{"id":574,"date":"2008-01-10T14:00:20","date_gmt":"2008-01-10T03:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sahajayoga.com.au\/news\/2008\/01\/10\/my-search-for-peace\/"},"modified":"2008-01-10T14:00:20","modified_gmt":"2008-01-10T03:00:20","slug":"my-search-for-peace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sahajayoga.com.au\/news\/2008\/01\/10\/my-search-for-peace\/","title":{"rendered":"My Search for Peace"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Shri<\/a>Sixteen years ago I made a New Year\u2019s resolution to join a meditation group.\u00a0I rang a couple of the more well-known ones from the Yellow Pages but they didn\u2019t answer.\u00a0Maybe they were on holidays.\u00a0 I kept trying all during January.\u00a0 By the time February had arrived I had given up on them.<\/p>\n

I was feeling stressed, having just gone through a marriage break-up.\u00a0I had read many self-help books, been to counselling, and\u00a0joined various groups on assertiveness, self-esteem and similar topics.\u00a0I had had health problems for many years and had tried all sorts of things from vitamin supplements, to books advocating affirmations to cure the various illnesses.\u00a0Some things I tried were a little helpful but I was becoming confused as they were not consistent with each other and were even contradictory.\u00a0I thought there must be some ultimate truth.\u00a0That\u2019s what I needed to find.<\/p>\n

I had decided to look for a Buddhist or Hindu meditation group.\u00a0I had been brought up a Christian but had not been convinced by their arguments and had never felt that going to church or praying had been helpful to me.\u00a0I had done Hatha Yoga in my teenage years and had found the relaxation techniques we did at the end of the class beneficial.\u00a0The yoga teacher had spoken about Hinduism and Buddhism and I had found it interesting.\u00a0I was looking for a meditation that would make me feel better,\u00a0help me to find peace and\u00a0enable me to forgive and to stop feeling angry and bitter.<\/p>\n

I had heard about Sahaja Yoga but didn\u2019t know anything about it.\u00a0I decided that as nothing else had worked out I would go along and try it.\u00a0The first class I went to was interesting and the people were friendly but I didn\u2019t feel very much.\u00a0They said that Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, the founder of Sahaja Yoga, was visiting Australia and was holding a free public lecture the following week.\u00a0I decided to attend.<\/p>\n

A half hour before I had to leave I still hadn\u2019t organised a baby-sitter.\u00a0Out of the blue my ex-husband rang and asked if he could take our son to Cubs.\u00a0I said, \u201cYes\u201d, and asked if he would like to have our daughter over for a visit as I wanted to go out.\u00a0Suddenly I was free to go.<\/p>\n

I sat in the front row at the Canberra Playhouse and after an introductory talk by a Sahaja Yogi, all of a sudden a great stillness fell over the hall and there was absolute silence and a feeling of great anticipation and expectation hung in the air.\u00a0It gave me goose bumps.\u00a0At that moment Shri Mataji slowly walked onto the stage from behind the curtain.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I was surprised that Shri Mataji looked like a very soft, natural, gentle and unassuming, short, Indian woman.\u00a0I liked her instantly.\u00a0 I had been expecting someone much more made-up, more sophisticated, harder, more brash, more like a saleswoman.\u00a0I thought she looked like a simple and na\u00efve woman and I hoped that this sophisticated and intellectual Canberra audience wouldn\u2019t heckle her.\u00a0I needn\u2019t have worried.\u00a0I now realise that what I saw then as na\u00efvety was an absolute confidence based on total innocence and complete fearlessness.<\/p>\n

She gave a lecture in which everything she said related to my life.\u00a0She spoke about how a lot of Christians were not as they were supposed to be, which had been my experience, and she talked about how in these modern times men had women fooled.\u00a0She spoke about acupuncture which I had had that day and about how Sahaja Yoga cures illnesses.\u00a0The lecture answered all my concerns and I felt as if it was directed at me.\u00a0She had an incisive intellect, she was an excellent speaker and her lecture was wide-ranging, humorous, surprising, insightful, witty and delivered with great passion and conviction.<\/p>\n

We went through the Self-realisation process, and again I didn\u2019t feel the cool breeze at the top of my head.\u00a0I didn\u2019t really expect to, I suppose, as I wasn\u2019t sure if it was real or if it was some kind of a con.\u00a0Then Shri Mataji said that she was happy to meet anyone who would like to meet her.\u00a0I had never followed a guru before, being wary of them after seeing expos\u00e9s of various gurus in the late 1970s, but I felt that Shri Mataji seemed to be a person of dignity and integrity.\u00a0She didn\u2019t appear to be a charlatan.<\/p>\n

When my turn came she was smiling at me as I walked towards her.\u00a0She had her whole attention on me and I felt like she was pouring huge soothing waves of love and compassion over me.\u00a0 She looked at me as if she knew me very well and she didn\u2019t say anything for a while as if she was waiting for me to recognise her and remember who she was.\u00a0She seemed to know me so well I started wondering if I\u2019d met her before anywhere, but I hadn\u2019t.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Then Shri Mataji asked me to put my hands out, palms upward.\u00a0She looked intently at my palms.\u00a0She asked if I had felt the cool breeze.\u00a0I lied and said, \u201cYes\u201d.\u00a0She knew I was lying and asked incredulously, \u201cDid you?\u201d\u00a0Again I lied.\u00a0She said, \u201cOh well, now you\u2019ve got it.\u00a0 You must keep on with it and fix it all up\u201d.\u00a0 And then she turned her attention to the next person in the queue and I felt like the floodlight of her love and attention that I had been bathed in was suddenly turned off and I was left in cold, hard reality.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Shri Mataji had had an enormous impact on me.\u00a0She was so natural and down-to-earth, so wise and knowledgeable, so soft and unassuming, yet so strong and powerful.\u00a0She had infinite patience, meeting each person in the long queue and giving each of them the individual attention she had given me.\u00a0She was caring, compassionate and full of loving kindness and understanding.\u00a0And so generous as she didn\u2019t stand to gain financially from this free lecture.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I realised that Sahaja Yoga was vastly different\u00a0from the various New Age philosophies I had been dabbling in, and that I had paid a lot of money for, and I resolved to give Sahaja Yoga a serious go.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So, for the last sixteen years, since that time, I have been practising Sahaja Yoga, meditating every day and clearing my chakras.\u00a0I have found not only what I was seeking, but much more.\u00a0I am less stressed, my health has improved, I am no longer angry and bitter and I have learnt to forgive.\u00a0It took a while but I now feel the cool breeze at the top of my head.\u00a0I have discovered the essence of the teachings of Christ, Buddha, the Hindu sages and all the great prophets, and found that they are not contradictory.\u00a0And best of all, I have found joy, peace of mind and a sense of real meaning in my life.\u00a0Thank you, Shri Mataji!<\/p>\n

Kay Alford<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sixteen years ago I made a New Year\u2019s resolution to join a meditation group.\u00a0I rang a couple of the more well-known ones from the Yellow Pages but they didn\u2019t answer.\u00a0Maybe they were on holidays.\u00a0 I kept trying all during January.\u00a0 By the time February had arrived I had given up on them. I was feeling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[36,12,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-36","category-personal-experiences","category-shri-mataji"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4h1Q1-9g","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sahajayoga.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sahajayoga.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sahajayoga.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sahajayoga.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sahajayoga.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sahajayoga.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sahajayoga.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sahajayoga.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sahajayoga.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}