The Beloved Narayani Inc. has been established to support the humanitarian projects inspired by Sri Shakti Narayani Amma.
We are a charity registered by the Australian Government via the ACNC commission, see here for our registration certificate —-> registrationcertificateacnc.
“Our vision is to share divine love and wisdom inspired by Sri Sakthi Narayani Amma through devotion and service.”
Our goals are:
- to create the opportunity for people to connect with their essential nature (inner wisdom, divine, true self) through pujas (prayers), service and special events.
- to build a unified and caring community which is a living expression of love and wisdom.
- to be a bridge between Australia and Sri Narayani Peedam/Sripuram in India
- to raise awareness about Amma and to support Amma’s charitable projects in India
- to create a permanent Beloved Narayani Centre in Australia.
We are an Australian-based incorporated, not-for-profit, spiritual community and welcome people of all faiths.
From diverse cultural and religious backgrounds, many of us have connected with Amma and Amma’s universal message of unconditional love. Our journey on the spiritual path is so unique and personal. No one understands our inner-relationship with the Divine, but the Divine. Sri Shakti Amma (commonly known as Am is both a living Guru (spiritual master) and embodiment of the Divine force that knows us from within, and thus helps us awaken our hearts to our own divinity and true purpose. We feel privileged to come together as part of Beloved Narayani to share the love that touched our hearts. And when we unite, the power of community, devotion and seva (selfless service to humanity) brings joy to our spirits and those in need.
“When you give service to the world you will experience a joy that will stay with you.” Sri Sakthi Narayani Amma
The Beloved Narayani Inc. truly values strong governance & transparency. At any request we can will send all our audited financials and annual report directly to you.
OUR COMMITTEE
CHAIR-WOMAN: KELLIE BRIGHT
Kellie Bright or as Amma calls her Karuna (compassionate one) has lead a life of a spiritual aspirant. Since ‘falling in love’ with Amma, Kellie has opened her home to host regular full moon puja’s, recently a full Navarathri program and many other grand events with her son Jesse Phillips. Kellie prepares her home days in advance, by cleaning, cooking and even ordering flower mala’s from India. Kellie has many talents including psychotherapy, healing, cooking, writing, diplomacy and a background in perfumery. She been using the flower mala’s that have been offered to Amma to create Divinely fragrant blessed perfumes. As an admin of the Facebook page Sydney Narayani Centre you can find out more about what’s on.
TREASURER: DANIEL RAWSON (founding board member)
Daniel Rawson’s love of spirituality began with Zen and Vipassana meditation. In 2004, whilst studying writing and music in the Byron region, he had a calling to visit India. He had heard of the importance of having a spiritual teacher and was curious. On meeting Amma and attending Amma’s pujas a deep love and connection was instantly formed that exceeded any of his expectations. On the fifth day after meeting Amma he had the desire to ask Amma if Amma would be his teacher. Amma replied, ‘It will be everything!’
Since then he has been visiting Peedam for 3 months a year to be in Amma’s presence, and it has been everything and more. Besides bestowing sweet wisdom, love and peace, Amma enlightened Daniel to the path of karma yoga or seva, as a way to experience true joy, bliss and purify his karma. He feels very blessed to be playing a role on the board, as he now understands that when like-minded souls come together to serve the Divine, the group energy ignites one another, and causes even greater transformation.
He currently lives in the Byron Shire with his wife Jasmine and daughter Jyoti. They have established the Divine Nature Sanctuary with a Shakthi Yurt Temple, dedicated to Sri Shakthi Amma in Goonengerry www.DivineNature.com.au
DIRECTOR: CHRISTOS DORJE WALKER (founding board member)
I grew up on the beaches of the Gold Coast. Surfing and the ocean have always been a passion for me as well as eastern philosophy, meditation and Yoga. I can remember the first time I went to India, I was only 8 years old. My Father and I were in transit, travelling back to Australia from the UK. This image of India never left my mind growing up and intrigued me deeply. Even to this day I still have the small wooden elephants that we bought on that stop over in Delhi back in December 1979. I have been travelling to India regularly all my adult life and finding it a source of inspiration and nourishment. At one point in my early 20’s I lived for a time in northern India studying Buddhism and later studied as a Buddhist monk under a Tibetan Lama in the UK. I concluded my Buddhist studies after 5 years and went back to Australia where I studied Somatic Psychotherapy. I live and work as a Psychotherapist using mindfulness based meditation as a therapeutic tool and also take people on retreats to countries like India and Bhutan.
In December 2004 I returned once again to visit India as I wanted to visit a young Indian Guru that I knew very little about but had heard great things from a friend of mine Ben Lee. This Guru turned out to be Sri Sakthi Narayani Amma a great Avatar and divinely realised Being. Since then Amma has become the most important spiritual influence in my life. I have returned to see Amma regularly ever since 2004 perhaps more than 30 individual trips and this has always proven to be an ongoing profound source of healing and revelation for me.
I feel that perhaps it may serve to share a personal story of my first meeting with Narayani Amma. When I was a monk I kept having reoccurring dreams of an Indian Guru holding up his right hand in the gesture of blessing that would appear in front of me. Never speaking but a very intense and blissful energy would be coming from the Guru in the dream. These dreams continued for many, many years but I never knew who this person was. I felt strongly that one day I would meet this Guru and visit the places I would see in my dreams. When I travelled to Narayani Peedam to meet Amma for the first time I realised that this was the person I had been dreaming about for so many years. When I stood in line to receive holy water and blessings from Amma the first time Amma asked my name and then said ” You are here because Amma has brought you here, you are Blessed” It was in this moment I felt very clearly Amma was confirming the feeling I had that this is the place in my dreams and this is the Guru from my dreams. There are many Guru’s in this world with many paths and many teachings. I am grateful to have found a Teacher, Guru and Divine Guide that embodies the loving presence of the Divine Mother offering a source Wisdom, Compassion and Power in the form of Narayani: Saraswathi, Lakshmi and Durga. I am currently on the board of the Beloved Narayani Foundation and am responsible for events. I have had the good fortune to film Amma performing Rituals called Puja’s and also film the spiritual domain Sri Puram that Amma has created. It is my hope a few times a year to share these images with like minded people. Om Namo Narayani.
SECRETARY: Dianah Merchant
Dianah Merchant is a lawyer, yoga teacher and social entrepreneur.
Dianah has worked for the United Nations in Asia and the US and as a corporate lawyer in the technology sector across Australia, the Middle East and the UK. She is now based in Sydney.
It was through attending several satsangs through Shanti Mission in 2017 that Dianah first learnt of Sri Sakthhi Amma, which led to her calling to visit Peedam in early 2018 where she had the grace to meet Sri Sakthi Amma and experience first hand the wonderful work of the Peedam community.
Dianah subsequently made several visits to Peedam to see Amma and study her teachings over the following three years.
She is now grateful to be able to serve Amma through both the board of Beloved Narayani and through volunteer yoga teaching with A Sound Life, a not for profit organisation providing interactive music and therapeutic yoga and meditation to vulnerable communities, the setup of which was also inspired by Amma’s work.