International Foundation for Spiritual Unfoldment Inc

In the medical field, distress or negative stress is a state of distress or suffering in which a person or animal is unable to adapt fully to threatening factors or increased demands, in other words, it is the "inadequate psychophysiological activation leading to failure. Dr Hans Slye, who discovered all physiological mechanisms of distress, when asked about how we can cure distress, his answer was: become lovable to your neighbor. Love heals. Science and Spiritual traditions meet in this simple therapy. Love thy neighbor as thyself.

The purpose of our foundation is to open, through meditational and spiritual practices the latent goodness that is in humanity, so that it can permeate the mind and direct these mental energies to a constructive purpose rather than a destructive one. Technology can be dangerous if it is not combined with the quality of the heart. The purpose of our organization is to open the heart of humanity; to open up the love that is within us, and spread and share it with our fellow human beings. In the natural expansion of awareness, the emphasis should not be placed solely on technology and mind, but on the heart, expressed through the quality of love.

We strongly believe that the only way to make a better society is one individual at a time. If you become a better person, your environment also becomes a better environment, and the sum totality of each environment in which each individual is placed composes our community and society.

We are a non-denominational organization and we encourage all spiritual disciplines and wisdom traditions. We base our interventions in scientifically designed methods and practices inspired in the traditional practices of contemplative traditions throughout the world. We bring together the gap between Science and Spiritual Traditions by an approach based on experience and an understanding to discern between the poetic language common of spiritual knowledge and the mathematical language of science and technology.

We provide spaces, online and physical, to help strangers connect comfortably with others and with themselves, more particularly, with their whole, true selves. Workmates who do not always get along well together. Far-flung cousins, aunts and uncles who too-rarely see one another. Police officers and community members who need to better appreciate one another. Former classmates and friends now out of touch. Neighbors who might enjoy deeper connections or profit from more mutual respect. Strangers who share a common interest or a common concern and who might support one another.

With our expanded mental awareness directed too much towards a mundane materiality, the quality of love between human beings is pushed into the background and is forgotten. What we are trying to do is to bring that love into the foreground.

Education
As Confucius said, if your plan is for 1 year plant rice, if it is for 10 years, plant trees and if your plan is for 100 years educate the children.
Our organization has its sights set on the long term and on achieving a better world by changing people for the better one person at a time, therefore it is necessarily long term. As an essential strategy to our objectives, therefore, is to act in education with the aim of introducing a new educational paradigm in the educational process. Education in the subjective experience of existence. Therefore our interventions at the educational level and coordinating and complementing ourselves with other organizations with the same objectives is one of our essential strategies.

Ashrams
Likewise, having physical places to hold meditation retreats and being able to host our teachers in different parts of the world is another of our strategies. Opening ashrams in different parts of the world. We currently operate two ashrams, one 100% owned by us in Spain and the other in New York in a residence that we have been given the use of.

Online Teaching
We have decided to use online teaching and interaction with our beneficiaries in order to access in the easiest and larger way to as much population as possible. We will engage in training mentors, teachers and facilitators that can introduce our methods, system and programs to as many individuals, education centers and families as possible. Also we have created the IFSU Resource Finder which will contain once finished its development the totality of the recorded teachings of Gururaj Ananda Yogi, which contain within them meditation techniques, practical everyday tools for wellness, and other in depth philosophical discussions about existence, the act of being human, Love, Grace and Devotion and the concept of God throughout times, cultures and ages that constitute one of the most comprehensive expositions of what life is all about.

Population sectors that suffer
Isolated People, people suffering from anxiety, victims of gender violence, chronic illness patients, etc., is a sector of the population we specially help. If in a theater group, the director works much more with those actors who play their role worse, then the group as a whole improves. If we work with those who play their role well, the group as such not only does not improve but gets worse. We see society as this theater group and we work especially with the most disadvantaged so that society as a whole improves.

Teachers, Mentors and Facilitators
Our intervention in society depends on teachers, facilitators and mentors who are trained beforehand in the specific disciplines necessary to transmit this message and achieve the opening of the heart that is at the core of our work in society. It takes three years to train a teacher, one year to train a facilitator and ten years to train a mentor. Increasing the number of them each year is a main strategy pursued by our organization.

Experience
Since 1976, prior to its incorporation in the USA, IFSU has created Meditation Societies in Spain, Ireland, United Kingdom, Denmark, Belgium, South Africa, Canada and the USA. Throughout this time we have trained thousands of people in our method and amongst them hundreds of teachers and mentors who are in different parts of the world. Following its incorporation in the USA in 2019 our goal is to integrate all these teachers, mentors and facilitators in a common effort and coordinated action under the IFSU umbrella.
Among our members we have outstanding academics from the world of education and psychology including Merrill Harmin Ph. D. Vidya Anderson Ph. D. Dr. Ramon Carballo M.D., Rosa Calvo Ph D., as well as 57 meditation and mindfulness teachers with more than 35 years of experience that constitute a sufficient starting point for our 5 year plan.

International Presence
IFSU has sister societies, all of them non-profit, in Spain, United Kingdom, Belgium, Canada, USA, Ireland and Greece and the coordinated work of these societies allows us a combined action at international level in the occidental world, which is the target of our efforts, since it represents not only the dominant culture at global level but also the society that suffers the greatest imbalance and lack of an adequate education in the subjective experience of life.

Funding
We offer our services free of charge and only ask for the possible donation that beneficiaries are willing or able to make, therefore at the moment we depend on one-time donors who have made possible the work done since the incorporation of our organization in June 2019. We are therefore dependent on their continued support until the flow of small individual donations of individuals and people receiving our services can fund our operating costs.

In November 2018, after a call from a student of Gururaj's teachings, Ramon Leonato traveled to the USA with the mission to help create and replicate the model he had adopted in Spain. On that trip and with the collaboration of Merrill Harmin Ph. D., a student of Gururaj's teachings, a group of volunteers was created that, with the financial help of Lee Swanson, sought and obtained the acquisition of a property by Lee Swanson, who in turn ceded the use of it to start activities in the USA.

During the summer, the property was fitted out, and furniture, computers, a video recording system, and a live broadcasting system were acquired and prepared to develop the activities aimed at opening people's hearts. In October 2019, we inaugurated the Ashram. Gururaj Ananda Yogi's family attended the inauguration; meditation teachers came from Spain, New York, England, and Ireland. In all, about 45 people attended the week-long event. The following weekends we held retreats with new people learning the PoU method with us and were followed by an average of six people each weekend until December 17, when we closed the Ashram for the winter, to resume activities in the spring of 2020.

In March 2020, the COVID pandemic arrived in full force, and with it came the suspension of activities in the Ashram, which since then has been used exclusively for the zoom broadcasting of our programs.

In January 2020, we started developing an online platform to offer our programs, which were provided in our Ashrams through the network. Likewise, we created a system to make all the works of Gururaj and our senior teachers available on the web for all the teachers of our organization and the national meditation societies operating in different countries since 1976.

We are making these teachings available globally, empowering the teachers we have worldwide with the extensive work of its most prominent members on psychology, philosophy, spiritual traditions, and the great questions of life.

We are translating and adapting the school program developed in Spain during this time to implement it in the educational environment in the USA by providing programs for teachers, families and educational centers.

In the first half of the month of April we are releasing Version 1.0 of our newly created and developed platform that will bring the programs we have created for free to large segments of the population. This version will be shortly followed app by a mobile app to make our programs available through mobile telephones and tablets with a particular focus on the younger segment of the population.