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.”
The importance of meditating each morning and evening cannot be emphasized enough. At first, this discipline takes effort, but as your meditations deepen and you begin to feel the inner peace and joy, your desire to meditate will grow. Each day resolve that you will meditate more deeply than yesterday. Set aside time one day each week for a longer practice. Make a place in your home that is dedicated to meditation.
Developing devotion, called bhaktiyoga, is also an essential part of the practice. Norman [Sunburst’s founder] often said, “Talk to God as you would your best friend, your divine companion!”
Devotion to whatever concept of God is pleasing to you is a powerful magnetic force that Spirit cannot resist. Your heart may be drawn to visualize Divine Mother, Heavenly Father, a God-realized soul, or a radiant sphere of Light, I Am That I Am, brilliant like the sun. Offering your love and devotion to your favorite image of the Divine will help rein in the ego-centered self, freeing the pure Self to come forth.
The meditation technique can take you to the door, but only your devotion will take you through the door. – Paramahansa Yogananda
John Kiddie:
Using our meditation technique, we quiet the senses, find that center place within us, that spark of the Divine that has been with us always. We imagine our spine as a hollow tube connecting Mother Earth and Father Spirit. We make the connection with the breath going up and down that tube.
We continue to do this, mixing and melting the energies of the Mother and the Father, bringing forth a union within us. It’s like dipping the fabric of our soul, our being in the waters of the Divine and washing it clean with every breath. As we bring in the energies and circulate them through our spine, we are slowly but surely cleansing ourselves from the inside.
We quiet our mind and come to reside in that center place within where Spirit resides. Through time, all will be revealed in that sacred space. What is revealed in that place is virtue, taking many forms. When we get to that place and reside there, we put on the cloak of virtue and transform ourselves so that our thoughts, words, and actions are virtuous. We do not have to think of being virtuous because we have become virtue.
by Norman Paulsen, Sunburst Founder • Self-discipline arises from commitment to the vision you seek, knowing what you want and dedicating your life to bringing it forth into being. True discipline is never a restriction. It is a liberation! Through meditation and right conduct, the ego, the false self, draws nearer to the pure Self. Virtue begins to arrive in your outward expressions, conducting the power of infinite love through every thought, word, and deed. Energies, never before felt, approach your awareness. Great love is felt for life, for God!
God is more desirable than all that can be experienced by the five senses. However, one does not abandon the outer for the inner! The adept, once knowing the inner, brings it to the outer world for expression. To bring heaven on earth again is our purpose. Yes, God is alive in you, experiencing the five senses, picking and tasting the fruit of the trees that I Am That I Am created, feeling the miracle of the solid earth beneath your feet, bathing in the waters, experiencing the warmth of the sun on a summer’s day.
Having access to the inner life, one now expresses it in the outer life. I Am That I Am now walks the earth as was originally intended in the cosmic plan. Yes, God, Mother and Father, those two divine dreamers, living and walking fully conscious within you upon the earth. This is the reason you are here today, dear friend, that God might live and work and play through you, fully conscious. And as a son or daughter, you are joined in this union.
by Catherine Mauron•There is so much love in our hearts. We are so blessed to be here, to pray to God who is ever-present, around us and within us. The virtue Sunburst celebrates this month is Patience, the ability to wait. This is a long-forgotten gift in today’s society.
The whole of existence waits for the right moment. The trees know when it is the right time to bring the flowers and when to shed their leaves. It is for us to learn to wait, to let go and let God bring forth the fruits. We plant the seeds and then we wait. It takes time for a fruit to ripen, for a new project to manifest, for a child to grow in the womb, for an oyster to cultivate a grain of sand into a pearl.
We must learn to wait through the phases of the moon; in the time of waiting we learn skills. Before the perfect moment arises, we have to let go of our ideas and beliefs, to return to being little children. We must let go of our expectations to receive this river of life that wants to run through us. In order to cleanse ourselves, we need to let go of the old, to renew our spirits. Thus we can be happy right here, right now.
There is nothing else but Now. There is no yesterday or tomorrow, only a dream of them. We must try to awaken to every moment and see that there is so much for which to be grateful. It is best to be loving and compassionate toward each other, to see God all around us and in each other. If we can’t see God in everything, we can’t see God at all. The Light shines on everything, a beautiful pearl or an old broken car. The Light does not mind.
In Brother Norman’s book, he wrote that when Divine Mother visited him, she said she would come back in seven days. So he had to wait. Through the waiting period he learned that he could meditate during his work time. He then could meditate all of the time. This is the true meaning of Kriya action, divine action, action with love. Not only in deep meditation, but when you work, when you talk, walk, eat, and sleep. Always let the Divine move through you. Mother and Father Divine await at the door, knocking silently until we are ready to open our hearts and minds so they can come in and enjoy this world through, and with us.
In French we say, “La patience est la mére des vertus.”“Patience is the mother of all virtues.” Waiting, listening, remaining alert, there is no anxiety knowing that all is well. All is well in the greater scheme of the Universe. All is well!
By Norman Paulsen, Sunburst Founder • Our two physical eyes can see the dual universe God has created, but they cannot see God. Meditation reverses the process, as you bring your gaze inward and to a single point. In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus says, “When you make the two one, you shall enter the kingdom of heaven.” In meditation, when you focus the two eyes on one point with deep concentration, you are “making the two one.“ With practice, the spiritual eye will open at that point and show you what it’s looking at! Yes, it will reveal to you the Light of God, like a living sun or star spinning in front of you.
Within our bodies, God gave us a clue for how to find our way home. When we look at our eyes in the mirror, we are looking at the outer, dual image of our inner single eye. The light that shines through our two eyes is a reflection of the divine light that shines within the single spiritual eye.
The single eye of God created our two eyes and everything that exists. It is the projector, that featureless face of God that looks like a blazing sun or star to our inner vision. Our physical sun reminds us that God is with us all the time. When we see God with the single eye of soul, we can see him the same way, as a blazing image of Light.
My teacher Yogananda once said to me, “You must penetrate the star in the spiritual eye—then you will have salvation.” How do you penetrate the star?
It has to come after you. The star shines upon you at the crown of your head. That’s as close as you are to the body of God! You’ve got to bring it in. You’ve got to open the door so it can come into you. That’s what Sunburst’s teaching is about.
We talk about the body of Christ, the real presence of I Am That I Am, the living presence of the sphere of light that travels through us. We speak of the garden universes, the parks it has created. The whole creation is full of uncountable suns, planets and life forms. I Am That I Am is in everything as particle energy, but it also travels individually as a sphere like the sun.
Yes, the source of it all is a sphere of light and consciousness, a being that can come to us personally! It can speak to us. It can take us out of our body, and show us the whole creation, all the colors, all the suns and worlds with their natural phenomena. This is a personal experience of a living being; a living presence of God that comes and talks to you. I’m talking about a sphere of light so bright, it’s above the brightness of the sun.
Develop devotion and love for God. Try to attract this Being of Light to come to you, to talk to you, to reveal Itself to you, through your offerings of service, love, and one-pointed concentration upon the Divine.
