Explore every episode of the podcast Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda

Dear Choose Happy Community,

It can take practice to recognize the patterns that keep us disconnected from our deeper truth. This teaching reminds us that beneath fear, limitation, and human pain, there is a capacity for unconditional love, compassion, creativity, and wholeness. We don’t have to pretend difficult emotions aren’t there. Instead, we can meet them with honesty and ask the source of unconditional love to guide us toward a different choice.

Choosing truth and love is a practice we return to again and again. And each time we choose it, we create more space for healing, connection, and wellbeing to move through us.

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the video:

 “If I’m in contact with the pure love of my being, which is unconditional, it’s universal goodwill, it’s compassion, it’s generosity, it’s creativity, it’s the energy of wholeness and healing, it sees the human pain that humans experience, and it also sees deeper than that to their potential to come into contact with self-remembrance, with wholeness, which is present with and within them always.

“It sees the ability of everyone to wake up from delusion and to remember that’s not the truth of my being. Truth is the truth of my being. And it’s actually so much more fun not to build a relationship by saying lie to me. It’s so much more fun by building a relationship in truth and in love and in honesty and in compassion and generosity and forgiveness and creativity and wellbeing.

“And, you know, also I will acknowledge, I hear from a lot of people, and it takes practice. It takes willingness day after day to say, ‘I’m here. I’m here for this. I’m here to keep choosing unconditional love in the times when that’s easy and in the time when that’s really challenging, and I’ll just keep.’

“If I’m having a hard time choosing unconditional love, I’ll ask the Source of unconditional love to choose through me, and that will happen. That melts away any human patterns of thought or feeling or thinking or behavior that are limiting my ability to allow the Source of unconditional love to share unconditional love through me.”

We also shared this video on YouTube, but wanted you to be able to have it on your Substack video player as well, in case you prefer that.

Having it on Substack makes it easy for you to see any other podcasts, videos, articles, or full meditation services that might be available in the Healing Consciousness by clicking here.

If you have heard this teaching before, we invite you — as Swami so often invites us — to hear it as if you are hearing it for the first time. Often we receive these teachings right when we need them.

In loving service,Awake Yoga Meditation

Everything available to a paid subscriber. Are you one yet?

This is a free post made available to everyone. If you are not yet a paid subscriber to Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda, consider becoming one today to receive exclusive audio talks, articles, meditation service replays, access to the archives, and so much more.

Podcast Episodes*: All Episodes

Darshan Articles*: All Articles

From the Founder Series: All Series • Mantra Series • St. Francis Prayer Series

Live Meditation Replays: All Services • Index of All Services by Series • Sunday Meditation Services • Tuesday Darshan Meditation Services • Friday Night Healing Meditation Services • Satsangs

Book Excerpts**: All Excerpts • Satsang with Swami Shankarananda

Workshops (formerly eCourses): All Workshops • The Spiritual Art of Intentions: Creating a Life You Love • Pillars of Self-Realization: 50 Days with Swami Shankarananda • Love: The Eternal Flame of Life Within You • Wisdom: Discovering the Peace in Our True Nature

*Also available to Free Subscribers**Select posts also available to Free Subscribers

Consider making a financial contribution to Awake Yoga Meditation

Your generosity makes it possible for AYM to share Kriya Yoga, meditations, and teachings of truth with people around the world. It also allows the community to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). The presiding teacher for Awake Yoga Meditation is Swami Nityananda.

Consider making a financial contribution to Swami’s Bowl

As the presiding teacher, Swami Nityananda selflessly offers her wisdom without taking a salary from Awake Yoga Meditation. Your gift honors her giving and ensures she can continue to share her invaluable teachings. The tradition of meditation communities like Awake Yoga Meditation is to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). All of the other myriad expenses of life are offered from student to teacher through Swami’s Bowl.

Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dear Choose Happy Community,

It’s easy to wonder if the small things we do really make a difference. A kind word, a moment of support, or simply showing up for someone can feel insignificant when the world’s problems seem so much bigger. But this teaching reminds us that we rarely see the full impact of what we share.

When we choose kindness and service, the effect can travel far beyond the moment we’re in. We may never know whose life was touched by something we did, but that doesn’t make the ripple any less real. Sometimes, making a difference begins with simply choosing to be of service right where you are.

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the video:

 “There is always positive ripple effects created by the kindness that we choose, by the support that we share. And that’s what Swami Shankarananda is talking about as well.

“He’s saying when you share support, when you are of service, it goes out. And it doesn’t just stay in your immediate neighborhood or your immediate environment, and you have no idea how many people it touches and the lives that it moves and transforms.”

We also shared this video on YouTube, but wanted you to be able to have it on your Substack video player as well, in case you prefer that.

Having it on Substack makes it easy for you to see any other podcasts, videos, articles, or full meditation services that might be available in the Healing Consciousness by clicking here.

If you have heard this teaching before, we invite you — as Swami so often invites us — to hear it as if you are hearing it for the first time. Often we receive these teachings right when we need them.

In loving service,Awake Yoga Meditation

Everything available to a paid subscriber. Are you one yet?

This is a free post made available to everyone. If you are not yet a paid subscriber to Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda, consider becoming one today to receive exclusive audio talks, articles, meditation service replays, access to the archives, and so much more.

Podcast Episodes*: All Episodes

Darshan Articles*: All Articles

From the Founder Series: All Series • Mantra Series • St. Francis Prayer Series

Live Meditation Replays: All Services • Index of All Services by Series • Sunday Meditation Services • Tuesday Darshan Meditation Services • Friday Night Healing Meditation Services • Satsangs

Book Excerpts**: All Excerpts • Satsang with Swami Shankarananda

Workshops (formerly eCourses): All Workshops • The Spiritual Art of Intentions: Creating a Life You Love • Pillars of Self-Realization: 50 Days with Swami Shankarananda • Love: The Eternal Flame of Life Within You • Wisdom: Discovering the Peace in Our True Nature

*Also available to Free Subscribers**Select posts also available to Free Subscribers

Consider making a financial contribution to Awake Yoga Meditation

Your generosity makes it possible for AYM to share Kriya Yoga, meditations, and teachings of truth with people around the world. It also allows the community to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). The presiding teacher for Awake Yoga Meditation is Swami Nityananda.

Consider making a financial contribution to Swami’s Bowl

As the presiding teacher, Swami Nityananda selflessly offers her wisdom without taking a salary from Awake Yoga Meditation. Your gift honors her giving and ensures she can continue to share her invaluable teachings. The tradition of meditation communities like Awake Yoga Meditation is to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). All of the other myriad expenses of life are offered from student to teacher through Swami’s Bowl.

Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dear Choose Happy Community,

Some pain stays with us long after the person or situation is gone. This teaching offers a powerful shift: healing may begin by forgiving ourselves for carrying the impact of what happened and giving ourselves the love and understanding we need.

It doesn’t mean denying what hurt you or pretending it didn’t matter. It means turning toward the part of yourself that still needs care. As we meet ourselves with compassion, we can begin to release the pain and navigate our relationships with greater wisdom, strength, and love.

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the video:

“ If you have any pain in relation to any humans from the past in your life, does that sound familiar to anyone? He’s saying you’re forgiving yourself, for allowing yourself to have been affected by them adversely. I know it’s a really interesting formulation, but it’s reminding each of us, ‘I have the freedom to heal myself the moment I decide to forgive myself for having been affected by anyone else adversely. I have the freedom to fill my heart with such love that then there is just a natural arising of forgiveness.’

“There is a natural letting go of pain in relation to, it seems to have been that the pain was connected to another person, and what he’s really saying here, it’s not actually ever about the other person.

“There’s always some aspect of yourself that you’re being invited to give understanding to, give connection to, give caring to. And then the situation, if it does involve another person, will resolve itself, as you’re coming from caring, you’re coming from connection from within yourself. And then you’re free to navigate with love, with wisdom, with affection, with good humor, compassion, courage, strength in relation to yourself, and then also in relation to others.”

We also shared this video on YouTube, but wanted you to be able to have it on your Substack video player as well, in case you prefer that.

Having it on Substack makes it easy for you to see any other podcasts, videos, articles, or full meditation services that might be available in the Healing Consciousness by clicking here.

If you have heard this teaching before, we invite you — as Swami so often invites us — to hear it as if you are hearing it for the first time. Often we receive these teachings right when we need them.

In loving service,Awake Yoga Meditation

Everything available to a paid subscriber. Are you one yet?

This is a free post made available to everyone. If you are not yet a paid subscriber to Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda, consider becoming one today to receive exclusive audio talks, articles, meditation service replays, access to the archives, and so much more.

Podcast Episodes*: All Episodes

Darshan Articles*: All Articles

From the Founder Series: All Series • Mantra Series • St. Francis Prayer Series

Live Meditation Replays: All Services • Index of All Services by Series • Sunday Meditation Services • Tuesday Darshan Meditation Services • Friday Night Healing Meditation Services • Satsangs

Book Excerpts**: All Excerpts • Satsang with Swami Shankarananda

Workshops (formerly eCourses): All Workshops • The Spiritual Art of Intentions: Creating a Life You Love • Pillars of Self-Realization: 50 Days with Swami Shankarananda • Love: The Eternal Flame of Life Within You • Wisdom: Discovering the Peace in Our True Nature

*Also available to Free Subscribers**Select posts also available to Free Subscribers

Consider making a financial contribution to Awake Yoga Meditation

Your generosity makes it possible for AYM to share Kriya Yoga, meditations, and teachings of truth with people around the world. It also allows the community to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). The presiding teacher for Awake Yoga Meditation is Swami Nityananda.

Consider making a financial contribution to Swami’s Bowl

As the presiding teacher, Swami Nityananda selflessly offers her wisdom without taking a salary from Awake Yoga Meditation. Your gift honors her giving and ensures she can continue to share her invaluable teachings. The tradition of meditation communities like Awake Yoga Meditation is to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). All of the other myriad expenses of life are offered from student to teacher through Swami’s Bowl.

Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dear Choose Happy Community,

How often do we put ourselves last in order to make everyone else happy? People pleasing can lead us to ignore our own needs, sacrifice our rest, and even mistreat ourselves in the process. Sometimes, the pressure isn’t even coming from others. It can come from our own fear of disappointing them.

This teaching invites us to pause and ask: Who am I trying to please? When we practice honest self-awareness, we can begin choosing kindness toward ourselves without believing we have to earn love or approval from everyone around us.

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the video:

“ Who am I seeking to please? Who am I seeking to please? That which is internal or that which is external? And again, going back to that source of people pleasing, man, we can contort ourselves, mistreat ourselves, be unkind to ourselves in order to please other people. ”How many of us are the person or know a person who will put themselves on the back burner? Health is unwell, not getting rest, totally stressed out in order to please other people who may or may not be making those demands. Who may or may not be making those demands. So it’s just something for us to self-reflect on.”

We also shared this video on YouTube, but wanted you to be able to have it on your Substack video player as well, in case you prefer that.

Having it on Substack makes it easy for you to see any other podcasts, videos, articles, or full meditation services that might be available in the Truth, Love and Justice by clicking here.

If you have heard this teaching before, we invite you — as Swami so often invites us — to hear it as if you are hearing it for the first time. Often we receive these teachings right when we need them.

In loving service,Awake Yoga Meditation

Everything available to a paid subscriber. Are you one yet?

This is a free post made available to everyone. If you are not yet a paid subscriber to Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda, consider becoming one today to receive exclusive audio talks, articles, meditation service replays, access to the archives, and so much more.

Podcast Episodes*: All Episodes

Darshan Articles*: All Articles

From the Founder Series: All Series • Mantra Series • St. Francis Prayer Series

Live Meditation Replays: All Services • Index of All Services by Series • Sunday Meditation Services • Tuesday Darshan Meditation Services • Friday Night Healing Meditation Services • Satsangs

Book Excerpts**: All Excerpts • Satsang with Swami Shankarananda

Workshops (formerly eCourses): All Workshops • The Spiritual Art of Intentions: Creating a Life You Love • Pillars of Self-Realization: 50 Days with Swami Shankarananda • Love: The Eternal Flame of Life Within You • Wisdom: Discovering the Peace in Our True Nature

*Also available to Free Subscribers**Select posts also available to Free Subscribers

Consider making a financial contribution to Awake Yoga Meditation

Your generosity makes it possible for AYM to share Kriya Yoga, meditations, and teachings of truth with people around the world. It also allows the community to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). The presiding teacher for Awake Yoga Meditation is Swami Nityananda.

Consider making a financial contribution to Swami’s Bowl

As the presiding teacher, Swami Nityananda selflessly offers her wisdom without taking a salary from Awake Yoga Meditation. Your gift honors her giving and ensures she can continue to share her invaluable teachings. The tradition of meditation communities like Awake Yoga Meditation is to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). All of the other myriad expenses of life are offered from student to teacher through Swami’s Bowl.

Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dear Choose Happy Community,

Anger can rise quickly and make us feel completely caught up in the moment. This teaching invites us to see anger as a wave that arises within us, rather than something we have to become. Through self-awareness, we can pause, observe what is happening, and remember that we have a choice in how we respond. When we stop identifying with the wave, we create space for anger to settle and for peace to return.

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the video:

“Anger is a wave that rises in the ocean of us, if we take these teachings seriously. Anger is a wave that arises in us if we’re allowing ourselves to be in the bucket of discontent. And by the bucket of discontent, Swami Shankarananda doesn’t say this, but this is my understanding, it’s identifying with feeling separate, right?

“I can only be angry if I’m identifying with feeling separate. If I’m remembering that all of this is the Tao, as all of this. All of this is pure consciousness, all of this is perfect love, as all of this non-contentiousness naturally establishes itself and anger melts away.

“So with self-awareness, if a wave of anger does arise in our consciousness, we gain the ability to choose. ‘There’s this wave that has arisen, and I can watch it, and I can allow it to dissipate.’”

We also shared this video on YouTube, but wanted you to be able to have it on your Substack video player as well, in case you prefer that.

Having it on Substack makes it easy for you to see any other podcasts, videos, articles, or full meditation services that might be available in the Healing Consciousness by clicking here.

If you have heard this teaching before, we invite you — as Swami so often invites us — to hear it as if you are hearing it for the first time. Often we receive these teachings right when we need them.

In loving service,Awake Yoga Meditation

Everything available to a paid subscriber. Are you one yet?

This is a free post made available to everyone. If you are not yet a paid subscriber to Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda, consider becoming one today to receive exclusive audio talks, articles, meditation service replays, access to the archives, and so much more.

Podcast Episodes*: All Episodes

Darshan Articles*: All Articles

From the Founder Series: All Series • Mantra Series • St. Francis Prayer Series

Live Meditation Replays: All Services • Index of All Services by Series • Sunday Meditation Services • Tuesday Darshan Meditation Services • Friday Night Healing Meditation Services • Satsangs

Book Excerpts**: All Excerpts • Satsang with Swami Shankarananda

Workshops (formerly eCourses): All Workshops • The Spiritual Art of Intentions: Creating a Life You Love • Pillars of Self-Realization: 50 Days with Swami Shankarananda • Love: The Eternal Flame of Life Within You • Wisdom: Discovering the Peace in Our True Nature

*Also available to Free Subscribers**Select posts also available to Free Subscribers

Consider making a financial contribution to Awake Yoga Meditation

Your generosity makes it possible for AYM to share Kriya Yoga, meditations, and teachings of truth with people around the world. It also allows the community to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). The presiding teacher for Awake Yoga Meditation is Swami Nityananda.

Consider making a financial contribution to Swami’s Bowl

As the presiding teacher, Swami Nityananda selflessly offers her wisdom without taking a salary from Awake Yoga Meditation. Your gift honors her giving and ensures she can continue to share her invaluable teachings. The tradition of meditation communities like Awake Yoga Meditation is to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). All of the other myriad expenses of life are offered from student to teacher through Swami’s Bowl.

Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dear Choose Happy Community,

Fear often grows when we become attached to an outcome we cannot control. This teaching reminds us that we can still act with love and give our best without carrying the weight of knowing exactly how things will turn out. When we dedicate our actions to serving the highest good, we create space for greater freedom, joy, and peace. The outcome may not always be in our hands, but how we show up can be.

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the video:

“‘There’s always the fear of loss. You know that. We’ve all been there. Fear of loss of job, position, honor, health, fear of losing a loved one.’ He [Swami Shankarananda] says, ‘You don’t fear losing an enemy. Performing everything as an act of worship’, or if you don’t like that phrasing, performing everything as an act of being of service to highest good. He says that frees you from attachment to outcome. That frees you from worrying. That frees you to do everything with love.

“And when you’re back in that energy of: I’m here just to be of service to highest good, to do everything with love. And the outcome is not always in my hands, but I can still be in this energy of fullness; I can still be in this energy of joy; I can still be in this energy of light, no matter what the outcome is, and that’s melting away fear as well”

We also shared this video on YouTube, but wanted you to be able to have it on your Substack video player as well, in case you prefer that.

Having it on Substack makes it easy for you to see any other podcasts, videos, articles, or full meditation services that might be available in the Healing Consciousness by clicking here.

If you have heard this teaching before, we invite you — as Swami so often invites us — to hear it as if you are hearing it for the first time. Often we receive these teachings right when we need them.

In loving service,Awake Yoga Meditation

Everything available to a paid subscriber. Are you one yet?

This is a free post made available to everyone. If you are not yet a paid subscriber to Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda, consider becoming one today to receive exclusive audio talks, articles, meditation service replays, access to the archives, and so much more.

Podcast Episodes*: All Episodes

Darshan Articles*: All Articles

From the Founder Series: All Series • Mantra Series • St. Francis Prayer Series

Live Meditation Replays: All Services • Index of All Services by Series • Sunday Meditation Services • Tuesday Darshan Meditation Services • Friday Night Healing Meditation Services • Satsangs

Book Excerpts**: All Excerpts • Satsang with Swami Shankarananda

Workshops (formerly eCourses): All Workshops • The Spiritual Art of Intentions: Creating a Life You Love • Pillars of Self-Realization: 50 Days with Swami Shankarananda • Love: The Eternal Flame of Life Within You • Wisdom: Discovering the Peace in Our True Nature

*Also available to Free Subscribers**Select posts also available to Free Subscribers

Consider making a financial contribution to Awake Yoga Meditation

Your generosity makes it possible for AYM to share Kriya Yoga, meditations, and teachings of truth with people around the world. It also allows the community to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). The presiding teacher for Awake Yoga Meditation is Swami Nityananda.

Consider making a financial contribution to Swami’s Bowl

As the presiding teacher, Swami Nityananda selflessly offers her wisdom without taking a salary from Awake Yoga Meditation. Your gift honors her giving and ensures she can continue to share her invaluable teachings. The tradition of meditation communities like Awake Yoga Meditation is to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). All of the other myriad expenses of life are offered from student to teacher through Swami’s Bowl.

Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dear Choose Happy Community,

It’s easy to believe we’ll finally feel peaceful once someone else changes what they’re saying or doing. But this teaching reminds us that happiness and harmony don’t have to depend on what is happening around us. When we turn within and choose the energy of wellbeing, we can meet difficult conversations, relationships, and everyday situations from a place of greater clarity. The shift begins when we stop waiting for life to change and start cultivating the harmony we want to live from.

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the video:

“I know that from a human perspective, we think, ‘Oh, if this person would only do what I want them to do, or say what I want them to say, or stop doing what I want them to stop doing, then I would feel happy. Then I would feel harmony.’”But instead, what the yogis say is happiness comes from within, harmony comes from within, and then I’m happy independently of whatever the person is saying or not saying or doing or not doing, and I’m not waiting for anything outside to change.

“And then I’m living fully in the consciousness of harmony. I’m living fully in the consciousness of wellbeing. I’m living fully in the consciousness of highest good from moment to moment. And then that’s able to share through me very practically, like in my kitchen when whoever is talking, is deciding who’s going to do what chore when everybody’s tired.

“Very practically in a workplace when you’re sort of making big decisions, you’re just opening and you’re aligning that highest good to keep unfolding.”

We also shared this video on YouTube, but wanted you to be able to have it on your Substack video player as well, in case you prefer that.

Having it on Substack makes it easy for you to see any other podcasts, videos, articles, or full meditation services that might be available in the Expansion Within Expansion by clicking here.

If you have heard this teaching before, we invite you — as Swami so often invites us — to hear it as if you are hearing it for the first time. Often we receive these teachings right when we need them.

In loving service,Awake Yoga Meditation

Everything available to a paid subscriber. Are you one yet?

This is a free post made available to everyone. If you are not yet a paid subscriber to Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda, consider becoming one today to receive exclusive audio talks, articles, meditation service replays, access to the archives, and so much more.

Podcast Episodes*: All Episodes

Darshan Articles*: All Articles

From the Founder Series: All Series • Mantra Series • St. Francis Prayer Series

Live Meditation Replays: All Services • Index of All Services by Series • Sunday Meditation Services • Tuesday Darshan Meditation Services • Friday Night Healing Meditation Services • Satsangs

Book Excerpts**: All Excerpts • Satsang with Swami Shankarananda

Workshops (formerly eCourses): All Workshops • The Spiritual Art of Intentions: Creating a Life You Love • Pillars of Self-Realization: 50 Days with Swami Shankarananda • Love: The Eternal Flame of Life Within You • Wisdom: Discovering the Peace in Our True Nature

*Also available to Free Subscribers**Select posts also available to Free Subscribers

Consider making a financial contribution to Awake Yoga Meditation

Your generosity makes it possible for AYM to share Kriya Yoga, meditations, and teachings of truth with people around the world. It also allows the community to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). The presiding teacher for Awake Yoga Meditation is Swami Nityananda.

Consider making a financial contribution to Swami’s Bowl

As the presiding teacher, Swami Nityananda selflessly offers her wisdom without taking a salary from Awake Yoga Meditation. Your gift honors her giving and ensures she can continue to share her invaluable teachings. The tradition of meditation communities like Awake Yoga Meditation is to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). All of the other myriad expenses of life are offered from student to teacher through Swami’s Bowl.

Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dear Choose Happy Community,

Pain and discomfort are part of being human, but sometimes our minds add another layer of suffering. One difficult experience can become a spiral of mental anguish when we keep identifying with the thoughts and stories around it.

This teaching invites us to notice when the mind is piling more suffering onto what is already difficult. With awareness, we can create space between the experience itself and the additional suffering our minds may create.

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the video:

“There is suffering in the world because the mind creates suffering. That’s what the mind does. And as long as we are identified or attached with maya, with the mind, then we can also create suffering, and also experience suffering deeply, emotionally.

“And so it’s not that in the realm of time and space we won’t know pain or discomfort. That is a part of being human. But if we are identified to that which changes, it becomes a keen emotional pain, a keen mental anguish, that we do not need to experience. We don’t have to add to what is already human experience of which we will experience discomfort. But sometimes by our choices, we pile it on.

“It’s like something shows up and I’m uncomfortable, and then the mental anguish begins, and then that mental anguish can spiral, and then we can be mentally anguished for years.”

We also shared this video on YouTube, but wanted you to be able to have it on your Substack video player as well, in case you prefer that.

Having it on Substack makes it easy for you to see any other podcasts, videos, articles, or full meditation services that might be available in the Truth, Love and Justice by clicking here.

If you have heard this teaching before, we invite you — as Swami so often invites us — to hear it as if you are hearing it for the first time. Often we receive these teachings right when we need them.

In loving service,Awake Yoga Meditation

Everything available to a paid subscriber. Are you one yet?

This is a free post made available to everyone. If you are not yet a paid subscriber to Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda, consider becoming one today to receive exclusive audio talks, articles, meditation service replays, access to the archives, and so much more.

Podcast Episodes*: All Episodes

Darshan Articles*: All Articles

From the Founder Series: All Series • Mantra Series • St. Francis Prayer Series

Live Meditation Replays: All Services • Index of All Services by Series • Sunday Meditation Services • Tuesday Darshan Meditation Services • Friday Night Healing Meditation Services • Satsangs

Book Excerpts**: All Excerpts • Satsang with Swami Shankarananda

Workshops (formerly eCourses): All Workshops • The Spiritual Art of Intentions: Creating a Life You Love • Pillars of Self-Realization: 50 Days with Swami Shankarananda • Love: The Eternal Flame of Life Within You • Wisdom: Discovering the Peace in Our True Nature

*Also available to Free Subscribers**Select posts also available to Free Subscribers

Consider making a financial contribution to Awake Yoga Meditation

Your generosity makes it possible for AYM to share Kriya Yoga, meditations, and teachings of truth with people around the world. It also allows the community to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). The presiding teacher for Awake Yoga Meditation is Swami Nityananda.

Consider making a financial contribution to Swami’s Bowl

As the presiding teacher, Swami Nityananda selflessly offers her wisdom without taking a salary from Awake Yoga Meditation. Your gift honors her giving and ensures she can continue to share her invaluable teachings. The tradition of meditation communities like Awake Yoga Meditation is to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). All of the other myriad expenses of life are offered from student to teacher through Swami’s Bowl.

Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dear Choose Happy Community,

We all have moments when fear, anger, or old habits seem to take over. But this teaching reminds us that these moments are not who we truly are. They simply invite us to remember the light that has always been present within us.

Meditation and karma yoga help us return to that deeper truth. The more we practice remembering our divine nature, the less power old patterns have over us. You are not here to fight the darkness. You are here to remember the light that has never left you.

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the video:

“Darkness can only be present in us if we’re forgetting our divine nature, which is such a healing teaching. So any darkness that we’re aware of in ourselves, and so it might just be like, ‘I have a bad temper, and I sometimes can’t control it’. I’m not speaking autobiographically , but whatever it is, like, you know your patterns.

“Whatever that is, that’s only possible to be activated if we’re forgetting the Divine within us. And Lahiri says when we meditate, when we practice karma yoga, that helps us to live continually connected in self-remembrance, remembering the Divine within us.”

We also shared this video on YouTube, but wanted you to be able to have it on your Substack video player as well, in case you prefer that.

Having it on Substack makes it easy for you to see any other podcasts, videos, articles, or full meditation services that might be available in the Expansion Within Expansion by clicking here.

If you have heard this teaching before, we invite you — as Swami so often invites us — to hear it as if you are hearing it for the first time. Often we receive these teachings right when we need them.

In loving service,Awake Yoga Meditation

Everything available to a paid subscriber. Are you one yet?

This is a free post made available to everyone. If you are not yet a paid subscriber to Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda, consider becoming one today to receive exclusive audio talks, articles, meditation service replays, access to the archives, and so much more.

Podcast Episodes*: All Episodes

Darshan Articles*: All Articles

From the Founder Series: All Series • Mantra Series • St. Francis Prayer Series

Live Meditation Replays: All Services • Index of All Services by Series • Sunday Meditation Services • Tuesday Darshan Meditation Services • Friday Night Healing Meditation Services • Satsangs

Book Excerpts**: All Excerpts • Satsang with Swami Shankarananda

Workshops (formerly eCourses): All Workshops • The Spiritual Art of Intentions: Creating a Life You Love • Pillars of Self-Realization: 50 Days with Swami Shankarananda • Love: The Eternal Flame of Life Within You • Wisdom: Discovering the Peace in Our True Nature

*Also available to Free Subscribers**Select posts also available to Free Subscribers

Consider making a financial contribution to Awake Yoga Meditation

Your generosity makes it possible for AYM to share Kriya Yoga, meditations, and teachings of truth with people around the world. It also allows the community to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). The presiding teacher for Awake Yoga Meditation is Swami Nityananda.

Consider making a financial contribution to Swami’s Bowl

As the presiding teacher, Swami Nityananda selflessly offers her wisdom without taking a salary from Awake Yoga Meditation. Your gift honors her giving and ensures she can continue to share her invaluable teachings. The tradition of meditation communities like Awake Yoga Meditation is to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). All of the other myriad expenses of life are offered from student to teacher through Swami’s Bowl.

Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dear Choose Happy Community,

Grief can feel overwhelming. It can make you wonder if you’ll ever feel like yourself again. But what if your tears weren’t a sign that you’re falling apart? What if they’re a reflection of how deeply you’ve loved?

This teaching reminds us that we don’t have to fear grief or rush past it. We can honor the love beneath our sorrow, stay present with ourselves and those we care about, and keep taking the next step. Even in the hardest moments, you can rise, stand firm, and discover a quiet strength that’s been with you all along.

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the video:

“If I’m crying, these are tears of love, and I honor the love. I honor the love of my being, and I honor that I am connected in community to the goodness and the beauty that dwell in all hearts. And when I’m honoring that, that will help me be of service to that. So then I’m not afraid of the sorrow or the pain or the grief or the loss.

“I’m just honoring it, and I’m saying, ‘Yes, that’s true, and I’m moving through it. And I will be with my loved one, whatever it is that they’re moving through’. And then we’re back again into that energy of Psalm 20. We will rise up and stand firm. And so this is something that moment by moment each of us can do.

“I will rise up and stand firm, and it’s always happening in the now.”

We also shared this video on YouTube, but wanted you to be able to have it on your Substack video player as well, in case you prefer that.

Having it on Substack makes it easy for you to see any other podcasts, videos, articles, or full meditation services that might be available in the Expansion Within Expansion by clicking here.

If you have heard this teaching before, we invite you — as Swami so often invites us — to hear it as if you are hearing it for the first time. Often we receive these teachings right when we need them.

In loving service,Awake Yoga Meditation

Everything available to a paid subscriber. Are you one yet?

This is a free post made available to everyone. If you are not yet a paid subscriber to Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda, consider becoming one today to receive exclusive audio talks, articles, meditation service replays, access to the archives, and so much more.

Podcast Episodes*: All Episodes

Darshan Articles*: All Articles

From the Founder Series: All Series • Mantra Series • St. Francis Prayer Series

Live Meditation Replays: All Services • Index of All Services by Series • Sunday Meditation Services • Tuesday Darshan Meditation Services • Friday Night Healing Meditation Services • Satsangs

Book Excerpts**: All Excerpts • Satsang with Swami Shankarananda

Workshops (formerly eCourses): All Workshops • The Spiritual Art of Intentions: Creating a Life You Love • Pillars of Self-Realization: 50 Days with Swami Shankarananda • Love: The Eternal Flame of Life Within You • Wisdom: Discovering the Peace in Our True Nature

*Also available to Free Subscribers**Select posts also available to Free Subscribers

Consider making a financial contribution to Awake Yoga Meditation

Your generosity makes it possible for AYM to share Kriya Yoga, meditations, and teachings of truth with people around the world. It also allows the community to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). The presiding teacher for Awake Yoga Meditation is Swami Nityananda.

Consider making a financial contribution to Swami’s Bowl

As the presiding teacher, Swami Nityananda selflessly offers her wisdom without taking a salary from Awake Yoga Meditation. Your gift honors her giving and ensures she can continue to share her invaluable teachings. The tradition of meditation communities like Awake Yoga Meditation is to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). All of the other myriad expenses of life are offered from student to teacher through Swami’s Bowl.

Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dear Choose Happy Community,

The words you repeat to yourself matter more than you may realize. If your thoughts or your self-talk leave you feeling discouraged, fearful, or small, this teaching offers a simple but powerful practice: notice them with honesty, then choose something that strengthens you instead.

Every thought and every word is an opportunity to reconnect with your inner strength. When you invite wisdom to guide your thinking, your speaking, and your choices, you begin creating a life rooted in clarity instead of fear. Real transformation doesn’t happen all at once. It happens one strengthening thought at a time.

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the video:

“ As Lahiri is saying, be in contact with your inner strength always, and also practice scrupulous self-awareness. Are there any thought patterns that are not helping me be in contact with my inner strength? And if so, then that is my sacred obligation to lay down those thought patterns and to choose thoughts that help me be in contact with my inner strength.

“And so too, with the words that I speak, are there words that I am speaking that are unintentionally not strengthening me and unintentionally not strengthening others? And if so, give yourself the gift of awareness, and then you can lay them down, and you can say, ‘I am going to speak words that strengthen me.’

“And I’m--if I don’t know, I’m going to ask the light within me to think through me what is strengthening; to speak through me what is strengthening; to choose through me what is strengthening. I’m asking the light that my consciousness and my energy are here in service to what is strengthening, and it will be so.

“And so we’re just reminding ourselves each of us can do this from moment to moment right where we are.”

We also shared this video on YouTube, but wanted you to be able to have it on your Substack video player as well, in case you prefer that.

Having it on Substack makes it easy for you to see any other podcasts, videos, articles, or full meditation services that might be available in the Expansion Within Expansion by clicking here.

If you have heard this teaching before, we invite you — as Swami so often invites us — to hear it as if you are hearing it for the first time. Often we receive these teachings right when we need them.

In loving service,Awake Yoga Meditation

Everything available to a paid subscriber. Are you one yet?

This is a free post made available to everyone. If you are not yet a paid subscriber to Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda, consider becoming one today to receive exclusive audio talks, articles, meditation service replays, access to the archives, and so much more.

Podcast Episodes*: All Episodes

Darshan Articles*: All Articles

From the Founder Series: All Series • Mantra Series • St. Francis Prayer Series

Live Meditation Replays: All Services • Index of All Services by Series • Sunday Meditation Services • Tuesday Darshan Meditation Services • Friday Night Healing Meditation Services • Satsangs

Book Excerpts**: All Excerpts • Satsang with Swami Shankarananda

Workshops (formerly eCourses): All Workshops • The Spiritual Art of Intentions: Creating a Life You Love • Pillars of Self-Realization: 50 Days with Swami Shankarananda • Love: The Eternal Flame of Life Within You • Wisdom: Discovering the Peace in Our True Nature

*Also available to Free Subscribers**Select posts also available to Free Subscribers

Consider making a financial contribution to Awake Yoga Meditation

Your generosity makes it possible for AYM to share Kriya Yoga, meditations, and teachings of truth with people around the world. It also allows the community to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). The presiding teacher for Awake Yoga Meditation is Swami Nityananda.

Consider making a financial contribution to Swami’s Bowl

As the presiding teacher, Swami Nityananda selflessly offers her wisdom without taking a salary from Awake Yoga Meditation. Your gift honors her giving and ensures she can continue to share her invaluable teachings. The tradition of meditation communities like Awake Yoga Meditation is to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). All of the other myriad expenses of life are offered from student to teacher through Swami’s Bowl.

Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dear Choose Happy Community,

This teaching reminds us that our brains and nervous systems respond to negativity as a form of stress, but we’re not powerless. Through self-awareness, we can recognize what’s affecting us, gently calm our stress response, and reconnect with the part of ourselves that is creative, peaceful, and clear.

You can’t always control what you’re exposed to, but you can choose how you care for your mind and heart. The more you return to awareness, the more space you create for clarity, healing, and genuine inner peace.

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the video:

“ I looked it up: What neuroscience says is that if we are exposed to negativity, and so this would be sort of like a stream of negative thought or a stream of negative speech, the brain actually registers that as a low-level threat. And so to just kind of have self-awareness, and to practice self-awareness - ‘How does my brain and how does my nervous system respond if I’m exposed to negativity?’

“And so I also respectfully acknowledge that I know there are people who serve as caretakers, for teenagers or for children or for elders. And then sometimes the people that we’re serving as caretakers for, are expressing negativity and they almost can’t help it. But it’s really great for us to have some tools so that we are aware, ‘Okay, this is actually triggering a cortisol response in my brain, and if that gets turned on and I don’t turn it off, that affects cognitive function. It affects the part of my brain that is able to learn and is able to remember. It also can affect my immune system. It can affect my sleep. It can affect my ability to be present and to connect with other humans. It can affect my relationships as well.’

“And so, for so many reasons, there’s an amazing gift that we give ourselves if we just say, ‘I’m giving myself the gift of self-awareness. I’m aware if I’m around a person or if I’m exposed to a stream of information or energy that is focusing consistently on negativity, here’s how my brain reacts. And it’s great that I know that because then I also have available tools so that I can choose to down-regulate that stress response, and I can choose to reconnect with the part of my brain that helps me to learn and remember and sleep and connect with creativity, connect with the ability to learn and to grow and to expand.’”

We also shared this video on YouTube, but wanted you to be able to have it on your Substack video player as well, in case you prefer that.

Having it on Substack makes it easy for you to see any other podcasts, videos, articles, or full meditation services that might be available in the Expansion Within Expansion by clicking here.

If you have heard this teaching before, we invite you — as Swami so often invites us — to hear it as if you are hearing it for the first time. Often we receive these teachings right when we need them.

In loving service,Awake Yoga Meditation

Everything available to a paid subscriber. Are you one yet?

This is a free post made available to everyone. If you are not yet a paid subscriber to Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda, consider becoming one today to receive exclusive audio talks, articles, meditation service replays, access to the archives, and so much more.

Podcast Episodes*: All Episodes

Darshan Articles*: All Articles

From the Founder Series: All Series • Mantra Series • St. Francis Prayer Series

Live Meditation Replays: All Services • Index of All Services by Series • Sunday Meditation Services • Tuesday Darshan Meditation Services • Friday Night Healing Meditation Services • Satsangs

Book Excerpts**: All Excerpts • Satsang with Swami Shankarananda

Workshops (formerly eCourses): All Workshops • The Spiritual Art of Intentions: Creating a Life You Love • Pillars of Self-Realization: 50 Days with Swami Shankarananda • Love: The Eternal Flame of Life Within You • Wisdom: Discovering the Peace in Our True Nature

*Also available to Free Subscribers**Select posts also available to Free Subscribers

Consider making a financial contribution to Awake Yoga Meditation

Your generosity makes it possible for AYM to share Kriya Yoga, meditations, and teachings of truth with people around the world. It also allows the community to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). The presiding teacher for Awake Yoga Meditation is Swami Nityananda.

Consider making a financial contribution to Swami’s Bowl

As the presiding teacher, Swami Nityananda selflessly offers her wisdom without taking a salary from Awake Yoga Meditation. Your gift honors her giving and ensures she can continue to share her invaluable teachings. The tradition of meditation communities like Awake Yoga Meditation is to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). All of the other myriad expenses of life are offered from student to teacher through Swami’s Bowl.

Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dear Choose Happy Community,

Life doesn’t always unfold the way we imagined it would. Change can make the human mind feel threatened, uncertain, or afraid. But this teaching offers a gentle reminder: in this moment, you are safe.

When we return to that truth, something shifts. Instead of reacting from fear, we begin listening more deeply for what is most loving, most helpful, and most aligned in each moment. Even when everything around you changes, there is a grounded and steady presence within you that never leaves.

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the video:

“ We can feel threatened. Our human personality self can feel threatened when change arises. And so just notice, is that part of your response? When change arises, does your human personality self feel threatened? Because if so, what you would do, and there was a very brave retreat participant yesterday who said this, ‘In this moment, I am safe. In this moment, I am safe.’”And that allows you to listen from moment to moment, what is most of service with my thoughts? What is most of service with my words? What is most of service with my actions? And as you keep listening in that way, what happens is that wholeness, which is the truth of your being, it’s always with you and within you, is very steady and present.

“So I’m going to start to use words that we use today. You start to feel very grounded and centered, no matter what is happening outside of you.”

We also shared this video on YouTube, but wanted you to be able to have it on your Substack video player as well, in case you prefer that.

Having it on Substack makes it easy for you to see any other podcasts, videos, articles, or full meditation services that might be available in the Truth, Love and Justice by clicking here.

If you have heard this teaching before, we invite you — as Swami so often invites us — to hear it as if you are hearing it for the first time. Often we receive these teachings right when we need them.

In loving service,Awake Yoga Meditation

Everything available to a paid subscriber. Are you one yet?

This is a free post made available to everyone. If you are not yet a paid subscriber to Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda, consider becoming one today to receive exclusive audio talks, articles, meditation service replays, access to the archives, and so much more.

Podcast Episodes*: All Episodes

Darshan Articles*: All Articles

From the Founder Series: All Series • Mantra Series • St. Francis Prayer Series

Live Meditation Replays: All Services • Index of All Services by Series • Sunday Meditation Services • Tuesday Darshan Meditation Services • Friday Night Healing Meditation Services • Satsangs

Book Excerpts**: All Excerpts • Satsang with Swami Shankarananda

Workshops (formerly eCourses): All Workshops • The Spiritual Art of Intentions: Creating a Life You Love • Pillars of Self-Realization: 50 Days with Swami Shankarananda • Love: The Eternal Flame of Life Within You • Wisdom: Discovering the Peace in Our True Nature

*Also available to Free Subscribers**Select posts also available to Free Subscribers

Consider making a financial contribution to Awake Yoga Meditation

Your generosity makes it possible for AYM to share Kriya Yoga, meditations, and teachings of truth with people around the world. It also allows the community to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). The presiding teacher for Awake Yoga Meditation is Swami Nityananda.

Consider making a financial contribution to Swami’s Bowl

As the presiding teacher, Swami Nityananda selflessly offers her wisdom without taking a salary from Awake Yoga Meditation. Your gift honors her giving and ensures she can continue to share her invaluable teachings. The tradition of meditation communities like Awake Yoga Meditation is to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). All of the other myriad expenses of life are offered from student to teacher through Swami’s Bowl.

Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dear Choose Happy Community,

Sometimes the deepest pain comes from the people closest to us. And when someone continues behaviors that hurt us, it can feel impossible to find peace. This teaching offers a different kind of freedom: the realization that healing does not always depend on the other person changing first.

The moment we choose to stop carrying resentment and reconnect with love, something inside of us begins to soften and open. That doesn’t mean ignoring harmful behavior. It means refusing to let pain define the state of your heart. Liberation begins when you choose peace within yourself, even before external circumstances change.

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the video:

“ Someone said to me, I think this was maybe last summer, ‘I’m ready to liberate myself’ in relation to unresolved pain that they had in relation to a parent. And the parent is still present in their life and engaging in these behaviors that are painful. ”And so this person made a conscious choice. No matter what, unconditionally, to stay in the energy of love, and to stay in the energy of kindness, to stay in the energy of...They didn’t use these words, but it’s, ‘I thank you for the gift of life which I received through you. And I choose to respect you unconditionally for the gift of life which shared through you. I choose to stay in the energy of love and appreciation unconditionally for the gifts which have shared through you.’

“And they are now free. They have freed themselves. They feel only love in relation to their parent’s behavior. So it has transformed their relationship with their parent, even though their parent is still engaged in the painful behaviors. So this person liberated themself even without the other person transforming or changing.”

We also shared this video on YouTube, but wanted you to be able to have it on your Substack video player as well, in case you prefer that.

Having it on Substack makes it easy for you to see any other podcasts, videos, articles, or full meditation services that might be available in the Expansion Within Expansion by clicking here.

If you have heard this teaching before, we invite you — as Swami so often invites us — to hear it as if you are hearing it for the first time. Often we receive these teachings right when we need them.

In loving service,Awake Yoga Meditation

Everything available to a paid subscriber. Are you one yet?

This is a free post made available to everyone. If you are not yet a paid subscriber to Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda, consider becoming one today to receive exclusive audio talks, articles, meditation service replays, access to the archives, and so much more.

Podcast Episodes*: All Episodes

Darshan Articles*: All Articles

From the Founder Series: All Series • Mantra Series • St. Francis Prayer Series

Live Meditation Replays: All Services • Index of All Services by Series • Sunday Meditation Services • Tuesday Darshan Meditation Services • Friday Night Healing Meditation Services • Satsangs

Book Excerpts**: All Excerpts • Satsang with Swami Shankarananda

Workshops (formerly eCourses): All Workshops • The Spiritual Art of Intentions: Creating a Life You Love • Pillars of Self-Realization: 50 Days with Swami Shankarananda • Love: The Eternal Flame of Life Within You • Wisdom: Discovering the Peace in Our True Nature

*Also available to Free Subscribers**Select posts also available to Free Subscribers

Consider making a financial contribution to Awake Yoga Meditation

Your generosity makes it possible for AYM to share Kriya Yoga, meditations, and teachings of truth with people around the world. It also allows the community to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). The presiding teacher for Awake Yoga Meditation is Swami Nityananda.

Consider making a financial contribution to Swami’s Bowl

As the presiding teacher, Swami Nityananda selflessly offers her wisdom without taking a salary from Awake Yoga Meditation. Your gift honors her giving and ensures she can continue to share her invaluable teachings. The tradition of meditation communities like Awake Yoga Meditation is to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). All of the other myriad expenses of life are offered from student to teacher through Swami’s Bowl.

Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dear Choose Happy Community,

Change can feel overwhelming, especially when it affects your relationships, your work, your family, or the world around you.

This teaching reminds us that fear and resistance are not the only ways to meet uncertainty. There is another possibility: remembering that even in the middle of change, you still live in a universe filled with guidance, love, wisdom, and support.

When we stop fighting change and begin opening to it, something softens inside of us. We become more steady, more creative, and more able to meet life with clarity instead of fear.

You don’t have to control everything to feel supported. Sometimes peace begins with remembering what you’re already connected to.

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the video:

“ Just notice, check in with yourself, ‘Have I been resisting change?’ And if so, one of the solutions to that is, ‘I open to realize I live in a universe of infinite genius, abundance, guidance, and love’.

“How much more fun does that feel? And so you’re acknowledging I’m facing this change, or my family is facing this change, or my country or the world is facing this change, you’re acknowledging it, and you’re saying, ‘And, I live in a universe of infinite genius, abundance, guidance, and love.’

“What is going to help you meet change more gracefully? Being in the energy of fear and resistance, or being in the energy of ‘I'’m open because I live in this universe of genius, abundance, guidance, and love’?”

We also shared this video on YouTube, but wanted you to be able to have it on your Substack video player as well, in case you prefer that.

Having it on Substack makes it easy for you to see any other podcasts, videos, articles, or full meditation services that might be available in the Expansion Within Expansion by clicking here.

If you have heard this teaching before, we invite you — as Swami so often invites us — to hear it as if you are hearing it for the first time. Often we receive these teachings right when we need them.

In loving service,Awake Yoga Meditation

Everything available to a paid subscriber. Are you one yet?

This is a free post made available to everyone. If you are not yet a paid subscriber to Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda, consider becoming one today to receive exclusive audio talks, articles, meditation service replays, access to the archives, and so much more.

Podcast Episodes*: All Episodes

Darshan Articles*: All Articles

From the Founder Series: All Series • Mantra Series • St. Francis Prayer Series

Live Meditation Replays: All Services • Index of All Services by Series • Sunday Meditation Services • Tuesday Darshan Meditation Services • Friday Night Healing Meditation Services • Satsangs

Book Excerpts**: All Excerpts • Satsang with Swami Shankarananda

Workshops (formerly eCourses): All Workshops • The Spiritual Art of Intentions: Creating a Life You Love • Pillars of Self-Realization: 50 Days with Swami Shankarananda • Love: The Eternal Flame of Life Within You • Wisdom: Discovering the Peace in Our True Nature

*Also available to Free Subscribers**Select posts also available to Free Subscribers

Consider making a financial contribution to Awake Yoga Meditation

Your generosity makes it possible for AYM to share Kriya Yoga, meditations, and teachings of truth with people around the world. It also allows the community to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). The presiding teacher for Awake Yoga Meditation is Swami Nityananda.

Consider making a financial contribution to Swami’s Bowl

As the presiding teacher, Swami Nityananda selflessly offers her wisdom without taking a salary from Awake Yoga Meditation. Your gift honors her giving and ensures she can continue to share her invaluable teachings. The tradition of meditation communities like Awake Yoga Meditation is to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). All of the other myriad expenses of life are offered from student to teacher through Swami’s Bowl.

Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dear Choose Happy Community,

Sometimes the mind becomes so full of stress, stories, worries, and attachments that we can no longer feel clarity or possibility.

This teaching offers a different approach: instead of trying to force answers, become empty enough to receive them. The yogic teachings remind us that infinite energy and creativity are always available when we loosen our grip on who we think we have to be.

Letting go doesn’t mean giving up. It means making space for something deeper to move through you. Peace, insight, creativity, and healing often arrive when we stop clinging and allow ourselves to simply be present.

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the video:

“So infinite energy is like a well, right? It’s bottomless. It’s used, but never used up. All that we can see is that infinite energy, and it’s never used up, ever. It’s like the eternal void filled with possibilities.

“Now, that almost seems like a paradox, because by definition, a void is empty, right? But it is filled with possibility. So the teaching is telling us basically to be empty vessels. And from that place of emptiness, that’s where infinite possibilities flow. ”All of those ideas and all of the solutions are there when we’re not attached. That’s what being empty means. It means to let go of all of your stories, identifications, attachments, and just let what is, be.”

We also shared this video on YouTube, but wanted you to be able to have it on your Substack video player as well, in case you prefer that.

Having it on Substack makes it easy for you to see any other podcasts, videos, articles, or full meditation services that might be available in the Truth, Love and Justice by clicking here.

If you have heard this teaching before, we invite you — as Swami so often invites us — to hear it as if you are hearing it for the first time. Often we receive these teachings right when we need them.

In loving service,Awake Yoga Meditation

Everything available to a paid subscriber. Are you one yet?

This is a free post made available to everyone. If you are not yet a paid subscriber to Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda, consider becoming one today to receive exclusive audio talks, articles, meditation service replays, access to the archives, and so much more.

Podcast Episodes*: All Episodes

Darshan Articles*: All Articles

From the Founder Series: All Series • Mantra Series • St. Francis Prayer Series

Live Meditation Replays: All Services • Index of All Services by Series • Sunday Meditation Services • Tuesday Darshan Meditation Services • Friday Night Healing Meditation Services • Satsangs

Book Excerpts**: All Excerpts • Satsang with Swami Shankarananda

Workshops (formerly eCourses): All Workshops • The Spiritual Art of Intentions: Creating a Life You Love • Pillars of Self-Realization: 50 Days with Swami Shankarananda • Love: The Eternal Flame of Life Within You • Wisdom: Discovering the Peace in Our True Nature

*Also available to Free Subscribers**Select posts also available to Free Subscribers

Consider making a financial contribution to Awake Yoga Meditation

Your generosity makes it possible for AYM to share Kriya Yoga, meditations, and teachings of truth with people around the world. It also allows the community to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). The presiding teacher for Awake Yoga Meditation is Swami Nityananda.

Consider making a financial contribution to Swami’s Bowl

As the presiding teacher, Swami Nityananda selflessly offers her wisdom without taking a salary from Awake Yoga Meditation. Your gift honors her giving and ensures she can continue to share her invaluable teachings. The tradition of meditation communities like Awake Yoga Meditation is to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). All of the other myriad expenses of life are offered from student to teacher through Swami’s Bowl.

Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dear Choose Happy Community,

The way we speak to ourselves matters more than we realize. This teaching reminds us that our thoughts don’t just pass through us—they shape the energy we live in every day. When self-criticism or self-rejection becomes constant, it disconnects us from the light, peace, and goodness already within us.

Healing begins by becoming aware of the thoughts we are feeding and gently choosing something different. More kindness. More compassion. More truth. The more we reconnect with the light within ourselves, the more available we become to bring that same light into the world around us.

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the video:

“ The Buddha makes it very, very clear that the effect of my thoughts follow me as surely as my shadow follows me. I am going to be the first one who experiences the effects of my thoughts.

“So what thoughts am I thinking? Am I thinking thoughts that are sweet-smelling, that are conscious of the divine light that is at the core of my being, that are conscious of the divine light that is at the core of that person who is so suffering?His words, ‘What peace can I have from God who hath taken from me peace and every good thing, and hath made me all rotten and stinking? I stink so greatly that I cannot endure my own self.’

“So that’s the energy of self-reviling. And so for each of us to heal and cleanse any energy of self-reviling that we have, because that keeps us from being optimally available and present and of service wherever divine light wants to be present and of service through us.”

We also shared this video on YouTube, but wanted you to be able to have it on your Substack video player as well, in case you prefer that.

Having it on Substack makes it easy for you to see any other podcasts, videos, articles, or full meditation services that might be available in the Expansion Within Expansion by clicking here.

If you have heard this teaching before, we invite you — as Swami so often invites us — to hear it as if you are hearing it for the first time. Often we receive these teachings right when we need them.

In loving service,Awake Yoga Meditation

Everything available to a paid subscriber. Are you one yet?

This is a free post made available to everyone. If you are not yet a paid subscriber to Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda, consider becoming one today to receive exclusive audio talks, articles, meditation service replays, access to the archives, and so much more.

Podcast Episodes*: All Episodes

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From the Founder Series: All Series • Mantra Series • St. Francis Prayer Series

Live Meditation Replays: All Services • Index of All Services by Series • Sunday Meditation Services • Tuesday Darshan Meditation Services • Friday Night Healing Meditation Services • Satsangs

Book Excerpts**: All Excerpts • Satsang with Swami Shankarananda

Workshops (formerly eCourses): All Workshops • The Spiritual Art of Intentions: Creating a Life You Love • Pillars of Self-Realization: 50 Days with Swami Shankarananda • Love: The Eternal Flame of Life Within You • Wisdom: Discovering the Peace in Our True Nature

*Also available to Free Subscribers**Select posts also available to Free Subscribers

Consider making a financial contribution to Awake Yoga Meditation

Your generosity makes it possible for AYM to share Kriya Yoga, meditations, and teachings of truth with people around the world. It also allows the community to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). The presiding teacher for Awake Yoga Meditation is Swami Nityananda.

Consider making a financial contribution to Swami’s Bowl

As the presiding teacher, Swami Nityananda selflessly offers her wisdom without taking a salary from Awake Yoga Meditation. Your gift honors her giving and ensures she can continue to share her invaluable teachings. The tradition of meditation communities like Awake Yoga Meditation is to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). All of the other myriad expenses of life are offered from student to teacher through Swami’s Bowl.

Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dear Choose Happy Community,

It’s easy to get pulled into drama—our own or someone else’s. But this teaching offers a powerful reminder: where we place our identity matters. When we identify with fear, conflict, or reactivity, we strengthen those patterns. When we identify with the light at the core of our being, we create space for wisdom, courage, and healing to emerge.

This isn’t about ignoring what’s difficult. It’s about meeting life from a deeper place. The more we stay connected to the light within, the more we can respond to challenges with clarity instead of getting lost in them.

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the video:

“ For all of us to just be open. We’re continually surrounded by wisdom. And the Divine is speaking with such joy and courage through everyone that we encounter. And so to just be present and to listen to the way the Divine is speaking through everyone that we encounter.

“And this is back to that teaching: you cannot have enlightenment and drama at the same time. You’ve got to decide what’s more important to you. So you’re choosing to identify with the light rather than the drama. It’s not a matter of suppressing, it’s not repressing, it’s not ignoring, it’s not denying. It’s just saying, ‘I identify with the light that is at the core of my being,’ and that allows me to look with love and wisdom and courage and honesty at the drama and to bring healing consciousness to myself. And if anyone else is connected with the drama, to allow healing consciousness to share through you silently.”

We also shared this video on YouTube, but wanted you to be able to have it on your Substack video player as well, in case you prefer that.

Having it on Substack makes it easy for you to see any other podcasts, videos, articles, or full meditation services that might be available in the Living Inner Truth by clicking here.

If you have heard this teaching before, we invite you — as Swami so often invites us — to hear it as if you are hearing it for the first time. Often we receive these teachings right when we need them.

In loving service,Awake Yoga Meditation

Everything available to a paid subscriber. Are you one yet?

This is a free post made available to everyone. If you are not yet a paid subscriber to Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda, consider becoming one today to receive exclusive audio talks, articles, meditation service replays, access to the archives, and so much more.

Podcast Episodes*: All Episodes

Darshan Articles*: All Articles

From the Founder Series: All Series • Mantra Series • St. Francis Prayer Series

Live Meditation Replays: All Services • Index of All Services by Series • Sunday Meditation Services • Tuesday Darshan Meditation Services • Friday Night Healing Meditation Services • Satsangs

Book Excerpts**: All Excerpts • Satsang with Swami Shankarananda

Workshops (formerly eCourses): All Workshops • The Spiritual Art of Intentions: Creating a Life You Love • Pillars of Self-Realization: 50 Days with Swami Shankarananda • Love: The Eternal Flame of Life Within You • Wisdom: Discovering the Peace in Our True Nature

*Also available to Free Subscribers**Select posts also available to Free Subscribers

Consider making a financial contribution to Awake Yoga Meditation

Your generosity makes it possible for AYM to share Kriya Yoga, meditations, and teachings of truth with people around the world. It also allows the community to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). The presiding teacher for Awake Yoga Meditation is Swami Nityananda.

Consider making a financial contribution to Swami’s Bowl

As the presiding teacher, Swami Nityananda selflessly offers her wisdom without taking a salary from Awake Yoga Meditation. Your gift honors her giving and ensures she can continue to share her invaluable teachings. The tradition of meditation communities like Awake Yoga Meditation is to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). All of the other myriad expenses of life are offered from student to teacher through Swami’s Bowl.

Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dear Choose Happy Community,

Fear, anger, and insecurity can leave the mind and body feeling tense, exhausted, and out of balance. This teaching reminds us that healing doesn’t come from fighting those feelings—it comes from turning inward and reconnecting with the natural flow of love already within us. When we open the heart to kindness, peace begins to return to the body, the mind softens, and clarity becomes possible again. Love is not weakness. It’s the energy that helps us remember the truth of who we are.

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the video:

“ It’s not pleasant to be in that energy of fear. It’s not pleasant to be in that energy of anger. It’s not pleasant to be in the energy of insecurity. And now, if you say, ‘I go within and I open the door of my heart to the natural flow of kindness, which is the truth of my being. I open my heart to love.’

“In the Bhagavad Gita, one of the translations says, ‘To love is to know the Divine.’ So opening my heart to love allows me to know the Divine. Opening my heart to love allows me to enter into the truth of divine being. The truth of divine being is already here.

“And now notice how your body is feeling. ‘I’m in the energy of love. I’m in the energy of knowing the Divine. I’m in the energy of the truth of my being.’ And notice what happens to the parts of your body that can feel discombobulated or dysregulated, out of balance, if you’re in the energy of anger, if you’re in the energy of fear, if you’re in the energy of insecurity. So choosing to heal anger, fear, and insecurity is so freeing and healing and empowering for us.”

We also shared this video on YouTube, but wanted you to be able to have it on your Substack video player as well, in case you prefer that.

Having it on Substack makes it easy for you to see any other podcasts, videos, articles, or full meditation services that might be available in the Living Inner Truth by clicking here.

If you have heard this teaching before, we invite you — as Swami so often invites us — to hear it as if you are hearing it for the first time. Often we receive these teachings right when we need them.

In loving service,Awake Yoga Meditation

Everything available to a paid subscriber. Are you one yet?

This is a free post made available to everyone. If you are not yet a paid subscriber to Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda, consider becoming one today to receive exclusive audio talks, articles, meditation service replays, access to the archives, and so much more.

Podcast Episodes*: All Episodes

Darshan Articles*: All Articles

From the Founder Series: All Series • Mantra Series • St. Francis Prayer Series

Live Meditation Replays: All Services • Index of All Services by Series • Sunday Meditation Services • Tuesday Darshan Meditation Services • Friday Night Healing Meditation Services • Satsangs

Book Excerpts**: All Excerpts • Satsang with Swami Shankarananda

Workshops (formerly eCourses): All Workshops • The Spiritual Art of Intentions: Creating a Life You Love • Pillars of Self-Realization: 50 Days with Swami Shankarananda • Love: The Eternal Flame of Life Within You • Wisdom: Discovering the Peace in Our True Nature

*Also available to Free Subscribers**Select posts also available to Free Subscribers

Consider making a financial contribution to Awake Yoga Meditation

Your generosity makes it possible for AYM to share Kriya Yoga, meditations, and teachings of truth with people around the world. It also allows the community to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). The presiding teacher for Awake Yoga Meditation is Swami Nityananda.

Consider making a financial contribution to Swami’s Bowl

As the presiding teacher, Swami Nityananda selflessly offers her wisdom without taking a salary from Awake Yoga Meditation. Your gift honors her giving and ensures she can continue to share her invaluable teachings. The tradition of meditation communities like Awake Yoga Meditation is to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). All of the other myriad expenses of life are offered from student to teacher through Swami’s Bowl.

Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dear Choose Happy Community,

No matter what you’re facing externally, there is still an inner victory available to you. This teaching reminds us that fear, anger, jealousy, or frustration do not have to define our state of being. Even in moments that look like loss from the outside, we can remain connected to something deeper—peace, love, and truth within. Spiritual victory begins when we stop waiting for the outside world to change before allowing ourselves to reconnect with the light already present inside us.

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the video:

“Whatever the external circumstances, whatever feels like an oppression to you - it could be internal anger, it could be frustration, it could be jealousy, it could be fear. Whatever that thing is for you, there is internal victory accessible to you in the midst of that. And then Christ goes on to fulfill that and make that even more visible, because we can see that his crucifixion is an external loss. That is not an external victory to be mutilated in that way. However, in the midst of that, he was in contact with internal victory.

‘And so that never changes. Whatever our experience, even if we feel as if we are in the darkest pits of our own misunderstanding, internal victory is accessible to us, and the way that we access that is we let go of attachment to the external victory”

We also shared this video on YouTube, but wanted you to be able to have it on your Substack video player as well, in case you prefer that.

Having it on Substack makes it easy for you to see any other podcasts, videos, articles, or full meditation services that might be available in the Truth, Love and Justice by clicking here.

If you have heard this teaching before, we invite you — as Swami so often invites us — to hear it as if you are hearing it for the first time. Often we receive these teachings right when we need them.

In loving service,Awake Yoga Meditation

Everything available to a paid subscriber. Are you one yet?

This is a free post made available to everyone. If you are not yet a paid subscriber to Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda, consider becoming one today to receive exclusive audio talks, articles, meditation service replays, access to the archives, and so much more.

Podcast Episodes*: All Episodes

Darshan Articles*: All Articles

From the Founder Series: All Series • Mantra Series • St. Francis Prayer Series

Live Meditation Replays: All Services • Index of All Services by Series • Sunday Meditation Services • Tuesday Darshan Meditation Services • Friday Night Healing Meditation Services • Satsangs

Book Excerpts**: All Excerpts • Satsang with Swami Shankarananda

Workshops (formerly eCourses): All Workshops • The Spiritual Art of Intentions: Creating a Life You Love • Pillars of Self-Realization: 50 Days with Swami Shankarananda • Love: The Eternal Flame of Life Within You • Wisdom: Discovering the Peace in Our True Nature

*Also available to Free Subscribers**Select posts also available to Free Subscribers

Consider making a financial contribution to Awake Yoga Meditation

Your generosity makes it possible for AYM to share Kriya Yoga, meditations, and teachings of truth with people around the world. It also allows the community to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). The presiding teacher for Awake Yoga Meditation is Swami Nityananda.

Consider making a financial contribution to Swami’s Bowl

As the presiding teacher, Swami Nityananda selflessly offers her wisdom without taking a salary from Awake Yoga Meditation. Your gift honors her giving and ensures she can continue to share her invaluable teachings. The tradition of meditation communities like Awake Yoga Meditation is to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). All of the other myriad expenses of life are offered from student to teacher through Swami’s Bowl.

Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dear Choose Happy Community,

It’s easy to get pulled into anger, judgment, or resentment—especially in a world that often feels divided and reactive.

But this teaching invites us to pause and ask a deeper question: Am I willing to heal? If we want peace in the world, we first have to allow peace to take root within ourselves.

The moment we stop feeding the fire of negativity and open to peace instead, something begins to transform. Peace doesn’t just surround us—it can move through us.

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the video:

“ Am I energizing any hatred, animosity, judgment, prejudices, bigotry? And then the question that I’m asking is, ‘Am I willing to heal? Am I willing to energize the solution, so that instead of fanning those flames, those embers, that fire that doesn’t go out, that fire that keeps burning, am I willing to look to the energy of the solution?’

“And I’ve been sharing a series of teachings, but if peace is what I want to create, I create it first in myself. I create it in consciousness first, and then it expresses through me. So there’s a really beautiful prayer: ‘May absolute peace pervade the whole universe. May absolute peace manifest through us to bless the world. May absolute peace abide in us as we abide in it.’

“And so for each of us then, if I am feeling any of those things: ‘I open to absolute peace. I open and I allow anything other than peace to be transformed so that I can allow peace to share through me.’”

We also shared this video on YouTube, but wanted you to be able to have it on your Substack video player as well, in case you prefer that.

Having it on Substack makes it easy for you to see any other podcasts, videos, articles, or full meditation services that might be available in the Living Inner Truth by clicking here.

If you have heard this teaching before, we invite you — as Swami so often invites us — to hear it as if you are hearing it for the first time. Often we receive these teachings right when we need them.

In loving service,Awake Yoga Meditation

Everything available to a paid subscriber. Are you one yet?

This is a free post made available to everyone. If you are not yet a paid subscriber to Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda, consider becoming one today to receive exclusive audio talks, articles, meditation service replays, access to the archives, and so much more.

Podcast Episodes*: All Episodes

Darshan Articles*: All Articles

From the Founder Series: All Series • Mantra Series • St. Francis Prayer Series

Live Meditation Replays: All Services • Index of All Services by Series • Sunday Meditation Services • Tuesday Darshan Meditation Services • Friday Night Healing Meditation Services • Satsangs

Book Excerpts**: All Excerpts • Satsang with Swami Shankarananda

Workshops (formerly eCourses): All Workshops • The Spiritual Art of Intentions: Creating a Life You Love • Pillars of Self-Realization: 50 Days with Swami Shankarananda • Love: The Eternal Flame of Life Within You • Wisdom: Discovering the Peace in Our True Nature

*Also available to Free Subscribers**Select posts also available to Free Subscribers

Consider making a financial contribution to Awake Yoga Meditation

Your generosity makes it possible for AYM to share Kriya Yoga, meditations, and teachings of truth with people around the world. It also allows the community to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). The presiding teacher for Awake Yoga Meditation is Swami Nityananda.

Consider making a financial contribution to Swami’s Bowl

As the presiding teacher, Swami Nityananda selflessly offers her wisdom without taking a salary from Awake Yoga Meditation. Your gift honors her giving and ensures she can continue to share her invaluable teachings. The tradition of meditation communities like Awake Yoga Meditation is to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). All of the other myriad expenses of life are offered from student to teacher through Swami’s Bowl.

Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dear Choose Happy Community,

When the world feels heavy—filled with conflict, injustice, or pain—it’s easy to feel overwhelmed or disconnected. This teaching offers a steady truth: even in the midst of everything, you are still being loved into existence in every moment. That love isn’t distant or external—it’s alive within you, guiding and sustaining you. When you reconnect with that, something shifts. You’re not alone in what you’re facing—you’re supported in every breath.

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the video:

 “ No matter what wars I have known, no matter what tragedies I have known, no matter what inequities I have known, no matter what discriminations I have known, racial, religious, or otherwise, there’s not been a single moment of my existence when I have not been loved into existence, loved into form by the source of all the love in the universe.

“And so if you’re actually able to know that, what happens is you also know the love that loves you into form. That energy of pure life, pure creativity, pure potentiality, that loves you into form, knows exactly what you need, every moment, every moment. Can you feel how incredibly joyful and whole and complete that is?

“So there’s nothing that the Divine is giving you from outside. The Divine is flowing in and through you, and whatever appears in form is the Divine as that. So whatever you need, it’s like this amazing call and response across the universe, this amazing song of the beautiful and perfect God.”

We also shared this video on YouTube, but wanted you to be able to have it on your Substack video player as well, in case you prefer that.

Having it on Substack makes it easy for you to see any other podcasts, videos, articles, or full meditation services that might be available in the Living Inner Truth by clicking here.

If you have heard this teaching before, we invite you — as Swami so often invites us — to hear it as if you are hearing it for the first time. Often we receive these teachings right when we need them.

In loving service,Awake Yoga Meditation

Everything available to a paid subscriber. Are you one yet?

This is a free post made available to everyone. If you are not yet a paid subscriber to Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda, consider becoming one today to receive exclusive audio talks, articles, meditation service replays, access to the archives, and so much more.

Podcast Episodes*: All Episodes

Darshan Articles*: All Articles

From the Founder Series: All Series • Mantra Series • St. Francis Prayer Series

Live Meditation Replays: All Services • Index of All Services by Series • Sunday Meditation Services • Tuesday Darshan Meditation Services • Friday Night Healing Meditation Services • Satsangs

Book Excerpts**: All Excerpts • Satsang with Swami Shankarananda

Workshops (formerly eCourses): All Workshops • The Spiritual Art of Intentions: Creating a Life You Love • Pillars of Self-Realization: 50 Days with Swami Shankarananda • Love: The Eternal Flame of Life Within You • Wisdom: Discovering the Peace in Our True Nature

*Also available to Free Subscribers**Select posts also available to Free Subscribers

Consider making a financial contribution to Awake Yoga Meditation

Your generosity makes it possible for AYM to share Kriya Yoga, meditations, and teachings of truth with people around the world. It also allows the community to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). The presiding teacher for Awake Yoga Meditation is Swami Nityananda.

Consider making a financial contribution to Swami’s Bowl

As the presiding teacher, Swami Nityananda selflessly offers her wisdom without taking a salary from Awake Yoga Meditation. Your gift honors her giving and ensures she can continue to share her invaluable teachings. The tradition of meditation communities like Awake Yoga Meditation is to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). All of the other myriad expenses of life are offered from student to teacher through Swami’s Bowl.

Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dear Choose Happy Community,

No matter what is happening around you, peace is still available within you. This teaching reminds us that external circumstances do not have to define our inner state.

When life feels uncertain or heavy, you can turn inward and rest in the deepest part of yourself—the place where the Divine is already present. Strength is not always pushing forward. Sometimes strength is learning to repose in what is steady, rich, and true within you.

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the video:

 “No matter what the external circumstances are that you’re aware of, no matter how you’re feeling in relation to yourself or your life, turn within and allow yourself to repose in what is deepest inside of you. ”And right now, just turn within. Allow yourself to repose in the deepest and richest part of you. And know that that is the Divine in you. That is how the Divine is greeting you.”

We also shared this video on YouTube, but wanted you to be able to have it on your Substack video player as well, in case you prefer that.

Having it on Substack makes it easy for you to see any other podcasts, videos, articles, or full meditation services that might be available in the Living Inner Truth by clicking here.

If you have heard this teaching before, we invite you — as Swami so often invites us — to hear it as if you are hearing it for the first time. Often we receive these teachings right when we need them.

In loving service,Awake Yoga Meditation

Everything available to a paid subscriber. Are you one yet?

This is a free post made available to everyone. If you are not yet a paid subscriber to Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda, consider becoming one today to receive exclusive audio talks, articles, meditation service replays, access to the archives, and so much more.

Podcast Episodes*: All Episodes

Darshan Articles*: All Articles

From the Founder Series: All Series • Mantra Series • St. Francis Prayer Series

Live Meditation Replays: All Services • Index of All Services by Series • Sunday Meditation Services • Tuesday Darshan Meditation Services • Friday Night Healing Meditation Services • Satsangs

Book Excerpts**: All Excerpts • Satsang with Swami Shankarananda

Workshops (formerly eCourses): All Workshops • The Spiritual Art of Intentions: Creating a Life You Love • Pillars of Self-Realization: 50 Days with Swami Shankarananda • Love: The Eternal Flame of Life Within You • Wisdom: Discovering the Peace in Our True Nature

*Also available to Free Subscribers**Select posts also available to Free Subscribers

Consider making a financial contribution to Awake Yoga Meditation

Your generosity makes it possible for AYM to share Kriya Yoga, meditations, and teachings of truth with people around the world. It also allows the community to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). The presiding teacher for Awake Yoga Meditation is Swami Nityananda.

Consider making a financial contribution to Swami’s Bowl

As the presiding teacher, Swami Nityananda selflessly offers her wisdom without taking a salary from Awake Yoga Meditation. Your gift honors her giving and ensures she can continue to share her invaluable teachings. The tradition of meditation communities like Awake Yoga Meditation is to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). All of the other myriad expenses of life are offered from student to teacher through Swami’s Bowl.

Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dear Choose Happy Community,

When fear or insecurity rises, it can seem like life outside of us is bigger than the strength within us. This teaching offers a powerful reminder: the light already within you is greater than anything happening in time and space. You don’t have to earn it or create it. Your task is simply to turn inward and let it flow through the places touched by pain, shame, guilt, or lack. What heals you is already inside you.

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the video:

 “The light in us is always going to be greater than anything we can possibly create or express in time and space. So there’s just no intimidation that can possibly be in us because we’re so full to overflowing with the light that is already within us.

“Okay, so this is the truth. The light in us already exists. We don’t have to create it. Our task is to turn within to become aware of it, to realize it, to allow it to flow through anywhere that I have identified with pain, anywhere that I have identified with lack, anywhere that I have identified with fear or with limitation, or with blame, or with guilt, or with shame or with judgment.

“Anywhere that I have blocked the flow of the Divine within me, I’m turning within and I’m allowing the light to bring illumination from within.”

We also shared this video on YouTube, but wanted you to be able to have it on your Substack video player as well, in case you prefer that.

Having it on Substack makes it easy for you to see any other podcasts, videos, articles, or full meditation services that might be available in the Living Inner Truth by clicking here.

If you have heard this teaching before, we invite you — as Swami so often invites us — to hear it as if you are hearing it for the first time. Often we receive these teachings right when we need them.

In loving service,Awake Yoga Meditation

Everything available to a paid subscriber. Are you one yet?

This is a free post made available to everyone. If you are not yet a paid subscriber to Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda, consider becoming one today to receive exclusive audio talks, articles, meditation service replays, access to the archives, and so much more.

Podcast Episodes*: All Episodes

Darshan Articles*: All Articles

From the Founder Series: All Series • Mantra Series • St. Francis Prayer Series

Live Meditation Replays: All Services • Index of All Services by Series • Sunday Meditation Services • Tuesday Darshan Meditation Services • Friday Night Healing Meditation Services • Satsangs

Book Excerpts**: All Excerpts • Satsang with Swami Shankarananda

Workshops (formerly eCourses): All Workshops • The Spiritual Art of Intentions: Creating a Life You Love • Pillars of Self-Realization: 50 Days with Swami Shankarananda • Love: The Eternal Flame of Life Within You • Wisdom: Discovering the Peace in Our True Nature

*Also available to Free Subscribers**Select posts also available to Free Subscribers

Consider making a financial contribution to Awake Yoga Meditation

Your generosity makes it possible for AYM to share Kriya Yoga, meditations, and teachings of truth with people around the world. It also allows the community to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). The presiding teacher for Awake Yoga Meditation is Swami Nityananda.

Consider making a financial contribution to Swami’s Bowl

As the presiding teacher, Swami Nityananda selflessly offers her wisdom without taking a salary from Awake Yoga Meditation. Your gift honors her giving and ensures she can continue to share her invaluable teachings. The tradition of meditation communities like Awake Yoga Meditation is to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). All of the other myriad expenses of life are offered from student to teacher through Swami’s Bowl.

Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dear Choose Happy Community,

Sometimes the pain we couldn’t feel in the past waits quietly until we’re ready. This teaching reminds us that when we wall off pain, we also block the life force within us. Healing isn’t about forcing anything—it’s about gently turning toward those parts of ourselves with kindness and care. When we do, we begin to reclaim the energy we’ve been missing. Every part of you is already loved, already worthy, and already held in the light.

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the video:

“ A couple of people have mentioned in early childhood the trauma was such that they just couldn’t allow themselves to feel it at the time. And also sometimes as adults, we have to keep going and we’re not able to allow ourself to feel at the time, whatever the pain is, whatever the trauma is. And then there’s a moment when light within you sort of knocks on the door of your awareness and says, it’s time. It’s time to breathe into this pain that you have been carrying.

“And so here I’m putting this in words, but allow yourself to feel this. Where we wall part of ourself off, we’re also unintentionally walling off life force. We’re walling off life energy. And so there’s this core trauma, or this core pain, that also holds life force and we’re actually longing for that life force.

“And so there’s this aspect of ourselves that says, ‘reach out and love that part of you that has been holding this pain. Reach out and extend kindness, extend caring, extend wholeness, to that part of you where we’ve been walling off our own life force.’ And that’s what realization is allowing all of yourself to be held in the light.

“And knowing that all of me is already loved completely by the light, there is no part of me that has to earn love or deserve love. It’s already loved. It’s already of the light.”

We also shared this video on YouTube, but wanted you to be able to have it on your Substack video player as well, in case you prefer that.

Having it on Substack makes it easy for you to see any other podcasts, videos, articles, or full meditation services that might be available in the Living Inner Truth by clicking here.

If you have heard this teaching before, we invite you — as Swami so often invites us — to hear it as if you are hearing it for the first time. Often we receive these teachings right when we need them.

In loving service,Awake Yoga Meditation

Everything available to a paid subscriber. Are you one yet?

This is a free post made available to everyone. If you are not yet a paid subscriber to Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda, consider becoming one today to receive exclusive audio talks, articles, meditation service replays, access to the archives, and so much more.

Podcast Episodes*: All Episodes

Darshan Articles*: All Articles

From the Founder Series: All Series • Mantra Series • St. Francis Prayer Series

Live Meditation Replays: All Services • Index of All Services by Series • Sunday Meditation Services • Tuesday Darshan Meditation Services • Friday Night Healing Meditation Services • Satsangs

Book Excerpts**: All Excerpts • Satsang with Swami Shankarananda

Workshops (formerly eCourses): All Workshops • The Spiritual Art of Intentions: Creating a Life You Love • Pillars of Self-Realization: 50 Days with Swami Shankarananda • Love: The Eternal Flame of Life Within You • Wisdom: Discovering the Peace in Our True Nature

*Also available to Free Subscribers**Select posts also available to Free Subscribers

Consider making a financial contribution to Awake Yoga Meditation

Your generosity makes it possible for AYM to share Kriya Yoga, meditations, and teachings of truth with people around the world. It also allows the community to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). The presiding teacher for Awake Yoga Meditation is Swami Nityananda.

Consider making a financial contribution to Swami’s Bowl

As the presiding teacher, Swami Nityananda selflessly offers her wisdom without taking a salary from Awake Yoga Meditation. Your gift honors her giving and ensures she can continue to share her invaluable teachings. The tradition of meditation communities like Awake Yoga Meditation is to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). All of the other myriad expenses of life are offered from student to teacher through Swami’s Bowl.

Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dear Choose Happy Community,

In the middle of everyday life—conversations, responsibilities, and passing moments—there is a deeper awareness always guiding you.

This teaching reminds us that the Divine isn’t separate from our daily interactions, but moving through them. Each moment is an opportunity to respond from inner truth, with presence and care. You don’t have to search for purpose—it’s already expressing itself through you. The light you are is meant to be shared.

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the video:

“ Awareness and inner truth within us is continually inviting us to respond to our kids, our parents, the people in our family, the people we encounter on the bus, or at work, on the street, whoever it is that we encounter. The Divine is always, always, allowing inner truth and an awareness that is larger than our separate individual self, to reach out through us to be of assistance, and to be of support.”

We also shared this video on YouTube, but wanted you to be able to have it on your Substack video player as well, in case you prefer that.

Having it on Substack makes it easy for you to see any other podcasts, videos, articles, or full meditation services that might be available in the Living Inner Truth by clicking here.

If you have heard this teaching before, we invite you — as Swami so often invites us — to hear it as if you are hearing it for the first time. Often we receive these teachings right when we need them.

In loving service,Awake Yoga Meditation

Everything available to a paid subscriber. Are you one yet?

This is a free post made available to everyone. If you are not yet a paid subscriber to Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda, consider becoming one today to receive exclusive audio talks, articles, meditation service replays, access to the archives, and so much more.

Podcast Episodes*: All Episodes

Darshan Articles*: All Articles

From the Founder Series: All Series • Mantra Series • St. Francis Prayer Series

Live Meditation Replays: All Services • Index of All Services by Series • Sunday Meditation Services • Tuesday Darshan Meditation Services • Friday Night Healing Meditation Services • Satsangs

Book Excerpts**: All Excerpts • Satsang with Swami Shankarananda

Workshops (formerly eCourses): All Workshops • The Spiritual Art of Intentions: Creating a Life You Love • Pillars of Self-Realization: 50 Days with Swami Shankarananda • Love: The Eternal Flame of Life Within You • Wisdom: Discovering the Peace in Our True Nature

*Also available to Free Subscribers**Select posts also available to Free Subscribers

Consider making a financial contribution to Awake Yoga Meditation

Your generosity makes it possible for AYM to share Kriya Yoga, meditations, and teachings of truth with people around the world. It also allows the community to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). The presiding teacher for Awake Yoga Meditation is Swami Nityananda.

Consider making a financial contribution to Swami’s Bowl

As the presiding teacher, Swami Nityananda selflessly offers her wisdom without taking a salary from Awake Yoga Meditation. Your gift honors her giving and ensures she can continue to share her invaluable teachings. The tradition of meditation communities like Awake Yoga Meditation is to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). All of the other myriad expenses of life are offered from student to teacher through Swami’s Bowl.

Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dear Choose Happy Community,

It’s easy to forget how powerful we truly are. This teaching reminds us that the Divine Presence within us is never absent, not even for a moment. When we release the thoughts and judgments that limit us, we reconnect with the limitless strength already at the core of our being. From that place, clarity and discernment naturally arise. Remembering our own divinity also helps us recognize the same light in others.

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the video:

“ If you find, like that person who is very honest about their own patterns, if you find ‘sometimes I am triggered. Sometimes I do get entangled with reactivity’. Every time you come back to your center, every time you come back to that column of light, every time you come back to what is highest good in this moment, you’re adding pure water to the bucket of your consciousness. ”So the Buddhist says, ‘drop by drop, the water pot is filled. And he also says, little by little, the wise human acquires merit.’ And so that’s your practice. If you are feeling anger, that’s where your practice is. That’s where you are able to gradually transform that energy into the energy of compassion and into the energy of creativity. ”If you have reactivity notice and take a step back. Give yourself grace and choose. ‘I choose to come from equanimity. I choose to keep going in my practice of cultivating that divine quality that is absence of anger.”

We also shared this video on YouTube, but wanted you to be able to have it on your Substack video player as well, in case you prefer that.

Having it on Substack makes it easy for you to see any other podcasts, videos, articles, or full meditation services that might be available in the Self Mastery by clicking here.

If you have heard this teaching before, we invite you — as Swami so often invites us — to hear it as if you are hearing it for the first time. Often we receive these teachings right when we need them.

In loving service,Awake Yoga Meditation

Everything available to a paid subscriber. Are you one yet?

This is a free post made available to everyone. If you are not yet a paid subscriber to Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda, consider becoming one today to receive exclusive audio talks, articles, meditation service replays, access to the archives, and so much more.

Podcast Episodes*: All Episodes

Darshan Articles*: All Articles

From the Founder Series: All Series • Mantra Series • St. Francis Prayer Series

Live Meditation Replays: All Services • Index of All Services by Series • Sunday Meditation Services • Tuesday Darshan Meditation Services • Friday Night Healing Meditation Services • Satsangs

Book Excerpts**: All Excerpts • Satsang with Swami Shankarananda

Workshops (formerly eCourses): All Workshops • The Spiritual Art of Intentions: Creating a Life You Love • Pillars of Self-Realization: 50 Days with Swami Shankarananda • Love: The Eternal Flame of Life Within You • Wisdom: Discovering the Peace in Our True Nature

*Also available to Free Subscribers**Select posts also available to Free Subscribers

Consider making a financial contribution to Awake Yoga Meditation

Your generosity makes it possible for AYM to share Kriya Yoga, meditations, and teachings of truth with people around the world. It also allows the community to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). The presiding teacher for Awake Yoga Meditation is Swami Nityananda.

Consider making a financial contribution to Swami’s Bowl

As the presiding teacher, Swami Nityananda selflessly offers her wisdom without taking a salary from Awake Yoga Meditation. Your gift honors her giving and ensures she can continue to share her invaluable teachings. The tradition of meditation communities like Awake Yoga Meditation is to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). All of the other myriad expenses of life are offered from student to teacher through Swami’s Bowl.

Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dear Choose Happy Community,

It’s easy to forget how powerful we truly are. This teaching reminds us that the Divine Presence within us is never absent, not even for a moment. When we release the thoughts and judgments that limit us, we reconnect with the limitless strength already at the core of our being. From that place, clarity and discernment naturally arise. Remembering our own divinity also helps us recognize the same light in others.

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the video:

“ Each of us is Divine always. That means each of us is never separate from empowerment. There’s not a single moment that each of us is separate from empowerment. ”And so another way to put this is you have no idea how powerful you are because the Divine within you is limitless. And so to let yourself move beyond any thoughts, beliefs, opinions, attitudes, judgments, feelings that would have you identify with anything other than your own divinity. And when you identify with your own divinity, then you’re also free to remember everyone else’s divinity as well. And all of these teachings are a thing; the teachings from Jesus say the same thing. It’s when we remember our own divinity that we’re able to act with wisdom. We’re able to act with clarity. We’re able to act with discernment.”

We also shared this video on YouTube, but wanted you to be able to have it on your Substack video player as well, in case you prefer that.

Having it on Substack makes it easy for you to see any other podcasts, videos, articles, or full meditation services that might be available in the Self Mastery by clicking here.

If you have heard this teaching before, we invite you — as Swami so often invites us — to hear it as if you are hearing it for the first time. Often we receive these teachings right when we need them.

In loving service,Awake Yoga Meditation

Everything available to a paid subscriber. Are you one yet?

This is a free post made available to everyone. If you are not yet a paid subscriber to Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda, consider becoming one today to receive exclusive audio talks, articles, meditation service replays, access to the archives, and so much more.

Podcast Episodes*: All Episodes

Darshan Articles*: All Articles

From the Founder Series: All Series • Mantra Series • St. Francis Prayer Series

Live Meditation Replays: All Services • Index of All Services by Series • Sunday Meditation Services • Tuesday Darshan Meditation Services • Friday Night Healing Meditation Services • Satsangs

Book Excerpts**: All Excerpts • Satsang with Swami Shankarananda

Workshops (formerly eCourses): All Workshops • The Spiritual Art of Intentions: Creating a Life You Love • Pillars of Self-Realization: 50 Days with Swami Shankarananda • Love: The Eternal Flame of Life Within You • Wisdom: Discovering the Peace in Our True Nature

*Also available to Free Subscribers**Select posts also available to Free Subscribers

Consider making a financial contribution to Awake Yoga Meditation

Your generosity makes it possible for AYM to share Kriya Yoga, meditations, and teachings of truth with people around the world. It also allows the community to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). The presiding teacher for Awake Yoga Meditation is Swami Nityananda.

Consider making a financial contribution to Swami’s Bowl

As the presiding teacher, Swami Nityananda selflessly offers her wisdom without taking a salary from Awake Yoga Meditation. Your gift honors her giving and ensures she can continue to share her invaluable teachings. The tradition of meditation communities like Awake Yoga Meditation is to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). All of the other myriad expenses of life are offered from student to teacher through Swami’s Bowl.

Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dear Choose Happy Community,

Some days fear shows up at the door. Other days it feels like misfortune or self-doubt. Drawing from Rumi’s wisdom, this teaching invites us to try something radical: welcome it in with love. The practice of “Choose Happy” is not about avoiding our feelings, but about meeting them with compassion and honesty. When we stop running from ourselves and start loving what we find, the heart naturally begins to open.

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the video:

“Rumi says that every day some new thing shows up. It could be at your door, there’s a fear, and it feels like a foe. Or, at your door there is what feels like misfortune, and Rumi says to just welcome it in. Welcome in your fear. Welcome in your misfortune.

“And so through the practice of Choose Happiness, we learn to extend love to whatever-to everything. So I’m going to show love to my fear. I’m going to show love to that thing in me that feels less than. I learned this when I was five. I’m going to show love to that part of me that wants to give up.

“So that’s what Choose Happy teaches us. And so, in and of itself, it invites us to invite everything in. You cannot bypass yourself. Wherever you go, there you are. And so when we’re in the practice of the yogic teachings, we learn to be with ourselves and to love ourselves as we show up. And that is what is heart opening for us.”

We also shared this video on YouTube, but wanted you to be able to have it on your Substack video player as well, in case you prefer that.

Having it on Substack makes it easy for you to see any other podcasts, videos, articles, or full meditation services that might be available in the Truth, Love and Justice by clicking here.

If you have heard this teaching before, we invite you — as Swami so often invites us — to hear it as if you are hearing it for the first time. Often we receive these teachings right when we need them.

In loving service,Awake Yoga Meditation

Everything available to a paid subscriber. Are you one yet?

This is a free post made available to everyone. If you are not yet a paid subscriber to Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda, consider becoming one today to receive exclusive audio talks, articles, meditation service replays, access to the archives, and so much more.

Podcast Episodes*: All Episodes

Darshan Articles*: All Articles

From the Founder Series: All Series • Mantra Series • St. Francis Prayer Series

Live Meditation Replays: All Services • Index of All Services by Series • Sunday Meditation Services • Tuesday Darshan Meditation Services • Friday Night Healing Meditation Services • Satsangs

Book Excerpts**: All Excerpts • Satsang with Swami Shankarananda

Workshops (formerly eCourses): All Workshops • The Spiritual Art of Intentions: Creating a Life You Love • Pillars of Self-Realization: 50 Days with Swami Shankarananda • Love: The Eternal Flame of Life Within You • Wisdom: Discovering the Peace in Our True Nature

*Also available to Free Subscribers**Select posts also available to Free Subscribers

Consider making a financial contribution to Awake Yoga Meditation

Your generosity makes it possible for AYM to share Kriya Yoga, meditations, and teachings of truth with people around the world. It also allows the community to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). The presiding teacher for Awake Yoga Meditation is Swami Nityananda.

Consider making a financial contribution to Swami’s Bowl

As the presiding teacher, Swami Nityananda selflessly offers her wisdom without taking a salary from Awake Yoga Meditation. Your gift honors her giving and ensures she can continue to share her invaluable teachings. The tradition of meditation communities like Awake Yoga Meditation is to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). All of the other myriad expenses of life are offered from student to teacher through Swami’s Bowl.

Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dear Choose Happy Community,

When others are caught in anger or hostility, it’s easy to get pulled into the same energy. This teaching reminds us that real strength is keeping our own consciousness clean and steady. Light does not fight darkness. It simply shines, and darkness disappears. When you stay rooted in clarity and act from that center, you stop feeding what you wish would fade. Strength is choosing light, again and again.

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the video:

“ If I become aware that other people are energizing enmity, my task is to keep my consciousness clean, always. Because otherwise, if I engage in feeling enmity toward the people who are feeling enmity, I’m just energizing more of what I would prefer not to make visible in time and space.

“We are here also to act, and to be aware. And so think about the way light acts. Light vanquishes darkness by being itself. Light expands. So for you to be in contact with the energy of light and to expand from that center sharing light, do you feel the difference?”

We also shared this video on YouTube, but wanted you to be able to have it on your Substack video player as well, in case you prefer that.

Having it on Substack makes it easy for you to see any other podcasts, videos, articles, or full meditation services that might be available in the Self Mastery by clicking here.

If you have heard this teaching before, we invite you — as Swami so often invites us — to hear it as if you are hearing it for the first time. Often we receive these teachings right when we need them.

In loving service,Awake Yoga Meditation

Everything available to a paid subscriber. Are you one yet?

This is a free post made available to everyone. If you are not yet a paid subscriber to Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda, consider becoming one today to receive exclusive audio talks, articles, meditation service replays, access to the archives, and so much more.

Podcast Episodes*: All Episodes

Darshan Articles*: All Articles

From the Founder Series: All Series • Mantra Series • St. Francis Prayer Series

Live Meditation Replays: All Services • Index of All Services by Series • Sunday Meditation Services • Tuesday Darshan Meditation Services • Friday Night Healing Meditation Services • Satsangs

Book Excerpts**: All Excerpts • Satsang with Swami Shankarananda

Workshops (formerly eCourses): All Workshops • The Spiritual Art of Intentions: Creating a Life You Love • Pillars of Self-Realization: 50 Days with Swami Shankarananda • Love: The Eternal Flame of Life Within You • Wisdom: Discovering the Peace in Our True Nature

*Also available to Free Subscribers**Select posts also available to Free Subscribers

Consider making a financial contribution to Awake Yoga Meditation

Your generosity makes it possible for AYM to share Kriya Yoga, meditations, and teachings of truth with people around the world. It also allows the community to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). The presiding teacher for Awake Yoga Meditation is Swami Nityananda.

Consider making a financial contribution to Swami’s Bowl

As the presiding teacher, Swami Nityananda selflessly offers her wisdom without taking a salary from Awake Yoga Meditation. Your gift honors her giving and ensures she can continue to share her invaluable teachings. The tradition of meditation communities like Awake Yoga Meditation is to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). All of the other myriad expenses of life are offered from student to teacher through Swami’s Bowl.

Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dear Choose Happy Community,

It’s easy to ask why there isn’t more peace in the world. This teaching gently turns the question inward: peace begins within each of us. As St. Francis reminds us, peace is not just something we speak about—it’s something we live and embody. When peace is rooted in the heart, it naturally radiates through our presence, our energy, and our actions. Real change starts from the inside out.

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the video:

“So I know that many people say, ‘Well, why can’t we just have peace in the world?’ Peace starts here. It starts within each of us. And so a number of teachers over the years have said this. ”One of the ways that St. Francis put it was ‘Before peace is on your lips, make sure that even deeper peace is in your heart.’ And so he was saying peace is not a thing that’s of the mouth, it’s not a thing of words. It’s a thing to live. It’s a thing to embody. It’s a thing to be, so that no extra words are necessary, because the peace is already there. It’s in your energy, it’s in your body.”

We also shared this video on YouTube, but wanted you to be able to have it on your Substack video player as well, in case you prefer that.

Having it on Substack makes it easy for you to see any other podcasts, videos, articles, or full meditation services that might be available in the Self Mastery by clicking here.

If you have heard this teaching before, we invite you — as Swami so often invites us — to hear it as if you are hearing it for the first time. Often we receive these teachings right when we need them.

In loving service,Awake Yoga Meditation

Everything available to a paid subscriber. Are you one yet?

This is a free post made available to everyone. If you are not yet a paid subscriber to Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda, consider becoming one today to receive exclusive audio talks, articles, meditation service replays, access to the archives, and so much more.

Podcast Episodes*: All Episodes

Darshan Articles*: All Articles

From the Founder Series: All Series • Mantra Series • St. Francis Prayer Series

Live Meditation Replays: All Services • Index of All Services by Series • Sunday Meditation Services • Tuesday Darshan Meditation Services • Friday Night Healing Meditation Services • Satsangs

Book Excerpts**: All Excerpts • Satsang with Swami Shankarananda

Workshops (formerly eCourses): All Workshops • The Spiritual Art of Intentions: Creating a Life You Love • Pillars of Self-Realization: 50 Days with Swami Shankarananda • Love: The Eternal Flame of Life Within You • Wisdom: Discovering the Peace in Our True Nature

*Also available to Free Subscribers**Select posts also available to Free Subscribers

Consider making a financial contribution to Awake Yoga Meditation

Your generosity makes it possible for AYM to share Kriya Yoga, meditations, and teachings of truth with people around the world. It also allows the community to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). The presiding teacher for Awake Yoga Meditation is Swami Nityananda.

Consider making a financial contribution to Swami’s Bowl

As the presiding teacher, Swami Nityananda selflessly offers her wisdom without taking a salary from Awake Yoga Meditation. Your gift honors her giving and ensures she can continue to share her invaluable teachings. The tradition of meditation communities like Awake Yoga Meditation is to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). All of the other myriad expenses of life are offered from student to teacher through Swami’s Bowl.

Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dear Choose Happy Community,

No matter what you’re going through—fear, exhaustion, confusion, or pain, you are not separate from light. This teaching reminds us that healing begins with honesty: naming what we truly feel and bringing it into the heart. The light does not interfere with our freedom, so we are invited to ask. The moment we do, support begins to move. Even when you feel alone, you are surrounded by luminosity waiting to respond.

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the video:

“For anyone, no matter what it is that you’re going through, if you give yourself the gift of going to the heart, and give yourself the gift. He’s being very emotionally honest: naming whatever it is that you’re feeling, naming whatever it is that you’re thinking, naming what your questions are, but then asking for the light within you to bring luminosity.

“Someone said to me recently, do we even have to ask? And I said, until you are completely merged in Divine Oneness, please ask. And the reason for that is, there’s, I call it, it’s like a mandate of non-interference. The light will not interfere with our freedom, so it really helps to ask for the light to help.

“And so the moment that you ask, it’s like each of us is actually, if you could only see this, we’re surrounded by light all the time. And so even if you feel cut off, if you feel what he’s naming right here: If you feel despair, fatigue, sleepless nights, fears, worries, pain, hurt, confused, tired, weary, whatever it is that you feel, you’re actually surrounded by light. And it’s when you ask and you go into the heart and you listen, that the light is able to unfold, that the light is able to rush to your assistance, to your support.”

We also shared this video on YouTube, but wanted you to be able to have it on your Substack video player as well, in case you prefer that.

Having it on Substack makes it easy for you to see any other podcasts, videos, articles, or full meditation services that might be available in the Sunday Meditation by clicking here.

If you have heard this teaching before, we invite you — as Swami so often invites us — to hear it as if you are hearing it for the first time. Often we receive these teachings right when we need them.

In loving service,Awake Yoga Meditation

Everything available to a paid subscriber. Are you one yet?

This is a free post made available to everyone. If you are not yet a paid subscriber to Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda, consider becoming one today to receive exclusive audio talks, articles, meditation service replays, access to the archives, and so much more.

Podcast Episodes*: All Episodes

Darshan Articles*: All Articles

From the Founder Series: All Series • Mantra Series • St. Francis Prayer Series

Live Meditation Replays: All Services • Index of All Services by Series • Sunday Meditation Services • Tuesday Darshan Meditation Services • Friday Night Healing Meditation Services • Satsangs

Book Excerpts**: All Excerpts • Satsang with Swami Shankarananda

Workshops (formerly eCourses): All Workshops • The Spiritual Art of Intentions: Creating a Life You Love • Pillars of Self-Realization: 50 Days with Swami Shankarananda • Love: The Eternal Flame of Life Within You • Wisdom: Discovering the Peace in Our True Nature

*Also available to Free Subscribers**Select posts also available to Free Subscribers

Consider making a financial contribution to Awake Yoga Meditation

Your generosity makes it possible for AYM to share Kriya Yoga, meditations, and teachings of truth with people around the world. It also allows the community to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). The presiding teacher for Awake Yoga Meditation is Swami Nityananda.

Consider making a financial contribution to Swami’s Bowl

As the presiding teacher, Swami Nityananda selflessly offers her wisdom without taking a salary from Awake Yoga Meditation. Your gift honors her giving and ensures she can continue to share her invaluable teachings. The tradition of meditation communities like Awake Yoga Meditation is to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). All of the other myriad expenses of life are offered from student to teacher through Swami’s Bowl.

Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dear Choose Happy Community,

Do yogis have special powers? This teaching gently reframes the question. True power isn’t something flashy or extraordinary. It’s the quiet strength to choose love in the middle of chaos, to choose peace when fear is loud, and to stay rooted in understanding no matter what arises. Everything else may be beautiful along the way, but the real gift is learning to love—again and again. That is a power beyond words.

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the video:

“ The real power of a yogi is to be like Christ when he stepped off the boat and said to the storm ‘peace,’ and there was peace. The real power of the yogi is to be like the Buddha when there was a rushing elephant, and he was so full of calm that the elephant ceased moving, and found peace.

“So our power is the ability to choose love. It’s the ability to choose peace. It’s the ability to choose understanding. That is the real gift. Everything else is just shiny stuff along the way. And shiny things are beautiful. There’s nothing wrong with admiring beautiful things. That’s the gift of being in a human body.

“And it is good for us to practice discernment to know this is just a shiny thing on the way. But man, where I’m going, it goes beyond what I can articulate. That’s how beautiful it is. So that’s our real power. Our power is the ability to love, again and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again forever. Isn’t that amazing?”

We also shared this video on YouTube, but wanted you to be able to have it on your Substack video player as well, in case you prefer that.

Having it on Substack makes it easy for you to see any other podcasts, videos, articles, or full meditation services that might be available in the Truth, Love and Justice by clicking here.

If you have heard this teaching before, we invite you — as Swami so often invites us — to hear it as if you are hearing it for the first time. Often we receive these teachings right when we need them.

In loving service,Awake Yoga Meditation

Everything available to a paid subscriber. Are you one yet?

This is a free post made available to everyone. If you are not yet a paid subscriber to Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda, consider becoming one today to receive exclusive audio talks, articles, meditation service replays, access to the archives, and so much more.

Podcast Episodes*: All Episodes

Darshan Articles*: All Articles

From the Founder Series: All Series • Mantra Series • St. Francis Prayer Series

Live Meditation Replays: All Services • Index of All Services by Series • Sunday Meditation Services • Tuesday Darshan Meditation Services • Friday Night Healing Meditation Services • Satsangs

Book Excerpts**: All Excerpts • Satsang with Swami Shankarananda

Workshops (formerly eCourses): All Workshops • The Spiritual Art of Intentions: Creating a Life You Love • Pillars of Self-Realization: 50 Days with Swami Shankarananda • Love: The Eternal Flame of Life Within You • Wisdom: Discovering the Peace in Our True Nature

*Also available to Free Subscribers**Select posts also available to Free Subscribers

Consider making a financial contribution to Awake Yoga Meditation

Your generosity makes it possible for AYM to share Kriya Yoga, meditations, and teachings of truth with people around the world. It also allows the community to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). The presiding teacher for Awake Yoga Meditation is Swami Nityananda.

Consider making a financial contribution to Swami’s Bowl

As the presiding teacher, Swami Nityananda selflessly offers her wisdom without taking a salary from Awake Yoga Meditation. Your gift honors her giving and ensures she can continue to share her invaluable teachings. The tradition of meditation communities like Awake Yoga Meditation is to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). All of the other myriad expenses of life are offered from student to teacher through Swami’s Bowl.

Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dear Choose Happy Community,

So much of our energy gets pulled into arguments, restlessness, and mental noise. This teaching invites us to pause and ask a powerful question: Am I being carried away, or am I staying centered and awake? As we purify the mind and open the heart to radiance, something simple and profound returns. Joy becomes available again, not because life changes, but because we do. The joy of being awake is not reserved for a few. It’s available to all of us.

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the video:

“For all of us just to notice, am I allowing myself to be carried away by the arguments and by the restlessness, or am I staying focused and centered? Am I purifying my mind? Am I opening my heart and inviting my mind to be filled with radiance? And as I do that, I make myself available to the joy of being awake.

“So the Buddha is the one who is awake, and this is something that’s available to all of us, that we all can come from the joy of being awake.”

We also shared this video on YouTube, but wanted you to be able to have it on your Substack video player as well, in case you prefer that.

Having it on Substack makes it easy for you to see any other podcasts, videos, articles, or full meditation services that might be available in the Energy Mastery by clicking here.

If you have heard this teaching before, we invite you — as Swami so often invites us — to hear it as if you are hearing it for the first time. Often we receive these teachings right when we need them.

In loving service,Awake Yoga Meditation

Everything available to a paid subscriber. Are you one yet?

This is a free post made available to everyone. If you are not yet a paid subscriber to Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda, consider becoming one today to receive exclusive audio talks, articles, meditation service replays, access to the archives, and so much more.

Podcast Episodes*: All Episodes

Darshan Articles*: All Articles

From the Founder Series: All Series • Mantra Series • St. Francis Prayer Series

Live Meditation Replays: All Services • Index of All Services by Series • Sunday Meditation Services • Tuesday Darshan Meditation Services • Friday Night Healing Meditation Services • Satsangs

Book Excerpts**: All Excerpts • Satsang with Swami Shankarananda

Workshops (formerly eCourses): All Workshops • The Spiritual Art of Intentions: Creating a Life You Love • Pillars of Self-Realization: 50 Days with Swami Shankarananda • Love: The Eternal Flame of Life Within You • Wisdom: Discovering the Peace in Our True Nature

*Also available to Free Subscribers**Select posts also available to Free Subscribers

Consider making a financial contribution to Awake Yoga Meditation

Your generosity makes it possible for AYM to share Kriya Yoga, meditations, and teachings of truth with people around the world. It also allows the community to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). The presiding teacher for Awake Yoga Meditation is Swami Nityananda.

Consider making a financial contribution to Swami’s Bowl

As the presiding teacher, Swami Nityananda selflessly offers her wisdom without taking a salary from Awake Yoga Meditation. Your gift honors her giving and ensures she can continue to share her invaluable teachings. The tradition of meditation communities like Awake Yoga Meditation is to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). All of the other myriad expenses of life are offered from student to teacher through Swami’s Bowl.

Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dear Choose Happy Community,

When anxiety or insecurity takes over, it’s easy to feel unsteady and unsure of your next step. This teaching offers a clear and grounding reminder: go straight to the Divine, first and always. When spiritual purpose becomes your anchor, clarity and peace follow naturally. From that place, strength grows, fear loosens its grip, and moving forward becomes possible no matter what’s happening around you.

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the video:

“ Jesus decides to just let go by surrendering his personal will. He says ‘nevertheless, not my will, but thy will.’ So if ever we feel like we are at the precipice, we’re on the edge of giving up: ‘not my will.’ I would like to stop here. ‘Nevertheless, not my will, your will be done,’ and then instantly we put ourselves into the energy of forward motion, into the energy of healing.

“And so that’s another way to look at letting go versus giving up. If we are in the perspective and the energy of letting go, we make it possible for the Divine to heal the patterns within us that make us want to give up, if that makes sense.

“But if we come to the edge and we just decide, ‘This is it for me. I’m going to contract'. And we make that intentional choice, that is a choice that we make: ‘I can’t do this anymore. I’m angry, I’m giving into my anger. I’m frustrated, I’m giving into my frustration. I’m sad, I’m giving into my sadness.’ We make it harder for light to come in and to alleviate, to heal that energy.”

We also shared this video on YouTube, but wanted you to be able to have it on your Substack video player as well, in case you prefer that.

Having it on Substack makes it easy for you to see any other podcasts, videos, articles, or full meditation services that might be available in the Truth, Love and Justice by clicking here.

If you have heard this teaching before, we invite you — as Swami so often invites us — to hear it as if you are hearing it for the first time. Often we receive these teachings right when we need them.

In loving service,Awake Yoga Meditation

Everything available to a paid subscriber. Are you one yet?

This is a free post made available to everyone. If you are not yet a paid subscriber to Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda, consider becoming one today to receive exclusive audio talks, articles, meditation service replays, access to the archives, and so much more.

Podcast Episodes*: All Episodes

Darshan Articles*: All Articles

From the Founder Series: All Series • Mantra Series • St. Francis Prayer Series

Live Meditation Replays: All Services • Index of All Services by Series • Sunday Meditation Services • Tuesday Darshan Meditation Services • Friday Night Healing Meditation Services • Satsangs

Book Excerpts**: All Excerpts • Satsang with Swami Shankarananda

Workshops (formerly eCourses): All Workshops • The Spiritual Art of Intentions: Creating a Life You Love • Pillars of Self-Realization: 50 Days with Swami Shankarananda • Love: The Eternal Flame of Life Within You • Wisdom: Discovering the Peace in Our True Nature

*Also available to Free Subscribers**Select posts also available to Free Subscribers

Consider making a financial contribution to Awake Yoga Meditation

Your generosity makes it possible for AYM to share Kriya Yoga, meditations, and teachings of truth with people around the world. It also allows the community to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). The presiding teacher for Awake Yoga Meditation is Swami Nityananda.

Consider making a financial contribution to Swami’s Bowl

As the presiding teacher, Swami Nityananda selflessly offers her wisdom without taking a salary from Awake Yoga Meditation. Your gift honors her giving and ensures she can continue to share her invaluable teachings. The tradition of meditation communities like Awake Yoga Meditation is to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). All of the other myriad expenses of life are offered from student to teacher through Swami’s Bowl.

Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dear Choose Happy Community,

When anxiety or insecurity takes over, it’s easy to feel unsteady and unsure of your next step. This teaching offers a clear and grounding reminder: go straight to the Divine, first and always. When spiritual purpose becomes your anchor, clarity and peace follow naturally. From that place, strength grows, fear loosens its grip, and moving forward becomes possible no matter what’s happening around you.

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the video:

“ Go straight to the Divine first, last, and always. Put your spiritual purpose first, always. And what happens then is you gain clarity and you gain peace. You gain skill, you gain strength, you gain fearlessness, you gain the ability to move forward no matter what is happening in time and space.”

We also shared this video on YouTube, but wanted you to be able to have it on your Substack video player as well, in case you prefer that.

Having it on Substack makes it easy for you to see any other podcasts, videos, articles, or full meditation services that might be available in the Energy Mastery by clicking here.

If you have heard this teaching before, we invite you — as Swami so often invites us — to hear it as if you are hearing it for the first time. Often we receive these teachings right when we need them.

In loving service,Awake Yoga Meditation

Everything available to a paid subscriber. Are you one yet?

This is a free post made available to everyone. If you are not yet a paid subscriber to Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda, consider becoming one today to receive exclusive audio talks, articles, meditation service replays, access to the archives, and so much more.

Podcast Episodes*: All Episodes

Darshan Articles*: All Articles

From the Founder Series: All Series • Mantra Series • St. Francis Prayer Series

Live Meditation Replays: All Services • Index of All Services by Series • Sunday Meditation Services • Tuesday Darshan Meditation Services • Friday Night Healing Meditation Services • Satsangs

Book Excerpts**: All Excerpts • Satsang with Swami Shankarananda

Workshops (formerly eCourses): All Workshops • The Spiritual Art of Intentions: Creating a Life You Love • Pillars of Self-Realization: 50 Days with Swami Shankarananda • Love: The Eternal Flame of Life Within You • Wisdom: Discovering the Peace in Our True Nature

*Also available to Free Subscribers**Select posts also available to Free Subscribers

Consider making a financial contribution to Awake Yoga Meditation

Your generosity makes it possible for AYM to share Kriya Yoga, meditations, and teachings of truth with people around the world. It also allows the community to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). The presiding teacher for Awake Yoga Meditation is Swami Nityananda.

Consider making a financial contribution to Swami’s Bowl

As the presiding teacher, Swami Nityananda selflessly offers her wisdom without taking a salary from Awake Yoga Meditation. Your gift honors her giving and ensures she can continue to share her invaluable teachings. The tradition of meditation communities like Awake Yoga Meditation is to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). All of the other myriad expenses of life are offered from student to teacher through Swami’s Bowl.

Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dear Choose Happy Community,

So much of our experience is shaped by what we attach our sense of I am to. This teaching invites us to gently notice whether we’re energizing fear, anxiety, or complaint—or nurturing what we truly love and want to grow. Speaking honestly about our struggles in safe, supportive spaces allows light to enter and loosen what feels heavy. And beneath every human difficulty, there is a vast, pure spaciousness within you that nothing can harm. Awareness opens the door back to that freedom.

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the video:

“ As a preponderance, like, do I attach ‘I am’ a majority of the times, to things that I love, and would love to energize, and would love to help make visible in my life, in my friends, in my family, in my work, wherever I am in my world? Or, do I unintentionally constrict my ‘I am’ by saying ‘I am complaining, I am afraid, I am anxious.’ And again, I want to be really clear, like when people have meditation conferences with me, they say all of those things. And that’s helpful because when you allow the truth to be lifted into view in a therapeutic, helpful context like that, then the light is coming in and it’s helping lift away those things, right?

“So, choose your situations where you’re talking about how you feel so that you have trusted confidential situations in which you can say, ‘yes, my human self is really struggling’ with whatever it is that you’re struggling with. And then also know that deeper than that, there is this expansiveness, this spaciousness, this purity of your being that absolutely nothing can touch.”

We also shared this video on YouTube, but wanted you to be able to have it on your Substack video player as well, in case you prefer that.

Having it on Substack makes it easy for you to see any other podcasts, videos, articles, or full meditation services that might be available in the Energy Mastery by clicking here.

If you have heard this teaching before, we invite you — as Swami so often invites us — to hear it as if you are hearing it for the first time. Often we receive these teachings right when we need them.

In loving service,Awake Yoga Meditation

Everything available to a paid subscriber. Are you one yet?

This is a free post made available to everyone. If you are not yet a paid subscriber to Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda, consider becoming one today to receive exclusive audio talks, articles, meditation service replays, access to the archives, and so much more.

Podcast Episodes*: All Episodes

Darshan Articles*: All Articles

From the Founder Series: All Series • Mantra Series • St. Francis Prayer Series

Live Meditation Replays: All Services • Index of All Services by Series • Sunday Meditation Services • Tuesday Darshan Meditation Services • Friday Night Healing Meditation Services • Satsangs

Book Excerpts**: All Excerpts • Satsang with Swami Shankarananda

Workshops (formerly eCourses): All Workshops • The Spiritual Art of Intentions: Creating a Life You Love • Pillars of Self-Realization: 50 Days with Swami Shankarananda • Love: The Eternal Flame of Life Within You • Wisdom: Discovering the Peace in Our True Nature

*Also available to Free Subscribers**Select posts also available to Free Subscribers

Consider making a financial contribution to Awake Yoga Meditation

Your generosity makes it possible for AYM to share Kriya Yoga, meditations, and teachings of truth with people around the world. It also allows the community to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). The presiding teacher for Awake Yoga Meditation is Swami Nityananda.

Consider making a financial contribution to Swami’s Bowl

As the presiding teacher, Swami Nityananda selflessly offers her wisdom without taking a salary from Awake Yoga Meditation. Your gift honors her giving and ensures she can continue to share her invaluable teachings. The tradition of meditation communities like Awake Yoga Meditation is to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). All of the other myriad expenses of life are offered from student to teacher through Swami’s Bowl.

Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dear Choose Happy Community,

When doubt clouds your understanding or conflicting opinions pull you in different directions, this teaching offers a simple return point: “I am open to seeing clearly.” Discernment isn’t something reserved for rare moments—it’s a daily practice woven into conversations, decisions, rest, and reflection. The yogic wisdom reminds us that what is real does not disappear, and what is unreal cannot last. When we establish ourselves in truth, kindness and clarity naturally guide how we move through the world.

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the video:

“If you’re aware of conflicting opinions, if you’re aware that doubt has clouded your understanding, recommit: ‘I am open to seeing clearly.’ That’s what discernment is. Discernment is seeing clearly. And it is required at any time, if you’re a human in time and space, discernment is always required.

“And so just in the morning: ‘I am open to seeing clearly’; before you go into a business meeting: ‘I am open to seeing clearly’; before you have a conversation, before you meditate, before you sleep at night: ‘I am open to seeing clearly.’ “The Bhagavad-Gita tells us, and this is one of my favorite teachings from the Bhagavad-Gita, ‘The unreal hath no existence. The real can never cease to be.’”And so establish yourself in the real and ask yourself, ‘What do I know is real?’ And then come from always that kindness, come from always that respect, and it will allow you to navigate all things in time and space.”

We also shared this video on YouTube, but wanted you to be able to have it on your Substack video player as well, in case you prefer that.

Having it on Substack makes it easy for you to see any other podcasts, videos, articles, or full meditation services that might be available in the Energy Mastery by clicking here.

If you have heard this teaching before, we invite you — as Swami so often invites us — to hear it as if you are hearing it for the first time. Often we receive these teachings right when we need them.

In loving service,Awake Yoga Meditation

Everything available to a paid subscriber. Are you one yet?

This is a free post made available to everyone. If you are not yet a paid subscriber to Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda, consider becoming one today to receive exclusive audio talks, articles, meditation service replays, access to the archives, and so much more.

Podcast Episodes*: All Episodes

Darshan Articles*: All Articles

From the Founder Series: All Series • Mantra Series • St. Francis Prayer Series

Live Meditation Replays: All Services • Index of All Services by Series • Sunday Meditation Services • Tuesday Darshan Meditation Services • Friday Night Healing Meditation Services • Satsangs

Book Excerpts**: All Excerpts • Satsang with Swami Shankarananda

Workshops (formerly eCourses): All Workshops • The Spiritual Art of Intentions: Creating a Life You Love • Pillars of Self-Realization: 50 Days with Swami Shankarananda • Love: The Eternal Flame of Life Within You • Wisdom: Discovering the Peace in Our True Nature

*Also available to Free Subscribers**Select posts also available to Free Subscribers

Consider making a financial contribution to Awake Yoga Meditation

Your generosity makes it possible for AYM to share Kriya Yoga, meditations, and teachings of truth with people around the world. It also allows the community to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). The presiding teacher for Awake Yoga Meditation is Swami Nityananda.

Consider making a financial contribution to Swami’s Bowl

As the presiding teacher, Swami Nityananda selflessly offers her wisdom without taking a salary from Awake Yoga Meditation. Your gift honors her giving and ensures she can continue to share her invaluable teachings. The tradition of meditation communities like Awake Yoga Meditation is to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). All of the other myriad expenses of life are offered from student to teacher through Swami’s Bowl.

Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dear Choose Happy Community,

When unhappiness shows up, the invitation isn’t to fight it—but to look deeper. This teaching reminds us that beneath every feeling of weakness is a strength that has always been present within you. Before any story, label, or identity, there is simply I Am. When you rest in that presence with care and gentleness, clarity and wholeness naturally arise. You are not broken—you are remembering who you are.

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the video:

“ Anywhere that we have a feeling of unhappiness or anywhere that we have a feeling of ‘I would love to let go of that weakness and gain clarity and strength,’ it’s looking deeper than the weakness and connecting with the strength that is already present with you at the core of your being. ”This is the strength that is with you before you come into embodiment. This is a strength that he is talking about that says ‘I am’ before you attach anything to ‘I am.’ ”And so just allow yourself, if you can say in your heart three times silently, ‘I am.’ Don’t add anything to it. Just ‘I am.’ Say it with caring, with love, with joy, with light. ‘I am.’ And just allow yourself to feel the purity and the wholeness of that being.”

We also shared this video on YouTube, but wanted you to be able to have it on your Substack video player as well, in case you prefer that.

Having it on Substack makes it easy for you to see any other podcasts, videos, articles, or full meditation services that might be available in the Energy Mastery by clicking here.

If you have heard this teaching before, we invite you — as Swami so often invites us — to hear it as if you are hearing it for the first time. Often we receive these teachings right when we need them.

In loving service,Awake Yoga Meditation

Everything available to a paid subscriber. Are you one yet?

This is a free post made available to everyone. If you are not yet a paid subscriber to Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda, consider becoming one today to receive exclusive audio talks, articles, meditation service replays, access to the archives, and so much more.

Podcast Episodes*: All Episodes

Darshan Articles*: All Articles

From the Founder Series: All Series • Mantra Series • St. Francis Prayer Series

Live Meditation Replays: All Services • Index of All Services by Series • Sunday Meditation Services • Tuesday Darshan Meditation Services • Friday Night Healing Meditation Services • Satsangs

Book Excerpts**: All Excerpts • Satsang with Swami Shankarananda

Workshops (formerly eCourses): All Workshops • The Spiritual Art of Intentions: Creating a Life You Love • Pillars of Self-Realization: 50 Days with Swami Shankarananda • Love: The Eternal Flame of Life Within You • Wisdom: Discovering the Peace in Our True Nature

*Also available to Free Subscribers**Select posts also available to Free Subscribers

Consider making a financial contribution to Awake Yoga Meditation

Your generosity makes it possible for AYM to share Kriya Yoga, meditations, and teachings of truth with people around the world. It also allows the community to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). The presiding teacher for Awake Yoga Meditation is Swami Nityananda.

Consider making a financial contribution to Swami’s Bowl

As the presiding teacher, Swami Nityananda selflessly offers her wisdom without taking a salary from Awake Yoga Meditation. Your gift honors her giving and ensures she can continue to share her invaluable teachings. The tradition of meditation communities like Awake Yoga Meditation is to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). All of the other myriad expenses of life are offered from student to teacher through Swami’s Bowl.

Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dear Choose Happy Community,

In moments of overwhelm, it can be hard to tell what’s spiritual insight and what’s nervous system overload. This teaching gently reminds us that within every human lives multiple capacities—the capacity for harm, and the capacity for love.What grows is determined by what we choose to think, feel, and energize. When we pause and choose understanding over hatred, we begin to expand what is highest and best within us. Awareness turns reaction into conscious choice.

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the video:

“ In the yogic tradition, the concept of evil and also of good just relates to capacity. So within every human, there is the capacity to cause harm. There is the capacity to choose violence. There is the capacity to have thoughts that are not for the highest or the best. There is also the capacity to choose goodness. There’s the capacity to choose understanding. There’s the capacity to choose love. There is the capacity to choose extending a hand. ”So that exists within each of us. And then as we move throughout our human experiences, the thoughts we think and the choices that we make, help to expand either of those capacities.

“So again, from the yogic perspective, it is just about what am I choosing? Am I choosing that which is the highest and the best, or am I choosing that which keeps hatred activated?”

We also shared this video on YouTube, but wanted you to be able to have it on your Substack video player as well, in case you prefer that.

Having it on Substack makes it easy for you to see any other podcasts, videos, articles, or full meditation services that might be available in the Truth, Love and Justice by clicking here.

If you have heard this teaching before, we invite you — as Swami so often invites us — to hear it as if you are hearing it for the first time. Often we receive these teachings right when we need them.

In loving service,Awake Yoga Meditation

Everything available to a paid subscriber. Are you one yet?

This is a free post made available to everyone. If you are not yet a paid subscriber to Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda, consider becoming one today to receive exclusive audio talks, articles, meditation service replays, access to the archives, and so much more.

Podcast Episodes*: All Episodes

Darshan Articles*: All Articles

From the Founder Series: All Series • Mantra Series • St. Francis Prayer Series

Live Meditation Replays: All Services • Index of All Services by Series • Sunday Meditation Services • Tuesday Darshan Meditation Services • Friday Night Healing Meditation Services • Satsangs

Book Excerpts**: All Excerpts • Satsang with Swami Shankarananda

Workshops (formerly eCourses): All Workshops • The Spiritual Art of Intentions: Creating a Life You Love • Pillars of Self-Realization: 50 Days with Swami Shankarananda • Love: The Eternal Flame of Life Within You • Wisdom: Discovering the Peace in Our True Nature

*Also available to Free Subscribers**Select posts also available to Free Subscribers

Consider making a financial contribution to Awake Yoga Meditation

Your generosity makes it possible for AYM to share Kriya Yoga, meditations, and teachings of truth with people around the world. It also allows the community to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). The presiding teacher for Awake Yoga Meditation is Swami Nityananda.

Consider making a financial contribution to Swami’s Bowl

As the presiding teacher, Swami Nityananda selflessly offers her wisdom without taking a salary from Awake Yoga Meditation. Your gift honors her giving and ensures she can continue to share her invaluable teachings. The tradition of meditation communities like Awake Yoga Meditation is to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). All of the other myriad expenses of life are offered from student to teacher through Swami’s Bowl.

Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dear Choose Happy Community,

If you’ve been feeling exhausted, tense, or mentally drained, this teaching offers an important insight. Neuroscience shows that negative self-talk activates the same stress response as real physical danger. In other words, when we attack ourselves with our thoughts, the body believes it’s under threat. Energy begins to return when we notice the pattern and choose to stop. Self-kindness is not weakness—it’s a powerful way to restore vitality.

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the video:

“They say that if a car is about to hit your body physically, that activates the same regions in the brain and the same cascade of stress responses that is activated by negative self-talk, like being about to be run over by a car, like in imminent danger of being run over by a car. Negative self-talk has the same consequences in your brain in terms of creating the stress response, in terms of creating sort of this, physical unease, but also emotional unease, but also mental unease. ”And so there’s a tremendous benefit, if I have been engaging in negative self-talk, to just say to myself, ‘I’m going to stop, I’m going to drop that.’

“And then also, this is really interesting as well. So one of the researchers, he doesn’t say that it’s negative self-talk, he says it’s self-attacking. He says like, that’s actually what you’re doing, you’re practicing self-attacking if you’re engaging in negative self-talk.”

We also shared this video on YouTube, but wanted you to be able to have it on your Substack video player as well, in case you prefer that.

Having it on Substack makes it easy for you to see any other podcasts, videos, articles, or full meditation services that might be available in the Energy Mastery by clicking here.

If you have heard this teaching before, we invite you — as Swami so often invites us — to hear it as if you are hearing it for the first time. Often we receive these teachings right when we need them.

In loving service,Awake Yoga Meditation

Everything available to a paid subscriber. Are you one yet?

This is a free post made available to everyone. If you are not yet a paid subscriber to Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda, consider becoming one today to receive exclusive audio talks, articles, meditation service replays, access to the archives, and so much more.

Podcast Episodes*: All Episodes

Darshan Articles*: All Articles

From the Founder Series: All Series • Mantra Series • St. Francis Prayer Series

Live Meditation Replays: All Services • Index of All Services by Series • Sunday Meditation Services • Tuesday Darshan Meditation Services • Friday Night Healing Meditation Services • Satsangs

Book Excerpts**: All Excerpts • Satsang with Swami Shankarananda

Workshops (formerly eCourses): All Workshops • The Spiritual Art of Intentions: Creating a Life You Love • Pillars of Self-Realization: 50 Days with Swami Shankarananda • Love: The Eternal Flame of Life Within You • Wisdom: Discovering the Peace in Our True Nature

*Also available to Free Subscribers**Select posts also available to Free Subscribers

Consider making a financial contribution to Awake Yoga Meditation

Your generosity makes it possible for AYM to share Kriya Yoga, meditations, and teachings of truth with people around the world. It also allows the community to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). The presiding teacher for Awake Yoga Meditation is Swami Nityananda.

Consider making a financial contribution to Swami’s Bowl

As the presiding teacher, Swami Nityananda selflessly offers her wisdom without taking a salary from Awake Yoga Meditation. Your gift honors her giving and ensures she can continue to share her invaluable teachings. The tradition of meditation communities like Awake Yoga Meditation is to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). All of the other myriad expenses of life are offered from student to teacher through Swami’s Bowl.

Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dear Choose Happy Community,

In moments of fear or self-doubt, it’s easy to forget who we truly are. This teaching invites us to return to the heart, where each breath reconnects us with the immortal Self—the vast, infinite love described in the Katha Upanishad. When we breathe into that presence, fear begins to soften, and pain and shame lose their grip. The love within us is larger than any limitation. Every breath is a doorway back to our true nature.

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the video:

“ In the Katha Upanishad, this is also named as the Self with a capital S. The immortal Self is the sun shining in the sky, the breeze blowing in space, the fire burning on the altar, the guest dwelling in the house. The immortal Self is in all humans. The immortal Self is the fish that is born in water, the plant that grows in soil, the river that gushes from the mountain, the changeless reality, the illimitable.

“The immortal Self, the adorable One, seeded in the heart is the power that gives breath. So what this means is every time you breathe into the heart, you are connecting with pure divine, infinite love. Like if you can imagine all the love that you have ever known, and then you multiply that, like the Upanishads do these thought experiments, they say multiply that by a thousand, and then multiply that by a thousand and then multiply that by a thousand and keep going on.

“That’s the love that is there every time you breathe into your heart. And so that is all powerful. That melts away fear. It melts away pain. It melts away shame. It melts away limitation. It melts away self-judgment.”

We also shared this video on YouTube, but wanted you to be able to have it on your Substack video player as well, in case you prefer that.

Having it on Substack makes it easy for you to see any other podcasts, videos, articles, or full meditation services that might be available in the Energy Mastery by clicking here.

If you have heard this teaching before, we invite you — as Swami so often invites us — to hear it as if you are hearing it for the first time. Often we receive these teachings right when we need them.

In loving service,Awake Yoga Meditation

Everything available to a paid subscriber. Are you one yet?

This is a free post made available to everyone. If you are not yet a paid subscriber to Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda, consider becoming one today to receive exclusive audio talks, articles, meditation service replays, access to the archives, and so much more.

Podcast Episodes*: All Episodes

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From the Founder Series: All Series • Mantra Series • St. Francis Prayer Series

Live Meditation Replays: All Services • Index of All Services by Series • Sunday Meditation Services • Tuesday Darshan Meditation Services • Friday Night Healing Meditation Services • Satsangs

Book Excerpts**: All Excerpts • Satsang with Swami Shankarananda

Workshops (formerly eCourses): All Workshops • The Spiritual Art of Intentions: Creating a Life You Love • Pillars of Self-Realization: 50 Days with Swami Shankarananda • Love: The Eternal Flame of Life Within You • Wisdom: Discovering the Peace in Our True Nature

*Also available to Free Subscribers**Select posts also available to Free Subscribers

Consider making a financial contribution to Awake Yoga Meditation

Your generosity makes it possible for AYM to share Kriya Yoga, meditations, and teachings of truth with people around the world. It also allows the community to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). The presiding teacher for Awake Yoga Meditation is Swami Nityananda.

Consider making a financial contribution to Swami’s Bowl

As the presiding teacher, Swami Nityananda selflessly offers her wisdom without taking a salary from Awake Yoga Meditation. Your gift honors her giving and ensures she can continue to share her invaluable teachings. The tradition of meditation communities like Awake Yoga Meditation is to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). All of the other myriad expenses of life are offered from student to teacher through Swami’s Bowl.

Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dear Choose Happy Community,

When we feel tense and exhausted, it’s often not just from doing too much—it’s from how we relate to time itself. This gentle teaching invites us to pause and ask: What is my relationship with time? Swami Nityananda reminds us that time isn’t our enemy—it’s the Divine, showing up as support, as grace, as the very structure that carries us. When we shift from urgency to curiosity, from resistance to play, peace becomes possible—even joyful.

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the video:

“ If I am feeling tense and exhausted and I would like to feel at ease, I would like to be able to let go of stress, I’m inviting us to tune into what is my relationship with time. So just ask yourself, ‘What is my relationship with time?’ And I think that humans, very often, they can have like this sense of anxiety or this sense of pressure or this sense of urgency in relation to time.

“But then sometimes there’s another response, which is, ‘I just want to avoid it. I just want to pretend time doesn’t exist.’ And so just notice where are you in that? And then remember this teaching from the Bhagavad-Gita, and this is chapter 10, verse 33: The Divine says, ‘I am time.’ Do you know what that means? That means time is actually our friend.

“Time is our companion. Time is a gift. Time is a form of support that the Divine gives us. The very next phrase, ‘I am time. I am the cosmic support of all that exists.’ And so to open, and I would invite you to have a sense of curiosity, a sense of play, a sense of humor. Can I open to have fun in my relationship with time?”

We also shared this video on YouTube, but wanted you to be able to have it on your Substack video player as well, in case you prefer that.

Having it on Substack makes it easy for you to see any other podcasts, videos, articles, or full meditation services that might be available in the Open to Clarity and Peace by clicking here.

If you have heard this teaching before, we invite you — as Swami so often invites us — to hear it as if you are hearing it for the first time. Often we receive these teachings right when we need them.

In loving service,Awake Yoga Meditation

Everything available to a paid subscriber. Are you one yet?

This is a free post made available to everyone. If you are not yet a paid subscriber to Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda, consider becoming one today to receive exclusive audio talks, articles, meditation service replays, access to the archives, and so much more.

Podcast Episodes*: All Episodes

Darshan Articles*: All Articles

From the Founder Series: All Series • Mantra Series • St. Francis Prayer Series

Live Meditation Replays: All Services • Index of All Services by Series • Sunday Meditation Services • Tuesday Darshan Meditation Services • Friday Night Healing Meditation Services • Satsangs

Book Excerpts**: All Excerpts • Satsang with Swami Shankarananda

Workshops (formerly eCourses): All Workshops • The Spiritual Art of Intentions: Creating a Life You Love • Pillars of Self-Realization: 50 Days with Swami Shankarananda • Love: The Eternal Flame of Life Within You • Wisdom: Discovering the Peace in Our True Nature

*Also available to Free Subscribers**Select posts also available to Free Subscribers

Consider making a financial contribution to Awake Yoga Meditation

Your generosity makes it possible for AYM to share Kriya Yoga, meditations, and teachings of truth with people around the world. It also allows the community to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). The presiding teacher for Awake Yoga Meditation is Swami Nityananda.

Consider making a financial contribution to Swami’s Bowl

As the presiding teacher, Swami Nityananda selflessly offers her wisdom without taking a salary from Awake Yoga Meditation. Your gift honors her giving and ensures she can continue to share her invaluable teachings. The tradition of meditation communities like Awake Yoga Meditation is to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). All of the other myriad expenses of life are offered from student to teacher through Swami’s Bowl.

Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dear Choose Happy Community,

When we long for connection, it’s easy to feel isolated or alone. This teaching reminds us that meditating with others—whether in person or at the same time—can reduce stress, support emotional balance, and help the mind become more flexible and steady. Most of all, it strengthens our ability to remember a deeper truth: I am love, and I am always connected. Community practice doesn’t just link us to others… it brings us home to ourselves.

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the video:

“ Community meditations, meditating at the same time with other people, reduces individual stress and also reduces societal stress. And so some of the mechanisms that science is aware of by which this happens when we meditate in community, it helps us enhance the adaptability within the way our brain is functioning.

“It helps us with our emotional regulation. It helps us with our attention and our memory. And so one of the things that means is it becomes easier for me to remember and to focus on that foundational realization ‘I am love. I’m always connected to the source of all the energy, the light, the healing, the growth, the inspiration, the expansion in the universe always.’

“And so it helps heal that feeling of isolation.”

We also shared this video on YouTube, but wanted you to be able to have it on your Substack video player as well, in case you prefer that.

Having it on Substack makes it easy for you to see any other podcasts, videos, articles, or full meditation services that might be available in the Open to Clarity and Peace by clicking here.

If you have heard this teaching before, we invite you — as Swami so often invites us — to hear it as if you are hearing it for the first time. Often we receive these teachings right when we need them.

In loving service,Awake Yoga Meditation

Everything available to a paid subscriber. Are you one yet?

This is a free post made available to everyone. If you are not yet a paid subscriber to Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda, consider becoming one today to receive exclusive audio talks, articles, meditation service replays, access to the archives, and so much more.

Podcast Episodes*: All Episodes

Darshan Articles*: All Articles

From the Founder Series: All Series • Mantra Series • St. Francis Prayer Series

Live Meditation Replays: All Services • Index of All Services by Series • Sunday Meditation Services • Tuesday Darshan Meditation Services • Friday Night Healing Meditation Services • Satsangs

Book Excerpts**: All Excerpts • Satsang with Swami Shankarananda

Workshops (formerly eCourses): All Workshops • The Spiritual Art of Intentions: Creating a Life You Love • Pillars of Self-Realization: 50 Days with Swami Shankarananda • Love: The Eternal Flame of Life Within You • Wisdom: Discovering the Peace in Our True Nature

*Also available to Free Subscribers**Select posts also available to Free Subscribers

Consider making a financial contribution to Awake Yoga Meditation

Your generosity makes it possible for AYM to share Kriya Yoga, meditations, and teachings of truth with people around the world. It also allows the community to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). The presiding teacher for Awake Yoga Meditation is Swami Nityananda.

Consider making a financial contribution to Swami’s Bowl

As the presiding teacher, Swami Nityananda selflessly offers her wisdom without taking a salary from Awake Yoga Meditation. Your gift honors her giving and ensures she can continue to share her invaluable teachings. The tradition of meditation communities like Awake Yoga Meditation is to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). All of the other myriad expenses of life are offered from student to teacher through Swami’s Bowl.

Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dear Choose Happy Community,

When the world feels overwhelming—filled with anger, fear, or harmful words—this teaching reminds us of our deeper task. Like the river, we are invited to become vast in our goodwill, steady beneath the surface no matter what storms arise. The fire may exist, but we are not the fire. We can choose to go deeper, to respond with clarity, peace, and love that radiates outward. Nothing outside of you has to shake the peace within.

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the video:

“ This is our task: to fill ourselves with goodwill and to be like the river so that we are deep and enormous in our goodwill. And the fire, like the Buddha is not saying that the fire is not there, he’s acknowledging it’s there, but he’s saying you are deeper than the fire. And so go deeper than the fire.

“And anything that you see in time and space is just an opportunity to go deeper, always. And then what happens is you become imbued with this goodwill so that nothing can shake you. No matter what it is that you observe or experience in time and space.

“The Buddha goes farther. So that was about if you see people who are lying, people who are using words to create hatred. People who are using words to create fear. People who are using words to create harm. This is what he says: stay with goodwill. Be deep and immeasurable like the river in your goodwill. Extend goodwill even to the people who are saying that. Even to the people who are doing that. And then allow goodwill to radiate forth through you to benefit the entire world.”

We also shared this video on YouTube, but wanted you to be able to have it on your Substack video player as well, in case you prefer that.

Having it on Substack makes it easy for you to see any other podcasts, videos, articles, or full meditation services that might be available in the Open to Clarity and Peace by clicking here.

If you have heard this teaching before, we invite you — as Swami so often invites us — to hear it as if you are hearing it for the first time. Often we receive these teachings right when we need them.

In loving service,Awake Yoga Meditation

Everything available to a paid subscriber. Are you one yet?

This is a free post made available to everyone. If you are not yet a paid subscriber to Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda, consider becoming one today to receive exclusive audio talks, articles, meditation service replays, access to the archives, and so much more.

Podcast Episodes*: All Episodes

Darshan Articles*: All Articles

From the Founder Series: All Series • Mantra Series • St. Francis Prayer Series

Live Meditation Replays: All Services • Index of All Services by Series • Sunday Meditation Services • Tuesday Darshan Meditation Services • Friday Night Healing Meditation Services • Satsangs

Book Excerpts**: All Excerpts • Satsang with Swami Shankarananda

Workshops (formerly eCourses): All Workshops • The Spiritual Art of Intentions: Creating a Life You Love • Pillars of Self-Realization: 50 Days with Swami Shankarananda • Love: The Eternal Flame of Life Within You • Wisdom: Discovering the Peace in Our True Nature

*Also available to Free Subscribers**Select posts also available to Free Subscribers

Consider making a financial contribution to Awake Yoga Meditation

Your generosity makes it possible for AYM to share Kriya Yoga, meditations, and teachings of truth with people around the world. It also allows the community to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). The presiding teacher for Awake Yoga Meditation is Swami Nityananda.

Consider making a financial contribution to Swami’s Bowl

As the presiding teacher, Swami Nityananda selflessly offers her wisdom without taking a salary from Awake Yoga Meditation. Your gift honors her giving and ensures she can continue to share her invaluable teachings. The tradition of meditation communities like Awake Yoga Meditation is to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). All of the other myriad expenses of life are offered from student to teacher through Swami’s Bowl.

Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dear Choose Happy Community,

It’s okay to acknowledge when someone’s anger hurts you or crosses a boundary. But this teaching reminds us that we don’t have to take on their anger or mirror it back. With practice and steadiness, we stay aligned with truth and centered in our own emotional clarity. When we hold our ground with love, we naturally move out of situations that no longer match our vibration.

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the video:

“ Sometimes people in their anger can hurt us, and it’s okay to acknowledge that feeling of hurt. It’s okay to say ‘this is really unacceptable behavior. I don’t deserve this’. That’s all okay. And we don’t have to let somebody’s anger become our anger. We don’t have to mirror that anger back. We don’t have to allow somebody’s, misunderstanding, misperceiving of what is real to make us feel sorrow.

“We are the masters of our emotional state, and so it’s again, just through steadiness and practice that we can stay in alignment. And the truth is, if we are doing our work, that person will find a way out of our experience. It’s not a match, it’s not a vibrational match.

“If I’m steady, I’m centered, I’m love, I’m clear, I’m navigating this with skill, at some point they will find a way or it will heal. It will resolve itself.”

We also shared this video on YouTube, but wanted you to be able to have it on your Substack video player as well, in case you prefer that.

Having it on Substack makes it easy for you to see any other podcasts, videos, articles, or full meditation services that might be available in the Truth, Love and Justice by clicking here.

If you have heard this teaching before, we invite you — as Swami so often invites us — to hear it as if you are hearing it for the first time. Often we receive these teachings right when we need them.

In loving service,Awake Yoga Meditation

Everything available to a paid subscriber. Are you one yet?

This is a free post made available to everyone. If you are not yet a paid subscriber to Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda, consider becoming one today to receive exclusive audio talks, articles, meditation service replays, access to the archives, and so much more.

Podcast Episodes*: All Episodes

Darshan Articles*: All Articles

From the Founder Series: All Series • Mantra Series • St. Francis Prayer Series

Live Meditation Replays: All Services • Index of All Services by Series • Sunday Meditation Services • Tuesday Darshan Meditation Services • Friday Night Healing Meditation Services • Satsangs

Book Excerpts**: All Excerpts • Satsang with Swami Shankarananda

Workshops (formerly eCourses): All Workshops • The Spiritual Art of Intentions: Creating a Life You Love • Pillars of Self-Realization: 50 Days with Swami Shankarananda • Love: The Eternal Flame of Life Within You • Wisdom: Discovering the Peace in Our True Nature

*Also available to Free Subscribers**Select posts also available to Free Subscribers

Consider making a financial contribution to Awake Yoga Meditation

Your generosity makes it possible for AYM to share Kriya Yoga, meditations, and teachings of truth with people around the world. It also allows the community to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). The presiding teacher for Awake Yoga Meditation is Swami Nityananda.

Consider making a financial contribution to Swami’s Bowl

As the presiding teacher, Swami Nityananda selflessly offers her wisdom without taking a salary from Awake Yoga Meditation. Your gift honors her giving and ensures she can continue to share her invaluable teachings. The tradition of meditation communities like Awake Yoga Meditation is to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). All of the other myriad expenses of life are offered from student to teacher through Swami’s Bowl.

Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dear Choose Happy Community,

When pain from the past keeps resurfacing, it’s easy to feel trapped. But this teaching reminds us that we have the power to choose again. Both neuroscience and yogic wisdom say the same thing: whatever we focus on, we strengthen. If we keep returning to pain, we build more pain—but if we shift toward healing, we lay the groundwork for peace. Love yourself enough to choose what heals.

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the video:

“Love yourself so much that you’re willing to let go of past pain. Because what neuroscience says is this, and the yogis say it too. If I am focusing on past pain, I am creating neural structures that create more pain for myself in the present and in the future.

“As soon as I become aware that past pain is here, I dedicate myself to letting go of identifying with a past pain and to connecting with what is healing. As soon as I shift and I start focusing on what is healing, I am creating neural structures that create healing, now in my present and in my future as well. So what this tells you, and the yogis have always said, this is it is my ability to choose.”

We also shared this video on YouTube, but wanted you to be able to have it on your Substack video player as well, in case you prefer that.

Having it on Substack makes it easy for you to see any other podcasts, videos, articles, or full meditation services that might be available in the Truth, Love and Justice by clicking here.

If you have heard this teaching before, we invite you — as Swami so often invites us — to hear it as if you are hearing it for the first time. Often we receive these teachings right when we need them.

In loving service,Awake Yoga Meditation

Everything available to a paid subscriber. Are you one yet?

This is a free post made available to everyone. If you are not yet a paid subscriber to Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda, consider becoming one today to receive exclusive audio talks, articles, meditation service replays, access to the archives, and so much more.

Podcast Episodes*: All Episodes

Darshan Articles*: All Articles

From the Founder Series: All Series • Mantra Series • St. Francis Prayer Series

Live Meditation Replays: All Services • Index of All Services by Series • Sunday Meditation Services • Tuesday Darshan Meditation Services • Friday Night Healing Meditation Services • Satsangs

Book Excerpts**: All Excerpts • Satsang with Swami Shankarananda

Workshops (formerly eCourses): All Workshops • The Spiritual Art of Intentions: Creating a Life You Love • Pillars of Self-Realization: 50 Days with Swami Shankarananda • Love: The Eternal Flame of Life Within You • Wisdom: Discovering the Peace in Our True Nature

*Also available to Free Subscribers**Select posts also available to Free Subscribers

Consider making a financial contribution to Awake Yoga Meditation

Your generosity makes it possible for AYM to share Kriya Yoga, meditations, and teachings of truth with people around the world. It also allows the community to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). The presiding teacher for Awake Yoga Meditation is Swami Nityananda.

Consider making a financial contribution to Swami’s Bowl

As the presiding teacher, Swami Nityananda selflessly offers her wisdom without taking a salary from Awake Yoga Meditation. Your gift honors her giving and ensures she can continue to share her invaluable teachings. The tradition of meditation communities like Awake Yoga Meditation is to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). All of the other myriad expenses of life are offered from student to teacher through Swami’s Bowl.

Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dear Choose Happy Community,

Sometimes we search for our purpose in big, dramatic answers. But this gentle teaching reminds us that the Divine might whisper something much simpler: be peace today. When we dedicate ourselves to expressing the Divine in every moment, guidance becomes clear.

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the video:

“It’s possible to ask the Divine, what is the highest purpose for me today? And it might be something really simple, like the Divine might tell you from within, peace. ”It might just be, how can I be the energy of peace in my kitchen, at my dining table, when I’m taking out the garbage, when I’m interacting with my family or my friends, or when I’m composing that email?

“t might just be the energy of peace. So there’s a continual guidance as soon as we dedicate ourselves to fully expressing our spiritual purpose.”

We also shared this video on YouTube, but wanted you to be able to have it on your Substack video player as well, in case you prefer that.

Having it on Substack makes it easy for you to see any other podcasts, videos, articles, or full meditation services that might be available in the Open to Clarity and Peace by clicking here.

If you have heard this teaching before, we invite you — as Swami so often invites us — to hear it as if you are hearing it for the first time. Often we receive these teachings right when we need them.

In loving service,Awake Yoga Meditation

Everything available to a paid subscriber. Are you one yet?

This is a free post made available to everyone. If you are not yet a paid subscriber to Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda, consider becoming one today to receive exclusive audio talks, articles, meditation service replays, access to the archives, and so much more.

Podcast Episodes*: All Episodes

Darshan Articles*: All Articles

From the Founder Series: All Series • Mantra Series • St. Francis Prayer Series

Live Meditation Replays: All Services • Index of All Services by Series • Sunday Meditation Services • Tuesday Darshan Meditation Services • Friday Night Healing Meditation Services • Satsangs

Book Excerpts**: All Excerpts • Satsang with Swami Shankarananda

Workshops (formerly eCourses): All Workshops • The Spiritual Art of Intentions: Creating a Life You Love • Pillars of Self-Realization: 50 Days with Swami Shankarananda • Love: The Eternal Flame of Life Within You • Wisdom: Discovering the Peace in Our True Nature

*Also available to Free Subscribers**Select posts also available to Free Subscribers

Consider making a financial contribution to Awake Yoga Meditation

Your generosity makes it possible for AYM to share Kriya Yoga, meditations, and teachings of truth with people around the world. It also allows the community to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). The presiding teacher for Awake Yoga Meditation is Swami Nityananda.

Consider making a financial contribution to Swami’s Bowl

As the presiding teacher, Swami Nityananda selflessly offers her wisdom without taking a salary from Awake Yoga Meditation. Your gift honors her giving and ensures she can continue to share her invaluable teachings. The tradition of meditation communities like Awake Yoga Meditation is to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). All of the other myriad expenses of life are offered from student to teacher through Swami’s Bowl.

Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dear Choose Happy Community,

Sometimes we carry the past like a weight, and we look toward the future with fear. This teaching invites us to release all of it, even just for a moment, and return to the light that is always present within. Even our identification with the body can soften when it is met with love and the vastness of heart. In presence, there is peace. In peace, there is clarity.

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the video:

“ If I’m identifying overly much with my body, that’s an indicator that I’m sort of identifying with what’s temporary rather than what’s eternal. And so if that’s something that’s true for you, then offer your body consciousness to the light within you and just say, ‘my heart is so vast it gives me ability to love even my body consciousness, even the way I’m identifying myself with my body’.

“And I open to be aware of that in me, which is eternal. And what happens then is you’ll just be fully present in your daily life. And I know this sounds so simple, but if you just, as a practice right now, just say, ‘I let go of the past’.

“So if you feel like you’ve been carrying around heavy pain in relation to the past, just for this moment, ‘I let it go’. ‘I let go of the future’. So if you’ve been carrying around a lot of fear in relation to the future, just for this moment, you let it go, and you say, ‘I’m here in the present and in this moment I stand in the light and I just allow kindness to fill my heart and I just allow light to fill my heart’. What remains? What remains in that moment?”

We also shared this video on YouTube, but wanted you to be able to have it on your Substack video player as well, in case you prefer that.

Having it on Substack makes it easy for you to see any other podcasts, videos, articles, or full meditation services that might be available in the Truth, Love and Justice by clicking here.

If you have heard this teaching before, we invite you — as Swami so often invites us — to hear it as if you are hearing it for the first time. Often we receive these teachings right when we need them.

In loving service,Awake Yoga Meditation

Everything available to a paid subscriber. Are you one yet?

This is a free post made available to everyone. If you are not yet a paid subscriber to Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda, consider becoming one today to receive exclusive audio talks, articles, meditation service replays, access to the archives, and so much more.

Podcast Episodes*: All Episodes

Darshan Articles*: All Articles

From the Founder Series: All Series • Mantra Series • St. Francis Prayer Series

Live Meditation Replays: All Services • Index of All Services by Series • Sunday Meditation Services • Tuesday Darshan Meditation Services • Friday Night Healing Meditation Services • Satsangs

Book Excerpts**: All Excerpts • Satsang with Swami Shankarananda

Workshops (formerly eCourses): All Workshops • The Spiritual Art of Intentions: Creating a Life You Love • Pillars of Self-Realization: 50 Days with Swami Shankarananda • Love: The Eternal Flame of Life Within You • Wisdom: Discovering the Peace in Our True Nature

*Also available to Free Subscribers**Select posts also available to Free Subscribers

Consider making a financial contribution to Awake Yoga Meditation

Your generosity makes it possible for AYM to share Kriya Yoga, meditations, and teachings of truth with people around the world. It also allows the community to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). The presiding teacher for Awake Yoga Meditation is Swami Nityananda.

Consider making a financial contribution to Swami’s Bowl

As the presiding teacher, Swami Nityananda selflessly offers her wisdom without taking a salary from Awake Yoga Meditation. Your gift honors her giving and ensures she can continue to share her invaluable teachings. The tradition of meditation communities like Awake Yoga Meditation is to support the presiding teacher’s Dakshina (reimbursement of basic living expenses for housing, transportation, and insurance). All of the other myriad expenses of life are offered from student to teacher through Swami’s Bowl.

Choose Happy with Swami Nityananda is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dear Choose Happy Community,

What if you could meet yourself as if for the very first time—full of kindness, curiosity, and welcome?This powerful teaching invites us to shift out of judgment and fear, and into the presence of the divine within. Healing doesn’t require fixing anything—it starts by letting go of the belief that we are broken. When we stop identifying with our pain, what once felt impossible becomes natural. Miracles begin where limitation ends.

Here’s one of our favorite quotes from the video:

“ Just opening in the now as if I am meeting myself for the first time, how would I meet myself for the first time? With what kindness, with what gladness, with what joy, with what interest, with what welcome, with what curiosity, can I open and allow myself to meet myself for the first time? And the Divine will give us.

“The Divine is not anywhere other than always within us. So as we turn within and we let go of fear, we let go of lack, we let go of self-judgment, we let go of frustration, we let go of any blame, we let go of identifying with any limitations, there’s just a pure open inquiry. allowing ourselves to be taught by the spirit of pure life energy within ourselves. And then what we’re doing is we’re shifting our consciousness.

“QWe’re not identifying anymore with the pain. We’re not identifying anymore with what we have defined as a problem. We’re not identifying anymore with any limitation and what the Divine can make possible humans call miraculous. It’s just natural for miracles to happen all the time when we let go of identifying with limitation.”

We also shared this video on YouTube, but wanted you to be able to have it on your Substack video player as well, in case you prefer that.

Having it on Substack makes it easy for you to see any other podcasts, videos, articles, or full meditation services that might be available in the Open to Clarity and Peace by clicking here.

If you have heard this teaching before, we invite you — as Swami so often invites us — to hear it as if you are hearing it for the first time. Often we receive these teachings right when we need them.

In loving service,Awake Yoga Meditation

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