[Uma]

At Saturday's Satsang Guruji announced that this year's 40 Day Observance will be a little different:

"In 1978 I went through these 40 Days of deep experiences and I was in seclusion (I was secluded - I wasn't speaking to people, I was instructed not to speak to people by this Energy). And after this 40 Days was finished and I came out of this thing I didn't want to be secluded. I wanted to be so happy and I wanted to be with everybody and I was like a little child. And you know last year was the fortieth anniversary of the 40 Days. So in this forty-first year I want it to be celebratory. You can see how the Divine is creating that. It's going to be a different 40 Days. It's going to be more joyous but yet it's going to have the strength of the sadhana," ~ Sri Vasudeva

I'm so looking forward to that!!

It begins as usual on the eve of March 25th with an evening of chanting. Guruji said that chanting is one of the best sadhanas to do during the Kali Yuga (the dark period of spiritual ignorance we are creeping out of right now) - because it's difficult to meditate during the dark period, when so many dark energies challenge us (just read what's going on in the world today). In the Blue Star yoga ashram chanting is a way of getting powerfully centered, and that prepares a clean space for meditating. It makes the meditation simpler, easier, more automatic and deeper. The space itself becomes energized through the chanting experience.

He said chanting is a pathway to the Divine - bhakti yoga, the way of the heart - and it purifies the heart, the mind and even the body, when you really put your whole being into it. (Here's a link that explains all about it.) So as always and throughout the 40 Days, it will begin with chanting.

And there are many many other spiritual tools to use for purifying and centering that is all part and parcel of a very strong and powerful meditation practice.

Meditation the Blue Star way, is really about getting into the "silence" [non thinking space] by tapping into all that you are - and then expressing it in the world.

I was looking back at some things he taught us last year. He really clarified it for me about getting into the flow, deepening the experience of the flow - and how to recognize the flow in the first place. Flow is the Tao - "the flow" of life - and it is an experience of spiritual energy and spiritual consciousness.

What flow means for me is getting into that space of joy where I feel carried by the Divine - and everything is happening on my behalf, I'm just cooperating with it, surfing the wave, observing - actively inactive and inactively active as Paramahansa Yogananda said. But flow doesn't just magically appear (except in rare grace-filled karmic moments) - there is an entire science in bringing the flow of life into your space and then maintaining the flowing with it.

How often do I feel out of sync with life - like life is a battle and everything is against me! This is the "normal" consciousness of the ordinary human experience. But when things are in the flow, every experience becomes, as Guruji says, extraordinary. And that requires a shift in consciousness. And a shift in consciousness is where the tough spiritual practices (sadhana) come into play.

That's what I want to focus on this year - the joy of the flow, the joy of living in happiness in every moment. It's incredibly difficult to achieve that kind of moment-to-moment awareness but I know it is possible. That's what meditation is all about to me. And that's my goal.