By Gurudevi Nirmalananda

A new year, a new virus variant, a new opportunity to choose what direction you are going.  Life is full of promise as well as challenges.  Can you move into it with intelligence, applying needed caution, yet with enthusiasm?  Enthusiasm comes from the Greek, en-theos, meaning “filled with God.”  Once you find the Divine dimension within yourself, everything you do is inspired and inspirational.

It is my enthusiasm that keeps me teaching in these challenging times.  For me, it is a sacred offering to all who want more out of life.  Intelligence is how my mind uses the light of Consciousness so I can help you see inward.  And caution demands I wear a mask when teaching in-person.  I’ve gotten so used to it that I often forget to remove it.  

Intelligence, caution and enthusiasm — weave them together in the brand-new year that is laying at your feet.  Step onto the path and head in the direction you want to go.  I say, “Head for the light!”  You will find the brightest light shining from its inner source, your own Self.

Yoga specializes in giving you access to the Divine dimension of your own being.  You taste it in doing Svaroopa^®yoga poses.  The physical benefits they provide are tangible, though superficial.  The deeper effects are found in the inner stillness and peace the poses give you.  Direct access is found by turning to explore inward.  Dive deep by using my Baba’s sophisticated meditative methodology.

When you live from the inner depths, you soar into the skies like a bird surfing the air currents that carry you higher and higher.  Shining with light, you are also lightweight.  Yoga gives you an abiding tranquility and profound inner clarity.  They make you able to fly high with an unerring sense of direction, even piercing through the clouds in your mind.  You know what to do and where to go because the answers arise from within.

How do you access this inner stream of clarity?  You have to look for it.  Look into where it comes from.  All your answers lie within.  Your mind is the microscope by which you see into the secret inner realms.  Like a microscope lens, it must be clean and clear to see what’s in there.  You simply have to quiet your mind in order to see clearly.

The sage Patanjali defines yoga as the quieting of your mind.  You don’t wait for your mind to calm down; you intervene.  Use yoga’s tricks to steer your mind in the direction you want it to go, into peace and clarity.  Head for the light within.  The best trick of all?  Mantra, of course. 

Based in Self, your own inner resources are more powerful than a nuclear generating plant.  They empower you to choose what to do with this coming year.  It glistens ahead of you, a golden opportunity.  A luminous moment that you can stretch into infinity.  I would love to show you how.