How to Stay Centered in a Changing World

Nayaswami Parvati shares this beautiful inspiration during her Sunday service talk at Ananda Village, January 9th, 2022. You can find the complete talk here.

Transcription

Sing when the sun shines; sing when the rain falls; sing when your road seems strange. In a tempest—which you could think about—in a tempest, seize the lightning flash and ride the winds of change.

And really, we're in a time when we need to adjust. We need to... from what I have understood: the little that is known out there, is that it's going to be a time of change and of increasingly quicker changes. And so how do we really deal with that? And I thought: you need to stay... each of us needs to stay in balance.

And that's what that… again, to me: our path—meditation; how we live positively; and common sense—balanced with each other. And that can keep you moving in the right direction.

The other part is that we need to not become distracted by too many options in our lives. And well, "I have to do this, and I have to do this, and I have to do this."

Swami Kriyananda gave this example one time, which I found very, very helpful over the years. And that is: he said, "If you want to get through delusion, it's like a thick sheet of ice." You can go out on a thick sheet of ice and pound on it like this, but you can't get through to the water below by doing that, not easily anyway. But he said, that same situation: if you take an icepick and you go like this, you can get through to the other part. And once you get through, then it will crack; it will start to crack open.

I've used that constantly in my life, just to say, "Okay, here's this situation. What's the most important thing for me to do right now, to keep my energy moving in a positive direction?"

Because the very interesting thing about energy is that it's conscious. Once you keep it moving, and you get it moving strongly in one direction, it opens up all kinds of other possibilities. And you can deal with all those other things that are seemingly, you know, spreading out all over, but without that continual movement in one direction, and really piercing through to the energy, the water, the energy below, it just becomes overwhelming.

So if you start to feel overwhelmed in some of these situations, focus on one thing that you know you can do right now. And also that... Swami Kriyananda said... at one point he said, "Yogis should be able to change on a dime." And again, if you're... if you're in balance, you can do that.

God's light is within me and around me. With the sword of faith in my hand, with the love of God in my heart, I am a warrior of light. I join my brothers and sisters everywhere to overcome fear with faith, hatred with love, disease with health. We all are warriors of light. We fill the world with God's light. AUM.