Sunburst Teachings

A Balanced Life

• Sri Chinmoy, adapted • To be actively calm and calmly active is the essence of a balanced life. We need to be active, but undertake activity with inner peace. As well as working and achieving things, we should not ignore the importance of looking after ourselves and paying attention to our inner life. Here’s some suggestions for being actively calm and calmly active.

1. One Thing at A Time – Whatever you do, you should give it your full attention and focus. With only one thing to do and think about, it is easier for your limited mind to cope. With several things on your mind, you flit from one problem to another and can become overwhelmed at how difficult life seems.

By doing several things at once, you won’t get more done; you will just feel busier and more important. Try to do only one thing at a time and see the difference it makes. Start off with your most important task, breaking it into smaller parts; gradually tick off the things you need to do.

2. Take Time for Relaxation – It’s very easy to feel that life is too busy to spend 20 minutes cultivating inner peace. However, the success of your outer activity depends on your inner state. If the mind is confused and brimming with conflicting thoughts, outer activity will be hard work and you’ll be victim to your own insecurities. If you can clear the mind and achieve an inner state of peace, you will be able to work much more effectively. Time set aside for yourself will not reduce potential, it will give you increased productivity.

Every Day Counts

• by Norman Paulsen, Sunburst Founder [photo: Sunburst work crew • God’s power responds almost immediately when it is for the benefit of all beings that we pray. We can see miracles and the presence of Spirit’s power working.

When we pray for selfish gain, sometimes God will fulfill strong desires of our hearts just to get those desires out of the way; those desires exist between us and God. But, for the most part, God does not acknowledge our selfish prayers. We might wonder why—it’s because we are not fulfilling Cosmic law.

When we are more concerned with helping those around us, instead of ourselves, we can see God’s power working. Spirit watches the humble servant and says, “I have to help them because they’re so busy helping everyone else.”

I have seen over and over again how God miraculously takes care of the humble servant. This is the one who sets their own desires aside and entertains only the desire to serve God. God loves that person so much, and loves divine communion with that soul. God’s living presence becomes so strong in that person that it fulfills every desire they have set aside.

They may say, “Lord, I don’t need that anymore, or “I gave that up…it really doesn’t matter anymore.”

God responds, “That’s alright, just take it anyway. You can give it away if you want to.” These are things that we see God doing for us. Humble servants have seen miraculous power at work to build things for the betterment of all humankind.

You may think that what you are doing every day is insignificant and means nothing, but as you practice selfless service, you can make your work an active meditation. Walking a spiritual path, you will receive God’s renewable creative life force through every cell of your body. Allow Spirit to work through you each day and watch your actions become instruments of creation, resurrection, regeneration and healing for yourself and all those around you.

“Live each present moment fully and the future will take care of itself.” – Paramahansa Yogananda

Editor’s Note: Norm is proud of the selfless workers—men and women—who keep Sunburst going every day.

The Wise Woman’s Stone

• An Ancient Tale, as recounted by Dawn King • A wise woman who was traveling in the high mountains of Kashmir found a special stone in a stream, as she crossed. Holding it up to the light, she could see it was a precious sapphire crystal, highly valued for its beautiful blue color. She thanked God, and tucked it into her pack.  

The next day she encountered another traveler. This was a man ill prepared for his journey. He appeared tired and hungry. The compassionate woman opened her pack to share her food.

After they ate, she stowed her cook pot away and the man caught a glimpse of the glittering precious crystal. “What is that?” he asked.  

“Oh, it’s nothing important,” she replied. 

“Then give it to me to examine,” he demanded. She did so without hesitation while looking deep into his eyes.

Soon, with a self-satisfied smile, the traveler tucked the crystal into his pocket. “It’s valuable to me,” he said and quickly left, rejoicing in his good fortune. He knew the stone was worth enough to give him security for a lifetime.  

The woman thanked God that she and the stone were of help to a stranger. She was also thankful that after their meal, her load was lightened, and she no longer had to guard and care for the valuable sapphire. 

A few days later as the wise woman was continuing her lengthy journey, she found the same man coming toward her up the trail. He looked confused. Approaching, he called out to her. “As I was leaving you several days ago, I heard you praying aloud to God, just like I was, giving thanks for good fortune. But for you, this was after I’d taken what must have been your most valuable physical possession.”

The woman shrugged, and smiled.

“I came back to apologize to you, and to learn how you gained your truly most valuable possessions: compassion and peace of mind. Since I left you, I’ve had none of these, although I now have money.”

The man then spent his days accompanying the woman on her further trips, as he learned of the virtue, inner peace, and contentment we all need to value most. These are the hidden gems within us that we must polish and treasure in this life time.

NOTE: About Ayurvedic planets and gemstones: Saturn is the Law-of-Karma planet that brings us to our senses (usually by hard knocks). Its gemstone is blue sapphire.

Manifest Your Dreams

• by Dawn King • While laying awake at night, just having realized how my worst fears could unfold, I centered myself and surrendered to Spirit. Most of us have experienced one of these very disturbing moments—an insight or imagining of how things could go very wrong. It happens to me, too, even after almost 60 years of meditating, and being totally dedicated to my spiritual path.

Clinging to my connection with Mother-Father-Divine in this situation, I calm myself and start thinking of all the ways in which my life is blessed at this very moment. I affirm that God, the Universe—or whatever you want to credit with having brought you to the present—is ultimately in charge, not me. Then I acknowledge my own power of thought that helps create my experience of this moment. What do I WANT to experience?

A peaceful, harmonious world is my ultimate dream. Let me radiate that image, that feeling from my being. To do so can only help the environment around and within me.

We are currently under the influence of a Full Moon (June 11, 2025) that took place in Western astrology’s zodiacal sign of Sagittarius, making this a powerful time for releasing limiting beliefs. It’s also a time to set goals, and imagine your most authentic future.

In Vedic astrology this Full Moon occurred in the intense mystical sign of Scorpio and its Vedic sub-sign (Jyeshtha nakshatra). Translated into English, Jyeshtha means “the elder.” The qualities represented by this sub-sign indicate power, wisdom, and psychic insights. Its power is to gain courage, and overcome oppression. Mercury (the mind) and Indra (ruler of weather) influence this sign.

At Sunburst we’ve experienced how our minds can influence the weather, with our songs of thanks for rain when it is needed. I truly believe that if humans are living in harmony and peace with each other and nature, the overall weather on our planet is consistently more pleasant.

It’s remarkable to look back on growing up in South Florida from the early 1950s through early 1960s and realize there were so few hurricanes during those years. That period had many fewer people living in Miami than are there today, and those living there were mainly refugees from winters of the North, from Haiti, Puerto Rico, or Cuba. All were happy to be living with hope for a better life in their new home, positive and grateful mind sets.

Paramahansa Yogananda’s words to live by:
• You may walk on water and live in fire, but control of the mind is better and more difficult.
• If you permit your thoughts to dwell on evil you yourself will become ugly. Look only for the good in everything.
• Every tomorrow is determined by every today.
• Be afraid of nothing. Hating none, giving love to all, feeling the love of God, seeing His presence in everyone, and having but one desire—for His constant presence in the temple of your consciousness.
• God is simple. Everything else is complex. Do not seek absolute values in the relative [dualistic] world of nature.

Speaking Honestly

• by Vimala Rodgers • Honesty means always speaking to the God within the other person, just as we appreciate their speaking to the God within us.

Honesty is not to be confused with “the facts”, knowing that the facts are often bent and gnarled from our interpretation of them. To speak honestly is to speak in such a way that our words are never injurious but a source of grace and healing for both ourself and the person to whom we are speaking.

But honesty does not stop there. It stretches beyond the boundaries of simply telling the truth and embraces integrity. Like a body without a heart, without the one the other cannot exist. Integrity is that quality which prevents us from doing, acting, thinking, or saying anything that conflicts with our value system. To some it may imply keeping one’s word. When teamed with honesty, it shifts in depth to encompass “being your word.”

Brother Lawrence, from The Practice of the Presence of God:
We ought to act with God in the greatest simplicity, speaking frankly and plainly, and imploring assistance in our affairs, just as they happen. I have often experienced that God never fails to grant it.

Norman Paulsen, from Sacred Science:
Integrity, an internal moral compass, starts at home and spreads outward into the world in which we live. Practicing the virtue of honesty reveals the law of cause and effect: whatsoever a person, group or nation sows, that shall they also reap. The law of cause and effect is the eternal law created by God, spoken of by the ancients. We cannot escape it. Another name for it is the law of karma, or action and reaction.

Describing the Impossible-to-Describe

• by Norman Paulsen • The by-product of Christ consciousness is ecstasy beyond description. This is the ecstasy that exists far beyond the self-conscious mind and its perimeters of experience. It is divine in all respects, transcending states produced by the five senses. It is indeed the complete experience of the new Christ Sense, and that which all writers and poets have tried to capture in words. With Gautama the Buddha it was preserved in the sutras; Jesus in the parables; Paul in his epistles; Dante at the end of Purgatorio and in the beginning of Paradisio; Shakespeare in his sonnets; Balzac in Seraphita; Whitman in Leaves of Grass; Edward Carpenter in Towards Democracy.

Following this ecstatic state comes the illumination of the intellect, again quite impossible to describe. In that great flash of light, that moment when divine rays penetrate the realms of the self-conscious mind, all is known—or should we say, all is comprehended. The very essence of life force, the Breath of Life, which created all images, is now dwelling completely exposed, within and around the self-conscious ego. This penetrating force shatters all previous concepts held by the self-conscious mind concerning God, the visible and invisible universe, and life itself.

One no longer sees planets, sun and galaxies as inert, lifeless matter, but rather the contrary. All visible images now become alive and are pulsating with the rhythms of eternal energy combinations. God himself, within and surrounding all images, now becomes visible to the beholder.

In an instant, one learns more than many self-conscious existences could ever contribute. The infinite floodgate is breached, and that flood never ceases in this life or hereafter. Above and beyond this, the greatest realization is experienced. God, I Am That I Am, is experienced as a state of ever-new joy and peace, Cosmic consciousness.

This experience reveals that the very keelson of this creation is love. Ten, twenty, thirty, fifty years afterward, the flood of divine wisdom comes pouring down on the newborn being, the Christ child. For lack and want of words, how can one express this divine state, this pearl of great price? You, dear reader, can only know this through your own experience of it.

What else is there to seek in this life? when we see those before us disappearing over the horizon and into the grave. We can see that the material pursuits are for nothing. God is everything! When we lay down our energy in this pursuit, the reward is all space, all time and all images to play with.

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