By Yogi Bhajan 1. A Teacher will never alter the teachings because of personal opinion. You will teach by example. 2. The higher you grow as a Teacher, the more humble you have to be. 3. The Teacher always serves the students, so they can become ten times stronger than you, because every student is a Teacher for tomorrow. 4. A Teacher has to be extremely kind, caring, compassionate, and forgiving. 5. As a Teacher you should always poke, provoke, confront, and elevate your students to excellence. 6. As a Teacher you have to continuously imagine, visualize, believe, and expand…

By Guruka Singh We live in a difficult age. There is constant distraction. In our 21st century culture of acquisition and consumerism, television, movies, newspapers, magazines, and books constantly fill our mind with stimulating images. Our minds constantly fantasize, and we spend much of our time living in our fantasies. The most basic teaching of Raj Yoga is that the mind makes a powerful servant, but it makes a lousy master. When we let our mind roam free, it takes us wherever it wishes to go—and there’s always someplace interesting to go! Through the self-discipline of daily meditation we can train…

By Devjot Singh Yogi Bhajan’s messages about the Aquarian Age may have been difficult to contextualise before now. We can forgive ourselves perhaps for hearing his teachings simply as an inspirational metaphor supporting personal commitment to a spiritual path. We may have felt confirmed in our preferences and justified in any stance against war, hunger, and a myriad of social injustices. But now that times have changed, perhaps we had better look again at what the Master was telling us and what will be asked of Aquarian Teachers. The Piscean Age, its values, achievements, and champions will not go gently…

By Tommy Rosen Back in 2003, my girlfriend, Kia, and I decided to go to Maui to celebrate my 36th birthday. We had been together for 3 years, long enough to know we had something special. We had spoken about the possibility of getting married someday, but I was quite happy to continue on as things were. The convention of marriage, as I had witnessed from my parents and most of the adults I had known, was fraught with difficulty and challenge. It was painful and in some cases, ruinous. When occasionally I would meet two people who seemed to be doing well…

In the yogic scriptures it says, “Even a glance from the eyes of a holy man can cure mental and physical imbalances.” Once in a very great while there is a picture that has a transcendent quality of neutrality that allows the person gazing at it to go through it and into their higher consciousness. This is a form of meditation called Tratakum. Years ago, a photograph was taken of Yogi Bhajan which had such a quality, and it has been used ever since by students as a link to their teacher and their inner consciousness. It is called simply,…

By Sirgun Kaur It was dark and I was extremely panicked. My 2 year old was missing during an eveningGurdwara service. He could have escaped through any door; he could have been taken;he could have… the scenarios played out in my head like a horrific slide show. In a moment of clarity, I remembered a rant I almost published on Facebook that sameday: “The 5 Sutras for the Aquarian Age aren’t lofty principles. They are for actual dailyuse. Vibrate the Cosmos isn’t a metaphor. It’s a first resort when trouble strikes.”Vibrate the Cosmos.What was I vibrating in this moment? In other…

 By Sat Purkh Kaur Khalsa “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”  I was never one to make a list of New Year’s resolutions—but sometimes one is just compelled to; so I would end up generating something like a list. But I would wait until January 6th or 7th, just to take some of the pressure off! In my experience, when I created resolutions that were to begin on the 1st, I had usually broken them by the 3rd—exasperating and not a little self-defeating! Eventually, I just quit making them at all and began living my life in the…

By Shakta Kaur When we are insecure we are afraid. When we are insecure we begin to compromise. When we are insecure we just want to survive. We’re thinking short-term, not long-term. When we are insecure there is no vastness, no connection with divinity nor a feeling of oneness with God or each other. “The only purpose of life is not to be scared of insecurity. Insecurity does nothing but scare a person,” said Yogi Bhajan. “It’s a scarecrow.”[1] And, instead of recognizing our power and reality as spiritual beings we allow this scarecrow to stop opportunity and grace from coming…

by Shakta Khalsa Our heads are logical and want “proof” about everything, which means they cannot understand anything that is outside of the limits of the mind. Our hearts can understand and intuit what the head does not know, yet our emotional heart can create a ball of confusion that clouds our judgement. With head and heart able to go haywire at at moment, it can seem that we don’t know anything clearly. But what if they can work together? What if there is a lovely line to walk where the head and heart complement and balance each other? That…

“Some of you who are sitting here will become great Teachers of the Age of Aquarius. You must understand that you have to build your character first. Care for yourself, be kind to yourself, be compassionate to yourself. That is what you have to do.”–Yogi Bhajan April 23, 1997 That I never met Yogi Bhajan in physical form left me with many regrets. I often felt envious that his earlier students had access to a living master that could answer their questions. I had a lucid dream years ago with Yogi Bhajan in it. I saw him and was thrilled…