Self-Illumination Therapy Training Intensive (SITTI) is a comprehensive system of spiritual education for consultees of Patanjali Kundalini Yoga Care (PKYC) who have successfully completed a PKYC Initial Spiritual Guidance Retreat. A SITTI is designed to enhance the spiritual development of each individual participant by providing a thorough experiential understanding of inner life, spiritual process, and supportive lifestyle within the context of their regular, ongoing sadhana. Focus is on spiritual advancement through theory, practice, experience, explanation, and practical application.
Instruction is provided through a series of small, two-week spiritual study retreats called SITTIs at the Oneness Sanctuary. Participation supports advanced spiritual growth and develops spiritually mature practitioner-scholars through mastery of particular topics, methods, scriptures, and deeper spiritual understanding. The traditional gurukula style of education is utilized, offering a spiritual (rather than academic) education designed to strengthen discriminative intuition, which enhances spiritual awareness and progress.
To assure a solid and shared foundation of understanding and vocabulary, an Introductory Intensive is required of all participants. This survey is taught by Shiva and reviews the essential teachings of Yoga, Vedanta, Kundalini Vidya, and Sanatana Dharma. Ancient teachings are compared with modern Western approaches throughout.
Subsequent SITIs include Swamiji and are not sequential, so participants can select whichever training topics they would like to study. Continuing education units and yoga teacher training credits are available for each intensive to those who qualify. Participants who have successfully accrued a sufficient number of approved selected units, completed a final oral and written review, and received approval can receive a Self-Illumination Therapy education certificate. Students enrolled in a university degree program can consult with their advisor about receiving Independent Study course credits for participating in Self-Illumination Therapy Intensives.
Self-Illumination Therapy participants maintain at home a regular practice of their recommended PKYC spiritual practices (sadhana) in the context of a healthy spiritual lifestyle, ongoing spiritual direction consultations, and Upper Process Advancement Retreats as needed. While at the Self-Illumination Therapy Intensives, participants engage in early morning spiritual practice, morning and afternoon scripture-based satsangs, evening individual and group study, and intermittent oral and written reports. An individual consultation is offered during the Intensive.
Self-Illumination Therapy and Training spiritual education and individual spiritual guidance are provided by Bri. Joan Shivarpita Harrigan, Ph.D., ERYT.
“Self-Illumination.” The Sanskrit for Self-Illumination is swayam jyotih, one’s own Light of all lights beyond darkness. It involves the use of knowledge to reach the spiritual goal. This is not research or discovery; it is revelation. It does not come from the rational, analytical mind but from the illumined Buddhi, the faculty of intuition and discrimination that all human beings have, regardless of religion, political ideology, nationality, gender, or race. Nothing is foreign or exotic in self-Illumination because it is all-pervasive. The divine One that religions refer to exists within everyone as Light, Illumination itself. We can bring harmony to the whole world only by means of our own Self-illumination. It is based on the divine principle of living in harmony with truth and non-violence, with self-confidence, self-awareness, and strong will power.
“Therapy.” Therapy involves learning, understanding, perceiving, experiencing, and explanation.
Learning is possible by our instruments of perception and thinking—mainly through seeing, hearing, and cognition.
Understanding comes through concentration, when we make the mind one-pointed.
Perception is the experience of the nature of the object of concentration.
Experience happens when concentration is deep and consistent, which is meditation, whereby we become the essence of the object.
Explanation is the revelation of self-illumination by the progressively more refined intellect, intuition, intuitive intelligence, discriminative intuition, intuitive intuition, and direct intuition.
The source of Self-Illumination Therapy Training Intensives is found in Vedanta, Yoga, and Kundalini Vidya. Yoga is based on the Yoga Sutras; Vedanta is the philosophy of the Upanisads, and the teachings of Kundalini Vidya are a combination of Yoga and Vedanta with verses found throughout the Vedic literature. Of the three sources, the Upanisads are prominent. They hold ancient knowledge of the universal absolute Reality. Upanisad means to get the knowledge of Absolute Reality by following the training and instruction of a realized spiritual preceptor and to do regular spiritual practice to be free of doubt, remove error, and improve awareness through the thinning and removal of all the past, present, and future limiting impressions in the mind.
2020 continues to bring increased turmoil. The recent acts of racial violence are a horrific addition to our already troubled times, and the necessary peaceful demonstrations of protest to these hate crimes and their underlying causes highlights our desperate need to change as individuals and as a culture. We cannot let lower levels of consciousness define us as a people; we must identify with the Light that we are. Only Light can dispel the darkness of ignorance and hatred. […]