Path of the Mother On-line Workshop

For a Deeper Connection with the Divine Feminine

Worship leader: Savitri L. Bess

Course Fee: $45 for 7 lessons

(50% of proceeds go to Amma's charitable activities)
Classes are on-going. You may enroll now using Secure Paypal

Savitri L. Bess, M.F.A, M.Ed.

About Savitri:

Savitri L. Bess, M.F.A., M.Ed., is a transpersonal therapist, workshop facilitator, and fiber artist who has been awarded Fulbright and NEA grants. She has taught at the University of Washington in Seattle and at Moore College of Art in Philadelphia.

While living as a monastic at an ashram in the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania in the 70's, she studied Hindu philosophy and religion.

In the 1980's she received a masters in counseling, became a therapist in private practice, and founded and directed the Center for Creative Consciousness in Tucson, Arizona, where she taught yoga and meditation and conducted workshops.

Since 1992, she has been a devotee of the Indian holy woman Mata Amritanandamayi (Ammachi or Amma) also known as "The Hugging Saint." Savitri has lived on and off at Ammachi's ashram in India and for five years in Amma's ashram in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Savitri now resides in Southwest Harbor, Maine, where she writes, contemplates in nature, and continues to spend time with Ammachi in India and other locations in the US and abroad.

Savitri also gives astrology readings focusing on spirituality.

Course Description:

Using Ammachi's (Mata Amritanandamayi) teachings as the foundation, Savitri will take you through a six-stage spiritual journey outlined in her book The Path of the Mother. You will also examine information about the spiritual feminine in several different cultures and religions. The workshop's exercises, meditations, and prayers will help you rediscover the Divine Mother within. The course will be useful for both novice and veteran seekers.

You may expect to balance your inner masculine and feminine energies, examine your buried wounds, open your heart to the nurturing guidance of the Mother of us all, and live more compassionately.

Details and Information:

The course is primarily experiential. There will also be reading assignments from the text The Path of the Mother as well as additional suggested reading which is optional. I will send you the exercises, questions for you to answer, and reading material for each lesson as you proceed.

As soon as you enroll, I will send you the outline for the "Introduction." When you finish the introduction, I will send you the outline for "Getting to Know the Mother," and so on, until you are finished.

I will look forward to communicating with you and receiving descriptions about your experiences with the exercises as well as your thoughts and feelings about the reading materials.

Questions? e-mail Savitri

Text book for the class:

THE PATH OF THE MOTHER: With the Divine Guidance of the Holy Mother Ammachi(Ballantine Books)
by Savitri Bess

Available from Amazon

or from your local bookstore.

The Path of the Mother is a non-fiction book presenting the six-stage journey to union with the Universal Mother framed by Savitri's years of devotion to one of the Mother's most famous incarnations--the Hindu mystic Ammachi. Click for more information about the book and about Ammachi.

Savitri sitting in front of a picture of Ammachi

The way of love is not
a subtle argument.

The door there
is devastation.

Birds make great sky-circles
of their freedom.
How do they learn it?

They fall, and falling
they're given wings.
--Rumi

The Course

1. Introduction:

First I want to get to know you, why you are taking this course, what you hope to get out of it. In the introduction I will ask you several questions about yourself, give the first reading assignment, and provide instructions for the first exercise.

You will begin to examine the six stages which are cyclical; they happen over and over again in many different ways. The stages are nonlinear in the sense that one does not necessarily follow another. Usually their motion resembles an ascending spiral. Many of you who have been on a spiritual path for a while may have wondered about this spiral staircase-like phenomenon and mistakenly thought you were not making progress when in fact you were.

2. Getting to Know the Mother

Stage one of getting to know the Mother includes learning about her on all levels, and can include glimpses of all six stages. Consciously or unconsciously we all have an image or an idealistic view of the divine Mother. We might know at least some aspect of who she is from our experience with our own mothers.

Even people who grew up motherless or did not bond with their mothers, understand the concept of the perfect mother. They know what the perfect mother would have done for them, and how her presence would have comforted them.

This lesson will show you how to begin making a connection with the Divine Mother.

3.Love and Rapture

The story of love takes us to the second stage on the Path of the Mother. Here we are swept into bliss and rapture beyond any we have ever experienced before. While in stage one, the love we feel is comforting, it tends to be more abstract and distant; in stage two, our love for her becomes deeply personal and all-encompassing, as a lover for the beloved.

To love someone greatly is one of the simplest and, at the same time, most advanced of spiritual practices. Love alone will take us to the deeper spiritual truth within.

This lesson will help you find the Love within that represents the inner Divine Mother.

Companion text (optional): This fictional guide shows one woman's way of following the path of the Mother:

OFFER ME A FLOWER: A Spiritual Quest(Bharati Impressions)
by Savitri Bess.

COVR award-winning novel in which a mystical Mother in white appears in the most unlikely places to guide the protagonist Luce in her search for the Immortal Nectar. Excitement reigns high as Luce goes through personal tests in the tradition of "quest" literature. Click for more information.

SALE: $5.00 with FREE shipping by using secure Paypal ($15 shipping abroad)

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If you want to be closer to God,
try to be like a child.
A child's world is full of wonder and imagination and play. . .
There is a child within everyone.
--Ammachi

All of life moves in cycles; the whole universe is cyclic. Just as the earth moves around the sun in a regular cycle, all of Nature moves in a cyclic pattern. The seasons move in a circle: spring, summer, autumn, winter, then spring again, and so forth. From the seed comes the tree, the tree again provides seeds, and the seeds grow into trees. It is a circle.
--Ammachi

4. The Mother's Discipline

In stage three we become willing to receive The Mother's discipline because we feel an intimacy with the her in a very childlike and fundamental way. In addition, because we love her so much, we actually enjoy that she holds us to her more tightly than she would in stage one or two. In this stage, with a love greater than we've ever known, she grinds us down, removes the dust and dirt, the pain and suffering, and leaves us shining with love, setting us free.

In this lesson several you will explore several ways to communicate with the Divine Mother and discover how she disciplines you in daily life.

5. The Shadow from a Spiritual Perspective

In the shadow stage the Mother's light reveals old, forgotten secrets, ones that undoubtedly arouse pain and fear. The inevitable outcome of doing spiritual disciplines such as the ones you have learned in lessons 1-4, (meditation, repetition of name, contemplation, self-examination) is set into motion.

At this point we find we simply must accept Mother's guidance through the shadow in order to purify our emotions, our mind, and our negative tendencies. You will examine the ways in which the real problem lies within you by asking, "What is the divine Mother trying to teach me?"

In this lesson you will explore various ways to access the shadow including dreams, art work, and inner writing.

St. Sauveur Mt., Southwest Harbor, Maine

Spiritual practice reminds you, "I am not just a part, but the part of the Whole---indeed, I am one with the whole."
---Ammachi

Like love, surrender cannot be studied or learned from any books or from any particular person or from a university. Self-surrender comes as love grows. In fact, the two grow simultaneously.
--Ammachi

6. Surrender

Usually an in-depth view of our shadow leaves us feeling tender and washed out. In this state of not knowing, we are the most likely to have an experience of surrender; we are likely to have a glimpse of what it means to allow the Mother to enter in, filling us with her grace and her infinite love.

A state of surrender means we no longer make claims such as "I did this or that" or "I accomplished this or that." Instead we recognize that everything we do is the result of divine energy moving in and through us.

Usually it is a slow and gradual process taking place over many years.

In this lesson you will cultivate an attitude of non-doership, of finding out how to know for certain that the Mother plays her music of life through you and that things do not happen by your will alone. You learn how to BE the song.

7. Contentment and Yearning

In this stage we begin to realize that everything we do is guided by the Mother. Her consistent patience with all our concerns-- health, finances, relationships-- has opened our hearts so that we now trust almost every aspect of her Motherhood. Her dedicated concern for our every desire has brought us to a point where we feel a comfortable faith in her counsel.

Our lives are more harmonious, not necessarily the occurrences themselves, but rather the way in which we perceive them.

In this lesson you will learn about the meaning of saying "yes" to everything and cultivating contentment.

The river says yes to everyone. All of Nature says yes, except human beings. A human being can say both yes and no....When you see life, and all that life brings you, as a precious gift, you will be able to say yes to everything.
--Ammachi

Enrollment:

Please e-mail Savitri as soon as you have enrolled and then you will receive your first lesson. As soon as you have completed one lesson, you will receive the next one, and so on until you have completed the course.

You may go through the lessons at your own pace as long as you finish each lesson within one month (a total of seven months for the full course).

50% of proceeds will go to Ammachi's charitable activities