Acharya Vandana's  Weekly Inspirations

Joy is inherent to our nature as individualized units of pure Consciousness. Our true Self is always joyful, content, and at peace. To directly experience our soul joy, we need to intentionally direct our attention and awareness to joy-filled moments throughout our day. As we become more skillful at recognizing and living into joy, our own life becomes more joyous.  

This week, let's actively look for all the ways that joy is revealed throughout our daily activities and interactions. What lifts our hearts? What makes us smile before we even know we are grinning? Even a little joy goes a long way to uplift ourselves and each other. Let's be the uplifting joy that blesses all life!

Thrive in prosperity consciousness this year at Blue Lotus Center onsite (Wednesday evenings only) and online (Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays). Experience a time of meditation, study, contemplation, and divine remembrance in a spiritual community 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 Kriya Yoga Meditation Center welcomes sincere seekers from all backgrounds. Beginning and experienced participants from all traditions are welcome at all gatherings. 

Intentional living involves developing our power of discernment - the ability to discriminate between those thoughts, words, and actions that serve the highest good from those that do not. With discernment, we honestly inventory our mental, social, and behavioral habits and their effects. Initially, this practice may be a bit uncomfortable to the ego as we recognize well-loved daily habits that actually perpetuate stressful living. With discernment, we learn to say "no thank you" to mindless TV time, surfing the internet, late-night eating, worrying about outcomes that cannot be changed by worrying, living in the past, and fretting about the future. With discernment, we realize how these habits interfere with our ability to clearly hear our inner wisdom guiding us to make different choices now. 

When we let go of these unskillful ways, we create more inner space and willingness to make necessary changes to enhance the quality of our consciousness and integrity in our lives. This is an important shift in our consciousness, as we learn to redirect our thoughts, words, and actions to be in harmony with our innate peace, joy, wisdom, and clarity. The teachings and practices of Kriya Yoga offer a way to develop discernment, and a life lived in the freedom of the soul. But don't take our word for it. Join us at CSE and BLC and experience for yourself how to live with more intelligent discernment, spiritual determination, and peace of the soul - in this lifetime. 

Thrive in prosperity consciousness this year at Blue Lotus Center onsite (Wednesday evenings only) and online (Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays). Experience a time of meditation, study, contemplation, and divine remembrance in a spiritual community 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 Kriya Yoga Meditation Center welcomes sincere seekers from all backgrounds. Beginning and experienced participants from all traditions are welcome at all gatherings. 

When life is going well and our desires are met, we might say, "God's grace is with me today". And that is true. But it is not true because our desire was met. It is true because the power, presence, and wisdom of divine grace is at work in our lives every day, regardless of our life circumstances.

Divine grace is like the sun. The sun is always shining in the sky, even when its light is obscured by the clouds. Similarly, the divine providence of grace continues to express Its wholeness in and through us and every circumstance in our lives, even when we are too confused, distracted, or emotionally reactive to see it. 

Learning to return to and live from the conscious awareness of divine grace in our lives is a spiritual practice. It requires us to mature beyond the reactivity of the ego's met and unmet needs as the source of our well-being. It calls us to open more deeply within to realize and experience the ways in which gifts of grace are still overflowing in our lives, regardless of the mind's reactions to life circumstances. Beyond the ever-changing, never-satisfied reactive mind is the always eternal peace, wisdom, and wholeness of grace waiting to be consciously lived through us. Divine grace is ready and waiting for us to realize it in our lives right now. 

Thrive in prosperity consciousness this year at Blue Lotus Center onsite (Wednesday evenings only) and online (Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays). Experience a time of meditation, study, contemplation, and divine remembrance in a spiritual community 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 Kriya Yoga Meditation Center welcomes sincere seekers from all backgrounds. Beginning and experienced participants from all traditions are welcome at all gatherings. 

Grace is freely given by the Source in every moment in our lives. Even during challenging moments, we can be aware of divine abundance still supporting the fullness of our minds/bodies and our lives. When we stop, look, and listen within, grace-filled moments express as intuitive insights, support arising from unexpected sources, and inner peace amidst increased activity. When we live in the flow of grace, then gratitude naturally overflows from our hearts, which deepens our call to freely share freedom with all sincere seekers.  

In divine grace, on November 6, 2014, Yogacharya O'Brian blessed into being the Blue Lotus Kriya Yoga Meditation Center. Over the past 10 years, a small but mighty group of devoted volunteers has offered more than 1,900 meditation groups and spiritual living classes to more than 17,800 sincere seekers in Gilroy, CA and beyond. On behalf of the BLC Board of Directors and the Seva Volunteer Team, we extend our deepest gratitude to the Source of wholeness and the Gurus in this tradition, including a special bow to Yogacharya O'Brian, for the opportunity to offer these life transforming teachings in our rural and online community. We are also grateful to each of you for your steadfast commitment to be the oasis of peace that is so needed in our hearts and our country right now.

Thrive in prosperity consciousness this year at Blue Lotus Center onsite (Wednesday evenings only) and online (Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays). Experience a time of meditation, study, contemplation, and divine remembrance in a spiritual community 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 Kriya Yoga Meditation Center welcomes sincere seekers from all backgrounds. Beginning and experienced participants from all traditions are welcome at all gatherings. ​​​