Many of you who have loved ones here this week have been following this blog. If you felt a wave of warmth and happiness come over you last night, know that we were sending out love as we joined in with singer Ragani for kirtan – a joyful call-and-response “singalong” of sacred Eastern music. Although it’s difficult to describe in words, kirtan is something I hope you all get to experience. The word “cosmic” doesn’t do it justice.

This morning, Swami Veda gave his final lecture of the week. He reminded us all to keep practicing, and said we will know if our meditation is “working” by the quality of our relationships. “Don’t ask me if it’s working,” he said, “Ask your husband or wife. Ask your mother-in-law.” This is because meditation and positive emotions go hand in hand.

Speaking of the positive, many (lucky, lucky) people are staying here for a second week; some are staying a whole month. If you are one of them, or if you are coming, I want to share with you a list I made for someone who asked me what they should be sure not to miss during their stay. It was supposed to be a Top Ten list but, as you will notice, it inflated.

1. Hike on the mountain.
2. Have breakfast in the vegetable garden.
3. Play Bingo with Barry.
4. Take a hula hoop class.
5. Go birdwatching with Joe.
6. Go hear the Rancho La Puerta band.
7. Get a 3 p.m. smoothie at the gazebo.
8. Visit the art studio (there is chocolate there, BTW!)
9. Try a cooking class.
10. Swim in the new pool.
11. Get a massage (you deserve it).
12. Dance with Yuichi.

If you will be here while the ashram is till in progress (there are three more weeks) spend time with Swam Veda. It will be, I promise you, a life-changing experience.

Lastly, take advantage of the many “coincidences” that will undoubtedly unfold while you are here. At the Ranch, you meet people you are supposed to meet, learn things you were meant to know. I can’t explain why, though I’ll bend your ear with my theories, should we meet in person. I guess I should say when we meet in person. Until then, in the words of Crosby, Stills, and Nash: “Rejoice, rejoice. We have no choice.”

And in the words of Swami Veda, “Relax your forehead.”

Last night, Ragani, a singer of sacred music who is performing at the Ranch ashram this week, shared a story of a renowned swami who would refuse to eat any food if he sensed it was prepared while the cook was angry or in any sort of upset emotional state. The idea that food contains the energy of the cook who prepares it and the soil in which it grows is a part of yogic philosophy. It explains to me why the food here at the Ranch is so delicious and energizing. It is prepared with love and joy – something I especially remember when I hike to the organic vegetable garden for breakfast, as I did this morning.

If there is anyone on the planet who loves his work more than Salvador, the Ranch’s head gardener, I’ve yet to meet them. One of the best parts of going to the garden is listening to him. He rhapsodizes about the acres of fruits and vegetables like a proud parent enumerating the charms of his children. If there is any living entity in the garden happier than Salvador, that might be the plants themselves. Is it possible for garlic bulbs and spinach leaves to be in a raucously good mood? It seems so.

One thing about Salvador: his enthusiasm is infectious. At one point he handed my husband a yellow tomato and a jalapeno pepper straight from the vine. “Make your own salsa,” he suggested, and my husband did – alternating bites of each with delight. For me, Salvador cut a slice of fresh Crenshaw melon in the shape of a smile.

Just as we were leaving, Salvador rushed up to us and presented a final gift: two entwined carrots that had grown together in the shape of, what else? – a heart. That about sums it up.

Namaste, Salvador, our yogi of food.

As the organizers of this amazing event had hoped, there is a great deal of cross-pollination occurring between those who have come here specifically to study with Swmai Veda and Ranch guests who have come for all the usual reasons – relaxation, inspiration, and rejuvenation. At every meal, you can hear people comparing notes on the morning meditation or having spirited debates about topics that have been raised in lectures: What is the nature of karma and can we change our own? Can English translations really do justice to Sanskrit concepts? It is rich mind-food that accompanies our chili rellenos and dark chocolate flan.

A number of guests have expressed delight at the serendipity that brought them here at exactly the same time as Swami Veda. Maybe, they say, it was meant to be…

Meanwhile, ashram students are reveling in the Ranch environment – at least as much as their busy schedule allows. Take, for example, Seval Ashtoy, who came from Istanbul to participate. “Words can’t express what it’s like here,” she says. “If heaven exists it must be like this. The mountain has an energy that is powerful, but also light – not a shaking energy, a subtle one.”

Seval, who has never been to North America before, is rooming with and getting to know, roommates from London, the Netherlands, and the U.S. She is quite at home with the Ranch cuisine, which draws so much from her familiar Mediterranean diet. As for her yoga training itself, “It is a joy how it has all been put together. The program is so scientific and systematic, but with an equal emphasis on feeling and experiencing,”

Seval’s goal is to take what she is learning here and help people all over the world. I suspect she will be a success.

This morning I took Swami Veda on a five-mile hike with me: Not in body, but in spirit. I was about halfway through a breathtaking pass on Mount Kuchumaa when I began to worry that the length of this trek would make me late for morning meditation. “You’ve got to hurry up and meditate,” I told myself. But then I heard Swami Veda’s voice – clear as the Baja morning sky – saying, “Relax your forehead.” (I’m a big forehead scruncher from way back. Give me a worry and I paste it over my eyes.)

“Okay” I agreed. I instantly felt better. I took a few diaphragmatic breaths, and began to walk consciously, appreciating what was around me. This sacred mountain is where native Indian shamans “kissed the earth with their feet,” as Phyllis Pilgrim says. I decide not to enter a race with myself. I make it down the mountain and decide not to gobble breakfast either. Swami’s voice says, “One sip of orange juice can send you into ecstasy if you know how to taste it.”

Amazingly, without scrunching or gobbling I enter the meditation gathering before Swami Veda begins his morning instructions. I’m not the first one there, it’s true. Okay, I’m one of the last. But I am where I’m supposed to be, and my mind is there with me. And, not incidentally, I am smiling. “Your mind shows on your face,” says Swami Veda. That’s the best beauty tip I’ve ever gotten.

Dr. Mehrad Nazari, a key organizer of this ashram at the Ranch, said during our orientation, “Every time I see Swami Veda there is a shift in my system. I go in running DOS and I come out running Mac.” Now I know just what he meant.

Before I sign off for today, a word of thanks, by the way, to Mehrad. He has played a major role in putting this many-faceted event together with infinite sprezzetura. That’s not a Sanskrit word, but an Italian one, meaning “the ability to take a difficult thing and make it look easy.”

Ciao and Namaste

Our Summer Spiritual Olympics ’08 continues – and we have superb air quality. At our Olympics, the main event is not track and field, but meditation.

Today, as yesterday, the morning began for many of us with an hour-long meditation session, followed by Swami Veda’s lecture about meditation. To those more inclined to attend the lectures, Swami Veda pointed out this is like attending many lectures on tea without drinking a cup. “What kind of tea party would that be?”

An hour-long meditation is a challenge for many of us who have not sat for so long before. We have never trained our minds to follow a single track. At first we sit and flit from thought to thought. We think of stuff we’ve got to do, stuff we forgot to do, food we’re going to eat, food we’re sorry we ate, things we need to tell people, and things we wish we hadn’t ever said. Sometimes we think, “Look at me, I’m meditating!” Though of course we’re not. But after a while – and perhaps because we are in the presence of a master – our minds calm. We feel a lightness of being. We are, for at least a little while, at peace.

“What is meditation for?” Swami Veda asks us afterward.“ It gives you a pleasant life,” he says, “because it makes your mind a pleasant place.” He asks us to picture our minds. How do we want them to be, clear or foggy? If our minds had an aroma, would it fragrant, or not? Meditation is like a shower for the mind, he says, like the mind’s deodorant. The mind takes on the form of what it encounters; let it encounter the gentle rhythm of breath and it will be gentle and stable.

Not all of us will fit lengthy meditations into our lives each day, but whether we do or don’t, Swami Veda recommends two-minute meditations every few hours. He advises us to relax the forehead, feel the touch of the breath in the nostrils, eliminate the pause between breaths and recite a mantra or favorite name for the Divine, or simply the words “one, two” with each inhalation and exhalation. This, he says, breaks he mind’s habits of tension. I like to think of it as a reboot.

So, wherever you are (and we wish you were here!) won’t you try this with us? Click on “comments” and let us know how it’s going. Hold us in our good thoughts as we hold you in ours. See you tomorrow.

It is magical to experience something familiar and beloved in a new way. For Ranch-goers who had never encountered Swami Veda until last night, and for Swami Veda devotees who had never experienced the Ranch until yesterday, enchantment abounds.

Last night and again this morning, Swami Veda led powerful guided meditations to a large and eager crowd. In lectures that followed, he imparted ancient wisdom while radiating humor and charm and, most of all, love.

There were so many revelations for so many of us in what he said. How to pick only a few to share? It’s difficult, but okay, anything worth doing is difficult so here goes…

Last evening Swami Veda told the story of a man who traveled – at great expense, so he said – to the Swami’s ashram in Rishikesh to “finally learn the secret of meditation” after trying for years. Swami Veda told him, “Relax your forehead.”

“What,” said the man. “It cost me a fortune to get here. Is that why I came all this way? Relax my forehead? I already know that.”

“But you are not doing it,” observed Swami Veda.

A few days Later Swami Veda encountered this man at the ashram. “How is your forehead?” he asked, noticing scant improvement.

“Well,” said the man. “The thing is, relaxing your forehead is really HARD!”

As Swami Veda pointed out to all of us, it is in our power to calm the mind and access reservoirs of inner joy. But how can we do this if we can’t even relax one small set of muscles. Swami Veda, at 76, has not a single wrinkle on his brow. As he noted, he does not teach anything he himself has not experimented with.

While we’re somewhat on the subject of health and longevity, I’ll share something Swami Veda told us this morning. (Of special interest to math-lovers if you know any.) Every 24 hours the average person (i.e. not the self-aware meditator) completes 21,600 breaths. But each of us is allotted a certain number of breaths per lifetime. Slow the breath in meditation, and extend your years (as well as the quality of your life).

Finally, what would a blog be without some “buzz.” Here at the Ranch guests are completely intrigued with the first of these four ashram weeks. Each of the many events is well and happily attended. Overheard in the lounge: “Leave it to Deborah Szekely to be on the cutting edge.”

Arrival

I’m so very happy to be back at Rancho la Puerta. My husband, Gray, and I arrived mid-afternoon in time to feast on a cornucopia of fresh and grilled organic vegetables. As usual, it took only about five minutes to transition to “Ranch mode.” All airport edginess behind us, we greeted some old friends, enjoyed the breeze, and picked up – along with our room keys and water bottles – a special gift to all guests this ashram week: sets of meditation robes, consisting of white linen tunics and flowing white pants. (When I tried mine on, my husband said they made me look instantly “spiritual and wise.” Ah! If only it were that easy.)

But everyone here was thrilled by the idea of trying their robes on for size, as it were. I overheard several fellow passengers on the bus from San Diego expressing their wish to drop in on the ashram programs, even if they had not come here specifically to participate.

One thing is for sure. This is the most international week I have ever seen here. Looking through the list of guests, I see some have come from as far as Germany, China, Korea, Turkey, and Trinidad and Tobago. We are the spiritual Olympics of the summer of ’08.

Swami Veda will be tonight’s featured speaker – and I’ll keep you posted on our “opening ceremonies.”