The WYC 45^th Anniversary was a night of great joy and love!

Our chanting lifted up the roof with enthusiasm and power and a great current of higher energy flowed abundantly.

Here are some excerpts from the program notes for those of you unable to be there as well as excerpts from Rudrani and Julia’s talks and photos. 

Enjoy the blessings of the Puja ceremony whether or not you were present- by joining us in the rededication to the WYC’s future and our shared commitment to creating a world built on compassion and LOVE*

* there will be a donation basket at the school for 10 more days to add to our proceeds from the Celebration. We raised $1000! This provides an additional opportunity for all of you to be part of making a sizable gift to displaced people in dire need via The International Rescue Committee’s work with Refugees and feel included in this wonderful night of Love, Community and Joy!

Program notes

Tonight we celebrate the World Yoga Center’s forty fifth year of offering the timeless and uplifting practices of Yoga.

The school is a haven for us, a place where we journey together for the sake of love, truth and evolution of Consciousness. Our community is blessed with deep bonds of friendship and mutual well wishing.

We are dedicated to the authentic teachings, to inner transformation and to service in the world. And tonight, we will celebrate and honor our beloved school with its unique longevity and enjoy chanting, meditating, feasting and sharing together!

Tonight, we will offer ceremonial honor as we install a beautiful new Murti (statue), an iconic Moksha Shiva balanced upside down on His left hand under which lies the demon of darkness in utter defeat! He is effortlessly beautiful showing supreme agility in the mysterious Divine Cosmos. He will accompany us in the years ahead. 

Our service for tonight will be offering our collected proceeds to the International Rescue Committee who is doing exceptional refugee relief in multiple countries.

The Refugee crisis is staggering as we all know. There are at least 152 million people world wide in need of humanitarian aid. That’s larger than the population of Russia and 115 million of those people lack basic health services, 94 million lack water and sanitation, and 34 million lack access to education. Humanitarian organizations are currently 70% percent underfunded. We will do our best to raise a good sum tonight and give from our heart.

Our Future Vision

May be always remain constant to the original vision of the World Yoga Center, to provide a place where our supreme nature can be revealed and known! We are enfolded here in the sacred energy of this space, a space that has helped us transform our lives. We have been blessed with much empowerment and inspiration here. Many talented teachers come into the WYC community to contribute their gifts. Our programs are ever more rich and deep.  We are mindful to let ourselves flow and change with the times so that the younger generation is at home here and so that more and more students can be nourished here. We are all working together to build a more compassionate world. May we have a long and flourishing future!

Thanks to our Faculty and those whose efforts sustain the school, who have given generously with their love, time and skill, and to our beloved students whose support, dedication, respect for the practices and admirable efforts to evolve never cease to amaze us. We offer deep gratitude to the great beings, the sublime Siddhas whose teachings and grace hold us on the path of the heart.

Rudrani’s talk

It is a huge blessing to be part of a community that shares contact with the Source, especially in the midst of a secular world.
There is Empowerment here and much joy, love, and inspiration.
We endure and something solid lives here that is Unseen.
While the world changes around us, we have stayed true to our vision
Our commitment is solid—to awakenment from the dream of limitation into Being.
We have no end of gratitude for everyone’s service and for all who have helped uphold the school- giving their beautiful energy and keeping us flourishing and expanding.
Our blessings to a grace- filled and long, dazzling future!

Julia’s talk

Talk on Moksha Shiva- our new Shiva murti
Moksha means Truly Free—what does true freedom look like/mean?

In this form of Shiva there is a graceful lift of the feet over head from the shift in identity from the small self to the Great Self, from separation to the knowledge of oneness with all that there is.

This is the shift we take as a school, in our vision, because for the small self, when we are caught in the illusion of being separate, surrendering to the Great Self feels like the loss of all we want. For the driven individual, surrender of the small self is doom, surrender is a giving up the fight for your small needs, of trying to win the endless grappling of attachment and aversion. You lose.

Whereas when we have the knowledge of the Great Self, surrender is freedom, to be in the form and to fulfill one’s dharma, to fulfill the highs and lows with equal vision and love, because in the knowledge of the Great Self, of Oneness, it is all Shiva.

The installation of this new Shiva statue represents a timely shift as a school- the ability to see and sense the veil of separation is also part of the practice- the more light we generate the more we can see and dissolve the darkness. Light reveals darkness. The path doesn’t get easier. As we grow as individuals, as a school, as a collective consciousness, the practices actually get harder. Shiva represents this in the form of Death, he is destruction, he will rip the band-aid right off. The intensity is high with Shiva. And as yogis, we ultimately want this- we want to move through to where pleasure and pain is all one focus, it’s all Shiva. Where we give up the stubborn suffering of attachment and aversion born from separation.

May we never be discouraged from the truth that all of this is Shiva. The mind can’t make sense of it- the mind holds strongly to the dichotomy and our experience of duality confirms this again and again. It’s the willingness to surrender to our dharma, to be in the form but not attached, that opens the door to deeper awareness. How do we do this? It’s the openness to our practices, it will be this that shifts us into the Truth of our dharma in the form.

Let us look to attain the great experience of surrender. The moment when our legs naturally lift up and like the Moksha Shiva, we stand balanced on ignorance and darkness with one hand, with another hand reaching back in full-blown ecstasy, complete in the knowledge of the Great Self, in the knowledge of Oneness.

Tonight, we honor this school and invite the liberative force expressed in this Shiva into this space, into our growth as a community.

Together, in our practices and within our own being, may we truly become free and live our lives in liberating, grace-filled surrender.