{"id":54495,"date":"2017-12-23T11:37:05","date_gmt":"2017-12-23T10:37:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/?p=54495"},"modified":"2017-12-23T11:39:31","modified_gmt":"2017-12-23T10:39:31","slug":"rise-up-your-bhakti-life-a-creative-vaishnava-project-comes-to-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/?p=54495","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Rise Up your Bhakti Life&#8221;, a creative Vaishnava project comes to life"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/lh3.googleusercontent.com\/-aOurmLfbxiI\/Wj4wx0kxMmI\/AAAAAAAAhHA\/g6nk9Vz2tL8zaudAlYHGGfZxvP9qhZFGwCHMYCw\/s0\/2017-12-23_11-32-37.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"960\" height=\"540\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/DyHDuDCTV-k?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" gesture=\"media\" allow=\"encrypted-media\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>by GITAVALI DEVI DASI     <\/p>\n<p> It all started last year when I decided to stop procrastinating and bring to reality a creative project that had been brewing in my mind for a long time, many months, in fact even years. We all know how busy our lives can be. We fill them up with so much service, so much responsibilities, not to mention trying to look after ourselves and our families.  When I decided to make this idea come to life, my son was 14 months old. I thought to myself: &#8220;Enough thinking about it, just do it! If I keep dreaming about it, it will just stay in my mind. I have to act.&#8221; For a while, I had thought: &#8220;Oh, maybe next year I&#8217;ll make it happen.&#8221; And then it hit me &#8211; I&#8217;ve been thinking like this for a long time and if I keep thinking like this, it will never happen. So on December 1st 2016 I shared my thoughts with a trusted friend, which gave me the impetus to start writing. Within two weeks I had a finished manuscript ready to be printed! Last year, I self published the first edition of the &#8220;Rise Up Diary 2017&#8221;. It was a success with 50 copies selling out within a week. I only promoted it within my own community in New Zealand by word of mouth.<\/p>\n<p>When I first was contemplating the idea for this book, I just wanted to have a diary or journal that was appealing to me and my needs. A place where I could record some elements of my life all in one place. Forget about the phone apps, the tablet, or computer; I preferred writing it down on real paper, the traditional way &#8211; it&#8217;s more permanent, more tangible and more personal I think. In this age of technology, we stare enough at a screen, so here&#8217;s an opportunity to unplug. Anyway, books are great right? And then I thought that perhaps there&#8217;re others around the world who would like this kind of thing also.<\/p>\n<p>I once paid $35 for a Gratitude Diary, which I loved and used pretty much daily. To me, it was worth it. Journals, planners or diaries, when correctly used,  motivate you to use them more and make use of them. They can be a wonderful tool in Krishna&#8217;s service.           <\/p>\n<p>So, what&#8221;s in this journal? The book includes a space to write down a daily gratitude, something you are grateful for. It can totally range from Krishna&#8217;s beauty, to a simple element of your daily life. Having an attitude of gratitude, as we know, can help us on the Bhakti path. It  is also psychologically proven to create new positive neurological pathways, &#038; makes us appreciate what we have now; thus uplifting our spirits and increasing our happiness.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Every moment is an opportunity to practically express our gratitude and that is how we make spiritual progress.&#8221;  &#8211;  HH Radhanath Swami<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s a section to write down your three top services as a priority for the day. Whether its reading Prabhupada&#8217;s books uninterruptedly for an hour, calling your mother, cleaning windows, writing to a friend or making a sweet for the ashram &#8211; whatever it is &#8211; get those things done as a priority and stick to it.  In this way, by the end of the week you&#8217;ll have accomplished a lot.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s a daily logging section on each page everyday so you can log elements of your Bhakti life like your Japa, reading and hearing as well as exercise, waking and resting times and there are three blank spaces to log whatever you like. Anyone, whether brahmacari, married, young, old, single, working or studying;  whether you&#8217;re chanting 4 rounds a day and want to steadily increase or have been chanting 16 rounds for 20 years, we can all improve the quality of our japa meditation. This is why this journal was started. I personally wanted to feel inspired by seeing how I am doing. I wanted to have a tool to help me orchestrate my life so that I could chant my 16 rounds all in one go and as attentively as possible. I understand that it&#8217;s not necessarily possible for everyone. Almost seems impossible, right? We work hard, raise small children or have many kids or even health challenges or old age sets in but still we can all work with what we have and do our best to chant attentively. We live in a time where we are bombarded by weapons of mass distractions. Lets stay focused on the goal and not waste any time, a most precious resource. I want to inspire everyone to become the best version of themselves in this lifetime. <\/p>\n<p>This journal includes an incorporated Vaisnava Calendar with all the important dates like the appearance and disappearance days of Vaisnavas in our line, appearance days of the Lord and Ekadasi days for your country. What took me the longest to design and why it took me so long to get this journal out was entering all the dates in four different versions. I separated the globe into four so there is the North American edition, the Extended European version for the UK, Europe and Eastern Europe, South Africa all the way to Western Russia. There is also the Indian version and finally, the Down Under edition for Australia, Fiji and New Zealand. <\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve added two pages a month for you to write down some attainable goals to help you rise up. Whether you want to chant more attentively, read more of Srila Prabhupada&#8217;s books (and study them in detail) or engage new people in Krishna&#8217;s service; or perhaps you want to start learning an instrument, take singing lessons, be kinder to your spouse, save money to go the Holy Dhama or even just clear out that closet of old things you no longer use &#8211; this section will help you with this. There&#8217;s a sheet that helps you separate your goals into tasks and give yourself a deadline.  It becomes more attainable and uplifting when you see things clearly on paper. It is easy to go back to it as this is a book, not an app. It&#8217;s all in front of you. We can&#8217;t change what we don&#8217;t acknowledge. First of all take a look at yourself and see what needs tweaking. It&#8217;s good to admit our own vulnerabilities and be humble to areas of ourselves that need addressing. There&#8217;s an old saying: &#8220;If you keep doing what you&#8217;re doing, you&#8217;ll keep getting what you&#8217;re getting&#8221;. It&#8217;s so true. If you don&#8217;t like the results you&#8217;re getting, maybe it&#8217;s time to make a few changes. It starts with you.                                                                                                                                                                                                                      <\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve included weekly inspirational quotes to uplift our spirits. I&#8217;ve asked permission from www.iskcondesiretree.com to use them from their website. I hope these can uplift and motivate devotees to move forward in their spiritual lives. I hope those whom I have quotes won&#8217;t mind personally that I&#8217;ve taken their words to help inspire the world. I made an effort to contact them personally.<\/p>\n<p>Logging it!- This feature allows you to see more clearly whether your are progressing or stabilizing (or maybe just lagging behind) in your habits. At the end of the journal you&#8217;ll see some grids where you&#8217;ll be able to see everything for the whole year. Japa and sadhana are the categories I chose to focus on. So everyday or weekly, you can fill in how many minutes you read and when you chanted your rounds all in one go. So, you&#8217;ll see how your going and tally your monthly totals. <\/p>\n<p>In conclusion, this journal is there to help us rise up to the mode of goodness, and develop regulation, gratitude and make positive changes in our lives. There&#8217;s a little something for everyone in this book. A great opportunity to take responsibility for your own life. Become enlivened to get up in the morning and be accountable. We are all individuals &#8211; original, varied and authentic. You can use this journal as you like, filling in the aspects of your life you want to upgrade in. Get inspired! RISE UP spirit souls!<\/p>\n<p>**************************************************************************************************************************************<\/p>\n<p>Gitavali devi dasi has been practicing Krishna consciousness or Bhakti Yoga since 2005 after travelling to New Zealand on a working holiday visa, looking for the answers to life&#8217;s biggest questions. She had just graduated with a Bachelor in Fine Arts from Concordia University and wanted to change the world through film. Originally from Canada, she now permanently resides in Auckland, NZ, with her husband and young son. As well as being a yoga teacher, running the Veda Club at the University of Auckland and supporting the outreach at the Loft Yoga Lounge, she and her husband run an ashram at their communal home where they train young working men, travellers or students to grow organically in Krishna consciousness.<\/p>\n<p>She recently started a Youtube channel: RiseUpyourLife<\/p>\n<p>And a facebook page: https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/riseupdiary\/<\/p>\n<p>The four versions of the &#8220;Rise Up your Bhakti Life Journal 2018&#8221; are now available on www.Amazon.com and www.Amazon.eu       <\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re interested in making this journal available at your local temple shop at cost price, please contact me by email: gitavali.das@gmail.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/lh3.googleusercontent.com\/-BM7WImLgdTE\/Wj4xSp8MFfI\/AAAAAAAAhHI\/_zie9VGW4X4t4ikB6kFnHq72PSxgIm0iQCHMYCw\/s0\/2017-12-23_11-34-50.jpg\" alt=\"Hare Krishna\"\/> Gitavali Devi Dasi: It all started last year when I decided to stop procrastinating and bring to reality a creative project that had been brewing in my mind for a long time, many months, in fact even years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recent-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54495"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54495\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54497,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54495\/revisions\/54497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}