January 14, 2025
Dear reader,
Shubh Makara Sankranti. Happy New Year 2025.
It is wonderful to be communicating with you during this period of new beginnings. And I think it’s always the right time to be connecting with like-minded people.
On January 1, New Year’s Day—a day which has come to hold great significance on the Siddha Yoga path—we were in each other’s company in the Siddha Yoga Universal Hall. We welcomed the new year in the way we like best, in the way we most appreciate on this path. We participated in Sweet Surprise with our Guru, Gurumayi Chidvilasananda.
I know I speak on behalf of all Siddha Yogis when I express my gratitude to Gurumayi for imparting to us her Message for 2025. And this Message, with its rhythmic, sutra-like quality—there is just so much to it, wouldn’t you agree? On the one hand, the central concept of this Message—time—is deeply familiar to us. As soon as we are born, we are forced to contend with time. We enter into a relationship with time, and whether we like it or not, we are in that relationship all our lives. Still, you know—and I know, and we all know—that there continues to be something mysterious, elusive, and downright challenging about time. No matter how old or young we are, we are always wrestling with time, always trying to make sense of time, always trying to understand how we can interact with time most beneficially. We are led to the age-old question: what is time?
On January 2 of this year, Gurumayi was holding satsang with the children, young adults, and parents visiting Shree Muktananda Ashram to offer seva. At one point during this satsang, the parents of an eleven-year-old boy shared that in the last couple of months, their son had begun to take an avid interest in time. Many nights before going to bed, he would ask his parents about time and share his own thoughts and philosophy about time. To support the boy’s budding interest, his father started to watch documentaries with him on the subject of time and eternity.
Clearly, as this young boy intuited, there’s a lot to explore and understand about time. And I feel particularly grateful to Gurumayi for imparting this Message at this time, given the social and cultural landscape we find ourselves in. The world feels precarious. We are seeing that the structures on which we have built our lives, our communities, and our countries are not as sound as we may have once believed. It is hard to feel certain about anything. Our reality is shifting on almost a day-to-day basis.
Yet in the midst of all this, Gurumayi’s Message for 2025 reminds us of our own agency. Gurumayi uses the phrase “your time”—not once, but twice in her Message. Even as we confront the seeming destabilization of what we’ve always known, even as we deal with what feels like a pervasive loss of control, we have full rein over what we choose to do with our time.
Having said this—and having dwelled on what is perhaps the more trying nature of time—I do have some news to share with you that makes my heart absolutely ecstatic. Throughout this year on the Siddha Yoga path website, we will be receiving teachings from Gurumayi about her Message.
Gurumayi has said that you might consider each teaching to be like your own personal mantra, something that is easy to remember and that you can find ways to apply as you go about your day. I feel certain that these teachings will be an immense support for our Siddha Yoga sadhana this year—that they will generate endless possibilities for contemplation, interpretation, and implementation. Many of you, I know, have already been considering how you will put Gurumayi’s Message into practice. As one person shared recently on the Siddha Yoga path website:
“What…stood out for me in hearing Gurumayi’s Message is that I must practice respecting time. I must honor time. I must appreciate time. Time is essential for my life. A great contemplation is now rising in my heart about what, how, and where I need to implement the Message.”
It is a boon upon boon to receive, first, Gurumayi’s Message, and now, these teachings from Gurumayi that will guide us in our exploration of her Message. I feel incredibly blessed—incredibly fortunate. I am deeply moved by how much love Gurumayi has for her disciples and for the new seekers who come to this path.
I also feel that along with this good fortune comes a sense of responsibility. That’s the crux of the Guru-disciple relationship, isn’t it? The Guru gives her teachings, and it’s our responsibility as disciples to follow those teachings by exploring them, understanding them, and endeavoring to apply them in the context of our own lives. It is, after all, when we are in dialogue and communion with the Guru’s teachings that they become real for us, that we experience their transformative power and become that much more able to access our own.
And now—it is time for me to conclude.
Sincerely,
Eesha Sardesai