By Mangala Allen

Yoga is mystical. When you practice yoga something happens. You begin to change.  It’s not just the many health benefits or reduced stress and anxiety levels.You do gain a greater ability to focus and overall improvement in your health, all of which is pretty straightforward. But there is something else at work here, a mystical dimension.  It’s changing my life in a fascinating way, coming from my experience of my true Self emerging from within.

Before yoga, I was searching for something that could fulfill me. “If only I had this or that,” I thought, “my life would be perfect and complete.” It never was. Even when I got what I wanted, I eventually lost interest. Of course, when I didn’t get what I wanted, I kept trying until my enthusiasm waned. Either way I chased after what I thought would make me happy.

Once I tried to meditate and my mind would not give me a moment of peace. Where was the glorious experience I expected? I felt defeated and went back to the chase.  My teacher, Swami Nirmalananda says, “You do not have to travel across an ocean to find an environment that will trigger your experience of the sacred. Find it inside. Do more yoga.”  Discovering yoga’s true purpose was a welcome turning point in my life.  It’s true that your teacher appears when you are ready to receive what she has to give.

I was attending a Svaroopa^® yoga program when I first heard the words: “You are divine! Everyone is!” I was intrigued. I had never thought of myself and everyone else in this way. I wanted to know more.

The Svarooopa^® Sciences have given me a way to explore and gain a greater understanding of this truth. It’s amazing how it all comes back to delving within. It is inside where we encounter our deepest blessing, our Self. We recognize the Self – being all selves, and awaken to truly appreciate the wonder of existence.

Yoga makes you ready for meditation.  When I learned meditation from Swami Nirmalananda, I found the easy way to experience my own divinity. Each meditation makes you more deeply saturated in your divinity. This suffuses your life with infinite gratitude and unconditional love. This is mysticism, the mystery unveiled. Powerful and wonderful changes occur.

Yoga has shown me how to slow down and how to stop looking outside myself for fulfillment. I feel like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, clicking my heels together saying, “There’s no place like home.” I have found my home within me.

When I sit and meditate I experience the sacred. When I open my eyes I am ready to fully embrace life.

To your Inherent Divinity, again and again I bow.