Stunning, seductive Sri Lanka lures with rich cultural heritage

Women sashay past, saris fluttering and hips swaying rhythmically to the thumping drums. The high-pitched whining of a wind instrument draws me like the call of the Pied Piper. I'm swept along by the crowd of spiritual devotees circling a massive white Stupa at Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka's Cultural Triangle. The region, in the centre of the island, was the seat of two powerful kingdoms, Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa. It's the place to visit for statues, relics, ruins and to soak up Sri Lanka's days of glory.

There's an air of mystery around the Cultural Triangle and although more than 2000 years have passed, I can still feel the seductive tug of power from a long-gone kingdom that was once great.

The sacred city of Anuradhapura

Anuradhapura was established as Sri Lanka's first capital in 377BC by King Pandukabhaya and remained the capital until the 12th century AD.

White bell-shaped Stupas, some 60 metres high, soar towards the sky and are almost as impressive as Egypt's pyramids or Myanmar's pagodas. But unlike the pagodas, these Stupas and Dagobas of Anuradhapura are mound-like structures filled with Buddhist relics.

Buddhism has influenced the kingdom's culture, laws, and rule so it's not surprising that one of the main attractions at Anuradhapura is the Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi tree, a sacred fig tree believed to have been planted from a cutting of the Sri Maha Bodhi tree in Bodhi Gaya in India where Buddha attained enlightenment.

It's obvious - from the stream of devotees offering flowers, prayers and chanting around the tree - that this is the drawcard.

The tree was planted in 288BC and part of its supernatural mystique is that it is believed to be the oldest tree planted by man.

Ancient Polonnaruwa

Another ancient capital, Polonnaruwa, was the island's seat of power during the 11th and 12th centuries. The Polonnaruwa era was a period of engineering and construction. Shrines and Stupas were made of brick and temples were built for Hindu gods.

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Stunning, seductive Sri Lanka lures with rich cultural heritage

Get High and Do Yoga

To some people, smoking marijuana is a sport. Then there are those yoga types who consider downward dog the finest high around.

And then there's Ganja Yoga, which combines pot smoking and yoga, both of which are inarguably meditative.

Though cannabis has long been associated with meditation, Dee Dussault , a yoga, tantra, and sex educator who founded Ganja Yoga, says her classes are the first to offer a blend of herb and yoga outside of India. She first started teaching the classes in Toronto in 2009, and now offers them multiple times a day in SoMa. In a San Francisco Chroniclestory today, she emphasized cannabis as a route to spiritual awakening:

"Whether you call it getting high, medicating, or sacramental use," she writes on her website, "this yoga treats cannabis as a medicine and spiritual teacher, and I offer these enhanced yogic journeys as opportunities for trippy relaxation, pain-relief, and the cultivation of inner peace."

Ganja Yoga students partake together in the first 15 minutes of class, provided they have a legal medical marijuana card. Those without the magic card are encouraged to smoke before class. Once stoned, the yoga positions are kept deliberately easy, Dussault said, so as to not strain your altered state of mind (or hamstrings).

So don't worry about falling over or perfecting your warrior one position: This is about getting stoned and taking it slow.

From Leafly:

Check out more about Ganja Yoga at Dussault's website, or signup directly at Meetup.com.

[via SF Chron]

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Get High and Do Yoga

OPINION: The power is in our hands to actively choose peace

WHEN catastrophes in the world occur, it makes us realise how lucky we are.

The everyday annoyances that seem huge just melt away in insignificance.

With the siege in Sydney occurring, the horrors of radical thinking is now threatening the safety and calmness of our society here in Australia.

How lucky are we in Australia to be blessed with peace and tranquillity for 99.9% of the time while, in other parts of the world, this event would have only been a fleeting moment and forgotten as bigger catastrophes dominated their lives?

Just like after 9/11, it is important to pull together and focus on the outcomes we all want, and work with every segment of society to achieve that preferred outcome.

A very small number of people can create fear and mayhem - but only if we all let them.

It took only a few individuals in Northern Ireland, on both sides, to cause ongoing atrocities for decades; but the wider community's desire for peace stopped the violence. The power is in our hands to actively choose peace, acceptance and avoid judgment and intolerance.

The problem is a small minority of misguided individuals trying to move our society away from the common good. Do not blame any country of origin, religion, skin colour, sexual preference or gender as you will become as bad as them.

At the end of the day, as a community, we should work together to create a wonderful future, eradicating negativity, and be able to peacefully exercise our spiritual beliefs. How each of us achieves spiritual enlightenment is up to each one of us and is nobody else's business.

After all, when we meet our Maker, the truth will be clear. Good luck with your choices.

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OPINION: The power is in our hands to actively choose peace

Child abuse royal commission: Woman assaulted with double-barrelled shotgun at Satyananda Yoga Ashram, inquiry hears

A woman has told an inquiry that she was sexually assaulted with a double-barrelled shotgun at a New South Wales Central Coast yoga ashram, and was not sure the man who did it would not pull the trigger.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is investigating allegations of sexual and physical abuse made against the former spiritual leader and director of the Satyananda Yoga Ashram in New South Wales, Swami Akhandananda Saraswati, in the 1970s and 80s.

The 57-year-old woman known as Shishy cared for children who were separated from their parents at the ashram where family relationships were broken down.

Shishy met Akhandananda when she was 16 and he was aged about 22. She was initiated at the age of 19 to a full swami and went to live at the Central Coast ashram, sleeping in the same quarters as Akhandananda.

The commission has heard that Akhandananda's behaviour towards her became increasingly threatening as the years passed, and he began cutting at her vagina with nail scissors and threatening her with a pocket knife.

He also used the pocket knife to cut out her moles, at times leaving deep wounds.

"He wouldn't allow me to get medical attention so I sewed those two [cuts] up with fishing wire," she said.

Shishy said she was "terrified" when Akhandananda sexually assaulted her with a double-barrelled shotgun, in the lead up to her fleeing the ashram in 1984.

"I felt like if I moved or did anything other than receive it that I wasn't 100 per cent sure that he wouldn't fully pull the trigger," she said.

Shishy has told the inquiry that she did not procure girls for sex at the yoga ashram but was present when two young girls were sexually assaulted.

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Child abuse royal commission: Woman assaulted with double-barrelled shotgun at Satyananda Yoga Ashram, inquiry hears

Child sexual abuse royal commission: Woman denies procuring girls for sex, admits witnessing assaults at yoga ashram

A woman has told an inquiry that she was sexually assaulted with a double-barrelled shotgun at a New South Wales Central Coast yoga ashram, and was not sure the man who did it would not pull the trigger.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is investigating allegations of sexual and physical abuse made against the former spiritual leader and director of the Satyananda Yoga Ashram in New South Wales, Swami Akhandananda Saraswati, in the 1970s and 80s.

The 57-year-old woman known as Shishy cared for children who were separated from their parents at the ashram where family relationships were broken down.

Shishy met Akhandananda when she was 16 and he was aged about 22. She was initiated at the age of 19 to a full swami and went to live at the Central Coast ashram, sleeping in the same quarters as Akhandananda.

The commission has heard that Akhandananda's behaviour towards her became increasingly threatening as the years passed, and he began cutting at her vagina with nail scissors and threatening her with a pocket knife.

He also used the pocket knife to cut out her moles, at times leaving deep wounds.

"He wouldn't allow me to get medical attention so I sewed those two [cuts] up with fishing wire," she said.

Shishy said she was "terrified" when Akhandananda sexually assaulted her with a double-barrelled shotgun, in the lead up to her fleeing the ashram in 1984.

"I felt like if I moved or did anything other than receive it that I wasn't 100 per cent sure that he wouldn't fully pull the trigger," she said.

Shishy has told the inquiry that she did not procure girls for sex at the yoga ashram but was present when two young girls were sexually assaulted.

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Child sexual abuse royal commission: Woman denies procuring girls for sex, admits witnessing assaults at yoga ashram

What is Enlightenment?

Continued from November 04

We still have bodies that break down in all sorts of amazing ways. We still face injustice and conflict. Awakening isnt a waiver from the shared circumstances of human life. But it does radically transform how we experience them. We are no longer beleaguered exiles but now people at home even in the most difficult times, searching for ways to respond that encourage the bursting forth of the enlightenment that is present always and everywhere.

Theres a story about Tolstoy that speaks to this fundamental shift from self-centeredness to all-centeredness, when we see the self as infinitely large, taking in all others. Tolstoy and Chekhov were on a walk in the spring woods when they encountered a horse. Tolstoy began to describe how the horse would experience the clouds, trees, smell of wet earth, flowers, sun. Chekhov exclaimed that Tolstoy must have been a horse in a previous life to know in such detail what the horse would feel. Tolstoy laughed and said, No, but the day I came across my own inside, I came across everybodys inside.

A great deal has been said about walking the path of awakening, including practices that show us our habits of exile and how our allegiance can turn away from them toward more spacious and generous lives. So Ill just mention one thing that relates to taking on a day-to-day practice of enlightenment. Especially early on, most of us still have a lot of self-centeredness, by which I mean belief in the absolute reality of the self and the primacy of its concerns and reactions. One of the bemusing results is that here we are, hoping for an event which by its nature is unprecedented, and we think we know best about how to make it happen. We try to exert control over the process, and we believe we can find our way to enlightenment through acts of will.

There is mad discipline and insane persistence on this path, but theyre in the service of something more fruitful than certainty, control, and will. Theyre in the service of availability. Whatever happens, you have to just keep showing up. Sit the meditation, attend the retreat, absorb the teachings, face the fear, feel the sorrow, endure the boredom, stay open to the disturbing and also the knee-bucklingly beautiful.

When revelation begins to walk toward you, have the courtesy to walk out to meet it. You know the tricks of distraction you play on yourself, so stay alert to them, but dont allow hyper-vigilance to blind you to the moments when the world comes to call you home. Theres an old story about a man who vowed to meditate until Krishna appeared to him. Moved by his commitment, Krishna walked up behind the man and put his hand on his shoulder. Without turning around, the man cried, Go away! Im waiting for Krishna!

Just keep showing up, no matter what, with an open mind and a whole heart. Allow your allegiance to be turned from the habits of exile to the promise of home, naturally. Make yourself unconditionally available, and trust that enlightenment will find you.

The metaphors we use can powerfully shape what we imagine awakening to be. My own Zen tradition has lots of descriptions, like wielding the sword and penetrating the mystery, that wed be forgiven for confusing with exercises of will. Enlightenment is likened to a lightning bolt or a sudden flash of sparks, something instantaneous and bright. But what happens when we listen to other voices with very different ways of describing the same thing? Here is Qiyuan Xinggang, a seventeenth-century Chinese nun, being questioned by her teacher:

In some Mahayana traditions, the luminous totality of the universe, called the dharmakaya, fulfills a vow that all things should come into existence and grow toward awakening. The bodhisattva vow harmonizes in microcosm with the dharmakayas macrocosmic vow: we will continue to exist, and we will dedicate ourselves to awakening so that we might help everything that exists awaken, too. To take this vow is to allow ourselves to be pulled to that place where our enlightenment is continuous with the universesour vow continuous with the dharmakayas vowso that there is no rub between our intention and its.

And so we enter a phase of awakening that we might, perhaps surprisingly, call endarkenment. Awakening is a marriage of wisdom and compassion, and each has an aspect that is enlightening and one that is endarkening. The enlightening aspect of wisdom is a growing clarity of insight that puts doubts to rest and creates confidence. Its about what we come to understand. The endarkening aspect of wisdom is our profound acceptance of the great mystery at the heart of things, which we can never understand in our ordinary ways but can rest in and be nourished by. This is sometimes called not-knowing mind.

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What is Enlightenment?

Mii amo spa and Sedona offer heavenly peace for a spiritual reboot

Everyone can relate to wanting more balance in life. The popularity of juicing, of yoga, of meditation and the spin-lightening chain SoulCycle? Just the latest evidence that many of us continue to seek a certain equilibrium.

Earlier this year, I was one of those people in need of a serious reboot, but getting on a plane seemed counterintuitive. So I opted for Mii amo spa in Sedona, Ariz., a 7 1/2-hour drive from Los Angeles that felt far enough away to qualify as an escape.

Mii amo is on the grounds of Enchantment, a 70-acre resort five miles northwest of Sedona and surrounded by wilderness and the majestic red rocks of Boynton Canyon. The area was originally inhabited by the Yavapai, who consider it their place of origin. ("Mii amo" is a Native American term signifying passage or journey.)

The treatments, activities and cuisine, available to guests of the 218-room Enchantment resort as well as those who choose to stay in one of the 16 Mii amo all-inclusive spa rooms, were designed to promote healing of mind, body and spirit. But virtue isn't the only item on the menu; there are cocktails on offer as well.

I left L.A. before sunrise so I could beat the traffic and settle into the idea of relaxing. I passed Palm Springs and Blythe, then eased across the California state line into Arizona by midmorning. Bypassing Phoenix on State Route 303 and heading north on Interstate 17, I began to ascend the Mogollon Plateau, where saguaro cactus gave way to pine trees. Once I took the exit for Cottonwood, turning onto Route 179 North, I caught a glimpse of crimson, a hint of the scenery to come.

Arriving in Sedona at about 2:30 p.m., the towering buttes and cliffs looked like a scrim painted with every possible shade of rouge and ocher. No wonder so many Hollywood directors came here to film westerns. You don't need the road sign to know you have entered red-rock country.

The red-ribboned canyon enveloping Enchantment, a former tennis academy that opened as a resort in 1987, is guarded by two spires known as Kachina Woman and Warrior Man, which sit on one of Sedona's so-called energy vortexes and are accessible from the area's many hiking trails. Scattered throughout the property, the resort's rooms and casitas are nestled into the landscape, with western-style furnishings, spectacular views and thoughtful amenities delivered to your door, such as fresh orange juice every morning and a card printed with a Native American blessing at turn-down.

The 24,000-square-foot spa complex, opened in 2001, was designed by Gluckman Mayner Architects, the same firm responsible for the Dia Center for the Arts in New York City and the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe. Set into the slope of the canyon, the building is low, modern and environmentally appropriate, with peaceful spaces that flow into one another, and lots of red adobe brick, natural light and water elements.

I found myself in a tranquil cairn garden in the complex's central atrium, which set the mood for ahhhh. A cairn is a mound of stacked stones built as a landmark or memorial, and guests can choose from the piles of stones to create their own. Nearby, a kiva-like space called the Crystal Grotto invites quiet contemplation and is the site of the morning "ritual," a brief, mind-clearing moment of calm guided by a staff member.

If you are a doer, there's a lot to do. In fact, Mii amo and Enchantment almost feel like a summer camp for adults, with more than 100 activities offered weekly, including cooking demonstrations, yoga classes, juicing 101, chanting, vortex lectures, stargazing, tennis, golf and mountain bike excursions.

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Mii amo spa and Sedona offer heavenly peace for a spiritual reboot

Child abuse royal commission: Woman admits having sex with boy, 14, at Satyananda Yoga Ashram

A woman has broken down while admitting to having sex with a 14-year-old boy at a yoga ashram on the NSW central coast.

The woman, now in her mid 50s and known as Shishy, is central to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse hearing into the Satyananda Yoga Ashram during the 1970s and 1980s.

Shishy was second in charge at the commune at Mangrove Mountain. She was also accused of physically assaulting child residents.

On Friday she apologised for failing to protect the children and betraying them by summoning them for sex with her partner, the Indian director of the Ashram, Swami Akhandananda.

Shishy said she started a sexual relationship with the 14-year-old boy, known as APQ, when she was 24 and said Akhandananda made her do it.

"He told me that I should start initiating him in the same way he did the girls. He became extremely violent toward me when I refused," she said.

Shishy later left the ashram, fell in love with APQ and they have a daughter.

Shishy met Akhandananda when she was about 16 and soon began a sexual relationship with him.

The Satyananda movement preached celibacy and chastity and Shishy said Akhandananda told her to keep it a secret.

"It was always, you [are] a very advanced being, you are a chosen one and this has to be between us," she said.

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Child abuse royal commission: Woman admits having sex with boy, 14, at Satyananda Yoga Ashram

Child abuse royal commission: woman admits having sex with a 14-year-old boy at Satyananda Yoga Ashram

A woman has broken down while admitting to having sex with a 14-year-old boy at a yoga ashram on the NSW central coast.

The woman, now in her mid 50s and known as Shishy, is central to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse hearing into the Satyananda Yoga Ashram during the 1970s and 1980s.

Shishy was second in charge at the commune at Mangrove Mountain. She was also accused of physically assaulting child residents.

Today she apologised for failing to protect the children and betraying them by summoning them for sex with her partner, the Indian director of the Ashram, Swami Akhandananda.

Shishy said she started a sexual relationship with the 14-year-old boy, known as APQ, when she was 24 and said Akhandananda made her do it.

"He told me that I should start initiating him in the same way he did the girls. He became extremely violent toward me when I refused," she said.

Shishy later left the ashram, fell in love with APQ and they have a daughter.

Shishy met Akhandananda when she was about 16 and soon began a sexual relationship with him.

The Satyananda movement preached celibacy and chastity and Shishy said Akhandananda told her to keep it a secret.

"It was always, you [are] a very advanced being, you are a chosen one and this has to be between us," she said.

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Child abuse royal commission: woman admits having sex with a 14-year-old boy at Satyananda Yoga Ashram

Merit and spiritual growth

The performance of deeds of merit forms one of the most essential elements of Buddhist practice. Its various modes provide in their totality a compendium of applied Buddhism, showing Buddhism not as a system of ideas but as a complete way of life. Buddhist popular belief has often emphasized merit as a productive source of worldly blessings - of health, wealth, long life, beauty and friends. As a result of this emphasis, meritorious activity has come to be conceived rather in terms of a financial investment, as a religious business venture yielding returns to the satisfaction of the agent's mundane desires.

While such a conception no doubt contains an element of truth, its popularization has tended to eclipse the more important function merit plays in the context of Buddhist practice. Seen in correct perspective, merit is an essential ingredient in the harmony and completeness of the spiritual life, a means of self-cultivation, and an indispensable stepping-stone to spiritual progress.

The accumulation of a "stock of merit" is a primary requisite for acquiring all the fruits of the Buddhist religious life, from a pleasant abiding here and now to a favorable rebirth in the life to come, from the initial stages of meditative progress to the realization of the states of sanctity that come as the fruits of entering upon the noble path. The highest fruition of merit is identical with the culmination of the Buddhist holy life itself - that is, emancipation from the shackles of samsaric existence and the realization of Nibbana, the unconditioned state beyond the insubstantial phenomena of the world. The mere piling up of merit, to be sure, is not in itself sufficient to guarantee the attainment of this goal. Merit is only one requisite, and it must be balanced by its counterpart to secure the breakthrough from bondage to final freedom. The counterpart of merit is knowledge (ana), the direct confrontation with the basic truths of existence through the eye of intuitive wisdom.

Quest for deliverance

Merit and knowledge together constitute the two sets of equipment the spiritual aspirant requires in the quest for deliverance, the equipment of merit (puasambhara) and the equipment of knowledge (anasambhara), respectively. Each set of equipment has its own contribution to make to the fulfillment of the spiritual life.

The equipment of merit facilitates progress in the course of samsaric wandering: it brings a favorable rebirth, the encounter with good friends to guide one's footsteps along the path, the meeting with opportunities for spiritual growth, the flowering of the lofty qualities of character, and the maturation of the spiritual faculties required for the higher attainments.

The equipment of knowledge brings the factor directly necessary for cutting the bonds of samsaric existence: the penetration of truth, enlightenment, the undistorted comprehension of the nature of actuality.

Either set of equipment, functioning in isolation, is insufficient to the attainment of the goal; either pursued alone leads to a deviant, one-sided development that departs from the straight path to deliverance taught by the Buddha. Merit without knowledge produces pleasant fruit and a blissful rebirth, but cannot issue in the transcendence of the mundane order and entrance upon the supramundane path. And knowledge without the factors of merit deteriorates into dry intellectualism, mere erudition or scholasticism, impotent when confronted with the task of grasping a truth outside the pale of intellection. But when they function together in unison in the life of the aspirant, the two sets of equipment acquire a potency capable of propelling him to the heights of realization. When each set of equipment complements the other, polishes the other, and perfects the other, then they undergo a graduated course of mutual purification culminating at the crest in the twin endowments of the Emancipated One - in that clear knowledge (vijja) and flawless conduct (carana) which make him, in the words of the Buddha, "supreme among gods and humans."

Spiritual dynamics

But while merit and knowledge thus occupy coordinate positions, it is merit that claims priority from the standpoint of spiritual dynamics. The reason is that works of merit come first in the process of inner growth. If knowledge be the flower that gives birth to the fruit of liberation, and faith (saddha) the seed out of which the flower unfolds, then merit is the soil, water and fertilizer all in one - the indispensable nutriment for every stage of growth. Merit paves the way for knowledge, and finds in knowledge the sanction for its own claim to a place in the system of Buddhist training.

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Merit and spiritual growth

Carlos Santanas memoirs celebrate music as spiritual quest

There once was a note, pure and easy/Playing so free, like a breath rippling by.

Pete Townshend of the Who did not have Carlos Santana in mind when he wrote those lyrics in the early 70s. But he might as well have.

Since emerging from the San Francisco musical melting pot of the late 60s with a fiery blend of Latin music, blues, jazz and psychedelia, Santana has been on a singular quest to find the purity of tone that marks his conception of the eternal, transcendent note.

More often than not, hes succeeded in that quest. Its not surprising, then, that when it came time to write his memoirs, Santana would write with the same searing intensity and blatant honesty displayed throughout his 45-year career in music.

You will get a bit of the usual rock star memoir stuff here frank discussions of drug use, though Santana was never much of a druggie, really; recollections of playing Woodstock when he was barely past his teens; and reminiscences of just what it was like to be at the cultural epicenter that was San Francisco at the end of the 60s.

But Santana is a different breed of man than most rock musicians, so those common autobiographical tropes do not form the core of the book. What we are treated to instead is the anatomy of a life lived in music, one steeped in the belief that playing music is a noble calling and that the role of the musician is to seek enlightenment, so that enlightenment might be shared with the listener.

This will be rough going for hippie-haters, for Santana is clearly a card-carrying hippie. Yet his take on values we might, sadly, write off as hippie tenets the concept that all men and women are brothers and sisters, that music might awaken us to our true purpose in life, that borders and nationalities and even the idea of race are merely constructs crafted by the hands of unenlightened men and women are run through the authors long-held Eastern-tinged spiritual beliefs.

Those beliefs are of the wholly selective variety; Santana is a devout reader of texts on the religious impulse, and he spent a decade as a disciple of the Indian spiritual pedagogue Sri Chimnoy, leaving only when he felt that his discipleship had served its purpose. Along the way, he constructed a personal spiritual code that suited his own needs, based on what he learned over the decades.

I believe there is a supreme being, a supreme creator, and whether its Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, or Allah, its as John Coltrane said: All paths lead to God, he writes. Divinity has many names but only one destination. God is all harmony not just one chord or one note. To say that one of them is the only one, and that everyone who worships another is wrong and going to hell, is mummified and petrified thinking.

Referring to John Coltrane is something Santana does often throughout the book, for the late spiritual seeker and jazz giant is clearly a role model for Santana. Similarly, Miles Davis, a longtime friend dubbed by Santana a divine rascal, is another source of continuing inspiration. The book details the friendship nurtured by the two musicians, and also delves into the relationships between Santana and jazz icons Wayne Shorter, John McLaughlin and Herbie Hancock, all of whom grew to respect Santana over the years, getting past the perceived barriers between jazz and rock musicians in order to find a common ground where some truly transcendent music was created.

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Carlos Santanas memoirs celebrate music as spiritual quest

36 Steps to Enlightenment: Dr. Pillai Reveals The Path of Enlightened Masters, Part 4 – Video


36 Steps to Enlightenment: Dr. Pillai Reveals The Path of Enlightened Masters, Part 4
Enlightenment Series http://www.pillaicenter.com/Birthday-trip-2015.aspx Pillai Center: http://www.PillaiCenter.com Free Meditation Kit: http://www.Millionai...

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36 Steps to Enlightenment: Dr. Pillai Reveals The Path of Enlightened Masters, Part 4 - Video