Share Your Experience of
Arranging to Make a Planned Gift

Some years ago, my husband and I moved out of London and now we live in the heart of the English countryside, surrounded by nature. We have derived a great deal of pleasure from planting trees on the land that surrounds our house, watching them flourish and creating a haven for the birds and other wildlife.
 
Like so many others who have planted for the future, we know that these trees will not come to maturity until long after we have gone. It is a joy to know that in years to come, others will be able to experience peace and tranquility sitting in their shade, listening to the birdsong and to the breeze rustling through their leaves.
 
This is how we both feel about planned giving on the Siddha Yoga path. We have received so many blessings; we cannot imagine what our lives would have been like without the Guru and the Siddha Yoga teachings. Because planned gifts are directed to the SYDA Foundation’s core purpose, including the Foundation as a beneficiary in our wills feels as though we are helping to hold the door open for others to receive the Guru’s grace in their lives, just as we have.
 

Dorset, United Kingdom

The process of making a planned gift can be transformational. This was what my wife and I experienced more than thirty years ago, when we first made the decision to name the SYDA Foundation in our wills. It was the late 1980s, and we were both living and working in London. We had become Siddha Yoga students five years previously and had started to offer dakshina regularly, a practice that we continue to this day. During these years, our gratitude for Gurumayi’s presence in our lives was growing deeper and deeper, and we wanted to extend our dakshina practice by including the SYDA Foundation as a beneficiary in our wills.
 
The act of planning this gift was a significant moment in our sadhana.  It was the first time we had acknowledged to ourselves that our connection to the Guru was permanent—that it would continue throughout our lives and extend beyond our deaths. In this way our commitment to making a planned gift revealed to us the depth and power of our own commitment to the Guru and to the Siddha Yoga path.
 
We also saw our bequest as an opportunity to fulfill a long-held wish to make an additional gift of dakshina, over and above our regular offerings. However, this was not something that we were in a position to do at the time or in the foreseeable future. Planned giving became the vehicle by which we could achieve this.
 
We came to understand that our final offering to the Guru would come from the fruits of our lifetime’s work, and this changed our perspective and our attitude toward that work and ultimately to life itself. Our lives were literally taking on a higher purpose.  
 

London, United Kingdom