Carried by a Promise

work­shop at the Berke­ley Field House

April 8^th to 10^th, Swami Rad­hananda came to Toronto for the final stop of the cen­tral Canada part of her book tour.  The group here had been meet­ing weekly for sev­eral months to pre­pare for her and Swami Lalitananda’s arrival.  Fri­day night, the swamis led a won­der­ful sat­sang at the Toronto Radha House which was packed with about 20 peo­ple, many of whom were drawn to the house for the first time for this spe­cial event.  After Aarti, Swami Rad­hananda asked the group, “why are you here?” and each per­son explained what drew them there.  Sat­ur­day after­noon, about 45 peo­ple came to Won­der­works book­store to hear Swami Rad­hananda read from her book. There was a sense of absolute focus on her every word, as she read pas­sages from her book and elab­o­rated on them.

Sun­day had more than 40 peo­ple attend­ing the day-long “Yoga of Reflec­tion” work­shop at the Berke­ley Field House, a large room in a his­tor­i­cal build­ing down­town Toronto usu­ally used for wed­dings.  The day started with rain and thun­der and by the end, we were stand­ing out­side doing the Divine Light Invo­ca­tion in the sun­light.  Many peo­ple that I talked to, and from my own expe­ri­ence as well, found that the way Rad­hananda led the work­shop really left no room for the dark clouds to hang around.

Luke Bur­ton

Swami Radhananda’s recent  visit brought the com­mu­nity together for two spe­cial evenings at Rad’a Montréal. On the first evening, April 6, we gath­ered around Swami Rad­hananda in antic­i­pa­tion. She smiled and drew us close to her in a cozy inti­macy through the atmos­phere and her sto­ries, as she shared the words of her memoir. I could sense a dif­fer­ence between her teach­ing a work­shop and this very per­sonal shar­ing of her jour­nals with the world.  The courage she needed to let go of her for­mer life is the same courage that now brings her on the road to share her process and learn­ing. Her talk about Ashram life, being in com­mu­nity, sup­port­ing a group of peo­ple in their jour­ney towards the Light was very real and hon­est. We laughed, reflected and felt close to the teach­ings in a rare way. I know I went away feel­ing I had been given a gift.

Thurs­day evening even more peo­ple gath­ered to take part in the “Tools for Trans­for­ma­tion” work­shop. In her always sim­ple and to-the-point man­ner Swami Rad­hananda showed that less is truly more. She gave the teach­ings cen­ter stage and and they brought for­ward what each per­son needed to see at that moment. Many of us felt we were ready to bring in more qual­ity and a deeper con­nec­tion to our­selves so that we can give from that place. Rad’a is in tran­si­tion  and every­one in her space that night seemed to be mov­ing through tran­si­tions, too, tak­ing bold new steps for­ward, lis­ten­ing and real­iz­ing the gifts of a safe place to share and grow.

Trine Mikkelsen

Over three days (April 1 – 3) the Ottawa com­mu­nity was car­ried by Swami Radhananda’s promise! Twenty peo­ple came out to the book launch at Mother Tongue Books, one of the few remain­ing inde­pen­dent women’s book­stores in Canada. Some were new to the teach­ings, some recon­nect­ing after a long absence. Eleanor, one of the elders in the group, was a par­tic­i­pant in the same work­shop, Women and Spir­i­tual Life, that was Swami Radhananda’s first expe­ri­ence at the Ashram.

On Sat­ur­day, twenty more peo­ple — thir­teen of them new to the teach­ings — par­tic­i­pated in the “Yogic Tools for Trans­for­ma­tion” work­shop at Rama Lotus, Ottawa’s largest yoga stu­dio. Then on Sun­day, thirty par­tic­i­pants squeezed into the Radha Yoga Cen­tre for the “Yoga of Reflec­tion: Learn­ing from Life” workshop.

The teach­ings wove their magic as par­tic­i­pants unlocked their cre­ative poten­tial with Swami Radhananda’s few, sim­ple words. As peo­ple departed there was a sense of diamond’s flash­ing and every­one had a new glow. We are still flow­ing on a river of Light left from this amaz­ing experience.

Joan Gam­ble