Dear friend, Just at daybreak, April 20, 2015, Swamiji’s casket was carried by devotees to its final resting place beneath the newly completed Moksha Mandir. That same morning, while in seclusion at Ananda’s Meditation Retreat, I awoke from a dream of our choir singing, with so much power and joy, “Christ Is Risen,” from Swami’s Oratorio, Christ Lives. Words and … Read More
Dear Friend, What opens the channel through which God’s grace flows into the human heart is, above all, an attitude of giving to the universe, to something larger than one’s little self, to the mystery from which comes all true inspiration. The channel grows more and more open. The giver increasingly finds his fulfillment in the giving, in using what … Read More
I feel so grateful to be blessed with such a harmonious marriage. If it were not as harmonious, my life would quickly become unbearable, since my husband and I are together almost 24/7. We have the same job (maintaining this website), and even work in the same office at the same desk. Some might call it unhealthy, but it works … Read More
Except for a couple of trips to the emergency room, my ninety-two-year-old mother thought she was doing just fine living on her own in her big house in St. Louis, Missouri—even though none of her children lived nearby. My siblings, both medical professionals, live hours from St. Louis. I live in California. “She is an accident waiting to happen,” my … Read More
As a small child in the 1940s, I was each year taken by my mother to buy a birthday gift for my father. She would help me make a selection, hand me a dollar to give to the cashier, later wrap the present, and, during the actual presentation, would exclaim, “look, Wally, what little Jimmy has for you!” I was … Read More
I always assumed I would have children, probably four, the same as the family I grew up in. My first marriage ended quickly in divorce, and my second marriage didn’t start until my late twenties. My new husband was ambivalent about becoming a father. Then I went to medical school, and suddenly I was thirty-nine. For the next twelve months … Read More
A number of years ago, I had the opportunity to visit the home of Nayaswami Jyotish and Nayaswami Devi for the first time. I happened to notice a large picture on their meditation altar of Swami Kriyananda with a garland around it. Having been brought up, spiritually speaking, to feel that our lineage contained strictly Jesus, Babaji, Lahiri Mahasaya, Sri … Read More
I was 22 when I found the spiritual path, and it was great despair and disillusionment that compelled me to embrace it. Like many of the great souls I have known in this life, I came to a point where the anguishing monotony of “normal” human existence was too much to bear. My cries for help led me to Paramhansa … Read More
Even as Asha never wavers in showing the heroism required of the spiritual seeker, so also does she show her profound faith that God Himself is always there, reaching down to lift up that seeker, to help him or her through whatever comes.
By the time I was thirty, I had already been married and divorced. In the decade after, I married and divorced again, and two other serious relationships started and ended. You would think at that point I would have given up and become a nun! My spiritual path supported that alternative. But in my heart I knew my desire for … Read More
