack old mental suitcases filled with stories that tell us that we are less than whole. We do not bring carry-on bags filled with old thoughts and emotions worn thin from our habitual reactivity. We leave in the past old habits of repeatedly walking down paths of suffering in our lives. And what do we do with the space left from all this mental unpacking?

As spiritual pilgrims, we fill our inner space with spiritual practices such as study, contemplation, prayer, and meditation that support our opening into this holy time of year. And we leave lots of space for divine grace – time in receptive silence within and around us - every day. When we create intentional space for our highest good, divine grace will bless it and fill it with endless reminders and opportunities to support our awakening to the Self. Even amidst the increased activity of the holidays, we experience spiritual guideposts such as inner peace, joy, and gratitude, that illumine the next step in our divine journey. 

Join us today for the start of the Advent season and begin your inner spiritual pilgrimage into the Self. And, join us each Wednesday evening when we continue our journey within to the Christ Consciousness that is our true nature. Create conditions to support the faithful waiting of this divine remembrance and the realization of the divine wisdom and love that indwells us all. Read and follow the practices of Yogacharya’s Path of Wonder: A Meditator’s Guide to Advent. Meditate into our heart's joy and our soul's peace during this Holy Season. All seekers from all backgrounds are welcome to join us anytime.

Join us at Blue Lotus Center onsite (Wednesday evenings only) and online (Tuesdays and Wednesdays). Experience a time of meditation, study, contemplation, and divine remembrance with others devoted to realizing and thriving in our innate peace, love, and wisdom. Contribute to the realization of peace in our minds, our hearts, our families, our community, and our world. Blue Lotus Meditation & Yoga Center welcomes sincere seekers from all backgrounds. Beginning and experienced participants from all traditions are welcome at all gatherings. 

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