Touch of Divine Wisdom: Living the Teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda

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January 8, 2021

IN LOVE AND APPRECIATION

Paramhansa Yogananda’s birthday is January 5. Usually we give people presents on their birthday, but what do you give to someone who has everything? who is everything? No choice is left us but to offer our love and appreciation. This is all we can truly give, and the hidden gift behind all outward symbols.

In a spirit of appreciation, then, I’d like to share how Yogananda’s qualities have helped shape my life. Master said that he particularly manifested three of the eight aspects of God: wisdom, love, and joy. As I try to attune my will with his, I let these three qualities be my primary guides. Here are some ways that I do this.

Grand Canyon, by Nayaswami Jyotish.

First, let’s consider wisdom: Swami Kriyananda said that wisdom is different from intellect or discrimination. Wisdom springs from a combination of heart and mind. You need both qualities truly to understand anything or anyone. As the great botanist George Washington Carver once said, Anything in nature will speak to you if you love it enough.

There are many ways to tune in to Yogananda’s wisdom, especially through reading his numerous books, lessons, and talks, but lately I’ve hit upon a new one. I’ve read that he considered three books to be scripture: the Christian Bible, the Bhagavad Gita, and his own book of prayer demands, Whispers from Eternity. Whispers is a treasure chest of wisdom. It combines deep devotion — the highest form of love — with sensitive guidance showing the appropriate attitudes to hold in most any circumstance. I have started reading and meditating on a different one of these prayers toward the end of each meditation. It is proving to be an absolutely marvelous practice.

Next, there is love: This is one of the most powerful forces in creation. It is the vibration that brings about union, and it expresses itself in various forms in all human relationships. But it is a much more universal force than just this. It is the power that holds atoms together and keeps planets in their orbits.

I’ve found that one of the best ways to feel and express love is through kindness expressed as friendship. Swami Kriyananda was a model in this. I’ve seen instances where virtual strangers immediately felt his love and friendship and wept when he was about to leave. Why? Because he was constantly radiating love and friendship like a surrounding aura as he went about his daily business. People felt it and it changed their lives.

Finally, let’s talk about joy: Joy is constantly flowing within us as part of our very being. We don’t have to try to feel joy, we just need to become aware of its constant presence. It is like feeling your heartbeat: You can sense it as soon as you become calm and pay attention. Feel joy toward the end of each meditation and try to expand it. Then keep an awareness of that feeling throughout the day.

It is said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. The best way to imitate Yogananda is to feel ourselves swimming in a sea of wisdom, love, and joy. Do this and don’t worry about anything else. The mere act of attunement will take care of all the details.

In love and appreciation,

NAYASWAMI JYOTISH

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January 15, 2021

DEALING WITH CHANGE AND LOSS

There’s a joke about a man who woke up one morning to discover that he had only three, long hairs left on his head. As he looked into the mirror, he said, Today I think I’ll wear my hair in a braid. The next morning he found that he had only two hairs left and thought, Hmm… today I’ll part it down the middle. On the third day there was only one hair left, so after some thought, he decided to wear it in a ponytail.

Finally on the fourth day there were no hairs left at all. He sighed with relief. Thank goodness. Now I don’t have to worry about how to wear my hair anymore!

I hope this story brought a smile to your face, but there’s a deeper message in it as well. Change and loss are an inevitable part of life. We can’t escape them, but we can choose how we deal with them. We can go the route of resentment, blame, and self-pity when faced with difficulties; or we can accept them willingly with openness and a positive expectation. It all depends on our level of consciousness.

In Whispers from Eternity, Paramhansa Yogananda writes: We must prepare ourselves mentally to meet life’s inevitable trials, difficulties, and tragedies. For such preparation, the movies we see in actual theaters can be instructive. If viewed with inner calmness and detachment, they can help us to understand that nothing in life is real in itself. "The fundamental cure for all human ills is everywhere one and the same: to raise one’s consciousness."

Let’s look at some changes that most of us face — loss of material possessions, health challenges, the passing of loved ones — and find ways to rise above the suffering they bring.

From personal experience, I’ve learned that even in the midst of losing everything one owns, it’s still possible to find a center of peace and security within. Our drama unfolded in July 1976 when a forest fire swept through Ananda Village, destroying hundreds of wooded acres and most of the community’s buildings, including our home and everything we owned. This happened at a particularly vulnerable time for us: Our son had been born just eleven days earlier.

With nothing but the clothes on our backs, we prayed to God for the strength to face the future. In response, we felt uplifted by an understanding that the source of our security and well-being was not our possessions, but an inner connection with God. Over time we came to realize that losing everything we owned was one of the greatest inner gifts we’d ever received, because on some level it permanently freed us from dependence on material things for our sense of well-being.

Another challenge that everyone deals with, especially now during the pandemic, is the loss of good health. Swami Kriyananda, who faced an almost constant series of health challenges, was a wonderful model for how to deal positively with them. We were with him before and after many surgeries, and his unwavering attitude of calm inner joy was astonishing.

How did he do this? We could see that there was never any denial of the situation, but rather complete acceptance and almost embracing of what was happening. He also maintained an inner detachment from his body, as though he were thinking, This illness may be happening to my body, but it doesn’t touch my true reality, my soul nature. Through all the tests and trials he confronted in his life he had unwavering trust and faith in his guru to sustain him.

Probably the hardest loss to deal with is the death of friends or loved ones. Yoganandaji faced overwhelming grief with the passing of his mother when he was a young boy. Inconsolable for many years, he was finally comforted by the voice of Divine Mother, who said: It is I who have watched over thee, life after life, in the tenderness of many mothers! See in My gaze the two black eyes, the lost beautiful eyes, thou seekest!

We can find comfort from such a loss by looking past the One Beloved hidden there. It is God alone who acts through you, Yoganandaji said. It is Him alone you should really love — through others, when you love them. People aren’t aware of that great, ever-comforting presence. They focus all their affection on one another. When someone whom they love dies, they think, ‘Oh, how cruel!’ But it was God alone all the time, playing at hide-and-seek with them!

Let’s embrace all the changes and losses in life with the uplifted consciousness and strength of divine warriors.

Let’s embrace all the changes and losses in life with the uplifted consciousness and strength of divine warriors. Then we can stand firmly in the truth that no loss can dim the light of God that shines within us and within everything in this world.

May you find God’s peace in the midst of change.

NAYASWAMI DEVI

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January 22, 2021

HOPE FOR A BETTER WORLD

We have occasionally written about the devastating forest fire of 1976, which destroyed our home along with most of the other houses at Ananda Village. We awoke that morning to a normal day with its usual routine, but within a few chaotic hours we had lost our home, our possessions, and our security. How can we look back through the telescope of time and view this as one of the best days of our life? Well, let me explain.

People usually try to find their solutions by changing their circumstances: Perhaps a big insurance settlement would have given us back our security. Or, in today’s world, maybe a vaccine will cure our sickness; or economic stimulus, or a new political regime will fix our problems. But Swami Kriyananda’s response to Ananda’s crisis gives us a different approach, one that truly offers hope for a better world.

He knew that for lasting solutions, we needed to reach beyond ourselves: to expand our hearts and to serve others. Almost as soon as the ashes had settled and the smoke had cleared, Swamiji began to talk about going on a nationwide tour. The more practical-minded residents wondered, How could a lecture tour possibly help us rebuild our houses or replant our forests? Moreover, they reasoned, it was certain to lose money, which we desperately needed for new homes. Well, those critics were right on a practical level, but so wrong on deeper levels.

Swami bought a motor home, and with a small group of singer/ helpers began to crisscross the country with the Joy Tours. He lectured in most of America’s major cities just as his guru, Paramhansa Yogananda, had done nearly a half-century earlier. The major theme during that tour was that learning to live in joy is the solution to problems, and that only by uplifting our consciousness can we realize our dreams.

A better future comes when we expand and elevate our consciousness.

Now, a half-century later, we find ourselves needing solutions to another crisis: the chaos of the pandemic and the resulting economic and political disruption. This time we need to rebuild not just one community, but the whole world. The answer, my friends, is the one Swamiji showed us — the one that has worked since the beginning of time. A better future comes when we expand and elevate our consciousness. Our hopes for a better world will be realized only as we ourselves become more realized.

Each day I have been reading and meditating on a different prayer-demand from Paramhansa Yogananda’s Whispers from Eternity. Today, I read the perfect answer to the problems that plague the world, his Prayer for expanding Love from myself to all my brethren. It begins with these immortal words:

O Divine Mother, teach me to use the gift of Thy love, which I feel in my heart, to love the members of my family more than myself. Bless me, that I may love my neighbors more than my family. Expand my heart’s feelings, that I may love my country more than my neighbors, and my world and all my human brethren more than my country, neighbors, family, and my own self.

Lastly, teach me to love Thee more than anything else, for it is only Thy love that enables me to love everything. Without Thee, I could not love anything or anybody.

Yes, we should do everything we can to improve this world on a practical level. But lasting solutions come only from expanding the aura of our love and by living in joy.

In joy,

NAYASWAMI JYOTISH

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January 29, 2021

KEEPING YOUR BALANCE

Irecently read an article by a dance teacher that gives us surprisingly helpful advice