Spiritual Awakenings


Yogananda-Inspired Meditation Calls for an Awakened Tucson


By Marcia Detwiler Scupin A


nanda Tucson Seeks Deep, Inner Experience of God


Ananda Tucson is a small community of about 30 people who gather regularly to meditate, fellowship and learn more about their chosen path toward wisdom, truth and joy, which some call God. The group, while operating independently, is formally affiliated with Ananda Sangha, based in Nevada City, Calif., where there are Ananda schools and a university.


Ananda bases its teachings


and practices on those of the late Paramhansa Yogananda, who brought the spiritual teachings of India to the West in the 1920s. He is perhaps best remembered as the author of “Autobiography of a Yogi,” an international bestseller published in 1946 and since translated into more than 30 languages. Yogananda founded a spiritual society and school in Los Angeles and spent most of his life until his death in 1952 in the United States, introducing meditation and Kriya yoga to several generations of Americans.


Tucsonan Elizabeth McConner


lived at the Ananda community in California for three years and was deeply impressed with what she encountered there.


“It’s incredible living in spiritual


community with people who live what 30


Tucson


they preach,” McConner said. “I never heard a negative word about anyone or anything while I was there.”


The group’s way of life affected McConner so strongly that she began teaching meditation in Tucson in 2001, founding a meditation group here in 2002 which grew into Ananda Tucson.


“Ananda Tucson is a branch of


the Ananda worldwide movement. We are a spiritual community based on the principles that people are more important than things and where there is dharma (right action) there is victory,” McConner said. “Ananda Tucson supports those on a spiritual journey toward a deep, inner experience of God by using the teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda relating to meditation, energy and living in harmony with all life.”


The group also looks to a direct disciple of Yogananda, Swami Kriyanda, as a spiritual guide. Kriyanda was just 22 when he came under Yogananda’s tutelage. At 85, he is still going strong as a spiritual leader, authoring books and offering teachings via CDs, DVDs and workshops.


Through the early 2000s, Ananda


Tucson met in members’ homes and other borrowed space, finally purchasing a home of its own at 1002 E. Prince Road in 2009. Meditation


groups meet weekly on the east and west sides of Tucson, with the Prince Road center serving as a central meeting house. The center, which McConner calls “our spiritual home” is a hub of weekly activity where devotees learn techniques based on the teachings of Yogananda: energization exercises, gentle yoga postures, affirmations, chanting and meditation. It also serves as a fellowship, or “satsang,” hub – where friends of like mind gather to share food and get to know each other better. A book study group regularly meets there. Some members are planting a vegetable garden at the Prince Road center that also holds a spiritual purpose. Yogananda, McConner says, warned of a “huge cleansing” that would be worse than the Great Depression, encouraging his followers to establish self-sustaining lifestyles.


All in all, Ananda Tucson offers its members a lasting reverberation of spirituality that they take wherever they go.


“Ananda members find that


the joy within from Divine contact radiates through the heart and creates an uplifting, loving vibration,” McConnor said.


To learn more about Ananda Tucson, contact Elizabeth McConner at 520- 299-9309 or visit AnandaArizona.org or Ananda Sangha at Ananda.org.


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