Life can sometimes be downright discouraging when things don’t go the way we want or expect. I’d like to share a simple practice with you that can change your reaction to life’s ups and downs. First, let’s begin with an incident from Swami Kriyananda’s life.
After Swamiji had been with Paramhansa Yogananda for about six months, a period came when his guru was away from the ashram for several weeks. Missing him keenly, Swamiji was eager for a chance to see the Master again.
The day after Yoganandaji’s return, word came that he needed someone to carry a five-gallon bottle of drinking water up to his kitchen. Happily appropriating the job to himself, Swamiji brought the large jug to the kitchen, from where he could hear his guru dictating a letter in his adjacent sitting room.
Hoping to attract his attention, Swamiji rattled the water bottle and made as much noise as was decently possible. The Master paid no attention. After some time Kriyanandaji plunged into a depression and thought, “He doesn’t care that I miss him. I’m just a nameless worker to him!”
Attempting to reason with himself, he thought, “He’s obviously busy. Why should he drop everything just for you?”
“Oh, yeah?” retorted his recalcitrant mind. Back and forth his thoughts flew as they vied turbulently with one another. He realized that reason wasn’t going to pull him out of his mental whirlpool. (“Indeed,” as he wrote later, “reason’s tendency is to support any feeling that happens to be uppermost in the mind.”) “If reasoning won’t do it,” he declared forcefully to himself, “let’s see if changing my level of consciousness will do the trick.”
He went into his meditation room, raised his eyes to the point between the eyebrows, and strongly held his mind there. Five minutes was all it took. By the end of that time his mood was so positive that he no longer needed to affirm anything, but saw things in an objective, expansive way.
In Kriyanandaji’s book, Awaken to Superconsciousness, he gives us a simple but powerful technique for changing our state of consciousness to deal with life’s challenges:
1) Look down, closing your eyes. Feel yourself relaxing and drifting downward as if sinking through water, through forests of waving seaweed. Affirm mentally, “Through slowly drifting waters, I sink into subconsciousness.”
2) Now, with a quick burst of will power, open your eyes and gaze straight ahead. Affirm, “With a burst of energy I rise to greet the world!”
3) Then look upward and affirm, “I awake in Thy light! I am joyful! I am free! I awake in Thy light!”
“Sacred Source,” by Nayaswami Jyotish.
Swamiji wrote that this simple practice will give you the ability to control your state of consciousness at will. It can also help you to deepen your meditation. When you feel yourself sinking into the dreamy state of subconsciousness, or when your mind is racing with thoughts and plans, stop and do this exercise. Without much effort, you’ll find that your energy rises and your boisterous thoughts quietly fade into the background.
May your thoughts be positive and your meditations deep.
With joy,
Nayaswami Devi
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14 Comments
Dear all,
what a wonderful energy coming from this message at the very first day of the spring!!!
My journey with my beloved Guru Paramhansa Yogananda started 1 year ago while reading his holy book “Autobiography of a Yogi”
Since then with the generosity and help of Ananda Worldwide, I have begun a journey that changed everything in my life!
My heart is always open and my home in Crete-Greece your home whenever anyone from Ananda chooses to visit our wonderful island.
Loving regards from Crete
God bless you all
M. Skoulas
Dear Nayaswami Devi Ji,
Thank you for this wonderful blog :)
A great guidance and much required
Joy
Prem
I so appreciate the creativity and the new gems that you and Jyotish mine from the teachings and share each week. There is so much, it’s easy to lose track of powerful tools.
In case you would enjoy, Mendelssohn wrote a beautiful short piece called “Lift Thine Eyes” that we sometimes sing in Palo Alto at Christmas. Here’s a boy’s choir version here on YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PP7FpSm5Uyo
Lift thine eyes, O lift thine eyes to the mountains, whence cometh help.
Thy help cometh from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.
He hath said, thy foot shall not be moved. Thy Keeper will never slumber.
With love and deep appreciation,
Karen G
Thank you, Michael. May Master’s blessings be with you always.
Aum guru
Beautiful advice dear friend Devi.
It is like a magic secret a mother imparts to a child.
thank you Swamiji , thank you Master,
and thank you Devi
AUM
thank you for this positive and practical activity one can do easily. Our lives can be so deep with thoughts and plans as one works away on multiple projects.
Not everyone is able in his meditation efforts to lift-up his consciousness right-away into a higher level.
After watching and listening to several of You-Tube’s Chris Hedge’s insight in the situation our planet is in; the devastation caused by the blind greed of corporations, financial powerful individuals, etc. …
I am deeply in love with this Divine creation, and aware and seeing the doomed destruction; which made me sink into depression. (In which I also noticed the effect that had on my physical well-being)…
… To see and being aware of all these dear creatures and beautiful surroundings getting destroyed…
But then I remembered that, just like our own temporarily physical manifestation, this whole material world is just a temporarily decor….
Just go on caring, and deeply loving, this suffering and sick world, like you would care for a dear human being which is suffering and approaching its death…
All the physical manifestations are just temporarily… and if there is a need for it, Divine-Whole will recreate it again in all its beauty.
So I went into my little yard again. And let the sun’s rays caress my physical being, and my ears drink-in the bird’s singing; blessing the tiny bees still able to drink-in the non-poisonous nectar of this tiny piece of organic-territory, and together with the Creator care and beautify more of His manifestations…
You brought me what I need, at the time I needed it.
Bless you Devi! Om Guru!
Thanks, Devi, this works, I test it (more often than I’d care to admit) while doing energization. Find myself looking down, deliberately raise eyes, big change in outlook! :)
When seeking spiritual awakening, there is no other outside your own conscious singularity that requires devotion. When I briefly experienced the breathless state, it was several hours after doing my first 3-hour meditation at a local SRF church, several months after having identical dreams of Sri Yukteswar & an image of Yogananda’s upward facing right profile. Not unlike a stalagmite, each life is as a drop of mineral water adding to previous experiences as it builds a bridge within. Your Heaven is not above gross matter, but within the extending light that is your evolving consciousness.
I love this suggestion to bring my attention back to the spiritual eye when I am distracted in meditation. simple and it works! Thank you!
Thank you, Devi ,this technique is so beautiful, just as I was reading it I tried it and I almist got it,though I was in the midst of doing something else. Can imagine how wonderful it’ll b when I practise it early morn. Thank u again, I’m going to benefit from it greatly.
Jai Guru. Thanks for sharing this beautiful message. I needed it very much. May God and Guru bless you.