Taller than a mountain and wider than the sea, As heavy as iron and lighter than a breeze, The ultimate challenge, the final task, Distilled difficulty filled in a flask; Many hoops you’ve jumped of fire and ice, Of danger, dust, despair, and vice, Hoops of toil, hoops of trouble, Hoops of battle surrounded by rubble. You’ve jumped through the …
Guest Blog by Aaron Ralby: Deepening Sadhana….
When I was seven years old, my mother showed me what the Heart was. I can remember it vividly. I was standing in a room in our house we referred to as the den. It was daytime. My mother had already taught me that the Heart was not a physical organ, nor could it be reached by thought. I closed …
Guest Blog by Ian Ralby: On Guest Blogging ….
This is the fourth time I have had the opportunity to guest blog. In reflecting on the last three, I realized that I got something out of the exercise that transcended just “sharing” my own experience. Writing these blogs has forced me to practice at a deeper level. In the process of articulating my internal practice for others, I have …
Guest Blog by Ian Ralby: Nirbīja Sādhana….
I have always known, conceptually at least, that spiritual practice has to be a constant and consistent endeavor. Rohini has said it thousands of times: to make any progress, you have to practice no matter what you are doing, whether teaching a class, riding a bike or cleaning a toilet. But somehow I am only just now discovering that I …
Guest Blog by Stacey Lambrow: Finding My Life….
If I had chosen to live my idea of a normal life I would be uneducated, unemployed, and entirely dependent on a man who hates me. I would be living a miserable life. Since I chose to listen to, and learn from, Rohini, I have a great career working for one of the world’s leading rare book, manuscript, and 19th-century …
Guest Blog by David Soud: Power and Hate….
Rohini’s last three blogs have all addressed the same dialectic: Love v. power. It seems simple enough, especially when Rohini lays out the ways in which we confuse the two. But one thing that has stuck with me about these blogs is that “Love v. power” is actually much more true, much more accurate, than “Love v. hate.” Because one …
Guest Blog by Ian Ralby: Living in the Zone….
For ten years, I was a competitive springboard diver. In fact, it was competition that got me into diving, rather than a desire to be a diver. When I was little, I used to compete all the time – even when my fellow competitors didn’t know they were in a race. “I win,” I would declare to my rather confused …
Guest Blog by Johannes Wagner: Three Weeks at Rohini’s….
I knew many things about Rohini’s house long before I arrived – voices, faces, stories, certain parts of rooms. To be honest, I expected it to be more austere or in another way strictly ruled, which very nicely displayed a misunderstanding of mine. As it turned out, the only disappointing thing was seeing how small I had made myself internally. …
Guest Blog by Ian Ralby: The Choice To Practice….
At the conclusion of the course on “A Spiritual Survival Kit” (see here), I asked for the chance to guest blog in order to share some reflections. Having grown up with my mother as both my mom and my teacher, I have witnessed her teaching and her students’ development from a fairly unique vantage point. I vividly remember when she …