Engaged Enlightenment and Abundance
Summary: This conversation explores how spiritual practice can be integrated with money, pleasure, work, ethics, and everyday life. It also examines dharma, abundance, happiness, grace, and the deeper mechanics of yoga.
Questions This Interview Explores
- How can spiritual awakening include rather than reject ordinary life, work, and money?
- What do dharma, artha, and kama mean in a practical, seeker-friendly way?
- How do ethics, non-stealing, and right speech shape a spiritually conscious life?
- What is the relationship between joy, abundance, and freedom from external sources of happiness?
- How do grace, karma, reincarnation, and the mechanics of yoga fit into lived experience?
Yogacharya Ellen Grace O’Brian is a meditation teacher, an award-winning poet, writer, and the spiritual director of the Center for Spiritual Enlightenment—a Kriya Yoga Meditation Center with headquarters in San Jose, California. She has taught Kriya Yoga nationally and internationally for more than three decades and has received many service awards, including the Mahatma Gandhi Award for the Promotion of Religious Pluralism. Ordained to teach in 1982 by Roy Eugene Davis, a direct disciple of Paramahansa Yogananda, her message is “engaged enlightenment” – an invitation to live an awakened, creatively inspired, and fulfilled life, now.
Along with her service as a meditation teacher and esteemed Yogacharya, Ellen Grace O’Brian is the Founder of Carry the Vision, a community nonviolence education project bringing meditation instruction to staff and children in schools, the prison population, and other segments of society. She is the founder and President of Meru Institute, providing healthy lifestyle education and leadership training in yoga studies, Ayurveda, and community service. She is host of The Yoga Hour, a weekly podcast with listeners in over 130 countries. Her latest book, The Jewel of Abundance: Finding Prosperity through the Ancient Wisdom of Yoga
Other books:
- The Moon Reminded Me
- A Single Blade of Grass: Finding the Sacred in Everyday Life
- One Heart Opening
- Sanctuary of Belonging
- Living for the Sake of the Soul
Discussion of this interview in the BatGap Community Facebook Group.
Transcript, summary, and key takeaways from this interview
Interview recorded January 21, 2019.
YouTube Video Chapters:
- 00:00:00 – Introduction and Overview of the Guest
- 00:03:50 – The Connection Between Material Existence and Spiritual Life
- 00:07:32 – Finding a Happy Medium and Being Awake in the World
- 00:11:24 – Living in an Ashram vs. Awakening in the World
- 00:15:11 – Discovering Your Unique Path
- 00:19:12 – Discovering a Subtle Dharma
- 00:23:13 – The Importance of Homo Consciousness
- 00:26:53 – Exploring the Goal of Artha
- 00:31:07 – Ethics in Spiritual Communities
- 00:34:42 – Ahimsa and the Journey of Non-Stealing
- 00:38:52 – Changing Our Mind for Abundance
- 00:42:44 – The Power of Speech and Thought
- 00:46:44 – Divine Grace and the Mechanics of Life
- 00:50:48 – Receptivity to Opportunities
- 00:55:44 – The Beauty of Life and the Nature of Reality
- 00:59:58 – The Importance of Enjoyment in Living a Spiritually Conscious Life
- 01:04:06 – Finding Happiness and Bliss
- 01:08:00 – Unhooking from External Sources of Happiness
- 01:11:27 – Living Beyond Our Means and Stealing
- 01:15:21 – Awakening to Higher Consciousness
- 01:19:34 – Stages of Life and Dharma
- 01:23:10 – Serving without Attachment
- 01:27:29 – Finding Joy in the Present Moment
- 01:31:42 – Being an Ocean and the Middle Way
- 01:36:00 – The Evolutionary Crucible of Close Relationships
- 01:40:17 – Awakening and Self-Reflection
- 01:44:43 – The Mechanics of Yoga
- 01:48:23 – The Body and Karma
- 01:52:21 – Reincarnation and the Mind
- 01:56:18 – The Power of Faith and Belief in the Universe
- 02:00:29 – Keeping Your Attention on Interview Preparation
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