In Sunshine
Never Alone
by Dawn King • Sometimes I’ve felt very isolated. At others I’ve experienced spiritual drought. That’s when I just have to keep on keeping on, one foot in front of the other. Showing up is 99% of success—I must show up every day for meditation, that communion with God. It’s important throughout my day to remember that Spirit is in everything, and everyone, offering assistance and helpful messages. It’s up to me to recognize and accept them.
It’s encouraging to recognize the endless bounty of blessings we have, including our Creator’s unconditional love. Many great souls have gone beyond this life, but they’re still with us in spirit, always rooting for us and trying to remind us to do the right thing. They’re with us energetically, countless helpful spirits, if we invite them.
No one is really ever alone, and spiritual drought is a mental illusion. Let these thoughts be replaced by an attitude of expecting a miracle, because that’s what life is, every moment.
“The dignity of each soul is so great that from its birth it is given its own angel.” – Saint Jerome
Note: Sunburst Community continues to offer a Zoom connection to weekday group meditations.
Wake UP, Wise UP, Grow UP, Show UP
Join the UP-wising — Wake UP, Wise UP, Grow UP, Show UP
by Swami Beyondananda • Now as you know, there are two kinds of mystics in the world: the optimystics and the pessimystics. The pessimystics tell us “the sky is falling!” The optimystics say, “No… it only looks that way, because we are ascending.”
Personally, I am an optimystic realist. While many look at the world situation and declare the glass 95 percent empty, I take the opposite position. To me, it’s 5 percent full!
There are those who say a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, while others swear by the 12-step. So here’s a compromise — four simple steps to make sure we step out in the right direction, mathematically guaranteed to work three times faster than 12-step.
These four steps that will take us from children of God to adults of God are… Wake Up… Wise Up… Grow Up… Show Up.
First step, Wake Up Laughing. As the ancient Foo Ling Masters who achieved Cosmic Comic Consciousness came to realize, life is a joke… but God is laughing with us, not at us. The Creator is watching the Comedy Channel, and we are what’s on. Yes, the world is in serious condition – largely because of our conditioning to be serious. So instead of having gravity bring us down, we can choose to have levity lift us up. Hearty laughter makes us go completely out of our head, and puts us right in the heart. And that brings us to Step Two.
Second step, Wise Up Loving. To counterbalance all the challenges of being human, we were given the power of love, the universal solvent. You have a problem? Dissolve it in a warm solution of love. Through the power of love, we can metabolize the BS (Belief Systems) we mistake for reality. And the good news is, love is more powerful than fear. How do I know? You ever hear anyone singing, All You Need Is Fear?
Third step, Grow Up Giving. Each of us has been given a special gift just for entering — so you are already a winner! We are the Creator’s creation created to create, so what are we waiting for? The more of our gifts we give, the more we grow upward. I suggest making a “bucket list” of all the undertakings you wish to undertake before being overtaken by the undertaker. And then undertake… and over-give, and you can’t grow wrong.
And finally, Show Up Living. Show up for the Greatest Show On Earth… it’s better than reality TV… it’s reality! A once-in-a-lifetime world win adventure show, where the whole world can win. It’s the Hero’s Journey with One Big Hero…the Human Race.
I’ve said it before, and it certainly applies now. If you don’t like the current programming, turn off your TV and tell-a-vision instead. So, I will tell my vision. I see it now. The Timeless Times headline that reads: “How Did The Human Race Turn Out? They won. They Achieved Oneness and Won.”
Look for Swami Beyondananda online at www.wakeuplaughing.com
Freedom
by Catherine Mauron
“God has complete freedom, so He made mortals…and endowed them with partial freedom and choice. Man has limited freedom and choice because he is a part of God and has to develop himself before he can reflect Spirit completely. God is absolute; man is relative, like the ocean and the wave. The ocean is the whole, the wave, being a part, is limited. So the wave, which aspires to be like the ocean, must lose its boundaries of form. The form-freed wave becomes the ocean. So also man, the partial reflection of God, must demolish the self-imposed boundaries of selfishness, ignorance and delusion before he can expand himself and merge into God.”
These words by Paramahansa Yogananda reflect a recent Sunday topic: opening the door of our heart in order to receive a visitation from Spirit. While I was meditating, it seemed to me that the door represented the boundaries of the ego-self. Solid doors built through many lifetimes.
How do we open the door then? By dropping all desires, all expectations, all searches. By being here now. By listening. Listen to God, for he alone has the key. There is no need to do anything, just sit quietly, and Spirit will open the door when we are ready.
In sitting, meditating, working, reading, talking, and walking, it is all the same: be quiet inside. Let the world turn at the crazy speed it is turning, and be quiet inside. Sit back and watch life’s play, so different every day, ever-new and fantastic.
Mother Theresa said, “There are no great things to do, only little things done with great love.” Whether in times of meditation or in times of action, let the door of your heart be open. Let the healthy ego do its little things in the world, while you are silent inside of you, awaiting Spirit’s visit. “Be still and know that I am God,” in action and in non-action. Whenever we lose our peace, our joy, our love, we close the door of our heart; we lose our connection with the Universe. We stop the flow of energy that connects us to the whole.
By the grace of God and our self-effort, salvation will come by being in joy and in love at every moment. This is our free choice on the spiritual path. When we feel love, we feel God. Let us try to feel God all the time! Whatever our circumstances might be, let us never lose sight of this ocean of peace inside of us. Let us live in harmony with the Great Spirit that runs through all things, knowing that all is well, that every moment is a divine creation, a divine jewel for us to enjoy. By permeating the atmosphere with vibrations of love, peace, and joy we will bring about the miracles so needed for our dear blue planet.
Align yourself with God.
Find his frequency like you tune a radio.
Align yourself under His beam of light,
So to become He and He becomes you.
So to become She and She becomes you.
America’s Spiritual Destiny
excerpted from “The New Path”, by Swami Kriyananda
Paramahansa Yogananda often spoke of America’s high spiritual destiny. When first I heard him do so, I marveled. America? All that I knew of this country was its materialism, its competitive drive, its smug, “no-nonsense” attitude toward anything too subtle to be measured with scientific instruments. But in time that great teacher made me aware of another aspect, an undercurrent of divine yearning—not in our intellectuals, perhaps, our self-styled cultural representatives, but in the hearts of the common people.
Americans’ love of freedom, after all, began in the quest, centuries ago, for religious freedom. Their historic emphasis on equality and on voluntary cooperation with one another reflects principles that are taught in the Bible. American’s pioneering spirit is rooted in these principles. And when no frontiers remained to our people on the continent, and they began exporting their pioneering energies abroad, again it was with the spirit of freedom and willing cooperation that they carried with them, setting a new example for mankind everywhere. In these twin principles Paramahansa Yogananda saw the key to mankind’s next upward step in evolution.
The vision of the future he presented to us was of a state of world brotherhood in which all men would live together in harmony and freedom. As a step toward this universal fulfillment, he urged those people who were free to do so to band together into what he called “world brotherhood colonies”: little, spiritual communities [including meditation groups that gather regularly] where people, living and working together with others of like mind, would develop an awareness of the true kinship of all men as sons and daughters of the same, one God. …
Because the pioneering spirit is rooted in principles that are essentially spiritual—implying the perennial quest for a higher as well as a better way of life—that spirit has not only expanded men’s frontiers outwardly: in recent decades, especially, it has begun to interiorize them, to expand the inward boundaries of human consciousness, and to awaken in people the desire to harmonize their lives with truth, and with God.
It was to the divine aspirations of these pioneers of the spirit that Paramahansa Yogananda was responding by coming to America. Americans, he said, were ready to learn meditation and God-communion through the practice of the ancient science of yoga—meaning…Self-integration…conscious union with the Infinite Spirit, God. …A practitioner of the yoga science, acquires outwardly also a vision of the underlying unity of all life.