Hari-kirtana is an author, mentor, and yoga teacher who shares his knowledge and experience of how the yoga wisdom tradition can guide us toward meaningful and transformative spiritual experiences.
Principles of Spiritual Leadership
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Greetings Reader - If you do a search on “spiritual leadership,” you’ll find descriptions that assume “spiritual leadership” means leading people along a spiritual path or inspiring people to engage more fully in their spiritual lives. That’s one way to think about spiritual leadership, and it’s a great way, but I prefer to think of spiritual leadership as the exemplary application of spiritual ideas and values to solving the problems of the material world. Among all yoga wisdom texts, the Bhagavad-gita specifically encourages us to make our participation in creating a better, kinder, safer, and more beautiful world part of a fully integrated personal spiritual practice. And the Gita gives us the tools we need to take our practice off of our mats and meditation cushions and into a world that needs us to embody spiritual values. Whether it’s small problems close to home or big problems that affect everyone, we’re all called upon to lead by example by embodying spiritual values in the course of our engagement with the world. This is why my next monthly wisdom workshop will be PRINCIPLES OF SPIRITUAL LEADERSHIP Live via Zoom on Saturday, October 5 @ 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm EDT TUITION: $37 This workshop will be recorded and available for replay
Beyond maintaining a solitary yoga practice for the sake of one’s own liberation is the higher practice of taking action based on spiritual principles for the sake of the world’s welfare. In the Bhagavad-gita, Krishna glorifies living for the welfare of others as a symptom of an advanced yoga practice. If you're ready to integrate principles of spiritual leadership into your practice, this workshop is for you. If you have any questions about the workshop, please just reply to this email. Thanks – I’m looking forward to sharing these principles of spiritual leadership with you. Hoping you're well in all respects, - Hari-k PS: Members of Yoga Alliance can receive 1.5 hours of CE credit for this workshop. And it will be recorded – you can watch the replay at any time. |
Hari-kirtana das
Hari-kirtana is an author, mentor, and yoga teacher who shares his knowledge and experience of how the yoga wisdom tradition can guide us toward meaningful and transformative spiritual experiences.
Greetings Reader - Some people think that a yogi should rise above the dualities of politics to a place of non-judgement and, subsequently, non-participation, through the cultivation of detachment. I think this is one of the most common misconceptions people have about the role detachment is meant to play in our yoga practice. The premises are right but the conclusion is wrong. Yoga does encourage detachment from conceptions of friends and enemies—the essence of politics—as well as equanimity...
Greetings Reader - In his Yoga-sūtras, Patañjali describes the true nature of the self as being eternal, pure, and joyful. It’s nice to know that we have the potential to experience ourselves that way. The sutra also makes a clear distinction between the true self and the not self; the temporary material body that’s subject to so many problems. The differentiation between the infinitesimal spark of individual consciousness within the body and the body itself is a fundamental principle of yoga...
Greetings Reader - In the great epic, the Mahābhārata, the demigod Yamarāja asked a wise king, “What is the most amazing thing within this world?” The king replied, “The most amazing thing in the world is that hundreds and thousands of living beings meet death at every moment, but a foolish person, even after seeing friends and relatives pass away, nonetheless lives as if they won’t die and does not prepare for death.” It's true: we usually think of death as . . . something we don’t want to...