Himalayan Academy has been working for some months now on a series of online learning courses. We chose the THINKIFIC platform (they have more than 40,000 teachers!) and have created some extensive and some simple courses. The entire Master Course trilogy is there, in three parts. So is our youth catechism Path to Siva, in both the teenage version and the 8-year-old simplified form. There is a course on Know Thy Self. Beginning to Meditate is our newest addition. The lessons are illustrated and designed to take ten minutes a day, or less.

As we all know, this is how learning is done in the digital age. You can be anywhere in the world and study the courses, pass the tests and follow the suggested practices.

We are working on more lessons. Meantime, visit Thinkific's site here (https://courses.himalayanacademy.com/) and begin your study.

Just today we received this amazing testimonial from a student who is on Week 5, Day 3 of the Master Course. As you will see, it has made quite an impression:

"I have been blessed with many teachers and many lessons throughout my life. A wise friend once counseled, "Don't go on and on" when I need to learn that I often say too much and what I say is not helpful. A music instructor recently told me, "You don't apply yourself." He was absolutely correct. Since then, I have been trying to work on applying these lessons to all areas of my life, and I think it's helped.

But the most helpful lesson I have learned is from this marvelous course: I am not my mind, body, or emotions. As I age and the body I inhabit now is beginning to show signs of breaking down, and I am faced with medical procedures in the near future, nothing has helped relieve my stress and anxiety as that simple lesson: I am not the body I inhabit. There is so much more than an ailing heart or poor eyesight or aching knees or or or... I am part of something eternal, something more blazingly beautiful than I can imagine at this point, but I know it's there.

No other religious tradition can offer this powerful lesson, and believe me, I've looked. I am aware of the current line of thinking that insists that a westerner participating in Hinduism is considered "cultural appropriation" and is unwelcome by many people. But my soul pulls me back to Hinduism nonetheless. Christianity, the religion of my birth, cannot ease my fears. Judaism, the religion of my mother, has great spiritual wealth, but doesn't present these truths this way. Sufis long for an immediate experience of the Divine in this life, but what happens after? Buddhism comes close, but where is God? And what happens to me after this life has ended? There are no answers for me in Buddhism.

But I found my answers in Hinduism, and those answers are clear and joyful and are giving me the peace I thought I would never find. I am eternally grateful for this learning experience."

Om Namah Sivaya!

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