Happy New Year! Welcome to our first Parvati Magazine issue in 2016! As you turn your attention towards the year ahead, you may have heartfelt dreams and intentions for what this year could bring. Perhaps lists are already made full of your New Year’s resolutions and you begin with high hopes that this year will be better than the last. As you take your first steps in this new year, you need to feel confident in the wisdom of your goals and in your ability to remain true to the milestones you have set out for yourself. May this issue on the theme of “Wisdom” serve to support a year in which you feel loved, supported and fulfilled. It is my deep belief that the universe loves us all equally in ways we cannot truly comprehend. As we step forward rooted in the knowing that our deepest joy is the universe’s joy, possibilities open up to us in ways unimaginable. Fill out your email address to download the PDF directly. Name: Email: Powered by WP Email Capture Onword Thank you for reading the January 2016 issue of Parvati Magazine! A year full of possibilities lies ahead. The extent to which those possibilities become reality in your life is related to your willingness to see past the…
It is the New Year. The year ahead feels like a clean, clear slate, full of possibilities. You may have a list of things you would like to see happen in the coming months. You may feel open, ready and willing to grow. Yet, high hopes can soon feel dashed when you meet naysayers in the world around you or internal limiting beliefs that say you can’t be truly happy. Of these two, your internal chatter is most like Superman’s Kryptonite. People’s negative comments only have power if you believe them to be true. You believe in them only because at some level, you likely hold a core belief that validates their words. For the purpose of cultivating wisdom in the practice of meditation, you must go deeper into exploring the truth of these core beliefs that can undermine your best intentions with mesmerizing speed and efficiency. When you see painful thoughts thwart your heart’s joy, draw upon an age-old key truth on the path to freedom. Know that when you believe life is happening “to” you, you are in your ego. As though under a spell, you are temporarily attached to a passing perception, generated by your ego, which only knows to divide. In that moment, you are seeing life through a limited, distorted lens.…
Image credit: Unterstrich Breath awareness offers each of us unique and profound insight into who we are and how we are feeling. It connects our inner, personal world of sensations, thoughts and experience, with the outer world that unfolds around us. One of the more introverted yoga poses, the forward bending Crab pose, is a welcome relief at the end of a busy day of “doing”. It moves your awareness away from the external and helps you cultivate greater internal wisdom. It is also a wonderful pose to start your day, as it cultivates humility, receptivity and the awareness that our relationship with our internal world is reflected back to us through our relationship with our external world. The wise yogi knows that each thought, feeling and idea literally affects the way we experience the moment, and this sets the arch and trajectory of our life. Please remember that the goal of this exercise is not to “work hard” but to get in touch with your true source of power. Connect to your breath, your body and your spine and witness whatever may arise. Release all tendency to have an agenda. Practice presence. In this allowing, you create a forum within yourself for tremendous healing. All YEM: Yoga as Energy Medicine exercises in this magazine are…
The Upanishads refer to the spiritual path as the kshurasya dhara, the razor’s edge. It is a potent path, yet one that can be easy to stray from without realizing it, and hard to stay on. The wisdom of a realized master is invaluable for those who seek to undertake this journey. I feel very blessed by the Grace of a satguru in my life. They say the teacher comes when the student is ready. I stumbled upon and met Mata Amritanandamayi Devi in Kerala, South India in 1993 when I was internally called to go to India to deepen my yoga practice. Mata Amritanandamayi Devi, lovingly known as Amma, or Mother, is the embodiment of unconditional love, the primordial shakti, or divine life force. Her teachings are clear and simple, practically relevant to our busy, modern lives. Her focus on selfless service as a means of God-realization provides straightforward guidelines on spiritual living. She says, “Fill your hearts with love and express it in all you do.” I would like to dedicate this month’s column to some of Amma’s guidelines for spiritual growth and expansion. They have become points of regular contemplation for me. As with most spiritual truths, there is a profundity in the simplicity found within them. In each of these points, we…
Welcome to the December 2015 issue of Parvati Magazine. This month, we celebrate some highlights from recent Parvati Magazine issues, while also providing a current update on the leadup to COP21 in Paris. Enjoy these excellent articles by some of our fabulous contributors! Parvati Fill out your email address to download the PDF directly. Name: Email: Powered by WP Email Capture Onword Thank you for reading the December 2015 edition of Parvati Magazine. T. S. Eliot wrote, “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” Whether you are seeing something for the first time or the fiftieth, this moment you are in is unique. Open to it with the heart and mind of a beginner, and cherish its gifts. Until next month, remember, Love yourself. Love others. Love our world. We are one Earth family. Parvati The post December 2015: Best of 2015 (Read the Full Issue) appeared first on Parvati Magazine.
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From my experience, the ego only exists because it sees itself as separate from life force. So when that illusion dissolves, we return to the experience of unity. In that process, we gain even greater access to interconnection, which ensures not only our survival, but our thriving.
Welcome to the November 2015 issue of Parvati Magazine. Daylight Savings Time has ended and the nights are lengthening on their way to the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere. Yet, even as darkness seems to increase, luminosity is not only possible – it is our destiny. As we come to fully experience that our essence and everything within and around us is one with unlimited consciousness, we realize our true, divine nature. One who truly understands and lives within this reality loves all things equally and sees all things equally, because to him, all is undivided consciousness, not separate from himself, or anything that is. This month’s issue contains articles to celebrate your luminous self and your interconnection with all on our beautiful planet. Enjoy! Click the cover image below to open the magazine viewer. Alternately, fill out your email address to download the PDF directly. Name: Email: Powered by WP Email Capture Onword As you finish this issue and move on to the next part of your day, practice seeing the radiance, the luminosity, of your true nature arising and shining through all things. By choosing to place less power in your ego, you feel more interconnected with your soul essence and life as a whole. You understand that insatiable wanting creates suffering for yourself…
Image credit: Christos Tsoumpeklas “When you have reached enlightenment, ignorance will delude you no longer. In the light of that knowledge you will see the entire creation within your own Atman and in me.” – Bhagavad Gita 4:35 Enlightenment is a part of everyone’s destiny. We each are called to this state at some point through our many incarnations. The process of our soul’s evolution involves a purification of our distorted perceptions that sees ourselves as separate, suffering entities. As we come to fully experience that our essence and everything within and around us is one with unlimited consciousness, we realize our true, divine nature. One who truly understands and lives within this reality loves all things equally and sees all things equally, because to him, all is undivided consciousness, not separate from himself, or anything that is. Often through a break of our ego’s grip due to the weight of our own suffering, we awaken to a life beyond the pain of limited sense of a divided “me”. We realize that there is more to life than wanting for oneself. We experience deeper truths that lie beyond our limited personal perceptions and question the nature of the mind and the authority of our ego. As we place less power in our ego, we go through…
Image credit: Unterstrich Each luminous, colourful butterfly was once a caterpillar. Not born with wings that could take it to great heights, the former ground-crawler had to be reborn to see the world in a whole new way and experience newfound freedom. In many ways, the spiritual path is like this. As one of my favorite children’s books, “Hope For The Flowers” by Trina Paulus, reminds us, we can too easily find ourselves stuck in the hum-drum of living, crawling along the ground and forgetting that a butterfly waits to be born within us. In India, cobblers traditionally sat to repair shoes in Butterfly pose, also known as Bound Angle Pose or Baddhakonasana in Sanskrit (baddha/bound kona/angle). Likely due to its ability to open the flow of life-force energy through the kidneys, sexual and digestive organs, groin and prostate, it was noted that often these workers did not suffer from such diseases. Safe for most anyone who does not suffer from severe knee, groin or hip injuries, this simple yoga pose will provide you with an opportunity to gently go within while deepening a rooted sense of connection to the Earth. As your spine spills over your hips and you release your forehead towards the ground, your overheated thinking mind eases into surrender to the cooling…
Image credit: Neil Piddock The divine means many things to different people. For some, it is formless, expansive light. Others see the sacred in nature, such as in a tree, a mountain, an animal or a river. Many traditions relate to God as a male figurehead, while others worship the divine mother. However we see the divine, what is essential is that we touch the reality of unity behind the appearance of diversity. The divine is ultimately pure, unconditional love, and as such, it will express itself to us in the best way for us to evolve. A window frame may be Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or any other world tradition. Some only look at the window dressing and see only their religion. For those who look deeper, the structure of each tradition can help spiritual aspirants find one universal divine truth. They know that what is essential is what shines through the window frame: the clear, unattached, compassionate natural-love-light of the divine that is within all. Let us not get stuck on the window dressing. Let us look through the window and welcome the love-light that we all are. When we focus on the unity that joins us, we create a beautiful human rainbow of light, varied in colour, all part of the one…