Oneness with God

Deep and daily meditation leads to oneness with god. Thinking daily of god fills the mind with god. Mind loses its own random thoughts when it identifies with god. Just as sugar melts in water or smoke mixes with air, the mind merges with god.

Om Peace!
Valarie Devi

Impermanence

Yoga is like a verse written upon the surface of the soul, a ripple that dances across water, or unseen air that moves the mightiest of trees.

Om Peace!
Valarie Devi

A Yogi can ...

A Yogi can turn fear into joy, frustration into fulfillment.

Everything a Yogi sees has roots in the unseen world.

A Yogi does not believe them self to be a local event dreaming of a larger world, but a world dreaming of local events.

Yogis don't believe in death, for in the light of awareness, everything is alive.

A Yogi's power is the power of love.

A Yogi has perfect attention. This is how a Yogi creates order and clarity out of chaos and confusion.

To a Yogi there are no coincidences. Every event exists to expose another layer of the soul.

Om Peace!
Valarie Devi

Feeling Peace

Peace is not a circumstance.

Peace is a feeling, a powerful, wonderful and desirable feeling.

Peace does not depend on any particular set of conditions.

It can be any place, at any time. Remember how peace feels.

And by so remembering, you make yourself available to peace.

Peace is what remains when

you've surrendered your ego and your fears.

Peace is always there, patiently waiting

for you to turn your awareness toward it.

The same part of you that longs for

peace is the part of you that experiences peace.

It is not complicated and is as close as your next thought.

Think lovingly of how peace feels to you.

And truly be at peace.

-Ralph Marston

Practice Happiness!

Happiness should be a habit, something we practice like Yoga. I am not talking about pretending to be happy or fooling yourself and others, but reaching deep within to the indwelling spirit for your inner joy. When we do this, the outer expressions naturally follows!

During good times, allow yourself to smile. During difficult times, allow yourself to smile. It doesnt have to be a big smile, just a soft smile, a 'Buddha' smile, a smile that expressions your inner contentment.

A good way to start is by fasting from negativity, by refraining from being negative for just one day. If you normally complain about the weather, find something nice to say about it instead. If you normally complain about a co-worker, find something nice to say about them instead. Just for one day.

Om Peace!
Valarie Devi

Spiritual Life

Many talk about a 'spiritual life' but sometimes what that means eludes us. A spiritual life is one lived in balance, when the body's passions and the mind's fluctuations are in Yoga, in 'union'. When we join together the conscious thought with direct activity we find the all in all, the true spirit that dwells within us. So the true spirtual life is a life of knowing who you are, of love, of high minded thinking, of respecting self, and knowing that blessings occur in every breath.

Om Peace!

Praise

My soul preached to me and said,

"Do not be delighted because of praise,

and do not be distressed because of blame."

Ere my soul counseled me, I doubted the worth of my work.

Now I realize that the trees blossom in Spring

and bear fruit in Summer without seeking praise;

and they drop their leaves in Autmn

and become naked in Winter without fearing blame.

-Kahil Gibran

Intuitive Wisdom

Intuitive wisdom empowers us to expand beyond our ever uncertain world to find the center of divinity within.

Centered in spirit, every difficulty becomes impotent, because the source of difficulty is our inability to recognize spirit within.

When our spirit unites with our human nature, a powerful synergy takes place, a union - a Yoga - that allows us to remember our beautiful self.

Om Peace!
Valarie Devi

Twofold Duty

We each have a twofold duty on earth:
-to preserve our life, and
-to realize Self.

To preserve our life we must learn to work for our daily bread. To realize our Self we must serve, love and meditate.

Yoga shows us the way of body and mind knowledge. Yoga shows us the way of realizing the twofold duty.

Om Peace!
Valarie Devi

Cosmic Love

Cosmic Love, or Visva-prema, is the idea of loving kindness.

We are love. God is love. Life is love. Realizing this love creates more love. Identifying ourself as love brings more love into our lives.

True religion is not ritualistic observances, but in loving kindness. Cosmic Love is all-embracing and all-incluseive. In pure love, none are shut out from the warm embrace that nurishes our soul.

If you are made tired by hate and pride, by arrogance and ignorance, then be love and send love, for these things cannot live in the presence of pure love.

Om Peace!
Valarie Devi

Best Apple Cookies Ever!

These apple cookies are raw .. as in, not baked, but dehydrated. Not being heated to over 118d (which destroys many nutrients), these cookies are little powerhouses of flavor and good stuff for the body. But more importantly .. WOW .. do they taste good!
______

Ingredients:
-2 lbs red apples, cored and peeled (5-6 apples, like fuji or gala; I used red delicious)
-1 cup agave nectar (I used honey)
-1 and 3/4 cups almonds, ground in a food processor
-1 and 1/4 cup raisins
-1/4 cup cinnamon

In Food Processor:
Slice half the apples with the slicing disc. Transfer the sliced apples to a mixing bowl. Slice the remaining apples in the food processor with the shredding disc. Now add the shredded apples to the sliced apples in a mixing bowl.

Add the agave nector (or honey), ground almonds, raisins, and cinnamon to the bowl. Mix well!

With your Hands *:
Press the mixture into about 20 round, flatcookies, approximately 3" thick, and lay them on dehydrator sheets. Dehydrate at 105d for approximately 24 hours.

*I did mix them with my hands .. and it felt cool and squishy .. but just to get the mixture evenly mixed. Otherwise, I pressed them, by the spoonfull, into a biscuit mold that I use for all my dehydrator foods. Plus, my dehydrator is old-school, having no temp gauge. Plug it in, its on. Un-plug it, its off. So I generally dehydrate stuff overnight and a few hours more. In this case, until the center was no longer gooey soft. I store them in a plastic container lined with a paper towel, in the frig. They last forever in the frig. I eat these like powerbars (I dont buy commercial ones), or for a mid-morning snack. My grandkids love, Love, LOVE them .. and so does hubby -lol- so they gotta be good! Finally, I have replaced the apples with other fruit. Most recently, blackberries that I picked in the yard. These were a beautiful deep purple color and tasted fabulous! Now that I have loads of figs from our tree, I will be using them as well. Ill let youse know how they turn out.

Om Annapurna!
Valarie Devi

Humility

Society often dictates who we should think and feel and react, so sometimes we have to try to keep society's limited views at a distance to better honor ourself and the divine spirit that moves through us.

Being humble is not putting yourself down.

Being humble is respecting yourself at all times.

Being humble is a feeling of personal self wonder and joy.

Being humble is thinking everyone else is wonderful and filled with joy.

Om Peace!
Valarie Devi

The Importance of Breath

Our breath is the vehicle of energy. It carries both oxygen, which is necessary for our body functions, and subtle energy, which is the life force the fills us, supports us and surrounds us.

Our breath quality affects the body and mind, so to calm the mind we should calm the breath. When our mind is calm we can begin to see the depth of our spirit moving within us.

Om Peace!
Valarie Devi

Five Values

Our life must be founded on five human values:
-Love,
-Truth,
-Peace,
-Right Conduct, and
-Non-disruption.

It is more important to create a safer, kinder world

than to recruit more people to the religion

that happens to satisfy us.

-Dalai Lama

I Know

I Know, that one less judgment and one less complaint can change human destiny. For it has changed mine.

I Know, that a loving gesture has remade the world. For it has remade mine.

Om Peace!
Valarie Devi

Yoga's Journey

Yoga is NOT about a goal. It is not about getting-into any particular pose. It is very much about how to enjoy the journey. A journey which never ends!

Om Peace!
Valarie Devi

Green Yoga

Yoga is about change. And from its beginnings, has been centered on earth, on the abundant planet, on life and living and sharing all-that-is, for we are connected to all-of-that.

There are so many issues at the forefront of our daily lives. We are literally bomboarded with war and a sinking economy, with oppression and seemingly endless violence, with nuclear threats and biological warfare, and the list goes on. In fact, this list is so dark and depressing that many act out in violent and fearful ways, or resigned and defeated ways.

So were do we begin? Where can we start to make our world a better place?

On your tapas .. which is your Yoga mat. This is where our heart is found, which is our center. While sitting there and doing poses named for animals and elements - like elephant and lightening bolt - recall the green earth around you.

Sometimes it feels like car-pooling and composting, recycling and buying locally, are simply not enough. Which is why we must do this work, first, from within - from the place of Green Consciousness.

When we think green - internally, spiritually - we reflect green back to our environment. This means that we must adjust our way of thinking and being. Further, this means, if on your tapas, you feel an overwhelming sense of peace and holiness, then let this radiate in all aspects of your life. Expand your Yoga experience to your home experience, to your job experience, to your driving experience.

Know this: As you extend your Yoga Consciousness into every level of your life and living, those you come in contact with become part of that higher consciousness, just through interaction with you. Because none of us know the effect of a single word on a single individual that we encounter - whether later that evening, or later in their life - know that when we embrace an attitude of Green Yoga, we embrace the same for all we encounter.

Every drop fills the bucket.

Today, many talk about the power of prayer. If you believe in the power of prayer, then pray for people to awaken!

Om Peace!
Valarie Devi

Keys to Happiness

The Keys to Happiness, and Why We Don't Use Them

By Robin Lloyd, Special to LiveScience

"It requires some effort to achieve a happy outlook on life, and most people don't make it."—Author and researcher Gregg Easterbrook

Psychologists have recently handed the keys to happiness to the public, but many people cling to gloomy ways out of habit, experts say.

Polls show Americans are no happier today than they were 50 years ago despite significant increases in prosperity, decreases in crime, cleaner air, larger living quarters and a better overall quality of life.

So what gives?

Happiness is 50 percent genetic, says University of Minnesota researcher David Lykken. What you do with the other half of the challenge depends largely on determination, psychologists agree. As Abraham Lincoln once said, "Most people are as happy as they make up their minds to be."

What works, and what doesn't

Happiness does not come via prescription drugs, although 10 percent of women 18 and older and 4 percent of men take antidepressants, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. Anti-depressants benefit those with mental illness but are no happiness guarantee, researchers say.

Be Happy
University of Pennsylvania’s Martin Seligman offers questionnaires for assessing your happiness, beating depression and developing insights into how to be happier on his web site.

Nor will money or prosperity buy happiness for many of us. Money that lifts people out of poverty increases happiness, but after that, the better paychecks stop paying off sense-of-well-being dividends, research shows.

One route to more happiness is called "flow," an engrossing state that comes during creative or playful activity, psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has found. Athletes, musicians, writers, gamers, and religious adherents know the feeling. It comes less from what you're doing than from how you do it.

Sonja Lyubomirsky of the University of California at Riverside has discovered that the road toward a more satisfying and meaningful life involves a recipe repeated in schools, churches and synagogues. Make lists of things for which you're grateful in your life, practice random acts of kindness, forgive your enemies, notice life's small pleasures, take care of your health, practice positive thinking, and invest time and energy into friendships and family.

The happiest people have strong friendships, says Ed Diener, a psychologist University of Illinois. Interestingly his research finds that most people are slightly to moderately happy, not unhappy.

On your own
Some Americans are reluctant to make these changes and remain unmotivated even though our freedom to pursue happiness is written into the preamble of the Declaration of Independence.

Don't count on the government, for now, Easterbrook says.

Our economy lacks the robustness to sustain policy changes that would bring about more happiness, like reorienting cities to minimize commute times.

The on us is on us.
"There are selfish reasons to behave in altruistic ways," says Gregg Easterbrook, author of "The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse" (Random House, 2004).
"Research shows that people who are grateful, optimistic, and forgiving have better experiences with their lives, more happiness, fewer strokes, and higher incomes," according to Easterbrook. "If it makes world a better place at same time, this is a real bonus."

Diener has collected specific details on this. People who positively evaluate their well-being on average have stronger immune systems, are better citizens at work, earn more income, have better marriages, are more sociable, and cope better with difficulties.

Unhappy by default
Lethargy holds many people back from doing the things that lead to happiness. Easterbrook, also a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institute, goes back to Freud, who theorized that unhappiness is a default condition because it takes less effort to be unhappy than to be happy.
"If you are looking for something to complain about, you are absolutely certain to find it," Easterbrook told LiveScience. "It requires some effort to achieve a happy outlook on life, and most people don't make it. Most people take the path of least resistance. Far too many people today don't make the steps to make their life more fulfilling one."

http://www.livescience.com/health/060227_happiness_keys.html

Happy Thoughts

As you think, so you become.

Our mental focus affects how we feel and act. If you are thinking happy thoughts, then your actions will carry those happy feelings. Think good thoughts to feel good feelings that will inspire good actions.

Our thoughts and feelings go into everything we cook, build, say, create, and give. Keep your mental pollution to a minimum and shine good thoughts into the world!

Om Peace!
Valarie Devi

Yoga is ...

Yogah Citta Vrtti Nirodhah

Yoga - mind - fluctuations - stopping

"Yoga is stilling the mind's fluctuations"
-Yoga Sutra 1:2

From the very beginning of Patanjali's Raja Yoga Sutras, he addresses, head-on, the issue of awakening.

Ok .. good advice .. but .. how do we do this!?

For the mind to be still - without fluctuation - it needs something to focus on. This 'something' can be a Yoga pose, for example. So for the mind to be still, while in any Yoga pose, be still and find the pose's center.

Find the body's center, and the mind's center is close behind.

Om Peace!
Valarie Devi

Follow Your Bliss

When you follow your bliss...doors will open

where you would not have thought there would be doors,

and where there wouldn't be a door for anyone else.
-Joseph Campbell

This is a powerful and simple quote. If anyone has ever read the works of Joseph Campbell, they may also now that this was advice that he experienced personally. For in every way, he sought to bring to his readers the greater truth of reality that IS the Source of All That Is.

That is Yoga.

The bodymind complex seeks happiness. Always. One could even say that humans are geared - evolutionarily - for this singular purpose. For indeed, what greater satisfaction is there than happiness?

And just how easy is happiness to attain? How easy is it to follow your bliss? Simply point your bodymind in that direction.

Often, in Yoga class, my students here me say, "Close your eyes. Breath deep and slow. Look within." When we close our outer eyes, our inner eye opens, so that our attitude changes. We are no longer external beings, but internal ones. This simple act - closing your eyes, breathing deep and slow, being still - is all you need to achieve Yoga.

Yoga, like water, is not something you hold in your hand. For the tighter your grip, the more it slips through your fingers. Nor can our bodymind complex - the container, the bowl of our essence - be filled if it is already full. After all, the phrase is not, "Hold your bliss", or "Grasp your bliss", but "follow". And speaking of journey's .. take no baggage!

Yoga is a blissful practice. One that shows us where our tension and stress resides, where we hold mental and emotional pain. Often, during Yoga poses, the mind becomes flushed with ideas and thoughts and situations and its as if the floodgates have been opened!

Good!

Let the flood come. And with it, let it wash away all that which we grasp and contort and restrict. When we allow the free flow of prana - the life force - within us, the healing occurs. And when healing occurs, bliss is quick to follow.

Why? Because the body and mind are connected.

The divine essence that is you, knows what it needs to be whole. So follow your bliss!

Aum Peace!
Yogini Valarie Devi

Ganesha Chalisa

Glory, glory, all glory to You Ganesha;

To You, the whole world pays homage,

You are the deliverer from opposites!

Glory to You, you destroyer of all obstacles!

Glory to You, you bestower of happiness!

O Ganesha, resplendent is your single white tusk!

And the crescent shaped triple mark on Your forehead, as beautiful as the Moon!

On Your bosom is a garland of jewels,
in Your eyes the beauty

Of the full-blown lotus and on

Your head a crowd of gems.

O Ganesha, You deliver Your devotees from anxiety!

Blessed are You, O Ganesha, Your wooden sandals -

All studded with gems on Your feet -

Are the source of all blessings in the world.