Excerpted from the book How to Love and Be Loved, by Paramhansa Yogananda
Affirmation to Attract a True Mate
To help us attract a true soul partnership, Paramhansa Yogananda offered the following prayer, to be said daily after meditation:
Heavenly Father, bless me that I choose my life companion according to Thy law of perfect soul union.
If said faithfully and with deep concentration for six months, you will magnetize your soul companion, and if drawn to the wrong person, will permit God to remove that relationship from your life.
Excerpt from the Ananda Wedding vows
Dear Beloved,
I will be true to you as I pray always to be true to God. I will love you without condition, as I would be loved by you and as we are ever loved by God. I will never compete with you; I will cooperate for our own, and for all others’ highest good.
I will forgive you always, and under all circumstances. I will respect your right to see truth as you perceive it and to be guided as you feel deeply within yourself. May our love grow ever deeper, purer, more expansive, until, in our perfected love, we find the perfect love of God.
Yogananda’s Affirmation for Increasing Marital Happiness
Father, please keep my husband (wife) and I perfectly united in body, mind, and soul, and in ever-increasing happiness by Thy perfect law.
Love
“Love comes first. That must be the ideal. When two people feel an unconditional attraction for each other and are ready to sacrifice for one another, they are truly in love. Then only are they ready for an intimate relationship in marriage. Mere possessiveness won’t do. When one marriage partner tries to control the other, it shows a lack of real love. But when they express their love in continual thoughtfulness for the true happiness of the other, it becomes divine love. In such a relationship we have a glimpse of the Divine.” —Paramhansa Yogananda
Yogananda’s Prayer for Expanding Love
O Divine Mother, teach me to use the gift of Thy love 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 me, so that I love my country more than my neighbors, and that I love my world and all human brethren more than my country, neighbors, family, and myself. Lastly, teach me to love Thee more than anything else, for it is Thy love with which I love everything. Without Thee, I cannot love anybody or anything.
Father Divine, teach me to enter through the portals of family love, and through the love of my friends, into the mansion of wider social love. Teach me, then, to pass through the doors of social love into the wider mansion of international love. Teach me to pass through the portals of international love into the endless territory of divine love, in which I may perceive all objects, both animate and inanimate, as breathing and living by Thy love.
Teach me to tarry not at any of the fascinating but lesser shrines of family, social or international love. Teach me to pass beyond these minor gods, confined as their dominion is, to small territories of selfish, human love, until passing through the last gate of selfless love, I enter into the endless territory of divine love, where I shall find all living, semi-living or sleeping things to be my own.
