Happy New Year! I can’t believe it is almost the end of January 2010. We have had here in California some of the biggest storms in a long time. After several dry years we really need the water. It has snowed twice, but each time it melted pretty fast. Ananda Village looks very different in…

One of the hardest things for me, at the start of my spiritual journey, was what to make of the phenomena I began to experience.  I know this is a problem for many, in the beginning, and this is why I write about it. When I began to awaken to the realization that there was…

Do you feel joy when using your physical skills to learn and grow and experience life? Perhaps you lead with your heart and feel most alive when you are in a beautiful natural setting, or caring for animals or babies. Maybe you live for a challenge – such as tackling a new project, or raising…

Last weekend I wrote an email to my family, sharing with them about the lifetime monastic vow that I took on Christmas Eve at Ananda Village.

In the email, I wrote, …

The year 2009 was one of great expansion for Ananda Sangha outreach. All of it came through the grace of God, which is reflected in the title of this post.

Here are some of the year’s highlights. …

Earlier this year I had the opportunity to travel to Mexico and Venezuela to lead Kriya Yoga initiations. Even though it’s a struggle to communicate due to my lack of Spanish (fortunately, I had a very good translator!), there is a lingua franca (common language) shared by sincere Kriya Yogis — the language of divine…

My inspiration in writing this was Swami Kriyananda’s new book on renunciation, A Renunciate Order for the New Age. Also my own desire to be a monk… but also to be married. The old cloistered form of monasticism says you need to renounce and “get away from the world” to find God. One might say…

“Sue, I need to know what’s going on!  What’s happening?  Why are young people sick and dying all around me?” was a tearful telephone call to me at home from a distressed work colleague. In the Intensive Care Unit where I work we see many deaths and tragedies of God’s Lila (Sanskrit for divine play),…

Ananda’s founder, Swami Kriyananda, spends his time primarily in 3 countries: America, Italy, and India. As he recently quipped, “Well I have these [8] communities that I’ve started, and I have to check in every now and then.”