Quote of the Day

People like to meditate for a number of different reasons, and they are all quite valid. First of all, I think it's the number-one best relaxer. When you begin to still the mind and become quiet in your body, you feel a sort of "giving away" of all stress. Then, as you go a little deeper in meditation, right below the surface level of the mind there is a place of great tranquility and peace and love. I find if you can touch that just for a moment, the peace and love of that state infuse your whole being. So when you come out of meditation, you re-meet the world from an optimal place.
And then as you go deeper, you come to a place of great inspiration, the place from which great writers write and great thinkers think and great musicians compose music. That's all within us, that capacity. And ultimately, in the deepest level of meditation, you come to touch the divine energy that has created the whole universe. You begin to feel oneness with the great power of this universe, and there the inner mysteries, the answers to the big questions -- Who am I? What am I supposed to do here? What is a human being? -- are answered.
I think we all have the experience of feeling that there is something greater inside ourselves, that we have some potential if we could just tap it, if we just could unlock it. In the tradition of yoga, from time to time there are great souls or spiritual masters who have the ability to awaken our dormant spiritual energy. This is what shaktipat is all about. Shaktipat allows you to begin to access your own love, your own creativity. It actually empowers the experience of meditation.
This was certainly my experience. I tried to meditate for a number of years on my own, and when I received shaktipat, I literally felt an almost magnetic energy awakened inside my being, in the region of my heart. As I would sit to meditate every day and would begin to still the mind, I'd feel that energy rise up. It was a very loving feeling. And then that energy would begin to guide me or draw me back inside into deeper states of meditation.
-from the video Entering the Heart: An Introduction to Siddha Yoga Meditation

Swami Ishwarananda, one of the Siddha Yoga teachings monks is known amongst Siddha Yoga students for his authenticity, warmth and great clarity of expression.