Dear Friend, What opens the channel through which God’s grace flows into the human heart is, above all, an attitude of giving to the universe, to something larger than one’s little self, to the mystery from which comes all true inspiration. The channel grows more and more open. The giver increasingly finds his fulfillment in the giving, in using what … Read More
The morning after the late-night drinking and poker game, I was abruptly awakened when the cover was jerked from my sodden form. There stood my father looking like an Old Testament prophet: “Rise up, son!” His words came with irresistible authority.
Dear Friend, When we look reverently, into the inner heart of the natural world, we see God’s hand stretching out to us, giving to us, nourishing, inspiring, sustaining, calling us to our true Home in His joy. Divine Mother teaches us the art of giving and receiving, of joyful self-offering and grateful receiving, through Her many guises everywhere in Mother … Read More
As a small child in the 1940s, I was each year taken by my mother to buy a birthday gift for my father. She would help me make a selection, hand me a dollar to give to the cashier, later wrap the present, and, during the actual presentation, would exclaim, “look, Wally, what little Jimmy has for you!” I was … Read More
The sincere seeker, whatever his natural inclination, will find in “The Essence of the Bhagavad Gita” the essential teaching he needs to follow the path to God. That central teaching, Paramhansa Yogananda explained, unites all paths “even as subsidiary streams unite in a larger river.”
To this day I am profoundly grateful to Swami Kriyananda for so lucidly making available to all of us the essence of Paramhansa Yogananda’s teachings on Raja Yoga. If you I want to know God, these lessons lay out with crystal clarity how to achieve that goal.
A few weeks ago we gathered at an Ananda Village home to offer our blessings to a statue of Divine Mother in Her form as Durga. Durga is a beneficent aspect – she protects her devotees from the misery caused by such dark emotions as selfishness, jealously, prejudice, hatred; she embodies purity and wisdom, and acts to preserve righteousness and … Read More
This past August, during Spiritual Renewal Week, we were treated to a dramatization of Swami Kriyananda’s beautiful story/allegory “The Singer and the Nightingale.” The play was a delight, profoundly funny and, in its serious purpose, just as profoundly moving. We rejoiced with the Singer when at last his voice soared free. I think we were equally touched by the light … Read More
Dear Great Souls, “That which you offer to God, that which you give to God is blessed. It’s not charity, for you’re giving to your own Self. What you offer to God is blessed a million fold!” (Swami Kriyananda) July 29,2014 we celebrated the one-year anniversary of Ananda Meditation Retreat’s new incarnation – its return, after many wonderful years as … Read More
Even as Asha never wavers in showing the heroism required of the spiritual seeker, so also does she show her profound faith that God Himself is always there, reaching down to lift up that seeker, to help him or her through whatever comes.
