Inspirational Messages

Blue Lotus

“If anything disturbs your peace, practice having faith that divine grace is already actively at work restoring wholeness and well-being.

Then make any necessary adjustments in harmony with that insight.”
Yogacharya Ellen Grace O'Brian, Spiritual Director, Center for Spiritual Enlightenment

July 30, 2023

Progress On The Path

Paula Whang-Ramos

“Choose the way that leads to increased awareness, enhanced life, and love. Our own aliveness, our deep abiding joy, can serve as the compass.”
~Yogacharya Ellen Grace O'Brian, Daily Inspiration 03-22-2014

On our path of spiritual awakening, we can wonder if we are truly making progress. The mind typically defines progress based on how many tasks we completed on our “to-do” list, or how much money we earned this pay period. These measures can be reflections of our earthly activity, but they are not necessarily reflections of our spiritual awakening.

Spiritual progress is based, in part, on conscious choices we make, again and again, to be spiritually awake in this earth life. As we meditate daily and learn to live more spiritually conscious lives, we can choose to realize our interconnectedness with all of life – how we support it and how it supports us. We can experience more patience and less impulsive reactivity. We can have more gratitude for what we have in our lives right now, and less desire for what was or is yet to be. We can see more opportunities for positive changes and less hopelessness, even during challenging moments. And we may welcome more joy, laughter, and love in our lives – in all the endless ways these divine qualities yearn to be expressed through us. Interconnectedness, patience, gratitude, positive changes, joy, laughter, and love. Doesn’t this sound like a fabulous life? This is the path of spiritual awakening.

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.

July 23, 2023

Open Into Divine Wholeness

Paula Whang-Ramos

“Ego is the CEO of the advertising firm 'I, Me, and Mine.' It continually creates desires to maintain the illusion
that we need what it is selling us— happiness from having this or attaining that, or security from achieving this or owning that.
The happiness and the sense of wholeness and well-beingwe desire are innate. They reside in the true Self.”
~Yogacharya Ellen Grace O'Brian, Daily Inspiration 9-20-2022

Did you ever notice how the ego can make endless lists of daily tasks, responsibilities and desires in our lives? The assumption is that we will feel better, relieved, accomplished, or happier when we finish just one more task or acquire just one more thing. However, once we obtain the beautiful house or new car, the ego begins a new task list to maintain it, so we can remain happy and avoid the pain of problems. This approach to life can actually decrease our happiness as it increases our stress with more planning, acquiring, trying and doing. As we mature spiritually, we realize that our ultimate happiness isn’t based on these temporary conditions, no matter how lovely they may be.

Yogic teachings reveal that the Source of happiness, and the yearning for It to be consistently expressed in our lives, is based on a prompting of the soul, and not desire from the mind. In yoga, we live from the soul's eternal peace, happiness and fulfillment present within us all, as we learn to use the ego mind as an instrument to express, not repress, the soul's joy. Even a restless ego can find peace when it stops struggling and opens into the Divine wholeness already offering the grace, love, and joy that we all seek. Try it for yourself. Stop, take a breath, and allow the Source of wholeness to celebrate Itself through your life right now.

July 16, 2023

Experience Soul Freedom

Paula Whang-Ramos

“Steady practice of superconscious meditation purifies the mental field and is a practice for living free in the world.
Freedom from mental conditioning is the goal; meditation is the means.”
~Yogacharya Ellen Grace O'Brian, Daily Inspiration 11-15-2022

We all have the potential to react from the mind and let the senses control our responses to daily challenges and activities. When we do, then we may feel frustrated, stressed or fearful in the presence of thwarted desires and unexpected change. And, we feel happy and fulfilled when our desires and expectations are met. But truthfully, a life spent chasing desire and avoiding uncomfortable emotions and circumstances is like living on a roller coaster filled with unexpected twists, turns, and dives that sometimes thrill and other times scare us. And eventually, that ride can make us sick on many levels.

Our daily practice of superconscious meditation offers a more fulfilling alternative to living from the limitations of our mental conditioning. Instead, we can learn to directly experience the deeper inner wholeness that is completely unaffected by the wild rides we may experience in our daily lives. In our superconscious meditation practice, we learn to return to and live from the divine power, presence, and wisdom that indwells us all. With repeated practice, we deepen the interior pathways to calm and clarify the mind so it can become a useful instrument to help us live in the freedom of the soul’s joy, peace, and eternal fulfillment. Join us in meditation and let’s live in soul freedom now!

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.

July 9, 2023

The Gift Of Yoga

Paula Whang-Ramos

“The key to true fulfillment in life is to know we are already full, whole, and complete. Then whatever we choose to do, have,
or be is an expression of that wholeness." ~Yogacharya Ellen Grace O'Brian, Daily Inspiration 11-7-2021

Sometimes on our spiritual path, we allow our reactions to challenging daily circumstances to define who we think we are. Instead of saying “I experienced a stressful situation”, we say, “I am stressed.” Instead of saying, “My car ran out of gas”, we say, “I ran out of gas”. This inaccurate self-talk contributes to our own suffering as we falsely believe that being spiritual or whole is a goal we must earn, work towards or achieve as a remedy to our perceived brokenness. We can spend a lifetime not realizing that we already are the power, joy, and integrity of Wholeness that we are working so hard to try to earn or achieve.

Kriya Yoga practices and philosophy can help us remember the truth that we are already whole, spiritual beings, and that there is nothing we can or need to do to be more spiritual or whole. This yogic lifestyle helps us navigate challenging circumstances as opportunities to consciously respond from a deeper inner wisdom, instead of the mind’s fear. Our daily yogic practices can open our hearts and lives into peace amidst chaos, clarity amidst confusion, love amidst loss, and joy amidst sadness. When we live as spiritually conscious beings, our own lives thrive in the joy, love, and presence of the essential wholeness that enlivens all life! This is the gift of Yoga.

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.

July 2, 2023

Live From Higher Possibilities

Paula Whang-Ramos

“See the world without illusions, living from a higher level of understanding.If you have present challenges,
imagine higher possibilities while engaging in practices which can contribute to spiritual awakening and growth.”
~Mr. Roy Eugene Davis, Life Surrendered in God: The Kriya Yoga Way Of Soul Liberation, 1995, p. 134

Many years ago, I had the opportunity to work with a person who woke up paralyzed below the waist from a surgery that was supposed to be a relatively simple procedure. As I sat with her, I kept waiting for her anger and grief at this unanticipated, devastating outcome. Instead, she fired every physician who told her she would never walk again and hired those who offered more hope for divine possibility. She actively participated in very intensive daily rehabilitation. And, after 2 years of grueling therapies, she walked out of the rehabilitation facility. Given the enormous limitations of her very disabled body following surgery, I asked her how she was able to withstand the incredible pain, life losses, and multiple challenges. How did she not just give up? She simply told me that it never occurred to her that she wouldn’t walk again. In fact, she knew she would.

This person’s living faith was private, unapologetic, and undeniable. She intentionally directed her efforts within the conscious communion in divine grace. She remained grounded and very clear that this life-altering event would not define her or limit divine possibility in what was left of her earth life. She knew that she still had much to offer and receive from life and she did everything she could to remain in integrity with that offering.

Some people use their spiritual practice to cultivate more peace, love, and wholeness in their lives. Others use their practice to overcome adversity. Still, others use their practice to experience more wisdom or abundance in their lives. My suggestion? Let’s continue to deepen our spiritual practice to receive divine blessings, to remember our essential wholeness during unexpected changes, and to live from the divine abundance and wisdom always available within us during good times and challenging times.

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.

Meditation & Yoga Center:

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