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Meditation
Wisdom from Paramhansa Yogananda
Excerpted from Conversations
with Yogananda
"How easy the spiritual path is, if you give even a little
time each day to meditation. Meditate intensely, morning and
evening. Even fifteen minutes of meditation is better than no
time at all. Better still, make it half an hour, or even one
hour."
—Paramhansa Yogananda |
Every sincere
effort is registered in the divine consciousness. Your duty as a
devotee is to accept whatever He sends you—and, for that matter,
whatever He doesn't send. God alone knows what past karma keeps
you from perceiving Him right now. He may want you to finish up
your karma in this life, before He gives you eternal bliss in Him.
Do not be anxious
if you don't have meditative experiences. The path to God is not
a circus! Don't even be anxious about such fruits of meditation
as inner joy and peace. Everything will come in God's time. Meanwhile,
consider meditation, too, as a form of karma yoga: action without
desire for the fruits of action. Meditate above all to please
God, not yourself.
In meditation,
you must go beyond thought. As long as you are busy thinking, you
are in your rational mind, on the conscious plane. When you sleep
and dream, you are on the subconscious plane, and in your astral
body. And when your mind is fully withdrawn in superconsciousness,
it becomes centered in the bliss of the spine. You are then in your
ideational, or causal, body. That is the level of the soul's existence.
Don't waste
the perception of God's presence, acquired in meditation, by useless
chatting. Idle words are like bullets: they riddle the milk pail
of peace. In devoting time unnecessarily to conversation and exuberant
laughter, you'll find you have nothing left inside. Fill the pail
of your consciousness with the milk of meditative peace, then keep
it filled. Joking is false happiness. Too much laughter riddles
the mind and lets the peace in the bucket flow out, wasting it.
Meditate regularly,
and you will find a joy inside that is real. You will then have
something you can compare to sense pleasures. That comparison will
automatically make you want to forsake your sorrow-producing bad
habits. The best way to overcome temptation is to have something
more fulfilling to compare it with.
Never count
your faults. Just think whether you love God enough. He doesn't
mind your faults. He minds your indifference.
Many people
meditate till they feel a touch of peace, but jump up then and leave
their meditation for their activities. That's all right, if you
have important work waiting for you, for it is always better to
meditate before any activity, that you may feel at least
some peace as you work. Whenever possible, however, sit for
a long time after your practice of the techniques. That is when
the deepest enjoyment comes. Intuition is developed by continuously
deepening that enjoyment, and, later on, by holding on to its calm
aftereffect.
God answers
all prayers. Restless prayers, however, He answers only a little
bit. If you offer to others something that isn't yours to give,
won't that be a merely empty gesture? If you pray to God, similarly,
but lack control over your own thoughts, that prayer will be without
power. Thoughts and feelings, both, must be focused when you pray.
Otherwise God will meet your little trickle with another trickle
of His own! He will dole His answers out to you in a teaspoon. Too
often, prayer is more like the halfhearted mumbling of a beggar
than the confident, loving demand of a friend.
You won't find
God by making constant excuses: for example, saying, "When
I find a quiet place, I will meditate." That is not at all
the way to get there! If you tell yourself, however, "Right
now I will plunge into deep meditation!" you can be
there in a moment. When you are really sleepy, you have no difficulty
in sleeping no matter where you are. When a person is in love, he
finds no difficulty in thinking of his beloved; rather, it is difficult
not to think of her, even to the point of ignoring his work.
Be in love with God! It is easy to meditate deeply, when your love
for Him is deep enough.
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