Dearest loving yoga family!
With great gratitude and joy I report that we are still standing. Our home and property, the horses, chickens, dogs and cats are all safe. We, all 7 of us, soon to be 8 (daughter’s partner arriving soon) are safe and surviving. In fact, the truest test of our humanity has been exposed and I am awed at the grace, tenacity and hard work of so many who are still fighting these persistent fires. I especially recognize the maturity and strength of my son Jay who got us all out of there with many precious belongings on Tuesday night between 1 and 5 am. I recognize and honor my daughter, and the friends who live with us in getting those amazing horses out. The animal rescue angels who miraculously showed up in the darkness and asked, “who needs help?” as they stood in the darkness of the equestrian center where they had gone to get a trailer.
I recognize and am grateful to my son’s girlfriend who tended to the dogs (3) and cat who were thoroughly freaked out. I bow to all of our friends and neighbors who pulled together and aided us, with homes, beds and food. We all pulled together, calmly and collectively to get ourselves safely out of there with all the animals in the middle of the night. Thank goodness PGE had just restored power one night before and we had lights to evacuate in and not total darkness.
I am so grateful to my son, who went back up the next morning, obtained a generator and with the blessed help of friend Matt (electrician) who just texted that morning asking if we were okay and said, YES, he will go up into the fire and help wire the generator to the well pump so Jay could climb on the roofs of the houses (2) and garage and begin to set sprinklers to keep the place wet! Jay made sure to go up every 8 hours every day to refill the generator with gas. He then began to journey around the fire ridden community and help others and chop down trees to make fire breaks and bring food, water and gas. He took fire roads, back roads and rail tracks to get in because we were not allowed in, but he went. He said the only thing he regrets so far, is not knowing these amazing people in that area better before this happened. He said our neighbors up in the Doon are amazing people. They are!
I am grateful that after a week of moving to several places, daughter sleeping in car, son and girlfriend in truck over night and just being displaced, we found a lovely house and another apartment for all of us and dogs. We are lucky, so many are displaced and I cannot imagine what they are going through. I am grateful to dear new friends housing our 14 hens and 8 new baby chicks!!!! I am grateful to friends taking care of our cat! This is the village caring for everyone.
My heart is shredded and I have not even been up yet to see what it looks like in one of the most beautiful places on earth. My heart is aching for my friends and so many I know of who have lost everything. It is a weird numb feeling to look at a pile of ash where your home was, I am on my knees that our home is there.
Right now, I am in a house with my daughter and the others are across town in another apartment. All animals are safe. I intend to teach, I need to ground into teaching and to remember that this practice, this earth will regenerate and our work is to remember the true transient nature of everything. I need to remember that we are absolutely resilient, after all, this is what we LIVE, KNOW AND TEACH. We will recover, we will be better somehow for it. We have all had a chance to see parts of ourselves and I tell you, what I have seen is so beautiful.
We will have a long restoration as the smoke damage is intense inside the houses and I don’t even know what that entails! But, thank God and all our angels, we have a house to restore! We will provide sanctuary to all we can, as I have always known my home to be a sanctuary for harmony and love. I will keep in touch with you all, for now, please join me on line for classes, see my schedule on the Live Classes page, I would love to see you and hope we hold each other. thank you so much for all of your outpouring of love and support during this time. We are love, we are safe, this is a lesson to remember the impermanence of life, of things, of all. We are just caretakers and so far, the Mother is mad as hell about the way we are not taking care of her. Climate destruction is real, things need to change and resource depletion, the massive abuse and destruction of our planet is coming back full circle. This was not a once in a lifetime event, this is our new reality. Big love to our Mother who is hurting, and to all, to all of you!
Classes begin again: WEDNESDAY
Please follow me on INSTAGRAM, link on my website and DENISEDIVINE where I will post updates.
Why Truth Matters, True Test of an Authentic Spiritual Practice
I wrote this before the fires erupted. After great consideration regarding the abuses of Yogi Bhajan, here is my deep reflection of an authentic practice.
If you are a seeker of truth, integrity and a divine life based in teachings of authenticity, you may find this helpful. With truth, it may be disrupting to hear, and yet, it sets us free. I hope this sets some part of you free.
In the beginning:
Yoga found me and burst open my heart and awakened in me an awareness unknown to me ever. From the beginning, a humble and graceful teacher opened my eyes and heart to the wisdom of practice. Her name was Bonnie Richter and she was a gentle loving angel. She worked with me one on one for a year, and then said it was time for me to leave the nest and move on. I was not to become attached to her, but to realize the Light within. I will always be deeply grateful to her. Three years later after becoming a Hatha yoga teacher, I became a Kundalini Yoga teacher certified by the Kundalini Research Institute and completed the advanced Level II trainings (5 modules) thereafter. I do not just practice and teach yoga, I live yoga.
We created a dear community of loving and generous practitioners in Annapolis, MD. I attended many Yoga Journal and Omega yoga conferences, as I had not yet found the yoga festival culture, Bhakti and Shakti fest as well as the Wanderlust events had not started for me. I continued yogic education with more workshops and a 500 hour Hatha Yoga training. I attended Summer Solstices (10 day KY events in NM) for many years, which included 3 days of White Tantric Yoga (a creation by Yogi Bhajan, as he deemed himself the only Mahan Tantric in the world).
A decade later
I found so much solace in coming to my mat every day where I could unload my suffering and stress and touch pure joy. I realized how many people were suffering and these practices changed lives! I saw community grow and felt our bond. It was palpable. Difficult to do, I uprooted from MD in ‘11, and was welcomed into a new KY community in Boston which held me during a very stressful transition. Eighteen months later I moved to California, 2012. Two major moves, incredible life changes and now landing in an entirely new world, a new part of the country where I knew no one. And every day I was nurtured and held by that time on my mat. Every day the suffering, joy, fear and all mind stuff would be left on that mat, on that meditation seat and worked out of my body. By this time I had witnessed many discrepancies in the practice and with several Sikh’s within the Aquarian Academy (the organization that trains teacher trainers where I had been accepted) and KRI at that time and I felt an incongruence in the practice and its roots. Personally I continued to chant mantras (both in Sanskrit and Gurmukhi), practice some meditations from KY and focused on Hatha asanas. My Sadhana, daily spiritual practice, deepened into the study and practice of additional and other yogic techniques.
During my early years, I had numerous challenges with the authenticity, origin and “lineage” as claimed by KRI (Kundalini Research Institute). I researched for years as my nature is to understand deeply coupled with a true heartfelt faith in my experiences. I had practiced and taught Hatha Yoga already for 4 years by the time I included KY in my practice. I was told emphatically by my original KY teacher that I “could” not do both, I had to choose. I did not choose, it was antithetical to me to divide the practices, as the pure definition of Yoga is to yoke and all of the tools of the 8 Limbed Path of Hatha were included in the KY teachings (in our manuals) and thus, it seemed an orthodox viewpoint and one limited from ignorance to not teach and practice both forms, respecting them separately.
Origins of Yoga practices
I found references through the years in many of the sacred texts of yoga discussing Kundalini and how to awaken this sacred dormant energy. It is an ancient knowledge and no one can claim it as theirs. What is consistently explained is that awakening this dormant energy must and should be done with devotion (clear intention and attention), purity in body, mind and heart, mindfully and slowly. Any techniques to rush this process can very well cause serious problems, such as mental, emotional, spiritual and physical disharmonies.
The techniques always involve Pranayama (specific breathing practices) with the main channels of Ida, Pingala and Shushumna; Bhandas (“locks” in the body at the perineum, diaphragm, and throat) Mulabhanda, Uddihanda and Jaladhara; Asanas (postures such as seated ones) and especially creating the ground for the awakening with a Sattvic leaning lifestyle of proper food, rest, play, observation and proper use of the Sense organs and Meditation (time spent focusing on the inner light/Self).
The Chakras are recognized as gateways towards this realization of Self in most of the practices to awaken Kundalini because they provide something for the mind to focus on, they are located in the Subtle body and are connected to the main channels and provide abundant information to the Self in the awakening process.
Mantras (sacred sound currents) and the practice of them can be a very useful and uplifting way to feel a vibration within and have been utilized for centuries. Chanting and singing throughout history are a way for communities to connect and join in voice and heart. I am not aware of any temple, holy place or sacred site where singing, chanting or some form of sound or music is not of benefit. In many of the sacred texts there is mention of the Shabad, the sacred sound current, this is well known and documented in many teachings.
Sanskrit mantras, Bija mantras (seed sounds) and other sounds are incredibly powerful. In KY as taught by YB, because he was born and practiced Sikhism (a religion originating in India/Pakistan), he chose to incorporate the sounds from that religious path into his practice. These mantras are recognized in the Siri Guru Granth Sahib; the Sikhs recognize this as their “living guru” and treat it as such. It is a physical document, akin to the Bible, Torah or Koran, in that it holds the teachings of the 10 Sikh gurus among other revered and recognized teachers of spirituality, from Rumi to Kabir. The language is Gurmukhi, as I understand it to be a derivative of Sanskrit, I cannot verify that. However, the chanting of these mantras is one of the single most uplifting ecstatic practices I found in all of KY.
Clearly, chanting of mantras is a practice worldwide that brings incredible solace, joy, peace and harmony to our hearts and bodies. I play the continuous sound of these in my home and car and have noticed through the years that the “chatter” in the back of my mind is one of these mantras. Whether a Sanskrit or Gurmuki one, does not matter, they carry the healing vibration of the Shabad and provide a great tool. These are not Yogi Bhajan’s nor do they rest in the domain of the Sikhs, KRI or any group. They are universal, sacred and belong to no one.
Kriya Yoga is a specific practice not to be confused with the “kriyas” that Yogi Bhajan invented in his practice. If you wish to learn more about Kriya Yoga please visit: Kriya Yoga, Paramahamsa Yogananda. The Kriyas in KY per YB are a series of exercises designed to deliver a consequence. As any Hatha teacher can share with you, Vinyasa Krama is when a teacher creates a sequence of Asanas to deliver a consequence.
Every Hatha Asana will specifically deliver an action in the body/mind complex, it will have a result. The art and science of creating healthy, balancing and definitive sequences takes practice, knowledge of anatomy both subtle and physical and awareness of the potential effects. This is called Vinyasa Krama, creating a consequence from a sequence. I am aware of what I am doing when I teach every class, in terms of aiming in a direction for a cause. In teaching teachers, I spend a great amount of time on this particular topic, as it is possible for a teacher to create unhealthy, imbalanced and possibly damaging sequences. I share this so that you will discern in your participation in yoga classes, how you actually feel afterwards. Not just to feel “good” but to notice the true results, which we will now go into.
Yoga aims towards Self Realization
Every spiritual sacred text I read on the teachings of yoga continue to point in the direction of Self Realization. To “know thy self” “Thou Art That” is the ultimate teachings, the ultimate aim. A life without self awareness, inquiry and connecting to that which is beyond our small microcosmic realm is seen as nearly a waste. Just to indulge in feeding the sense organs with pleasurable or exciting experiences cannot and won’t satisfy our natural inner need to feel whole, healed and pure Joy.
Just because you have an “experience” with a practice, whatever it is, does not mean it is one that delivers. To each of us, this is unique. Unique, because each of us is unique. We may share orientations in direction with a practice, we may share desires and passions. We crave community, to belong, to find our tribe, our people, and to feel whole. We are born into this world and according to the Yoga Sutras, we “forget” that we already are whole, divine and a part of all that is. The individualization of being in our own body creates the idea and sense that we are separate from others. This feeling of being separate can be terrifying and as we grow up, we continually seek to find a way to feel connected again, until we remember we are whole and that the connection we seek outside of ourselves is already available within.
An authentic spiritual practice will remind you that you are whole, it will connect you to YOU in your heart and will strengthen your understanding of yourSelf and others. With devotion, proper habits and inquiry/reflection of what you are thinking, saying and doing, you will witness your own Self and realize that what you seek is already inside of you. With authentic practice, you will return to a deep calm inside and know that no matter the chaos on the outside, there is a river of calm on the inside. This is a true result.
Call it faith, call it mindfulness or anything you like, the important element here is the remembering, realization and reconnection to the knowingness that you are a part of all that is and always was. This is a true result.
This feeling resides in the Anahata Chakra, the Heart Center and can easily be covered over with the myriad of emotions we experience from fear, anger, worry, anxiety, depression and more, stress, trauma, hardship, and a lack of practice.
Awakening Kundalini is Awakening Awareness
This feeling as I call it, runs within every one of us. Awakening Kundalini energy in a calm, healthy and balanced way can and will connect us, as will other yogic practices. It is not to awaken this dormant energy that should be our goal, but rather to remove the veils of illusion that prevent us from realizing our true Divine nature. This realization may include awakening Kundalini and it may not. This realization is the Aim of Life. It will remove the fear of death, it will create a boundless connection to our deepest heart nature and it will provide clarity and strength of character without doubt. This is a true result.
Once we have awakened this connection, and we continue to practice we now have a choice. I see exactly where my mind takes me, what my desires are, how I may or may not respond in situations of stress, agony and joy. I also know what can block my connection to this Heart energy and how I can confuse or distort truth to suit my needs. Each of us has what is referred to as an ego driven nature, where the impulse is to meet our needs, we want what we want and we don’t want what we don’t want. And we will do a lot to maintain that.
Moving our awareness to our “divine” nature is what an authentic practice in my humble opinion will provide us with. This is a true result. It is our choice as to how we respond in every situation, we are not two people in these two sides of our nature, unless we truly are mentally unstable. We are able to witness our own duality, and choose which way we respond.
Values and Virtues
The Values and virtues many lack or have not learned to connect with may become very clear. Patanjali gave us 10 yogic precepts, the Yamas and Niyamas to strive to live by. These are profound and yet simple precepts that allow each of us, unique individuals, to interpret, experience and practice them to our level of awareness. With increasing awareness our relationship to these will morph and change over time and what used to be held as a definition at one point in our life may change dramatically over time.
Satya, truthfulness is one of my most meaningful precepts. From day one of learning of it I challenged myself to root out every time I was not truthful, and I saw how incredibly easy it had been for me to not only live with many untruths, but to justify them. Rather than feel terrible about myself, I made it a game and decided to see where I could now be more truthful, where could I change my thoughts, words and deeds to be truthful. Where was I lying to others and most of all, to myself. I changed my entire relationship to truth and developed a whole new language to speak truthfully and kindly. It was a real awakening and over time I realized how much more congruent I felt and how much self doubt had disappeared and how I could genuinely trust myself more. I kept my word by not making promises I could not keep, even when it disappointed someone if I had to say no. I gathered my words with kindness when I had to say something that I felt might be difficult for another to hear. I stopped having harmful thoughts and worked to root out the feeling, situation and cause of them. I realized that anger, frustration, swearing or disappointment were not “not spiritual” , they were an acceptable form of expression when I took full responsibility for the expression. This is a true result.
The Yamas and Niyamas gave me a joyful, accessible and profoundly simple yet deep way to inquire with myself and to check in on my “spiritual progress”. Spiritual maturity to me, is about us being able to see all of our Self, in all the light and dark, in the polarities that we exist in; To love and forgive myself when I fall back into a way that brings harm to another or myself. Spiritual maturity comes from awareness and may or may not be your goal or direction for your practice. I heard the term many years ago and decided to understand it and see what it might bring to me.
Kundalini Yoga as Universal
Awakening Kundalini is an ancient and important part of many yogic teachings. The methods are varied and many ancient sages have shared their experiences, practices and tools for us today. I feel that all yogic paths have merit, and I use my sense of discernment to witness the results of the practice and the awareness of the teacher. Kundalini is a term used to express the awesome and magnificent power of our life force that once awakened, moves us to be all that we forgot we could be. It opens us to the joy that quietly and always lives inside of us. It is not fantastical but it may feel like magic. It is different and unique for every one of us. This, is our true birthright. And we must work to reach it, and provide a foundation for it to exist in. No one person owns it, how to awaken it and most especially can truly awaken it in us. If our practice awakens it, we will gradually and gently realize or even quickly realize more. Value that, don’t discount or devalue it.
The hope and grace of an authentic practice is to witness in ourselves an evolution towards increased authentic awareness, in the way we think, speak, and act. Every thing we participate in is an example of the results of our practice.
I understand awareness as me being able to know what I am doing, how I show up, where I use my energy, am I living in a balanced, natural, harmonious way, am I kinder, more compassionate and resolute. Am I filled with anxiety, self doubt and confusion or am I calm, clear and able to process and understand what is happening. Am I able to be clear with my own fears and soothe myself with truth and light in a time of need? This is a true result.
Sovereignty and the Collective
I have never been comfortable handing over my self authority to another, whether it be a doctor, teacher, guru or leader. As a very young child I was encouraged and taught to question authority and derive an understanding for myself. If you know me, you may know that I will speak up and out. I think I came here to seek truth and from my near death experience at 15 to now, I feel grateful beyond words, beyond anything that I may not know all truth, but I know that there exists no absolutes.
I encourage every student, my adult kids, friends and family to dig deep and find that connection to our inner divine realm. To experience and soothe ourselves with that river of calm that flows beneath the chaos. To me, that is what this entire practice is about. Many may feel an experience with the Divine, to those that do not share that belief, connecting to a deep abiding eternal essence provides grace. This is a true result.
Yogi Bhajan gathered many tools from many paths and created his own sequences of actions and called it Kundalini yoga. He took his life knowledge from being Indian, living in his religion, community, family and amalgamated it into a practice. He realized the value of his presence, a large figure he took up a lot of space energetically and in all ways. His presence was commanding as my teachers said. Adorned in his turban and speaking with his accent and espousing these teachings, he gathered followers. The times were ripe for this. An entire massive organization grew up around him as many were inspired from his teachings and it became a thing, Kundalini Yoga as taught by YB. He did not invent or create the breathing exercises Pranayamas, Bhandas, Mantras, Mudras or Meditations. These are not his to claim and with a bit of research you will find them universally taught elsewhere. He did invent the Kriyas, the exercises. He did lecture a lot and told fantastical stories to prop up a clearly overly inflated ego self that is absolutely wounded and deviant. He claimed to have mystical and near magical powers, which are neither provable or unprovable. He invented White Tantric Yoga and called himself a Mahan Tantric. He preached one thing and did another. Clearly he held the attention of his audience and managed to manipulate so many. He was not the first to do so and will not be the last.
Many people have had strong experiences from this practice, and yet, I ask, do these experiences authentically awaken your awareness, strength of character and connection to your own divine existence? Are you more clear of what brings you closer to your authentic Soul light? Sitting for 3 days in White tantric yoga can help us overcome our own wriggly nature, our monkey mind. And it can also instigate forms of psychosis. Yet, with that, what else has it awakened in you? Are you more clear in your life with your true nature? Are you developing more of a witness consciousness? Are you holding the reins of the senses, the Ego aspect of our personality? Do you find more of a loving nature arising within whereby you can confront those issues that cause disharmony, trouble and fear? Are you less avoidant and procrastinating? Are you clear with your virtues and values without projecting onto others? Are you taking things less personally? These are true results.
Toxic Teacher?
Warning, this content may be alarming and upsetting:
We are now being told by KRI to trust the teachings of Kundalini Yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan and to realize that his toxicity did not influence the teachings. YB said to follow the teachings not the teacher and yet, he demanded loyalty from his innermost circle of followers. Nearly a year of investigations, articles of inquiry and revelations from past followers of YB, we now know of his absolutely indescribably horrific, dangerous, damaging, deviant and demented behaviors towards many of his followers. His cult styled behaviors, threats, punishments, physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual abuses and his extravagant and criminal acts are no longer legend or myth but are reality. The raping, molestations, bizarre sexual practices as well as his incredibly strange and harming demands ranging from mono-diets to one size fits all Ayurvedic practices, are recognized as coming from a deeply damaged human who wreaked havoc on a number of innocent women and children for their lifetime. I will say that clearly men were harmed as they chose to believe YB’s misogynistic teachings couched under the guise of empowering and honoring women. Women, children and men were greatly harmed and many men and women enabled and covered up for this abuse, for 25 years.
I cannot rectify, justify, recognize or frankly align with this particular brand of yoga again, because to know the man now is to know his mind. And that same mind that brought the level of harm and destruction to so many with his words and teachings was uttering out of the other side of his mouth these practices. To hold both of these concepts simultaneously, the dark and the light is the work of being human. And yet, we have choice, we have awareness to recognize that this particular brand of yoga was created by a man, not a Godhead, not a Christ consciousness, not a Buddha.
But the Experience…
Are the glorious experiences coming from the practices, or the gathering of like minded souls who want to find and feel God in each other? Is it that we crave connection and love so much that we believe we are experiencing it with these practices? Or are we? KY now and forever will be marred with the knowledge that as YB taught sitting there in his white turban he was violently harming trusting and innocent women and children behind the veneer.
That as he espoused the grace and divinity of women and taught Women’s Camps, he raped and assaulted women followers. That as he married off couples, he would also purposely torture some with his claim of wanting them (women) to be his. That as he espoused family values, he asked his followers to send their small young children to either live with other families or off to India to a boarding school he created where they were sadly bullied and molested. That he forced a 16 week abortion upon a woman follower with his baby, after which she nearly died from hemorrhaging.
But what really rips my guts apart, is the enabling and brainwashing that occurred to allow all of this to happen. It took a lot of people to keep this secret, to provide a place for this to continue for 25 years and worst of all, it took a lot of people who claimed this practice lifted them closer to God to act out and not have the courage, the integrity, the grit to stand up to this man. And now, those same people want to rebrand this practice and keep going with it, disavowing him. Or worse, disavowing the absolute clarity of the investigation thus negating the many victims.
Is not a genuine authentic spiritual practice one that awakens within us a clear and doubtless awareness of what is healthy, acceptable, good and right?
At what point would anyone ever believe or consider that these kinds of actions, FROM YOUR SPIRITUAL TEACHER were okay? Where was the character, divinity, dignity and grace that was so preached? How deeply depraved not only was this teacher but were the followers to cover this up, to harm those that tried to come forward, to create such an environment of exclusivity and illusion? How is it ever possible to separate the teacher from the teachings knowing that the teacher in this very clear case in in fact the originator of the teachings?
This is not another religion where the practitioners and leaders have gone off the rails. This is a practice created by a man who lacked a complete moral compass. The degree of mental compartmentalization, mania, and pure psychological pathology is nearly impossible to comprehend. I can only acknowledge that he was simply a man, believing in his own God complex and feeling completely justified in all of his actions, the same as any common criminal pedophile or rapist.
Where Do We go from Here?
I end with this, I will accept that many will be attached to the practice and that it will continue. It is a multi million dollar business and hundreds of people have invested their lives, hearts and souls into a way of living as an American Sikh, as a KY teacher or trainer and have yoga studios and entire livelihoods fixed on this. There will be many who decry the outrageousness of the reports and claim them to be false. There will be many who will strive to live by the new mantra of trust the experience of the teachings, let go of the teacher.
I get it, we are devastated as a community to realize the level of deception not only by YB but by many many people in the higher “ranks” of KRI, SSSC and 3HO. Many in the “old guard” knew and turned a blind eye and will have to deal with themselves. The publication of Pamala Dyson’s book, “White Bird in a Golden Cage” was a clear and evident tipping point that finally pried open the coffin that had carefully been nailed shut to hold these secrets forever. I appreciate those at KRI and SSSC that knew enough to know that this had to be addressed and began an investigation. I do not appreciate the lack of thoroughness in the investigation, regarding leaving out massive parts of abuse regarding children in the boarding school and the criminal issues around the many businesses the corporation owns.
To those that had the phenomenal courage and integrity to come forward, I thank you, I honor you and I hold you in the most loving and supportive light possible. What you went through can never ever be changed, what you go into now is light, I pray. You are the ones who truly are the teachers. You are the ones who honestly practiced truth, integrity and witnessed the most painful and enormous realizations. You are the ones setting the path to Light and truth. You are the ones who awakened, realized and are of pure light. Your courage and conviction is an example for everyone to learn and live by. Thank you for doing what you did to come out of the darkness and bring to light what we all needed to see.
Let us all witness this truth, let us all look deep within and see our own Light and Dignity. Let us hold these polarities and yet choose wisely what we shall think, say and do. I do not honor YB and acknowledge my 16 year struggle to feel his light, I never could. I honor that within me was always a discrepancy between what I felt and experienced with the practices and our community and what I felt from the teacher. I honor awareness, I honor that which I cannot touch or see, but I feel it. I honor the courage and strength within me to know.
I honor and will practice the universal sacred in Pranayama, Mantras of all paths, Bhandas, Mudras, Meditation and asana. I honor the Yoga Sutras, the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads and too many sacred texts of truth to count. I honor the pain and struggle so many are living in right now. I honor the amazing artists who sing these mantras with love in their hearts. I honor the teachers who will decide how to be truthful with themselves and their students. I honor the divisions, disparity, polarity and confusion and trust that Light, LOVE and Truth will prevail. I honor that I am doing my best to truthfully and lovingly resolve my heartache not in realizing the reality about YB personally but in learning of the enormous suffering of so many in the name of spirituality. I honor everyone struggling to rectify their experience and truth. I love you all and thank you for taking your time to read this. Perhaps it has shed some light for you as to how to understand what a true authentic spiritual practice is and the results.
It is not enough to just have a powerful experience but to witness our awareness, courage, values, virtues, kindness, tenacity and more grow. Cultivate your practice with Mantras, Asanas, Pranayamas and learn what the 8 Limbs of yoga are and practice them. That will lead you to Samadhi, to the Light.