hi all!

[Shobha Vaidyanathan]

Hi all,

Jai Gurudev,
All the ppl who attended ASV last Sunday got a form asking for your experiences while doing this course.
Those who handed me those sheets pl. ignore this msg.
For the others, the reason for this input is we are hoping to start a seva pretty soon where we will be sending out emails every week to the San Jose Art of Living Family about participant's experiences in different AOL courses, Kriya , Long Kriya , etc.
Please feel free to share any experiences you may have had. We hope that by sharing this knowledge with others we can all learn and grow.


If you wd rather email me this , that's fine as well!
Bavani:

A Very happy b'day to you!!!
Take care
Shobha

[Ashwin Srinivasan]

why are you collecting peoples' experiences? Just curious.


-Ashwin

[Ashwin Srinivasan]

Ok, I'll just write my experiences anyways...

It all started right before my senior year. the summer before, I went
to my cousin ambica's house in texas. I felt so light around her,
because she was so stressfree. she nearly got into a car accident and
she was still stressfree, i mean she wasnt blaming herself overly or
didnt show it anyways (and i was in the car!!!!). anyways, then i
started reading celebrating silence and i was in awe. i was like, i
have to see what else this man with a nice smile has done

so i went home and took the part 1 course. the first time i was
exposed to brearthing techniques, and hinduism in practicality, not
just some esoteric sanyasi sort of thing. i was like wowwwww so this
is what indian wisdom is all about!!!!! how cool!!! how practical!!

i was ttoally in awe of the course points, but most of all it was the
teachers, especially srinivasan uncle. amazing. also prabhat neobudda
was so inspirational too.

I was llike oh my gosh thiese yoga asanas are sooo fun.

and then for the first time in a loooong time, i experiences samadhi
(or deep sleep) in a conscious manner -- like i felt the deel sleep in
me; i know we get deep sleep anyways every night, but this was in a
totally different way. also i was able to experience a chatter-less
mind, which was ttoally awesome; and then, I also understood what is
meant by "who am i?" -- its the person who is observing!! and that was
only made easy to understand by breaking the consciousness into the 7
layers -- so simple, like an onion. some day i want to teach this
course.

i also loved how they said do 3 s's -- seva, sadhana, sadguru. You can
say do these things, but i only know the benefit thrugh an
experiential mannter. I mean the teachers were so friendly and
caring!! so they were doing what they told us to do, in other words.

Then I took the yes course! that was a looooot fun with emma seppala
and ari winburg. I took it in a backwards order; yes.
I love talking about how responsibility brings ability; when i saw the
video of sri sri's satsang in the part 1 course, i was in awe. one
man, took responsbility for the whoooooole world; my goodness, and in
a very deep way; he not only cared, but he knew how to help.

YES was good b/c it was ppl sort of my own age.

The best aspect of yes was the teacher interaction, and the trust
activities which were invaluable.

Emma was a great teacher and encouraged me to go and take part 2. she
said i was "ready" for it hahaha

so i signed up for part 2. and ill be honest, i was really confused
most of the time, but it didnt help that i was also preparing for my
arangatram during the part 2 course!

then, i used to talk alllot with shivaram uncle, and he used to say
how i could become a teacher. i stil do as a matter of fact.

Then...I wanted to take ashtavakra because i wanted to learn more from
his holiness and awesomeness guruji, and it was pretty cool, but
personally i felt it could have been condensed!

The same point over and over again, you are n ot this, you are not
this, you are not that, you are not this, you aren ot that.....(like
you are not emotions, you are not the doer, you aren ot the body, you
are not the events)

but i guess repetition was the point;

and now i am signed up for part 2!

I plan to take bhakti sutras sometime in the future, and ttc, and w'll
see what happens!!

-Ashwin