Forgiveness

In the teachings of the East we can reincarnate again and again, if needed, to correct our mistakes, because God is a forgiving God. Nayaswami Padma shares and comments on an excerpt from the book The New Path by Swami Kriyananda.

Transcript

Nayaswami Padma

Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Nayaswami Padma. And I'm here today to bring you today's noontime broadcast excerpt from the teachings, the original teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda, and I'm still reading from Swami Kriyananda's autobiography, The New Path in this little quotation. Well, it's interesting.

God’s Loving Expectation of Us is Eternal 

Earlier last week, I shared the story about the fisherman. And he goes on here to say,

"the story of the fisherman is also a symbol of God's everlasting willingness to give us the one more chance we need to catch all we desire from the ocean of God's abundance.By extension, this story suggests that God's forgiveness, call it rather, his loving expectation of us is eternal. The teachings of India claim that the soul to has an eternity of opportunities before it, too, has an eternity of opportunities before it to achieve perfection. A person ought never to abandon hope. Even if failure dog us all our lives. Through repeated incarnations, we can indeed we must succeed eventually."

A Grandchild’s Visit to a Catholic Easter Mass 

This excerpt reminds me of an illustration I'd like to share with you from my own life. And that is when our daughter, who is now in her early 40s, when she was a little girl, and she went to visit her devout Catholic grandparents on my husband's side. And it happened to be Easter weekend.

So they had taken her to the Easter mass. And her grandfather called us that evening, and told us what happened and said, he delighted in this, that after the service, he asked our daughter what she thought about the Catholic service, and she had been raised at Ananda Village in California. So, he asked her what she thought of the Catholic service. And she said, Well, I liked it fine, she said, but I didn't agree with all of it. And he said, well, what didn't you agree with? And she said, Well, the priest was talking about somebody who could, you know, do something terrible, and they would be sent down to hell for eternity. She said I don't believe in that. I don't believe that because I think God is a forgiving God. And her grandfather thought that was very insightful of her.

And so when she got home, we shared with her what he had said. And she said, Well, I would have used the word karma instead of sin. For the mistake, she said, but I didn't think he'd understand that.

Forgiveness and Overcoming Egoic Realities

It was just very interesting because it showed also what this particular paragraph was talking about, that in the teachings of the East, we can come back again and again, if needs be, to correct our mistakes. In fact, that is the purpose of our many lifetimes, to learn from our lessons to correct the mistakes because God is a forgiving God. And so eventually, all of these mistakes, all of the goodness, all of the errors come into balance until we have neutralized these, but that's not even the end of it. Because then the more we are uplifted, the more we are transcendent of ego, transcendent of our material and personality, realities of lifetime after lifetime. The more we begin to see the Divine Light in everything, and in everyone and self-realization, samadhi, ecstasy, by whatever term we use, we are lifted into our true reality.

So that's our blessing, and I offer you good thoughts for next Tuesday when we'll see you again.

Joy to you.

Bye-bye now.