Category Archive

Rohini uses rubber duckies to explain the abiding substrate of consciousness that undergirds all the modifications of the mind. If we identify with the modifications of the mind, we are lost. If we still all modifications, our minds can serve as clear mirrors reflecting the light of the Self, which then can be revealed as our true nature. Rohini’s talk elucidates Vyasa’s commentary on Yoga Sutras 1.32.

After reading her poem “banquet,” Rohini explains how we must never conflate humiliation with humility, or getting and giving love with Being Love–the Love that is our true nature.

Answering a student’s question, Rohini explains how the intellect leads us into delusion if we identify with it, and clarifies how it is to be used as the instrument it is, not who we truly are.

Rohini reads her poem “straw dog,” which strips away the delusion that our separate, individual selves are Real.

Starting with her poem “against the grain,” Rohini explains six ways in which we might respond to experiences deeper than our ordinary. In each case, we believe we see all there is to see; in only one case are we correct, and in only two are we actually practicing sadhana.

Starting with her poem “Irresolute”, Rohini shares how a wrong identification with our intellect, in which we use it as a deflector or filter to protect the shrunken self from what we take in, makes us incapable of learning from our experience or growing into Love, freedom, and our true nature.

In honor of the 38th anniversary of her Guru Swami Muktananda’s mahasamadhi, Rohini reads her devotional poem to Baba and leads a short meditation.

Rohini explains how and why so many people who think of themselves as undertaking spiritual practice (sadhana) actually don’t want to change. Instead, they want the Guru to magically transform the world around them to accommodate who they think they are, so they don’t have to do the actual work of inner transformation that lies at the the heart of real sadhana.

Rohini explains how our wrong identification with our intellects contributes to our inability to connect with the groundwater of reality we share, and ultimately with each other. She clarifies how nondualism articulates this perfectly.

Rohini draws on one of her poems and Swami Vishnu Tirtha’s Devatma Shakti to discuss the nature of the mind, clarifying how it is not who we truly are but merely a vehicle for the Self. She then answers questions about the right attitude toward shakti and how to approach meditation as a way of deepening one’s spiritual practice.