by Dawn King•From the earliest human cultures, fertility and gathering food were given sacred status. Early Amerindians revered the Corn Mother. Starting in ancient Sumeria the Virgo Maiden became associated with recording the harvest; thus the mental skills of writing, noting details, and engaging in commerce were added to her areas of influence.
Sunburst associates Virgo with a virtue we call Continence. Here, Continence means self-discipline, self-control, exercising self-restraint sexually and otherwise. We should not allow ourselves to become addicted; we should be abstemious in all areas of life., instead aspiring to maintain the state of inner joy and comfort that is Christ consciousness, knowing our Divine Parents and gaining their guidance in daily life.
Today addiction lurks insidiously close, right in our computers and phones. They invite us to over-stimulate ourselves with gossip, entertainment, conspiracy theories, gambling, bullying and so many other self-indulgent behaviors. Abuse of our devices is not nurturing for our minds or spirits.
In our normal way of life, we let ourselves be controlled by powerful thoughts and emotions, which in turn give rise to negative states of mind. It is by this vicious circle that we perpetuate not only our unhappiness but also that of others.…Nurture new inclinations by deliberately cultivating virtuous practices. This is the true meaning and object of the practice of meditation.– Dalai Lama
Continence in thought, word and deed is devotion to God, allowing us to return our love to our Divine Parents.Norman Paulsen, Sunburst’s founder said: “The conservation of life force through living the virtue of continence allows the seeker an abundance of concentrated life energy to be redirected for a higher use.”
The absolute truth cannot be realized within the domain of the ordinary mind. And the path beyond the ordinary mind is through the heart. This path of the heart is devotion. – Sogyal Rinpoche
You have to turn the key to this world in the opposite direction if you want to know God. – Sri Ramakrishna
Oh Divine Comforter, No matter how difficult the path, I know You have blessed me with the faculties By which I am able to bear what comes to pass.
As I journey homeward, Please hear my soul calling. I will pursue You every moment of my conscious life. I will forever persevere, Oh Spirit Divine, To develop the willpower to never give up! I must meet You face to face. I must hold You in my arms, If You will allow.
You are my Father; You are my Birth Mother, The Creator of my soul. From You have I come forth into this world, Into this sea of faces.
I look for You in every face, Oh Beloved. Will You please come forth And reveal Yourself to me Somehow, somewhere, someday?
I will continue to pursue You In every image and in every place, Until I find You hiding In the mirror image of my own face.
• by Sandy Anderson •Divine love is the mother of all virtue. That is where it all starts. Love is the root and the source of compassion. Love makes our hearts beat. It makes our blood flow. It makes the sun shine inside us, and it brings us to understanding and compassion for our fellow beings. Our hearts can include them all.
We are all beings of divine light, of love, from the same Being whom we call God. Our greatest fulfillment is to celebrate our Creator, to embrace him and her, to live a life acknowledging the Divine Being day to day. And to know this being lives in each of us.
As parents, we wish to nurture our children with true unconditional love, total forgiveness, complete embracing, moment by moment. How could you ever reject your own child? That is how Spirit feels towards us. Each of us is their child, and we are each other’s children. I am so grateful to be a part of the human family.
In the vibration of Leo, celebrating compassion, we come to the heart, to living love, to forgiving, to holding the hands of the people next to us, rising above judgment. We all know self-righteousness is not really righteous. Understanding and compassion are righteous.
Visitors to Sunburst sometimes ask, “How do you do it? How do you get along with each other, with so many different personalities?” Living compassion, understanding, living love is the essence, the answer.
Many times, if I have a conflict with someone, I’ll say my prayers and let it float, praying for resolution. As time goes by, I will find myself in meditation with that person, and somehow their feeling is made known to me. A door opens in my heart bringing understanding, and I feel for them. Forgiveness comes spontaneously. I love that. God unites us and brings healing love as a balm, as the comforter of all hearts, solver of all problems, as the joy that we live.
Paramahansa Yogananda: Don’t depend on death to liberate you from your imperfections. You are exactly the same after death as you were before. Nothing changes; you only give up the body. If you are a thief or a liar or a cheater before death, you don’t become an angel merely by dying. If such were possible, then let us all go and jump in the ocean now and become angels at once! Whatever you have made of yourself thus far, so will you be hereafter. And when you reincarnate, you will bring that same nature with you. To change, you have to make the effort. This world is the place to do it.
Norman Paulsen:Self-discipline arises from commitment to the vision you seek: knowing what you want and dedicating your life to bringing it forth into being. To walk the spiritual path, the utmost discipline is required. Threefold development must be pursued: physical, mental, and spiritual. Through the attainment of virtue, the ego-centered consciousness must abdicate the throne to the pure Self. This is the crowning achievement of the spiritual athlete. Helping you to achieve this goal of virtue is Spirit, I Am That I Am, existing within your soul. Yes, we all have this energy nearby, and centered deep within.
It has to be identified and brought forth. Meditation alone will not take you home. Without practicing virtue and walking the a balanced path, you may see the goal, but you will not be able to hold onto it. By attempting to live the virtue every day, whether you succeed or not, you plant positive seeds in the field of power. The law of cause and effect has no choice but to return these efforts toward virtue to you.
Swami Guru-Bhaktananda: All beings are manifestations of God alone. This is the vision of the great Indian scriptures, the Vedas. The worship mentioned is also unusual. God in the form of each being is worshipping God in the universal form! Life takes on a completely new meaning when lived in accordance to what this verse implies. This vision creates the right feeling in us in all our daily activities. Every act becomes an act of worship. The fact that we do not feel in this way is due only to one single factor: Our Ego steps in between and tries to snatch away all the glory for itself!
by Norman Paulsen, Sunburst Founder•Someone once asked me, “Why is God so hard on me? I never hear his voice or see his light.”
Responding, I said, “Do you hear that creek running? Do you hear those waters rushing down the mountain on their way to the sea? Listen to them! Meditate upon nature. You didn’t create it; God did. It is the visible body of Spirit, the voice crying in the wilderness.
The wind in the trees! What a sound—the elements of air pressing against the elements of the earth. Listen and hear God’s voice in nature, and in the creatures of the earth.” Once understanding this communion, God speaks to you in a voice from all space, calling you by name and giving you love and direction in your life.
Recreate with God’s creative life force. Read words or watch movies of inspiration. Write and play music expressing mankind’s glories. Play games that encourage one another to be strong and live virtue. Develop spiritual willpower through the discipline of physical exercise. This is recreation and regeneration for body, mind and spirit.
Allow your heart to commune with God in nature. Find a pristine environment that makes your heart swell with joy and love. Embrace the solitude. The pure Self within you will come forward through your senses to commune with you in nature.
The word recreation means to co-create with God; this is the purpose of the divine creation. Yes, knowing one’s own pure Self within is real re-creation. Living upon the earth as Spirit intended humankind to live, God fully conscious in human beings, brings heaven on earth again!
by Dawn King•In our busy lives, sometimes the day seems chaotic. Chores, cooking, meetings, phone calls, texts, child care, traffic jams, emails, sounds that irritate us, and even more bombards us. Our attention is demanded from all sides.
If we can remember to consciously take a deep breath, inhaling the life of Spirit and realizing the temporary nature of this ever-changing life, we win! This is when we embrace the advice of Paramahansa Yogananda to “…Stand unshaken amidst the crash of breaking worlds.” Our spirit remains strong and is untouched.
An article I read recently told of a young man’s six-week sojourn in a Buddhist temple. He described being invited one day to tea by the abbot. He ascended the stairs to an upper story, only to find the abbot absorbed in concentration over his task at hand, and observing a focused silence. He cleansed each article used in the tea ceremony with full attention, as though nothing else existed at that moment. Ultimately, tea having been served, the abbot turned the same full attention on the young man.
When we focus the mind completely on the moment, whether in meditation, or while carrying out an action, we bring peace to our minds, hearts, and nervous systems. The distraction of phones and other electronics is especially disruptive to this process of being here now. We make ourselves ill by attempting to deal with everything at once.
Studies have now proven that multitasking can reduce your cognitive functioning. Your brain isn’t really doing more than one thing at once, it is jumping back and forth between tasks, and needing to try to remember where it was each time it returns to the earlier one.You lose valuable productivity time in completing tasks, make mistakes, and memories are harder to recall.
Entrepreneur Andy Hill writes: “Multitasking is just a fancy word for being unfocused.…When we multitask we can’t give ourselves to the present. Instead, we sacrifice now for later with the hopes of future happiness.…Imagine what we could hear, learn and share if we were 100 percent present in a conversation. …We’d be more focused, apt, adaptive and therefore better decision makers. The better we can solve problems, the more productive. More successful. Happier. And isn’t that the point?”
To the words of psychologist Michelle Fung: “…By simply focusing on one thing at a time you will instantly improve the quality of your work,” I would add “and your life.”
