Spiritual Awakenings
Tucson Meditation Group of Self-Realization Fellowship Walks a Peaceful Path
T Paramahansa Yogananda
he Tucson Meditation Group of Self-
Realization Fellowship or the Self-Realization Fellowship Group, is formally affiliated with
Self-Realization Fellowship’s international headquarters in Los Angeles, CA, which was founded by Paramahansa Yogananda in 1920.
The local group, which has about 120 members on its contact list, was founded in Tucson in 1975 with about 30 members. There are many Self-Realization Fellowship temples in California and year-round retreats elsewhere, but Arizona boasts the only official temple outside Los Angeles, one in Phoenix. The fellowship’s central meeting place in Tucson is its Meditation Chapel at 1702 E. Prince Road, No. 140, with space for meditation and study groups and a media room with books, DVDs and CDs for sale. The group holds a Sunday service at the chapel each week, including a silent meditation followed by chanting from 9 to 10 a.m. and then a reading service from 10 to 11 a.m. There is also a weekly Sunday evening meditation service from 6 to 8. The fellowship also runs weekly evening meditations on Wednesdays and Fridays. A three- person council governs the local group; elections are held annually.
The Tucson meditation group follows what it terms the “timeless scientific method of yoga meditation” introduced to the West by Yogananda that “enables one to rediscover, by direct personal experience, the universal consciousness of God that dwells within.” To that end, members learn and practice Kriya yoga, described as a “soul-awakening technique to make direct contact with God” and a “sacred, spiritual science” that originated millennia ago in India, lost to the world during the Middle Ages and revived in the 20th century by Yogananda.
The local group has a weekend retreat in Picture
Rocks in October, and the Phoenix temple has an annual one planned for April 29-May 1. Self-Realization Fellowship members from all over the Southwest and farther away will attend. Throughout the year, the group sponsors socials, potlucks, picnics and hikes, in addition to its regularly weekly meditations and services. The group holds extended meditations throughout the year, and the week before Christmas the group offers an all-day meditation. The international Self-Realization Fellowship holds an annual convocation in Los Angeles, which is attended by devotees from all over the world, including a
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number from southern Arizona. Susan Warren, a local psychotherapist and 33-year
SRF member, functions as the local group’s advertising and website coordinator. She found many answers in Yogananda’s teachings.
“I had been searching for 26 years for something that
answered all of my questions,” Warren said. “His teachings answered all my questions.”
Susan offers this quote from Yogananda as an explanation of the core of the Self-Realization Fellowship: “God is the most loveable being in the universe. Everything you want is in him.”
To learn more about the Tucson Meditation Group of Self-Realization Fellowship, call 520-792-6544 or email
Meditation@TucsonMeditationGroup.com. Other contacts include the Phoenix Temple at
PhoenixTemple.org and
Yogananda-srf.org.
Marcia Detwiler Scupin owns Write on Course, a Tucson- based writing and editing business. She is a contributing writer and editor for Demand Media websites and available for contract freelance work. Reach her at
mscupin@cox.net.
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