I would like to admit something.  Yesterday I was in a training in Los Angeles on how to publish my upcoming books. As I was riding the beautiful marble elevator down to class in the morning, I heard the news about the shooting in Orlando. Last week there was the shooting in Tel Aviv close to the apartment my sister and her husband live in with their three little boys. It was on my mind all day.

I realized that I rarely, if ever, make a public statement about the terrors happening in this world. Of course I would like to request prayers for all those affected by these terrors and of course I would love for it to stop. I wish that there was never a situation where my sister felt she had to send a message to me that the family is alive even though shaken up.

Often when we speak of these things, people get reactive. It is natural to feel anger, fear, hate, sadness, disappointment and many other emotions. I don’t enjoy being around those emotions, and I do not like to do...

Come dance with me.
Come walk the tightrope with me
And fall with me.
Dive into me.
Clear the dust,
See the light.
Whirlpools fly away,
Resistance gone,
The path clears,
Energy flies up to the eye.
Through you I see me 
And we become God.
Energy rise,
Bubble at the point.

Hearts open,
Barriers gone.
Drop in deeper and deeper.
My soul feels you,
My soul loves you.

As I face the challenges coming up lately, it is very easy to go directly into a negative reaction. Yet around the corner keeps coming a greater desire to love. As I let it in, I feel soothed and calmed. It helps me understand where others are coming from without getting emotionally involved. I can choose my stance in the situation with greater strength and even-mindedness.  And it reminds me of when I first discovered how helpful it is for me to love and feel my love received.

I had just spent over two months in an isolated and tense situation where I felt very disconnected, even from those right around me. I was sitting in the living room in a foreign country of a family my friend worked with. The conversation revolved around complaints about politics I knew nothing about. I had no interest in engaging. I also had a growing headache.

I did not have a headache for a long time but used to get them frequently. Headaches were always a sign something was really off in myself. When...

Isn’t God more than a person? Doesn't God dwell within us? Isn't everything God? These are some of the questions I have been hearing from friends that I thought to address. There is much more that could be shared or elaborated on, but that is what future blogs are for. :)

On my second night at Ananda in 2004 my Yoga Teacher Training class was asked to define “God.” I furiously wrote a page about how I hate the idea of a man sitting in a chair in the heavens judging us and how religion has caused many wars. On the back of the page I wrote about how I prefer to believe in things like peace and love. We were then asked to share what we wrote. I sat quietly because I did not want to share anything negative. I listened, though, to how everyone in the group described the term “God” as concepts like peace and love. My eyes were completely opened to another way of looking at God. With a new understanding of the word God I thought there should be a new...

A couple recent conversations within LoveWorks, a relationship training program, helped me get clear on my relationship with the term “commitment” and its connection with “freedom.” This exploration revealed some enriching ways to view commitment and freedom that I thought would be fun to share.

 
On a phone call we were discussing the idea of surrender. I asked for someone to explain to me what it is like to continue to surrender over a long period of time. I added I have only been in commitments for shorter periods of time. In response to my question, Sonika, one of the leaders of LoveWorks, suggested I reframe the question to something more uplifting like “What have I been committed to over a long period of time? What have I continually surrendered to?”

 
Right away I knew I had an answer to that question, God; seeking truth and tuning into God’s will. Many times I have gone into something feeling calm and right about it. Then...

After going to a musical the other night, I was reminded of the transformational opening I felt from going to a dance concert a few months ago. A dance company by one of my past dance teachers was performing in San Francisco. I had respected this instructor so much that I did not feel it was necessary to do any research on what I was getting into when I bought a ticket for this show.

Living the quiet meditative village life in the hills of the Sierra Nevadas in California, just a trip to San Francisco felt like a blur of energy swarming around me. As I walked into the lobby of the dance theater I was asked, "Do you want to dance?" My answer was enthusiastically, "Of course!" They were teaching people a version of an electric slide in funk style.

The announcer came out at the beginning of the performance and proclaimed that all audience members were required to shout during the presentation. The first dancer entered the stage with huge platform shoes, bright colored clothes, and a...

This journey displayed the universality of all paths to God but also my love for the path laid out by my Guru Paramhansa Yogananda and his disciple Swami Kriyananda. I was being sent to Los Angeles to help at the Conscious Life Expo Feb 11-13, 2011. It also felt like a good time after being gone for two years to return to Santa Barbara to thank the spiritual teachers I had studied with during the four years I lived there.

Right away upon arriving in Los Angeles, or what some people call Lala Land, I went straight to the Conscious Life Expo. With the Ananda LA staff, I entered through the beautiful hotel lobby being greeted by the sound of a wonderful violinist and an Egyptian queen and king on stilts. The beauty of this welcome was a little hidden behind the many people chit chatting, the extra chairs strewn around, and the flyers completely covering the pretty marble counter tops.

We made our way past even more flyers and people to our booth with a huge photo of Paramhansa...

Dear Great Soul,

With a flood of ideas coming to me over the last few months, I thought it would be fun to write them down and share them. It is a thrilling venture as writing has never been my forte in the past. Yet as I write this introduction, a half dozen other blogs are also spilling out of me.

During his final summer in U.S. in 2012, Swami Kriyananda--the founder of Ananda Sangha and direct disciple of Paramhansa Yogananda,--declared he wants all of us to be Swami Kriyanandas. I do not believe he meant for us to be exactly like him. He expressed this without judgement creating the space for the full expanse of our potential.

With Swami Kriyananda's passing last April (2013) I find it ever more important for us to actively continue his mission; to dive more deeply into the spiritual path and in turn to write, speak, and share his love, teachings, and devotion to Master.

For now I am calling this blog The Dance Into Divinity not just because I love the art form of dance, but...