Journey to Self-Realization

~ Paramahansa Yogananda
Shut yourself in seclusion and meditate.
At first your mind will rebel against your
will, but if you are in earnest,
you will eventually find that nothing else
can satisfy you as meditation does.
Your meditation should not
be an oblivion of
wandering thoughts,
but an attentive,
constantly increasing
devotion to God
- a deep joy arising from
contact with Spirit.
In the silence within,
implore His presence again
and again,
with yearning you have felt
when you have wanted
something very badly.
With that most
urgent desire,
pray to Him and tell Him
that you want Him.
Death and darkness
cannot cast fear
upon us,
for we are the
very Consciousness
out of which this
universe has been
created by God.
 Though I live in this
world and behold it as
a moving picture show
that continuously
comes and goes,
still most of the time
this earthly movie is
away from my
consciousness.
I go within,
into the
Unchanging Reality.
That is the way
to seek God.
Live in that eternal
consciousness.
Personal desires are
like an acid that
corrodes the peace of
our souls.
 The ability to accomplish is all in the mind.
Your body itself is virtually sustained by thought.
Food is incidental; the main power sustaining you
is your mind, your consciousness.
It is thought that brings energy into the body.
 To live in harmony,
to live with strong will
power to do the will of
Him who sent you,
is all you should be
interested in.
Never lose courage,
and always be smiling.
Have the smile of the
heart and the smile of
the face completely
in harmony.
If your body, mind, and
soul register the smile
of the inner
consciousness of God,
you can scatter smiles
about you wherever
you go.
 Set a program for yourself,
carry it through, and you will
find how much happier you
will be. Failure to keep to
your schedule of
improvement means you have
paralyzed your will. You
have no greater friend and
no greater enemy
than yourself.
If you befriend yourself,
you will find
accomplishment.
There is no law of God
preventing you from being
what you want to be and
accomplishing what you
want to accomplish.
 ... there is no use spending your time detecting
your faults or the faults of others....

My faults may have been extreme, but my love for God has drowned my faults.
I am completely free in my heart; not a desire stalks me there.
I love Him more than anything else.
And, if He so desires, I am ready to scrub floors to express my love for Him.
 God is your Father, God
is your Mother, God is
your Supreme Love.
With God, parental and
other human relationships
are wonderful; but
without God, they are
only an interplay of the
laws of karma and nature
for this one lifetime.
Those relationships would
mean nothing if God had
not put His thought and
love in our hearts.
 Disband attachment and
learn to give true, sincere
love to all.
True love
is impersonal and
is not bound by anything.
Our eyes bubble
over with love,
and we feel
a wonderful togetherness;
we feel we are one.
Once in a while that
is felt in ordinary life,
but then then it is so easily
mutilated by familiarity
and
lack of respect.
The power of love is the greatest
of all powers.
No power of authority
is greater than that.
Love can conquer all.
 Prayer

O cosmic vibration, reverberate through me as the cosmic,

intelligent sound, and teach me to find in
Thee the presence of the reflected
Christ consciousness.
O Holy Vibration,
lead me to intuit the Christ consciousness in Thee.
O omnipresent,
cosmic sound of Amen or Aum,
reverberate through me,
expanding my consciousness from the body to the universe,
and teach me to feel in Thee the all-permeating,
perennial bliss.
- Whispers from Eternity