Dear Spiritual Friend:
I began my spiritual journey over 24 years ago as a monk in southern India. In the last two decades of living in the west, all the spiritual practices I had learned became truly valuable. Living as a married person, working exceedingly long hours to pay my bills, building a career and dealing with all the stresses of an urban lifestyle challenged and refined what I had learned as a monk. Here, in these United States, which I love deeply, I learned to apply all of these practices in real life situations and I understood how to apply the ancient wisdom I had learned in India to continually transform my day-to-day life and consciousness. The fruit of my journey is what I wish to share with you.
My interest in creating this program is to empower others with the knowledge and the spiritual experience that I have garnered over the past 24 years of being consciously engaged on the spiritual journey so that you, in turn, can embody it in your life and then pass on the methods to others. It is not my intention to offer you esoteric knowledge that is distant from the world and its affairs, but well-tempered spiritual applications that can help you to deal more effectively with everyday life situations, empower you spiritually and increase your energy. The objective is to learn to transform our negative mental content and connect to a deep and lasting sense of spiritual fulfillment. I am inviting you to join a dynamic spirituality program akin to a Yogic Mystery School, the likes of which began in India and Egypt in antiquity and flourished in the Middle Ages, such as at Chartres Cathedral in Europe or in the great temple cities of India, where I received much of my spiritual education in addition to the monastery.
Today, many of us who live in the western world, feel spiritually impoverished. We live in societies that in its popular culture defiantly ignores the spiritual dimension of life -- not necessarily in terms of religion or morals or ethics -- but more in the domain of authentic and profound spiritual experience that truly touches upon the nature, vision and depth of human consciousness. Authentic spiritual experience naturally moves us into the flow of energy that includes morality, ethics and religious values while transcending all three at the same time.
THE GREAT SPIRITUAL NEED OF OUR TIMES
What, then, is authentic spiritual experience? Is it whatever we make it? Or is there more to it than meets the eye? Is our regular spiritual practice meeting our deepest needs? Are we being spiritually nourished by what we are doing? Are we truly feeling the pulse of what it really means to be in touch with the sacred, the transcendent? If these and other similar questions spark some inner flame inside you, you may be ready to embark on the interior journey of being part of this post-modern Mystery School.
At a basic level, many of us are in search of alternatives to boost our health and spirit. Depression is at an all time high because modern living does not connect us meaningfully and experientially to the world of spirit. We are, for the most part, estranged from spirit. This program will train you to reconnect powerfully to the hidden and mysterious dimension to our existence by developing a three dimensional spiritual life, that is, through the tracks of mantra, music and meditation. My vision is that this multi-dimensional model provides you with a level of spiritual fulfilment and spiritual experience that you may not have realized possible before.
From a loftier perspective, the vision of this program is panoramic, not only empowering you with spiritual tools that enhance your personal and professional life, but also inviting you to join in a continued venture, post-completion, to partner with me as a program associate and share what you have mastered with others. In other words: to fulfil yourself; and then, to use that fulfilment to fulfil others. Together, we can build a sense of community worldwide around the spiritual practice of sacred sound as a yoga path.
THE VALUE OF THE SONIC DIMENSION IN SPIRITUALITY
Why Sacred Sound? It is evident that sound is a vital link in our efforts toward our immediate personal balance as well as in the onward evolution of our species. Sound represents an aspect of life whose healing and spiritual powers that we are just beginning to rediscover. For the last 400 years we have been obsessed with information that has come to us through our eyes. Ever since the birth of the printing press we have moved out of the body and onto the page. Today, sucked into computer monitors and distracted by billboards everywhere, we have lost the visceral power of language and we see the results of this imbalance in our spirituality, which is often confined to the head. We are feeling it in our educational systems, from which we have banished art, and, as a consequence, the heart. What is even more tragic is that the spiritual dimension is lacking in our art.
Now is the time to reclaim the profound signficance of the ear and reinstate the feminine power of spirituality which is embodied in the mystery of sacred sound. The essence of a spiritual perspective that is based on sound is the understanding that “sound is form” and “form is sound”. To relate vision and hearing in healthy balance is the great challenge of our times and will form the heart of our practice together. This is also the essence of my work, “The Yoga of Sound”, and the three tracks of the program -- meditation, music and mantra -- form the triangle of empowerment that supports this system. Each of these components will be explored as distinct yet integrated tracks of the program.
I look forward to exploring this learning process with you.
In One Spirit,
Russill Paul
