March 1, 2025

Dear reader,

It’s time for another letter. It’s time to welcome the spring season in the Northern Hemisphere. It’s time to connect again with all of you, my fellow Siddha Yogis and the new seekers I am so eager to get to know.

In my last letter, I wrote about some of the questions we might contemplate as we study Gurumayi’s Message for 2025 and her teachings from In the Presence of Time. For example: Is time truly discrete and measurable, or is this simply a story we tell ourselves while time remains as it ever was—unending and, to some extent, unknowable? Can time have a personality of its own? Or are the qualities we perceive in a given period of time just a mirror of our own, ever-changing subjective experiences? Does time change or do we change? Does the delineation matter?

If you live in a place with distinct seasons—such as the northeastern United States, where Shree Muktananda Ashram is located—then the question of whether and how time changes is almost certainly influenced by what you see around you. Each season is dramatically different from the others; the transition from one to the next is an undeniable marker of the passage of time. Yet there is a pattern to this movement. The seasons occur in a cycle. What was once vibrantly alive goes to rest; what was dormant blossoms again. Is time a line, then, or is it a circle? Or is it another shape entirely?

March is the month of the spring equinox, and spring brings with it the first signs of renewed life. Tender green shoots poke up from the ground. There is an ineffable something in the air as it warms—the promise of more light, perhaps, as the days visibly lengthen; the unspoken excitement that attends any new beginning. It’s no surprise that there are so many festivals around the world associated with the springtime. In India, for example, people celebrate Holi and Gudhi Padva, both of which are taking place in March this year.

I find it useful, even encouraging, to think about spring and its connotations given the current moment we are living in. For many people, it may be disorienting to observe what is happening in the world; the loss of stability is acute. Our attention, our emotions might vacillate each day between sorrow for what is and an indefatigable belief in what could be—what must be, if we have anything to say about it. Our wish to retreat and recoil might be matched only by our motivation to bring about real and meaningful change. There seems to be more turmoil than ever before, both around us and within us. But then, isn’t that the nature of life? The struggle to find answers—for what we thought we had understood but now question, and for what we may have never really known at all—is part of what it means to be a thinking human being.

Still, I take solace in the seemingly limitless capacity of people to create happiness—to find and expand joy. Throughout history, human beings have had to withstand periods of untold hardship. And yet they have always found some reason, some occasion, to celebrate. Amidst whatever challenges they have faced, they have sat with one another and broken bread. They have shared stories, made music, linked arms in dancing. They have fallen in love; they have married. And each year, when the spring has come, they have acknowledged nature’s beauty and bounty. They have chosen to remember the goodness in life.

This notion of rippling possibility—of hope, of resiliency—undergirds Gurumayi’s teachings from In the Presence of Time. It is something that many of you have picked up on already. As one of you recently shared on the Siddha Yoga path website:

This practice and study of time that Gurumayi is gracing us with is so exciting for so many reasons. I am now waking up every day asking myself with great anticipation, “Oh, I wonder what time it is today!”

Yes; what time is it? What time will it be? The tabula rasa of it all, the prospect that each day can be new—or at least, that we can be new, in how we approach and make use of our time—is invigorating. In Shree Muktananda Ashram, one of the first plants we see in spring is the snowdrop. It is an unassuming flower, its small white petals hovering just inches above the earth, but it is remarkable for its hardiness. It often appears while ice and snow are still on the ground; in fact, snowdrops have the ability to respond to temperature, closing in on themselves for protection when the weather is very cold and reopening when it warms again. In their own way, then, these little flowers carry a lesson for us—a lesson in how to triumph over challenge, how to remain undaunted by what has been, how to live with the understanding that no condition is final. There is always more inner strength available to us.

Sincerely,

Eesha Sardesai