The First Step: Be The Change

A very Happy New Year to all of you!

After a long pause of writing we are back again in the blog world. Since our last post so many things have happened. Super-storm Sandy, the horrifying CT shooting and the incredible cruelty against a young Indian woman which she did not survive, appalled thousands and thousands of people around the world. But in all these nightmares something new happened. We became a global family.
All over the world people felt, and expressed that these innocent children were part of our family, too.  That this young Indian woman was our sister and our daughter, too. Their loss hurt us, too. All over the world people came together, to mourn, to console each other, to help, to protest and taking action.

“We know that something is wrong with our society, but we do not know what, and how to change it.” That was one of the most common remarks of people being interviewed, conveying a kind of helplessness in the face of such social catastrophes.

Gandhi said:

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Every long journey starts with a single step. Every transformation of society starts with a single person. With me. With you.

After 18 years of practicing Sahaja Meditation I can claim something else, too:

If you are the change, others around you start changing, too.

To change, means to become oneself, one’s true self. Or how Richard Bach expressed it so poetically:

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world,

the Master calls a butterfly.

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In the coming months we will concentrate here on our inner transformation. This will be a step by step guide, how to achieve it by developing a new awareness about ourselves, and others as well.

The First Step

To experience this new awareness the first step is to receive your self-realization, which means, the awakening of your Inner Energy.

The First Goal

Feel the cool vibrations: after the awakening of your Inner Energy you will immediately feel a new sensation in form of a cool breeze in your hands and over your head. Sometimes it might be warm or hot, because as soon as this energy is active it will start to clear your inner energy centers which you might feel as heat.

The Exercise 

Here is a guided meditation by Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi herself to awaken your Inner Energy. She also shows how to raise this energy and how to put yourself into a shield of protection. After this meditation you may find yourself in a state of thoughtless awareness and feeling deep peace within.

The awakening of the Inner Energy is usually done only once. However, out of my own experience I encourage you to try to meditate every day with this guided meditation at the beginning. When I started to meditate it helped me a lot to focus and come into a state of thoughtless awareness and inner peace.

If you had a good experience with this meditation please share it with others, too, and tell us your story.

I wish you a wonderful start into the New Year 2013! Let us make it a special one, together!

Your’s, Angi

Can Books Give Us Spirituality?

It is said that the Bible is the best-selling, most printed and most translated book of all times. Besides it, there are numerous books nowadays, trying to describe spirituality from every possible angle. But by reading them, including the Holy Scriptures of different religions, have we really been  transformed into spiritual beings?

It is one thing to try to follow an idealism, be it a religion or any kind of believe. But is ‘to follow it’ the real becoming? Do we really know our own inner being, this eternal, ever-lasting spirit in us? Do we have the experience of being connected to the all-pervading power?

Shri Mataji said: “I cannot just give you a book by which you sit and read and say, ‘Yes, I know the self. I have got it, I have become.’ To know Thyself does not come from rituals or reading books; it has to be experienced on your central nervous system. It’s a real becoming, ripening, maturing, and living process. No doubt the books give a description of a person with self-knowledge – how he behaves, how his style is, but none of them explain how you become that. Perhaps most of them didn’t know about Kundalini. So it came to my lot.”

To me – personally – it was astonishing how simple the answer was: the key to experience lays in our central nervous system.

We ‘see’ colors, but how would we describe them to a person who was born blind? We ‘hear’, we ‘feel’, we ‘smell’, we ‘taste’ – therefore we know. Therefore we are able to act.
In the same way we have to experience spirituality on our central nervous system.

The key to this experience is the awakening of the inner energy (in Sanskrit called as Kundalini), and already here a lot of confusion can occur. There is a big difference between the electromagnetic fields of the body, the auras, the energy centers, the energy surrounding us in nature and the inner energy.

What differentiates the inner energy to others is that it is a living energy; one may say it is a part of the life force itself that works in its own ways, without our interference. In a dormant state it is the power that ‘keeps our body together’, the essence that aligns all body-functions in us, and provides the necessary energy for our living.
When awakened it starts rising along our spine and enlightening our central nervous system. That is the moment when a new awareness starts manifesting in us, like a new sense.

Here is what you will feel when your inner energy is awakened:

  • a cool breeze in your hands and over your head (which – specially at the beginning – can be also warm, an indication of clearing)
  • different sensations in your fingertips and parts of the hands which indicate the state of your energy centers
  • a clear change of these sensations in your hands when you start working on your energy centers

Each energy-center represents a part of our personality and it becomes very easy to figure out where we are strong and where we need to improve.

There is nothing more beautiful than to experience once own inner richness, and the knowledge to have powerful allies – the Kundalini (the inner energy) as well as the all-pervading power around us that is only too eager to support us, fill us with all needed energy, and help us in every possible way on our journey through life.

It is a big difference, if I read in a book about the taste of the juiciest and sweetest red apple, or to bite into it myself. And I am sure you will all agree with me that, only when I have taken this bite myself can I really understand what the book tried to tell me.

So here is the invitation to ‘bite into it’, start feeling your own inner energy, and then keep it up by meditating – 10 minutes in the morning, 10 minutes in the evening, and you may be surprised how much you will find in it for yourself.

I wish you a wonderful week full with the taste of your own spirit!

Yours, Angi

A 10-Minutes-Meditation for Inner Balance

  1. Awaken your Inner Energy (if you have not done it before):
    Here is a guided meditation (approx. 10 Min.) to awaken your Inner Energy by the founder of Sahaja Meditation, Shri Mataji.  If you went through it already skip step 1). When your Inner Energy is activated it will stay so, there is no need to repeat the affirmations (although you can do so if you like).
  2. At the beginning and the end of each meditation we do what we call “raising the energy” and give ourselves “a shield of protection”.
    Here is a nice animation how to do it: charlie.swf
    You can also find a detailed description in our Meditation Tips on page 4 and 5: Meditation Tips
  3. The following guided meditation is about 10 minutes long. Please keep your eyes open (at least for the first time) as the instructions are in written form.

What A Wonderful Life

Do you dream sometimes what the world could be if there were no wars, no hunger, no hatred, no greed, nor starvation anywhere? If we could live in peace and harmony with each other and enjoy the beauty and richness of life together?

Today I want to share with you a glimpse of how beautiful life can be when it is allowed to unfold and express itself, where creativity is unleashed  and can brighten the day of everyone else. Enjoy this wonderful fireworks of creativity from my home town, Vienna – a flashmob in a train station:

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This blog was created out of the desire that one day we might grow into such a paradise, where we start knowing and experiencing our deeper Self, and enjoying the beauty of other Selfs.

Often meditation is misunderstood as something boring, where nothing happens. It is quite the contrary. Real meditation – the meditation that leads you inside – is never boring, and is always opening new doors to your inner being. It is giving you new insights and perspectives, it triggers your creativity, it leads you to a joyful state, it manifests in us the courage to really live life and take each and every day as a new adventure full of challenges, opportunities and abundance in many different forms.  10 minutes in the morning, 10 minutes in the evening – it is worth giving yourself this time. 

I wish you a wonderful week!

Yours, Angi

The Power of Meditation

‎”…if I see a problem, immediately I go into meditation – immediately – and the problem is solved. “
~ Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, October 1989

In our programs we are asked every now and then: “How do I meditate?” followed by the question: “In what way is Sahaja Meditation different to other meditations?”
Although the word “meditation” is quite common nowadays the actual meaning of it seems often unclear and vague. And it is true – there is meditation and meditation. It can be everything between simple breathing exercises to deeply spiritual retreat. Some of the common associations are certain breathing techniques, focusing, visualizing, chanting mantras and/or concentrating on a specific energy center.

Why Sahaja Meditation is different is simply due to the fact that our Inner Energy is awakened. This gives us the advantage that we do not only meditate, but that we can actually “use” meditation in our day-to-days life. The awakening of the inner energy enables us

1) to feel the state of our inner being
2) to direct this inner energy to any problem we face (inside or outside) and let it be worked-out for us
3) if we have exhausted ourselves too much, to have access to the unlimited universal energy around us
4) to awaken this inner energy in others as well

I would like to share a story with you (and there are many many more) what Sahaja Meditation is capable of – to just give you an idea that it is also something really practical.  This was a mail I received some years ago from a friend and I believe it is worth sharing, specially in times where there are threats hanging over our heads like Fukushima.

I’ve got a friend. His name is Victor and we have always called him uncle Vitya as he came to Sahaja Yoga Meditation at the age of 45-50.

He worked in Chernobyl, Ukraine, at the concrete casting of the nuclear reactor: after the explosion he was pouring concrete in the containment. Among those who worked with him, there was nobody alive then as they had got large doses of radiation. And Victor also got a disease which the doctors could not diagnose – he was, literally, a disabled person. After getting self-realization (the awakening of the inner energy) he got up at 4 am every day and cleaned his subtle body changing 5-7 basins when doing foot-soaking.
In several months there appeared improvement in his state and in 2 years he completely recovered.

He always had a beautiful quality – he loved people. I have always tried to develop this quality watching him. Victor came to Togliatti, Russia, 2 years ago. He was a man of 70 at that time. And he made washstands for 400 people in the camp where International Sahaja Yoga Festivals are held now.

I asked him, “Isn’t it difficult for you?” And he answered, “BUT I’M ENJOYING!”
If there is love and devotion, negativity is powerless.

So here I am, promoting the same again and again: meditate! – 10 minutes in the morning, 10 minutes in the evening. And in your meditation really try to connect to your inner energy and to the all-pervading universal energy around you. If you are a religious person, hold out your hands – after the awakening of your inner energy – and ask whomever you worship if he/she is there with you. If you do not believe in anything hold out your hands and ask if this is  the life force itself.
To have faith still means you “only” believe – but this is about the knowing, about the connecting, about a deep relationship that can only be understood in the heart, not by the brain. To pray means to express ourselves, to meditate means to listen.

I wish you a wonderful week with deep meditations!

Yours, Angi

A 10-Minutes-Meditation to bring us into our inner balance

  1. Awaken your Inner Energy (if you have not done it before):
    Here is a guided meditation (approx. 10 Min.) to awaken your Inner Energy by the founder of Sahaja Meditation, Shri Mataji.  If you went through it already skip step 1). When your Inner Energy is activated it will stay so, there is no need to repeat the affirmations (although you can do so if you like).
  2. At the beginning and the end of each meditation we do what we call “raising the energy” and give ourselves “a shield of protection”.
    Here is a nice animation how to do it: charlie.swf
    You can also find a detailed description in our Meditation Tips on page 4 and 5: Meditation Tips
  3. The following guided meditation is about 10 minutes long. Please keep your eyes open (at least for the first time) as the instructions are in written form.