Living the Practice

By: Rohini Ralby

Narrated by: Aaron Ralby

"Warrior of Love" by Rohini Ralby is a comprehensive guide to spiritual practice and self-realization. Through her teachings, Ralby offers profound insights into the nature of the 'shrunken self,' the transformative power of the guru-disciple relationship, and the rigorous discipline required for spiritual growth. This book provides practical exercises, meditations, and philosophical reflections designed to make spiritual principles accessible and actionable for listeners at any stage of their spiritual journey.

©2024 Rohini Ralby (P)2024 Bancroft Press

Teaching, Guding, and Modeling Love

My name is Doug Oppenheimer and I have been a student of Rohini’s for over twenty-five years. Recently, I was diagnosed with stage four esophageal cancer and the first person I called was Rohini, knowing that she had battled and beaten cancer twice herself. Since that moment, Rohini has been right beside me helping me navigate the complex process of dealing with this terrible disease and modeling for me the true path to being a warrior of Love. From communicating with my doctors to making sure that I am doing everything under my power to live, Rohini has taught me that every moment and every situation is an opportunity to grow and to love both myself and others.

As I read her new book and reflected on my life over the past thirty years or so, it struck me that there is not a moment where I haven't felt Rohini's teachings and love right beside me. All of the major events and roles I took on in those years were both inspired and supported by Her. From teaching to coaching soccer to even creating my own software company, these moments in my life have proven to be the most fulfilling and life changing.

For example, I remember her sitting with me when I first moved to Maryland with no job and her asking me, so what do you want to do now, besides nothing? “Nothing” was my first answer, and I could hear it internally. We went on to discuss my history and after patiently listening, she suggested that I teach at a local private school since my life kept gravitating towards helping kids and playing the sport of soccer. With teaching, I could also coach!

Her working with me did not stop there though because over the next twenty-five or so years she helped me with countless interviews, lesson plans, student situations, and soccer practices. She even inspired and pushed me to attend graduate school. Again, she was not only guiding me on my own path, helping me grow and evolve as a human being, but she was showing me how a teacher consistently models true Love and support for their student. Those years were filled with such joy and were perhaps the most rewarding ones of my life. I can honestly say that I grew and learned more in those years than the rest of my life put together.

Like she says in the book, she uses these opportunities to help people grow as a human being but more importantly help them walk down their own path as a warrior of Love. In my experience, this path starts out not as an idea, but a truth. It requires honesty and reflection and is not easy. I am just a beginner and so, as I walk down my own path, this book is not only a gift, but it is also a tool through which to help me continue to discern between what is real and what is not real in this life, and to help me find and fight for LOVE.

It is fitting that Rohini never stops giving of herself and continues to fight for what is most important in all of us. With this book Rohini continues to teach, guide, and model Love. Her creative blend of art, poetry, and commentary is not only emphasizing her teachings, but also giving the book a unique rhythm and joy.

From the outset, Rohini has walked this path of Love over and over in my life and I have watched her do it in many others.

What is in this book is a gift available to us all

Reading Living the Practice Volume Two: The Warrior of Love makes me happy. I feel joy reading and listening to this book, because I am understanding myself, people, the world, and Love a little more deeply every time I open it.

There are times when I want to seek a particular passage in the book, and there are other moments when I’ll just turn to a random page; without fail, Rohini’s words or paintings reveal an internal lesson that somehow always applies to whatever my momentary experience might be. It is so remarkable and relieving.

Through essays, paintings, poems, and stories that are utterly human and relatable, (one of my favorites is about finally recognizing a simple truth at age 23), Rohini gives us and explains the literal Practice–exactly what to do, and how to do it–that can and is to be done in every moment of the day. And it works. Because of Rohini and the Practice that she teaches in this book, my life is changing for the better and I experience Love.

On a regular basis as I go throughout the day, I find myself recognizing and applying lessons from the book, such as working with the “Non-resistance” fourchotomy in “Conscious Non-resistance”. With essays such as “Are You Sharing or Reporting?”, wherein she so clearly delineates the experiential differences between the two, I can check myself, reflecting on what my honest motivation is in a given situation, and then grow.

Rohini’s poems are also so full of meaning, and because I understand something differently or something more each time going back and rereading, they are extremely helpful. It amazes me how a word like “own” in her poem, “karmic chain”, for example, could be read as an adjective, a verb, or potentially even a pronoun, and yet all of these possibilities work and shed light. It’s fun to read them.

This book has become a part of my daily life. Rohini writes on page 219, “...because the Guru’s motivation is Love, the outcome is always freeing, whether or not the disciple sees it at first…Externally, the situation may remain difficult, but the experience of those difficulties, and the reasons for them, change…The Guru frees us to live a life filled with the many textures and layers available to all of us. We look at a scene and see the fullness and Love rather than the most superficial and empty elements.” I am enjoying how every experience has within it an inherent lesson if I’m willing to listen and to do the Practice that Rohini teaches within the pages of The Warrior of Love. What is in this beautiful book is a gift, and the most incredible part is that it is available to us all. How lucky are we?