Conversations With Ananda — Ch. 40, Nayaswami Lilavati Aguilar

Living Wisdom School second grade teacher Lilavati Aguilar
Lilavati in 2017

At the time when she wrote her story, Lilavati taught Pre-K and Kindergarten at the Ananda Living Wisdom School in Palo Alto, California. As the school year starts (in August 2023), she is the second grade teacher.

I was in acute emotional pain after the end of a twenty-year relationship with my then-husband and father of my two children. I told a friend, who wasn’t part of Ananda, that I was looking for a meditation class to help me restore a sense of inner balance, and he suggested that I go to East West Bookstore in Mountain View which was owned by Ananda.

Sometimes it takes a crisis to shake us out of our spiritual complacency. That was certainly the case with me.

Years before, I had tried meditation through various Buddhist organizations, and by taking the SRF lessons by mail. They gave me a glimmer of spiritual possibilities, but they didn’t engage me deeply. But I had read Autobiography of a Yogi in the distant past, and I remembered that it contained profound thoughts and insights.

When my friend and I walked into East West, I was immediately encouraged to see Paramahansa Yogananda’s familiar face on the covers of several books. East West had a special feeling that I couldn’t quite place. I only knew that it felt good to be there.

I’m writing this fourteen years after taking my first meditation class at East West, and I feel total gratitude every day for having been introduced to Ananda. I wasn’t the type to jump with both feet into something new, and I cautiously became more involved over the years. My career and family take up a lot of my time, but it’s the time I spend with Ananda that recharges my batteries. I volunteer once a month as an usher for Sunday services, and I try to help with other activities throughout the year. I continue to take classes, workshops, and seminars, because it was Ananda that turned that initial glimmer of spiritual possibility into a rewarding spiritual life that guides me through this rich and confusing world.

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