Satsang with Nirmala

Advaita Spiritual Teacher

Who are you really? Are you your body, mind, and personality? Or are you the spacious awareness in which they appear? Questions like these point us to the infinite oneness and Presence that is the true source of peace, happiness, and love. Satsang means "gathering together to inquire into our true nature." It is an opportunity through inquiry and dialogue to discover that the love, peace, and happiness you have been seeking are available here and now. Satsang is a chance to finally rest from all seeking and struggle, and to experience directly the completeness and perfection of your Being. Advaita spiritual teacher, Nirmala invites you to enjoy the free spiritual ebooks, satsang video and satsang audio recordings, and many free nondual teachings on this site pointing to this spiritual truth. You will discover the sweet richness that is revealed when you give this truth your undivided attention.

Nirmala offers free spiritual poetry in his book of Spiritual poems entitled Gifts with No Giver.

Advaita is the teaching of nonduality, which is best known through the spiritual teachings of the revered Indian saint, Ramana Maharshi. He taught

that self-realization, or awakening to the nondual spiritual truth of who we are, is not some distant goal that only a few can attain. Instead, the true Self

is that which is always and already present, that which doesn't come and go. Through satsang and simple self inquiry, we can awaken from the dream

of a separate self to the reality of oneness or nonduality, to the spiritual truth of who we are.

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Love Is for Giving

Written by Nirmala

(Nota: Este artículo también está disponible en Español aquí.)

(Note: This article is translated into Spanish here and Russian here.)

What is love and where is it found? We search for love and try to get love, and yet it seems like we never get enough. Even when we've found it, it can slip away as time passes. What if there is a source of love that never fades and is always available? What if love is as near and easy as breathing? What if you have been "looking for love in all the wrong places" instead of actually lacking love?

Love is both simpler and more mysterious and subtle than we imagine it to be. Love is simply the spacious, open attention of our awareness, which is the gentlest, kindest, and most intimate force in the world. It touches things without impinging on them. It holds all of our experience but doesn't hold it down or hold it back. And yet, inherent in awareness is a pull to connect and even merge with the object of your awareness.

It's this seemingly contradictory nature of awareness-the completely open and allowing nature of it and its passionate pull to blend with and even become the object of its attention-that gives life its depth and sweetness. There is nothing more satisfying than this delicious dilemma of being both apart from and, at the same time, connected to something you see, hear, or feel.

What Is Advaita or Nonduality?

Written by Nirmala

What is Advaita or nonduality? Advaita means nondual or "not two." This oneness is a fundamental quality of everything. Everything is a part of and made of one nondual conciousness. Often the question arises, If it is all one non-dual thing why don't I experience it that way? This is confusing oneness or nonduality for the appearance of sameness. Things can appear different without being separate. Just look at your hand for a moment. Your fingers are all different from each other, but are they separate? They all arise from the same hand.

Similarly, the objects, animals, plants and people in the world are all definitely different in their appearance and functioning. But in their ultimate nature, they are all connected at their source. So, this one nondual oneness of Being has an infinite number of different expressions that we experience as different objects.

The Role of a Spiritual Teacher

Written by Nirmala

In usual terms, a teacher or mentor instructs, guides, or helps another in the process of gaining understanding, knowledge, or skills. How about the spiritual teacher or mentor? What is the role they play? And also what role does a spiritual teacher or spiritual mentor in the Advaita or nondual satsang tradition do?

A spiritual teacher's role is different from the usual teacher in that the goal is not so much to transmit understanding or knowledge as to somehow nurture an awakening in the student to their own pre-existing true nature. This is more subtle than simply teaching someone a skill or piece of knowledge, not that a spiritual teacher never assists with knowledge and understanding about spirituality, but by itself, that knowledge or understanding is not the goal. A student can acquire a broad knowledge of the principles of spirituality but may still not have realized those underlying principles as being inherently present in his or her own true nature. So Advaita spiritual teachers or mentors may not teach anything or they may teach a lot, depending on what a student needs at that time to facilitate their enlightenment, or awakening to the spiritual truth of their true nature.