Spiritual Awakening Series for Chicago with the Brahma Kumaris

Chicago IL: A yogi from India inspired an audience of over 4,000 Chicagoans on June 29 and July 1 to wake up their authentic selves. It's time to understand that love and forgiveness are natural human energies, Sister Shivani said. Anger, resentment and revenge are unnatural. These are the culprits that make us suffer.

Guest speaker Sister Shivani is on a 20-day tour of North America. Her message is that you need to understand what really makes you happy. Two things definitely don't work: One is absorbing hurtful words or actions from another person, as if you are obliged to accept whatever a person puts out. The second is "copying," giving people back the same energy they give us. Both of these strategies make you behave as victims. Victims are never happy.

Then what makes you happy? When you "do the right thing," that is, treat everyone with love, kindness and respect, you receive that good energy first. With this practice you can maintain a constant state of peace and power, which is the basis of a happy life. Sister Shivani invoked the audience to exercise their power of choice by sending kind thoughts every day to people who have hurt them. Over time, this will increase one's self esteem and diminish hurt feelings.

Sister Shivani was working as an electrical engineer in Pune, India when she started studying Raja Yoga Meditation with the Brahma Kumaris 20 years ago. Now a teacher of Raja Yoga meditation, she inspires people to awaken their spiritual awareness through her TV show "Awakening with Brahma Kumaris" that airs in 160 countries across 5 continents and a YouTube channel that has registered 180,000 subscribers and over 34 millions views. On Saturday July 1, she was presented an award from YouTube for having achieved over 100,000 subscribers.

Saturday's program opened with a musical invocation of peace and love by Sister Elizabeth Padilla, a singer and Brahma Kumaris teacher from San Francisco. The program was emceed by Eric LeReste, a TV news producer for Canadian Broadcasting Corp. in Montreal and national coordinator of Brahma Kumaris for Canada. Neeta Bhushan, Consul General of India in Chicago, was in attendance as well as Swami Shardananda of Chinmaya Mission of Chicago and Shiva Singh Khalsa of Spirit Rising Yoga.

Sister Shivani's tour of North America includes programs in 11 cities and a culminating celebration on Sunday, July 9, at the Peace Village Learning & Retreat Center in upstate New York.

For more information on this and other upcoming programs on Sister Shivani's tour, visit bkawakening2017.org. Free meditation classes and workshops are offered in Chicago, west suburbs and north suburbs.