It is common to lament the slowness and difficulty of one’s spiritual efforts. Heroic courage is needed for victory in this most challenging, but also most important, of all struggles. Many devotees, after a little effort, flee the scene and return to the life they were living before.
Most people don’t realize how restless their minds are. When they sit to meditate, they may be aghast to find how their consciousness seethes and roils with one idea after the other. Patience is necessary for calming the mind. Paramhansa Yogananda likened it to a glass of water containing mud and other particles. One cannot command the water to become clear, but if one allows the glass to sit for awhile the impurities will gradually settle to the bottom of their own accord.
One should live more wholeheartedly right now, enjoying his yoga practices, thinking of this moment, not of the future, but simply loving God in the present and offering oneself up to the Lord without any expectation of a reward. You should remind yourself, indeed, that there is no you to be rewarded!
God is ever near. What seems to hold Him at a distance is only our indifference. If we will do the work necessary for calming our thoughts and feelings (above all), we will find Him there, waiting for us. People who wail over His continued silence, and His seeming heedlessness of them in their suffering, need only the apply principles that they already know from daily life.
God does not owe it to us to answer our brief, restless, and usually shallow prayers. Sometimes they are anguished prayers, but the anguish passes, and we soon forget Him again as we go off chasing after some new will-o’-the-wisp. God sees all this, and says, “I will wait.” He wants to be sure of our love, for He has been seeking it, with hardly ever a glance in His direction from man, for millennia!
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A free app with guided meditations and techniques, based on the teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda. Go deeper in the joy of your own Self.
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The 10-week Ananda Course in Meditation online course is designed to provide in-depth instruction in scientific meditation techniques that bring more peace, deeper relaxation, and focused concentration to every area of your life, regardless of outer conditions.
These techniques are based on the teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda, author of Autobiography of a Yogi.
