Book excerpt: Sadhana brings us into an intimate alignment with the reality of who we are: as a creature of the Creator and as a human being. First published in 1974, Kundalini Yoga Sadhana Guidelines has become the best-selling Kundalini Yoga manual of all time. Within these pages, you'll find the inspiration to keep returning breath-by-breath to your Self and to your practice. Sadhana is everything we do on a daily basis as our self-discipline and our commitment to our higher self. It is a spiritual practice in which we confront the tendencies of our mind and ego and, out of love, we invite in the dimensions of our soul, spirit, and intuition. In its essence, it is a process of refinement, development, and mastery. As we learned from eastern traditions, a sadhu is a being who has disciplined himself. Likewise, the definition of a yogi is a person who has totally leaned on the supreme consciousness, which is God. The purpose of sadhana is to arrive at the place where we go beyond our ego and its limitations. Morning sadhana-done before the sunrise-is a special time when we sit before the altar of our own consciousness and have the opportunity to clean up our inner world before we engage in the outer world-our jobs, our families, our responsibilities. This manual exists to serve you and to help you uplift yourself and others. It is designed for both the new and the experienced student. It focuses on the essential practice of Kundalini Yoga. A material that offers lectures, essays, insights, and a series of exercises that one can experience and improve one's own personal practice.