I write much about the challenges of spiritual work, the skills that facilitate our awakening, and the great reality of enlightenment. Today I want to write about the simple day-to-day outcome, the normal-life benefits of the transformation we are creating inside us and how it changes our world.

This morning I got an email from Leslie, who has practiced the Skills for Awakening intensely during the last 6 months. She wrote:

“Last week I was in New York, teaching a seminar. Afterwards I spent a day to consult with the director and the team. I enjoyed the people very much, was relaxed and connected. (Many times in the past I was able to focus on the issues, but was not able to connect with staff very well.) This visit seemed different. I was amazed at how positive and friendly I felt.

THEN, I asked the director, (young woman in her 30′s) if she would like to go to dinner with me. She was thrilled and we went out and had a great time and I have a new friend. How strange! As of even 6 months ago, I would NEVER have reached out to engage in a social event that I didn’t have to go to, let alone ask someone out myself. No way. My husband is still in shock and wonders if I even made the whole thing up. (not really).  It made me wonder what is going on; like a personality change.”

~ Here is what I replied:

“Dear Leslie, I would prefer not to call it a “personality change,” even though that is correct from a psychological point of view. I find it more revealing to see that your personality is becoming transparent to your real Self. In other words, you haven’t been yourself in the past.

Your experience of life has been ruled by a distorted sense of who you are. This conditioned “you,” your ego, the personality with its worries and suffering, has been a distortion. You have lived in the grip of a mal-functioning mind.

What are the indications that this is so? You have had many stressful thoughts, and they have created negative emotions and behaviors—like fear and shyness. The times of happiness were always overpowered by these mental obstructions.

A mind filled with stressful thoughts is a mal-functioning mind. Of course most people are suffering from some level of anxiety, self-doubt, depression and so on. We live in a world full of mal-functioning minds. Sadly that is the norm. People think they are functioning well only because they do not know their true potential.

Now that you notice all the positive changes, it means you are becoming who you really ARE. How do you know that to be true?

Because it feels good, peaceful, solid, secure. If something feels good in a profound way, it means that it is true to your real being. What is stressful is a distortion – that’s why it is stressful. Very simple.

The Self, your true being, is the Source of all joy, of unshakable happiness, of unlimited unconditional love, and of your capacity for divine intelligence. All these can arise from within you, independent of your outer circumstances, and create for you the life you want.

So embrace the aspects of your real nature that are now shining through. And continue to “peel it out” from even more subtle layers of negative thoughts and emotions that hide from you your true and glorious nature. Don’t stop until you are shining as the Self, the enlightened YOU.

This is a good time now to be very aware of the pain body. As you know, the pain body is the way we are unconsciously attached to pain, to who we have been, to our suffering. It lurks in the unconscious mind and when it becomes active, you can notice it because you find yourself sabotaging your new happiness.

It will probably show up again one of these days, but DO NOT LET IT FOOL YOU! The more aware you are of this tendency to self-sabotage, the less power it will have.

The pain body is fundamental confusion, and the clearer you get, the more firmly you will become established in your new peace of mind and no longer sabotage the emotional harmony and joy it brings you.

Remember: Your true Self is an experience of freedom and happiness that is permanent. As you learn to live from that inner capacity of the heart you will find that you don’t collapse any longer into negative thoughts and emotions. Instead you will be increasingly present and loving toward yourself and the people around you.

I love that you are aware of your great potential and so determined no longer to live a lesser life.“

———-

You, just like Leslie, are capable of authentic self-transformation. It is the end of suffering, and it is now available to anyone who seriously commits to this inner work.

We know the goal of our lives—spiritual enlightenment by whatever name; we can learn and practice the skills that can get us there, and we can find guidance and companionship on the way. If you are tired of your pain, go beyond spiritual understanding and embrace transformation through practice. The choice is yours.

with love,

Ram Giri
and the Skills for Awakening team

It is early in the morning and I sit in meditation, trying to find the elusive heart. Like clouds of fog, thoughts move by, shrouding my search.

I sit still. I wonder, why does it seem so difficult to get to the core of our being, the heart of the matter, to find the place in us we all hunger for, whether we know it or not?

The heart is covered. Feelings hide it, indistinct-like moving shadows before sunrise. A sense of insecurity sits somewhere, like a single crow calling into an empty space, hearing only its echo respond.

Then I sense it. There is a trail of compassion here. It is a still and small sympathy I have with my not-knowing, my not-finding, my sense of being lost. Gratefully I pick up this path and follow it for a while.

Still I cannot feel the heart. Still I feel lost in the moving distractions of the mind and the senses: a desire pulls me this way, a subtle fear that way, a confusion hovers like an unanswered question. It hides from me what I am.

It hides the place of aliveness; the fundamental peace I know is there, somewhere, behind the fog.

And the path appears again, this subtle compassion with myself, telling me, “It’s okay to be lost, for that is the root of finding yourself. It’s okay to taste once more the wine of obstructions that seemed to have gone a long time ago. It is okay to be however you are in this moment.”

I find I can embrace it all in this compassion with my insufficiency, my distractedness, my lack of stillness and focus. This embracing, this basic compassion for whatever arises, this holding still even while the mind quivers in discontent—it dissolves it all.

It dissolves the self-doubt; it dissolves the barriers around the heart; it dissolves the shadows that hide in the corners of lifetimes. Not for long. Not for long.

The sunrise is an inevitability. Even if it’s still dark, can you just hold still? Can you trust that somewhere, deep inside you, is your heart waiting? Can you let yourself know the depth in you the mind cannot see when it is embroiled in the force of the past?

Can you embrace yourself in the subtle compassion that arises like the sweet fragrance of night-blooming jasmine from the heart that you cannot yet feel?

This heart has forever watched over you. And it will not abandon you. It cannot, for it is you. It is you, waiting for you, waiting for you to bloom in the full sunshine of day.

The dawn is here. Courage arises with it. The waiting, the single focus of caring while you stir the embers of the heart, that is the strength of a warrior.

It starts small. But give it time and it will change the world.

with love,

Ram Giri
and the Skills for Awakening team

Your parents have pure love for you in the depth of their heart. Of course their personalities may not always be aware of that. Unconditional love is easily forgotten and replaced by manipulation or even coercion: “We want you to be different from the way you are (—or we won’t love you).” All of course for your highest good.

As you react, resist or resent, it may not be obvious to you that you do the same to them. You also want them to be different than they are—also of course for their highest good. Someone has to change.

I’m betting on you.

In the depth of your heart you have pure love for your parents—this is simply the nature of the heart and there is nothing you can do about it.  In your personality you can untangle yourself from the jungle of emotions and reactions. You can make peace happen and that will give you freedom.

Your parents do not have to change for that. You do—if you want freedom. By your own efforts you alone can change the relationship, by changing you. This is wonderful news. Change you to leave the place of a victim for good. Change you to end the compulsion to react and defend and the anguish of this relationship.

What you need to change:

• Confused and scattered mind (in stillness and meditation)
• Stressful thoughts (with The Work of Byron Katie)
• Negative emotions (with Open Attention or Presence)
• The inability to feel your amazing love (with HeartSourcing)

With these 4 superb skills you can end the root of all suffering. Imagine yourself meeting your parents with a clear mind, balanced emotions and an open heart. What would it be like to be with them like this? Would you fall for the old family drama?

This clarity and openness are up to you. Your parents have been your great teachers and you can learn from them for a lifetime. They have given you life and they are giving you now the lessons you need to work through to find your freedom. They show you where you are not yet enlightened. Are you grateful yet?

By your consistent, patient and focused practice of any or all of these skills you can learn to meet your parents with freedom and openness. Then you will not engage in the dysfunction, you will simply love them instead. It would not be surprising to see them react positively to your open heart. Hearts do that.

So any time now when they push your button, mentally bow to your teachers and resolve to get free of the button. You might be surprised to see how fast change can happen, even when you thought the situation was beyond hope. It never is.

Please watch the following videos that goes deeper into this subject. They are taken from Satsang with Ram Giri.

Part 1

Part 2

Love and Blessings,

Ram Giri

and the Skills for Awakening team

(305) 567-1406 / info@skillsforawakening.com

It doesn’t take any effort to fall in love. Suddenly the walls you’ve built around your heart crumble and you experience what you are at your core: alive with the bliss of the heart. Suddenly your ego has evaporated and all you can think of is how to make your beloved happy.

Imagine a world where our first order of business is to make each other happy! No really—take a moment and picture that. It sounds completely utopian—impossible really—and I am here to say that we are exactly headed for that. And the best place to learn it is in our relationships.

Just one ‘little’ problem: what we expect in relationships makes true happiness impossible. “Some day you will find that special one who will make you happy.”  You know, the prince charming fiction. He will come and swipe you off your feet and you will be one. The whole world tells us some version of this. We are raised to believe it, it comes at us from all sides every day, and we love to believe it. It’s deep in our unconscious and it’s completely and utterly impossible.

It’s impossible because if you want to be happy for more than a short honeymoon, then this love has to come from inside you. It has to be the way you are: this openness of heart, this self-love, this inner glow of your own fulfillment. Solid, unshakable, a breath of eternity. You deserve no less.

Another person cannot give that to you. It’s an inside job and the whole world will help you to find this love, your true Self, once you understand how it ticks.  But first you’re stuck in this Neanderthal paradigm of relationships. Let’s get you out of there!

1. You will get two things from your lover and from everyone else close to you: The first thing is love and support. Yes we all go for that. And what is the second thing? We don’t want to look at it. We want to deny it. And yet we know it. It’s challenge.

Don’t you know that there isn’t one relationship in the world that isn’t challenging? As a matter of fact, in the long run, challenge is what you can count on. Love and support are optional. We have to work to keep things positive.

2. This romantic hallucination of meeting the one who will make you happy infuses you with another illusion. It’s the unconscious expectation that it’s his or her job to make you happy. Well, of course, you’ve been raised to believe that. That’s what a partner is for!

So now what do you do when the inevitable happens and you’re not happy with the relationship? Where does that take you? It cannot take you anywhere but into blame, frustration and war. After all s/he is breaking the unspoken contract. Your partner is not living up to the illusion of what you have been taught to expect.

Now you’re really in a trap. Innocently you believe the romantic nightmare. You don’t realize that no one outside you can fulfill you—simply because they’re not inside you. You are. Your heart is your business. And you’re closing it down because s/he doesn’t do what they cannot do: fulfill you.

3. And there is more. If you depend on someone else to make you happy, then there is fear. They might leave you. And then where would you be with your source of happiness gone and your life all in shambles? So you do small or large things that don’t feel right to you, just to keep him/her, just to keep the peace. You prostitute yourself, and that feels terrible, but you see no other way.

These 3 problems are universal. They are present in almost all marriages or intimate partnerships and they serve no one. Here are 3 solutions for you:

1. The Source of all true happiness is in you. It is your already existing wholeness, the fullness in the core of your heart. You have tasted it in moments before, but most of the time it is obstructed by fear, anger, stress, distractions, sadness, running after meaningless pleasures, and so on. Now you can take the steps to find true and lasting happiness by:

A. Moving your expectation for happiness from the “perfect” partner to this inner Source.
B. Freeing yourself from the inner obstructions by practicing high-level skills with the help and support of a spiritual guide and community.
C. Healing your live and nurturing yourself deeply from the inner Source of all love, until you are clear and unshakable in your own happiness.

2. Once you know that you are responsible for, and capable of, your own happiness, you can react constructively to the inevitable challenges of the relationship. You can realize that your suffering is not created by your partner. Instead it comes from your reactions to his or her behavior. You are never a victim of anything other than your own reactiveness, your own confusion, and your own blindness. To change this, to become free of the obstacles to your happiness, you need to have someone to bring your reactiveness, your hot buttons to your attention. And there is no one better on earth than your partner to show them to you!

3. Having replaced impossible expectations with awareness and gratitude you now find yourself in a relationship with the perfect mate. Your lover is the one who supports you with his love (at times) AND by showing you where you are not yet enlightened. Whenever you react, now you can do something constructive with that: you free yourself of your way of reacting.

In this process you will experience incredible intimacy. Your love will blossom as it is freed from expectation and your relationship will become a sacred dance. To any conflict there is only one possible outcome: that it will bring your closer to your Self. Being closer to your Self, being more whole, you have more love in you and therefore more love to give, freely, without expectation. And who better to share it with than your lover?

You have now moved from being stuck in the ego of suffering (“S/he will make me happy”) to the ego of aspiration. In your aspiration for freedom you will come to know the infinite Source of love in your heart step by step. It will heal all your old pain and dissolve the cycles of suffering and your ways of self-sabotage. It will set you free.

And, when the time comes, it will reveal to you the state of liberation, the ego of the sage, the one who lives in oneness with everything. In oneness with yourself, with the sky and the earth and all living things. And of course with your partner. That is true happiness, unshakable, solid and eternal.

That is the oneness and the happiness they told you to expect. They just weren’t clear about how to get there.

CLARIFICATION

My dear,

I am not a donkey

looking for a mate.

I am the soul with that great hunger

to know itself in the brilliant light

hidden inside you.

In truth

I am not even a man.

But as long as it appears so to us,

it’s a handy trick

to catch the dark thoughts

and to throw light into the room.  It’s

a tool for exposure and freedom

and a stage for practicing love.

I belong to no one,

not even myself.

My hearts’ allegiances run very deep.

My business is to burn us both

in that great fire that has consumed me

ever since the gurus’ supreme love

first inspired my heart.

We are so much more than we know.

I am that great fire

that burns each star

as an offering only to you -

only to you, who fashioned

the stars out of darkness

and wove your body

of light and of earth

so admiration and awe

could have a place in this world.

~ ©Ram Giri Braun

The ego is confusing. It’s not your enemy. And you already know that very often it isn’t your friend. It can cause a lot of trouble.

If you have too much of it, you may be blind to it—while it’s obvious to everyone else. If you have too little, you can’t function in this world.

You can’t live without an ego; you have to have one, but it isn’t real. It is created moment to moment by a conversation you have in your head: one moment you’re wonderful, the next moment you shiver in fear.

This ego, the one that’s forever busy chasing what it desires and protecting itself from what it fears, is the ego of suffering.

The ego is baffling and mystifying, and if you don’t understand it, and educate it, it will be your master, instead of the servant it is meant to be. Then it will lead you around by the nose, through a lot of pain and loss to exactly nowhere.

You’ve heard all the stuff about transcending, or even  ‘killing the ego.’ And you’ve also heard that you need ‘ego strengths.’ So what is it? Do we need to get over it, or make it strong?

The answer is: both. You think that’s paradoxical? Definitely!

Okay, lets start with the basics.

At birth you emerge into this world from what has been called “The Ground of Being,” the womb of the universe. And at death, that’s where you go. It is the Self, the alpha and the omega, spirit, THAT which many people call God.

From there you can picture the journey of your existence as a circle that begins and ends in the Ground of Being.[1]

You can then divide this circle into two halves. The first part of life is about building the ego, coming to know who you are in this short time-span of your existence; it’s about going out into the world, about self-assertion, about being some body. The second half is about returning back home to our essence, to your origins, to spirit, to Self-realization, to eternity, oneness, and truth.

The “I” changes throughout this circular journey.

We can also divide the circle into three parts, three pie shapes. In childhood the ego begins as soon as you start to think. At the beginning of thought there is a mechanism that makes you continuously relate everything in your world to this “I.” You make up this thing called “I” as you think. You believe it’s a stable ‘thing,’ but it isn’t; it’s like an optical illusion of the mind that appears real.

This first third of the journey is the pre-personal stage. The roots of your beliefs of “I am………” are laid here, good and bad. You identify with your body, your likes and dislikes, your emotional habits and your personal history. You praise yourself and experience pride, and you condemn yourself and experience guilt. Most of this is subconscious and quite automatic. You struggle to be who you think you are meant to be, and you judge yourself as to how well you think you are doing. This, as I said, is the ego of suffering.

At this stage you are unconsciously still fused with the collective mind, and your thinking is deeply conditioned. You think in the way your family or clan, religion or nation told you to think. You are under the influence of an internalized voice that sounds like a controlling and critical parent. You have not yet developed a fully independent sense of yourself, a free way to make up your own mind.

For that you have to cut the restricting ‘umbilical cords’ that bind you to the ways of your upbringing. Until you do, you do not yet have a fully functioning ego. You’re part of the group mind. You’re also still close to spirit and that gives you comfort. But the danger here is that you may be prone to fundamentalist thinking.

Once you cut the ‘umbilical cord’, you move into the self-conscious stage, become a fully rational person and see the blossoming of your personal identity. You become an independently functioning individual, a “person” in your own right. No longer bound by the fear of being rejected by your group if you were to be fully yourself, you unfold your unique gifts and abilities.

This is the culmination of what Western psychology calls the development of ego-strengths. Rational and relatively independent in your views, you act and operate in your world.

Western culture generally assumes that this is the totality and aim of human development. Once you are a strong individual, you ‘have made it’ in the eyes of our culture; you are done. Therefore, of course, most individuals do not evolve much beyond this point. They are still in the grip of the ego of suffering, and remain far removed from the nurturing reality of the true Self.

This is now changing, as more and more of us realize that the highly developed ego is not the end of the line. And the ego itself feels it, as it matures. Where it has been fascinated with material life at first, now a sense of unease arises, an existential loneliness, disconnection and lack of fulfillment, or perhaps a deep, but indistinct yearning. These can easily turn into despair and trigger addictions and relationship problems.

Such lack of fulfillment is often mistaken for regular anxiety or depression—but that is not what it is, and it should not be treated that way. The ego has to suffer this basic lack of fulfillment, because it knows deep down that it, along with the body and all its worldly achievements, is going to die—although it tries hard to ignore that fact.

But rather than despair, this is the time when the individual needs to evolve further, and only entry into the next stage, the spiritual stage of development can resolve these problems.

This brings us to the third pie shape, the trans-personal stage. This part of the journey has been deeply studied by the world’s mystical traditions. Particularly Indian Vedanta and Tibetan Buddhism have elevated this inquiry to a profound and fascinating science.

As long as you operate exclusively through your rational mind, you will remain unaware of the reality of this higher development, because it goes beyond the ego, beyond the rational mind. But it does not deny rationality; it includes and transcends it. Here the mind can evolve into intuitive intellect and into divine intelligence.

It begins with experiences that lead you into the spiritual realm. At first these moments of peace, or deep joy, or your ability to perceive a deeper truth, are fleeting. To make them more permanent, you must develop an ability for stillness. Meditation is the best known and time-honored way to do that.

The first part of the spiritual journey is the exploration of ‘spiritual wonderland.’ You are fascinated by all kinds of exciting options, collect spiritual paraphernalia, move from teacher to teacher, read many books, and, all-in-all develop a very cool spiritual ego, which is not much different at all from the rational ego. It feels special about itself, either in a good or bad way, and in that it is absolutely commonplace.

But as you explore the spiritual realm, you build another kind of ego, the ego of aspiration. Now you feel drawn to real sadhana, to committed spiritual practice. This is how you can free yourself of the shadow elements, the habits of suffering which you have acquired earlier in life and which are the true source of your pain.

The higher reaches of spiritual realization will remain hidden to you until you do this work. But with the gradual easing of unconscious tensions, and with a greater and stable peace, comes the ability to look inward.

Now a great paradigm shift begins. You realize that who or what you thought you were was in fact a mistaken identity. Yes, the ego was useful enough for a while, just like the countless other identities you have built in past lives that are now gone and forgotten. And so will this one be gone in just a few years.

Now however this is not a source of despair, but of a great aspiration. You begin to intuit that you are in truth not this puny ego with its ongoing drama and self-importance, but the true Self, and your body and mind can serve as the perfect expression of divine presence in form.

You realize that you are not the body, but a ray of divine light that is reflected in you. And, going even further, you realize that this individual ray is one with the sun, the Self, the Source of infinite light.

In the expansion of this inner experience, the ego is transformed into the ego of the sage. Where it has formerly been opaque and confused, it now becomes transparent to the light. Where it has been a dictator, if not a tyrant at times, it now becomes your faithful and reliable servant.

Through the force of continued spiritual practice, sadhana, your being becomes the conduit of divine grace. The thinking mind with its judgments and stress dissolves and gives way to the intuitive intellect, which can run your worldly affairs perfectly.

The heart remains increasingly open and, since you are internally filled by the bliss of the Self, you can love freely. Your life becomes a life of joyful service to all beings around you, in whom you recognize the same presence of God that shines in you.

This is the way to absolute peace and to the fulfillment that does not die when the body is done. It is the realization of your true and immortal identity as the Self.

The ego evolves from being the source of much trouble to being a clear lens through which the presence of God shines into this world. How is it done? What are the mechanisms that are at work in this transformation? And what is the most crucial transformation from the ego of aspiration to the ego of the sage?  That is what we will discuss in Part 2.

We invite you to watch the video: The 3 Aspects of Ego by Ram Giri.
For more information visit our website www.Skillsforawakening.com

With love and gratitude,

Ram Giri 
and the Skills for Awakening Team

You are the architect of your destiny.

There are parts of your life that are working, and others that aren’t. It is in dealing with your challenges differently, that you can find your true potential to make this new year a time of real transformation and victory!

Never mind the hype about 2012: this coming year will be exactly identical to all others in that it will give you plenty of opportunity to stay trapped in your conditioned ways of unhappiness—or not!

I can make one unfailing prediction: if your desire to change is not great enough to spur you to action, you will stay exactly the same. Your desire will remain a desire, not more. An unfulfilled hope, like you’ve had many over the years. Surface change will not work.

The reality that surrounds you is just that: a chain of opportunities, perfectly designed to help you realize your inherent freedom and bliss, your enlightened nature, your great heart.

Your challenges are not bad luck, personal failure, or a sign that the universe doesn’t care. Far from it! They come to help you realize the deeper truth: that you can be incredibly happy in life, not despite, but because of it all.

See what doesn’t work in your life for what it is: Something you have yet to master. Something that is designed to bring out the best in you, to show you the missing pieces, to awaken you. Even discouragement and hopelessness are like that: they are the beginning of courage and mastery.

You need to brace yourself therefore not against challenging events, but against your habit of staying asleep, of reacting to life’s challenges in the same old negative ways that have perpetuated your suffering in the past.

And you have insisted on staying asleep even as a profoundly caring universe has tried time and again to shake you awake.

“A profoundly caring universe?” you may say, with a rather incredulous look on your face.

Imagine a loving mother who notices her child suffering from a nightmare. She comes to wake up the child, but he resists, and, still in the grip of the nightmare, blames her for disrupting his sleep.

This mother-universe is going to try to prod you to awake this year. How will it happen? Will it be through a new love, an unforeseen good fortune, or greatly renewed strength? Or will it be a financial meltdown, a sudden loss, an illness, an accident, a moment of deep despair?

Probably some of both.

How will you use these events? How you react to them—and therefore, the result you get—is up to you.

There is a simple law in effect here. If you do nothing now to change old unconscious patterns of reacting with anger, or fear, or desire, dependency, worry, and so on, then you will react as always before, and your old patterns of suffering will be reinforced. This means you will suffer more in the future.

That’s the default mode. But by engaging in a regular high-level awakening practice now, you will avoid future suffering. Such efforts are the wisest way of investing your time and effort.

Then, when the inevitable events of life happen, you are not helpless. Instead, whatever comes will help you become more skilled, more aware, more kind, more awake. This is a masterful way to live. It is based in wisdom and love.

You can only be a victim to your own unconscious tendencies, your blindness, fear and confusion—but they can be explored and removed now.

Your old patterns of suffering are what keep you asleep. They are what can turn life into a nightmare. But, let me say it again: you are not a victim!

At your core, deeper than the troubles of life, are undisturbed peace and vast awareness, waiting to be discovered by you. You are the unconditional love in your deepest heart, which creates this dance of a world. Now make a deeper resolve than ever before to discover that and shed your pain like the worn-out skin of a snake!

Whether by default, or by aspiration, you are the architect of your own destiny. The events of this world are nothing more than the raw materials out of which you build your character and through which you either rise to freedom, or entangle yourself further in pain.

So here’s to 2012, a year, which will offer you challenges and support, exactly like any other.

And here is to you, the hero in the quest for the awakening out of the slumber of eons into the clarity of your mind and the depth of your heart.

You, the one who can make this year an epiphany, the beginning of a new world!

Happy new year!

Ram Giri
and the Skills for Awakening team

………

To assist a few committed individuals to make the best of the challenges and the grace of this new year, Ram Giri offers a 20% sale on his personal or group coaching program for 2012. Please call (305) 567-1406 or visit http://skillsforawakening.com/coach/ for more information.

This offer is valid through January 31, 2012.

There is no time better than now to remember that in your heart lies the immense potential of all the unconditional love that is possible.  And the wisdom to use it.

Imagine that!

You have a Buddha inside of you.

The second coming of Christ can take place—where else?—in your heart!

What could you do with that love, that higher awareness, if you knew how?

You could heal your own life.

• You could find peace in that busy, stressed-out mind of yours.
• You could end all the fear, sadness and guilt.
• You could help your body be healthy, strong and beautiful.
• You could actually become happy.
• You could enlighten yourself!

And it wouldn’t stop there. It would radiate from you into your relationships, into your world.

You would be the light that everyone is looking for.

Imagine that!

But you’re caught inside you. You’re caught in your negative emotions and thoughts.

You’re the sun imagining you’re a fire fly.

You’re the vast ocean, constantly worried about a little wave.

You are boxed in by your stressful thoughts and emotions. They are the prison that keeps your heart constrained until you deal with them and resolve them.

Break down that jail of your heart!

How is it done? Dissolve the obstacles at their source and don’t get caught up in why it’s the way it is. That long story of your suffering is no longer necessary.

It’s not the “why” but the “how” that matters now. How do you change what you feel, who you are, now?

Back to the tremendous healing potential of your heart, the most powerful medicine of all. How can you tap into that?

1. Take some time. Become still.
2. Go to a troubling emotion. Feel what’s going on inside you. Notice the strongest body sensation.

Do it now. Be gentle.

If you don’t go to them, how will your emotions ever heal? By talking about them, you say? You’ve tried that.

Ready to go on?

1. Be present with that sensation. Realize that it’s not a threat, ever. So what is it? It’s a part of you that needs help.
2. So go to it, OPEN up to it, and pay ATTENTION. Feel it. Be with it. That is the opposite of what you have been doing so far.
3. When you open to it and pay attention, then what happens? Notice that.

You may notice that it weakens.

Take your time, be gentle, do a little bit of it at a time. In small steps, this is the application of love to what hurts you. This is the best medicine—and you are the doctor.

The feeling may move from place to place in your body. Go with it. Be still. Give yourself this powerful but gentle healing.

So now there are two parts of you, two poles:

The first one is this stressful sensation, this complex of negative thoughts, emotions and behavior. That’s your “stuff.” Everyone has stuff.

The other pole is the depth of your heart, with its amazing healing power, its deep peace, its profound presence of unconditional love. That’s who you really are.

So can you sense your heart of hearts, the Source of healing?

And can you feel that knot in the stomach (or wherever it is), that source of pain.

Now connect the two in your mind. Imagine the immense light in your heart shining into that knot, the place of darkness, the pain.

Let the light dissolve the darkness. It will.

Stay with it, become still. Give yourself this essence of the heart, this nectar. And become totally receptive to that love, open up to it in the place of your pain.

This is true yoga, true union.

This is the holy grail of all healing. You are the cosmic lover and the human beloved. In that inner embrace you are one.

Darkness (and pain) cannot stand up for long to the light. When the light penetrates, the darkness is gone.

Love yourself enough to give you this revolutionary medicine. Be among those who know how to use the great healing power that slumbers inside you.

Merry Christmas!

With love,

Ram Giri
and the Skills for Awakening team

…

For further instruction and help, including free HeartSourcing videos and much more, go to www.SkillsforAwakening.com. Spend some time on this site and explore. And let us know how you are doing!

Share with a friend if you have found this meaningful to you!

The ego has two very positive aspects, the Ego of Aspiration and the Ego of the Sage. They must be used to overcome the third, the Ego of Suffering.

The root cause of the ego of suffering is fundamental ignorance. It is the delusion that, “I am this body, this mortal personality. Happiness comes from enhancing myself.” This view creates the afflictions of egoism, attachment, hatred, and fear of death.

The Ego of Suffering does not have your best interests in mind. Quite to the contrary. It only wants to enhance itself, and by that you are entangled in a merciless net of pain of your own making. This ego is a tyrant that takes you over and holds you prisoner.

At the same time it is incurably insecure, because its existence is not based on reality. It is a fabrication of confused, self-centered thoughts, only concerned about its own maintenance, the continuation of its delusion.

The emotional part of this ego is knows as the pain body, the way you unconsciously cling to pain. To put it into words, you have a hidden belief, “I am this person who is used to a certain amount of suffering. That’s who I am.” And to maintain this identity you unconsciously sabotage your happiness and bring pain to you.

Although we like to believe that we are victims of an uncaring world, the truth is that all our suffering comes from the way we unconsciously incapacitate ourselves. This is why the ego of suffering needs to be rooted out.

To do this is the job of the Ego of Aspiration. Everyone knows it already first hand. You have experienced it in moments of deep peace, of unconditional love, or during flashes of great happiness. Although most people miss their true meaning, these incidences point out to you what you really are. They are sign-posts that say, “Come here, this is the way to yourself. You ARE this happiness!” But few stop long enough to read the signs.

The Ego of Aspiration enables you to translate your higher yearning into action, “I want to know my Self. I want to follow the glimpses I had of it, and realize the full unfolding of my inner potential.” This impulse enables you to engage in a spiritual practice and to connect with teachers and like-minded friends.

Then, as the Ego of the Sage develops through direct experience of the Self, you become increasingly unshakable in your orientation to liberation. This is true faith, which is not mere belief, but authentic knowledge of the shining wisdom of the Self and the profound and unlimited love in your heart.

But the Ego of Suffering will not simply give up and go away because you’ve had a spiritual impulse. Tyrants don’t give up so easily. They become bigger and more intimidating when we question their power.

You know how that works. You make a decision to mediate every day and suddenly all kinds of things get in the way. Distractions, demands on your time, laziness, discouraging thoughts are suddenly in your face. This is the secret art of self-sabotage. It’s alive in all of us.

The Ego of Suffering is depicted as a great demon in all the mythologies of the world. It puts up a hell of a fight, it terrorizes and tortures you. And in the end the demon loses. It must lose, because this is the way of it. Illusion can hold us prisoner for a long time, but it cannot win. Inevitably, if you follow the spiritual impulse with patience and determination, this gross ego dissolves.

Inevitably you become free. Inevitably you come to realize what in reality you already are. Inevitably, as the ego-sense dissolves, all that is good, auspicious and beautiful begins to manifest through the personality. I like that word: inevitably!

with love,

Ram Giri

Skills for Awakening

www.SkillsforAwakening.com

” The deepest wish we have is to feel the harmony and peace of an Open Heart. And if we want that strongly and ask for it, the universe will support us” – Ram Giri

Click Here to play

video time: 4:22min

Life will always have its ups and downs. This is inevitable. And in this continuous change, in this unpredictability, life meets beauty in its entire dimension. Here is where I ask myself and I invite you to do the same: How am I dancing with life?

Am I meeting life with a balanced and peaceful mind and an open heart, no matter what? Am I seeing that on my side of the fence the grass is pretty green too? Am I treating my fears, self-doubt, self-judgment and shame with kindness and compassion? Do I love myself just the way I am? Or am I constantly comparing myself with others who seem ‘more successful’, ‘more attractive’ or ‘more spiritual’ than me? Am I indulging in the 10 million distractions of the world in order to hide and run away from what’s going on inside? Am I pretending to be someone quite different than who I really am…?

I find that it’s easy to love yourself when everything is going your way, when life fulfills your desires, when you find yourself at the peak of the mountain.  But it doesn’t last; life constantly and kindly shows us where we have yet some growing to do. What about when you get embarrassed, feel criticized, vulnerable or exposed? When you find yourself in that dark tunnel feeling that there is no light at the other end? How do you deal with that conversation in your head that keeps putting you down?

If you are seeking for a deeper truth, ask yourself these questions; you can do that now, even if it means to stop reading this article for few minutes. This process of self-inquiry opens up a new understanding of yourself. It can give you a road map to deal with the conditioned mind that constantly falls into the cycles of self-doubt and self-judgment. This sheds light into the dark shadow.

Constantly we hide our most sacred ideas, our most sacred secrets, because it’s easier to shelter them than exposing ourselves. To bring them out, whether that means opening a conversation, looking for help, or finding practices to undo our own cobweb, means to make yourself vulnerable. And this can be scary at first. So we wear masks and pretend not to be ashamed, but we’re always scared to be found out… If they knew what I‘m really like, they would never speak to me again. This is the tragedy of this world: we have lost access to our brilliant hearts and live dominated by fear. That’s why we suffer so much.

Loving yourself the way you are is like being on the peak of a mountain and knowing that you can merge with the vastness of the sky and the nature around you. It is being at peace with reality, however reality shows up. It is being kind, so kind with yourself even in those moments when you can’t stop the self-punishment for what you have or haven’t done. It is dissolving the voice that says: “it is embarrassing to be me”, or “men don’t cry”, or “I’m not good enough”, and so on.

The truth is that it is not embarrassing to be you. It is quite the opposite. It is freedom to expose your true self, it is liberating to feel vulnerable and allowing what is. It is an act of honesty, with you and with the world, to show your sensitivity, your happiness or sadness, and your compassion. It is courageous to show what is hidden behind that mask. It is an act of love to be authentic. Keep this sentence in your mind: The most attractive thing about a person is his or her authenticity!

To get to the peak of that mountain (which ultimately is the realization that you are what you seek to become) you need to start climbing, step by step. Stop when you need to take a deep breath, perhaps look back to see how much you have advanced… and continue climbing, with that deepest driving desire in your mind, with one-pointed focus. Allow yourself to be like water and move with the flow of life. And it’s ok if you slip down a few meters. No need to panic. There is always a new opportunity to begin again.

Be aware and listen when the ego is telling you that you are going too slowly, or that you should climb faster. Stillness, even while moving, can help you to distinguish the voice of the ego from the voice of love. It is wise to acquire what you need for your quest: the companionship of fellow climbers, the necessary tools to make your climbing easier, the skills that make you stronger. Listen to the guidance and experience of those who have gone before you and check in to see if they work for you. And most importantly, know that in this quest you are completely supported by a caring universe.

All minds are the same until they get educated for happiness. That is your task. If you are conscious enough to understand this, then you are capable of doing it.  You are capable of turning your life around, so completely that not long from now you will have a laughing fit when you remember how miserable you used to make yourself today.

Unhappiness is optional, but only for those who get serious about happiness. And when I say happiness I don’t mean the meaningless chase after distractions that serve to keep the ego fast asleep. I mean the complete wakefulness of the spirit. I mean the full realization of the immense brilliance of what you are. I mean the full miracle of you!

You must discover your heart if you want to enjoy the kind of relationship you dream about and deserve. The tensions created by insecurity and self-doubt will inevitably spoil the greatest experience. They must create conflicts in all your relationships and they will cause you to sabotage yourself every step of the way.

But when you feel bad you push your heart away, you try to bury it, and it always comes back. You live in escape mode from what you believe, from your truth, but you can’t get away from yourself. These are the moments when you need that open and authentic heart the most.

Remember: The most attractive thing about you is your authenticity. When you can be who you are, you are naturally fulfilled and others will notice. There will be a shine around you, but you won’t care. It is just the natural way you are.

You are already what you seek to become, only you are unconscious of it. Your bliss and your love are already fully present in you; you just haven’t discovered them yet. In you lies hidden the totality of all the love that is possible in this world. It is the true nature of the heart.

But in you lies also the enemy of forgetfulness. You have fallen asleep. You do not remember you. And there is another factor alive in you: your ability to awaken from the trance of your unhappiness, from your distraction of mind and your closed heart. That spark in you is reading this article right now. It can go to sleep again, or not. It is up to you.

If you decide to act on the impulse to awaken yourself, be prepared to see your life change. With the knife of self-love you will cut out the decay, you will stop in its track the tendency to indulge in what makes you suffer. You will realize that you—and no one else—create all your suffering. And that will set you free.

Your view of life will change rapidly as you discover nothing but kindness around you. You will want to dissipate the habits of sadness and fear and learn healthy habits. You will want to love yourself in the places where you now hate yourself. You will want to embrace yourself with only pure love

It’s too late to promise yourself you’ll do better when all hell breaks loose. It’s hard to find peace in emergency mode. The time is now, or when will it be? Your higher potential is staring you in the face, when will you look? Find out what happens when you give yourself the support you have wanted. Let yourself be around people who dare to assume that they have the courage for freedom.

Take a jump and you will notice the ground rise up to meet you.

With Love,

Ram Giri and Julia

Skills for Awakening

The people of Libya have rid themselves of their oppressor and are celebrating.

Celebration of Freedom Women in Tripoli after Eid day 2-9-2011

I cannot help but be struck by the symbolism of this wonderful party, and what it can mean for us.

We too are involved in a ‘holy war.’ It is the true jihad, the inner struggle to free ourselves of the dictatorship of the ego that has caused us immense suffering. And while we are still in the middle of this all-important struggle for freedom, our eventual victory is certain because the forces of darkness can only obscure the light for a while.

Even the considerations at the end of this video of the new government’s move back to the capital, is reminiscent of the great shift of focus in the process of seeking enlightenment: the dissolving of the rule of the thinking mind and the return of our center into the heart.

Let’s enjoy this external victory over darkness today and know that the celebration of our own internal and final victory over the ego, once achieved, will never come to an end!

Ram Giri

When depression is not depression but disillusionment, it still feels like depression. But in reality it is the first step toward the recognition of your inherent freedom and peace. Dis-illusionment is the beginning of waking up from illusion. It is a difficult stage with enormous promise.

What is the illusion that is about to be lifted, and what reality beckons us? Our primary illusion is that we experience ourselves as separated from our Source, as egos subject to a meaningless and uncaring world. Because of this fundamental error in perception we grasp for things we hope will fulfill us and reject what we fear. We live in the tension between hope and fear, perpetually chasing after substitutes for real joy, unfulfilled and blind to the fact that the Source of all we yearn for is within our own hearts.

Human beings lived in this confusion for thousands of years and for many of us it can now come to an end. The process of awakening breaks us open from the inside and this is be highly upsetting to the old ways of our thinking, the view of the old paradigm. And it is good that what is not true should be destroyed so the truth can blossom in us.

To find the bliss of Self in the depth of the heart is the greatest adventure of humankind. As all adventures it brings along dangers and discomfort. To brave these and to triumph over our fears and our weakness is the price of success. That is why I invite you to welcome your dis-illusionment and, instead of trying to reach back to a former state of tranquility, move forward to embrace the astonishing truth of your being.

We embrace this truth and the love it brings through sadhana. Sadhana is the effective practice of waking up from illusion and replace it with the taste of reality. This is done by practicing specific skills, first among them stillness, devotion, self-inquiry, presence, and the support of spiritual community.

Sadhana demands focused self-effort. Through self-effort you are creating your destiny. It is magnificent to be able to change the course of your life by your own power! Your habit of blaming the events of the past, other people, or ourselves enhances the ego and contradicts your efforts to awaken. What appears as your destiny today is the effect of self-effort—or its lack—in the past. What matters therefore is how you conduct yourself now. You are capable to practice easy-to-learn, powerful skills to break free. It is simple. The alternative is to continue to suffer.

The greatest aspiration is to realize our highest goal and manifest it in this world. This is the aspiration to awaken from suffering and realize the radiance of the Self. And the truth is: you are already on the path to this goal. Everything is part of the path to enlightenment, whether you know it or not, even your pain and confusion. Your path looks like this now. Your journey had to go through all your experiences, just as they were. You have not failed, you have not gone wrong; this IS the path to your fulfillment.

What obstruct you from realizing this highest goal of your life is your thoughts. All suffering is experienced not in the outer events we blame, but in the mind. And even the body is exterior to the mind. Therefore your constricting, fear-based mental habits are the true source of your pain. You have inherited them from the society you were born into; they are entirely conditioned and you have not known how to question them to break free of their spell.

How heartless have you treated you and robbed you of the joy of your life! How cruelly have you imprisoned your heart by judging others and yourself constantly! Of course it was all done innocently, out of confusion. And what enormous joy will come to you when you find yourself, when you connect once again with your innermost ability to love yourself as you are and to let this love overflow into the world around you!

That is why I invite you to find your way back to the core of your Being. HeartSourcing is the central practice for that. The essential answer to all you, or anyone, have ever yearned for is the unconditional love and self-acceptance that waits for you in your heart. It may sound too simple and yet it is true. The fundamental nature of your innermost core is that happiness, and once you find it, it can never fail you.

To gain permanent access to that inner Source you can question your basic assumptions with the question, “Who am I?” This is self-inquiry. It frees you of your stressful beliefs and opens you to the realization of a deeper truth that will set you free. Through Open Attention you can shed your patterns of restricting emotions, which you have mistaken for an identity. This will take some effort, yes, but it is not at all difficult to do. The alternative is to suffer more. What will you do?… You are the architect of your destiny!

with love,

Ram Giri

SkillsforAwakening.com

An Alternative View of an Epidemic…

by Ram Giri

Over 120 million people suffer from serious depression worldwide. Most of them live in the richest countries in the world, where, one would think, people have less reason to be depressed. What’s going on?

What the statistics don’t tell us is that many of these people are not depressed even though they have the symptoms of depression, possibly all the way to suicidal ideas. They suffer from a completely different experience: disillusionment with the world. They sense, in some vague manner, that what they have counted on to give happiness and meaning to their lives is unable to do so, and will always betray them. Materialistic values are too small for them. They have unmasked them as hopeless, and therefore they have become hopeless.

Far from being an illness, such disillusionment is the root of the aspiration for spiritual emancipation. It is a difficult but necessary phase; it is the Dark Night of the Soul, the ‘eye of the needle,’ through which every spiritual seeker has to go pass. After all ‘dis-illusioned’ means to become free of illusion. In order to live in the next paradigm you first have to be dis-illusioned by the old one.

Most physicians and psychologists are unable to recognize this condition. They are unfamiliar with the spiritual dimension and therefore unable to lead people to an effective spiritual practice, which alone is able to resolve this state. “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” They hit their patients with a label of ‘illness’ and medicate them. This can terminate the beginning of a meaningful transformation and turn it into a very challenging illness. The well-meant effort of the psychologist actually creates the depression because it teaches that a true solution to an existential crisis is unavailable.

When the flame of a higher aspiration is kindled in the heart, dis-illusionment is the dawning of wisdom. It is difficult, essential and precious. It shows us the truth, that all things in this world are fleeting and transient, and that what we have hoped will make us happy and give meaning to our lives can never fulfill us.  It robs us of the illusion that gratifying the ego works.  Everything we have put stake in turns out to be useless.

In the midst of this pain a subtle intellect begins to emerge which is capable of grasping the truth: no amount of temporary pleasures, power, money, sex and experiences can bring us what we really want. And in this critical moment, as we begin to sense how shallow or misguided some aspects of our life have been, we need guidance to a way of life that can make sense to us, that can actually fill our emptiness. But instead we are told that our brains aren’t functioning and that the only hope for us is to take pills to become compliant once more.  And if we submit, we are again locked in the old paradigm of despair, the jail in our head.

But those in whom the spiritual flame has been kindled more strongly will be able to break this unintended conspiracy.  They recognize that this world is filled with sorrows and does not keep what it appears to promise. They will not submit, but out of hopelessness their hearts will become alive.  They may turn to the examples of those who have traveled the path to spiritual emancipation before us.  They will seek a liberation that is indestructible. They will seek the bliss of the Self.

Going through the symptoms of disillusionment is not a distraction on this path. It is the path. The journey goes through this crisis to freedom, and as we get dis-illusioned many times we come to experience progressively higher states of grace.

The great scripture of India, the Yoga Vasistha, begins with the aspirant brooding over the vanity of all things.  He is tormented by worries and anxieties. He is dejected and has become very thin.  He is indifferent to sense pleasures.  The whole world has become painful to him and he contemplates ending his life.  Many pages describe the multiple aspects of disillusionment, how the world of the senses is unfulfilling and empty.  A paradigm shift is desperately needed.  In the end of this chapter the sages, who see the true and positive significance of this state of mind, praise him:

“He alone is called a ‘human’ who has the light of spiritual aspiration burning in his heart. Others are not fit to be called ‘human.’  They are nothing but animals revolving in the wheel of birth and death, driven by attachment, infatuation, and ignorance… They are blessed who aspire to realize the essential Self through their existence in this world of illusory objects and perishable pleasures.”

If you feel down, hopeless, or disoriented, and if you identify with what I am saying in some way, you most likely do not suffer from depression but are in the midst of disillusionment.  This is the development of a new state of mind that carries in it vast promise.  It is the first step to true freedom and the profound happiness of enlightenment.  Congratulations to you!

The most important first step is to realize the difference between disillusionment and depression.  Cease to think of yourself as ill, but realize you are in a positive process of spiritual awakening. Next begin to seek out the most effective ways you can further this awakening.  Be sure you look for more than fleeting comfort, but rather define the ultimate, timeless goal you seek, such as liberation from suffering, unconditional love, peace, Self-realization, etc.  Then let your entire being strive for that goal.

In this context, whatever spiritual path attracts you deeply, that is the one for you. I have my personal bias here: I feel the Skills for Awakening are particularly capable of dissolving suffering at the root and enable you to move into a new paradigm of being: freedom.  But more than recommend one path over another, I trust that the awakening consciousness in your heart will guide your way perfectly.

~ You are the architect of your destiny ~

Everyone knows someone who is down or depressed.  Why don’t you share this article with them?  You’ll never know, you might save a life.

with love and gratitude,

Ram Giri

Overcome Physical Problems through Open Attention

We all know of the intimate correlation between mind, emotions and physical illness. Can resolving emotional stress help you overcome physical pain? And if so, how is it done?

Jane’s hip was hurting a great deal. She had gone to the chiropractor with little results and in the middle of the night the pain woke her up. That’s when she tried Open Attention, one of the Skills for Awakening.

Open Attention guides you to do the opposite of what you would normally do. Normally you would do anything to get rid of the pain. When pain arises, the mind is conditioned to jump into fight or flight mode. But what is the effect of that? You contract around the pain and it gets worse. It’s hard to stress yourself healthy.

That is why we need to approach healing with a healthy dose of wisdom and caring. Although the healthcare system is constantly involved in one war or another we need to ask this: when you fight a war against something that is a part of you, who is going to win that war? Not you.

So when war doesn’t work, then what?  Then it helps to realize that the symptom is not an enemy or a threat, but a part of you that needs help. This is a significant paradigm shift that allows for a completely different and very promising approach. You open to that part of you and pay attention. Thus begins a positive way of healing.

So Jane brought her attention to her hip. There was a burning sensation on the left side. Several times her mind tried to escape the feeling, but she persisted. After a while she became aware of a subtle sensation of nausea in her abdomen. What could that be about?

She switched her focus to the nausea. For a while the feeling in her belly continued to evade her attention, and again she persisted. Realizing the nausea, though subtle, was a powerful and important feeling, Jane became very still. She wanted to get to the bottom of this.

Assisted by that stillness and her determination to heal this part of her, she came into a highly focused state of mind. She evoked the power of unconditional love in her heart (through a process called HeartSourcing) and directed it into the nausea. When her mind and heart was concentrated on the sensation she realized that this was the way she had felt at times of great fear.

As soon as she realized it was fear, it began to dissolve. She did not know what had caused the fear, but she clearly experienced it evaporating. After a short while she noticed that both fear and nausea were gone. Her attention went back to the pain in her hip and that too had greatly decreased. After that she went back to sleep.

When Jane woke up the next morning, the discomfort in her hip had almost completely disappeared. She went to exercise as usual, with no side-effects. The improvement was stable.

How did this come about? Open Attention ends the unconscious rejection, the ‘war’ we wage against the symptom. It replaces this unconscious hostile attitude with an attitude of conscious openness and kindness. This can allow us to find hidden emotions that underlie the symptom, which dissolve through the simple application of awareness. This is the power of self-love in action.

Sadhana (spiritual practice) is the way to seek wholeness on all possible levels of our being. In the process of we are ‘plowing’ the unconscious mind to unearth the hidden obstacles that lie hidden there. They are known as the five kleshas: ignorance of the Self, egoism, attachment, aversion, and fear of death.

As these afflictions come to light one by one, we are able to transmute them into their opposites:

• awareness of the Self,
• ego transcendence,
• non-attachment and clarity of mind,
• acceptance of reality and unconditional love,
• and fearlessness.

The deep-seated fear Jane discovered was some manifestation of these kleshas. It was unimportant for her to find out its origin. What matters is that she brought awareness into the unconscious (the pain, nausea and fear). Like light shining into darkness, it dissolved the fear.

Such healing is part of the profound process of spiritual transformation. Once we have entered the path to enlightenment, the inner obstacles rise up in various ways so we can recognize and resolve them. This is the key to freedom.

Whether you are facing physical challenges, relationship problems, or pain related to your mind and emotions, you may be dealing with manifestations of inner obstructions that cannot be resolved permanently by conventional means.

In my experience most medical or psychological treatments are based on the rejection of symptoms without trying to understand their subtle message. This can produce only a temporary improvement. The deeper emotional cause remains untouched and manifests sooner or later in another symptom. To reach a lasting resolution requires that we free the deeper cause, and that demands a spiritually conscious approach.

I invite you to experience the practice of Open Attention and HeartSourcing through a guided meditation with devotional chant by Krishna Das CD “Living with an Open Heart”. Audio samples and downloads available in iTunes!

For more information go to our website: Skills for Awakening

with love,

Ram Giri