Welcome to the October 2019 edition of the Yogoda Satsanga Society of India eNewsletter. This month we share some of Paramahansa Yogananda’s inspiring thoughts on performing our actions as an offering to the Divine.
Paramahansa Yogananda on Spiritualizing Your Actions and Ambitions
Knowing that you are a child of God, make up your mind to be calm no matter what happens. If your mind is fully identified with your activities, you cannot be conscious of the Lord, but if you are calm and receptive to Him within while being active without, you are rightly active.
Duty performed as an offering to God is as spiritually beneficial as meditation. God loves that devotion which makes of action as well as silence an oblation to Him.
Seek Him in both activity and meditation. When inwardly you walk with God, and also carry a heavy load of earthly duties on your shoulders, He loves you even more. So before you perform an action, while you are performing an action, and when you have finished that action, think of Him. The Gita says: “He who watches Me always, him do I watch. He never loses sight of Me, nor do I lose sight of him.” [A paraphrase of Bhagavad Gita VI:30]
Before embarking on important undertakings, sit quietly, calm your senses and thoughts, and meditate deeply. You will then be guided by the great creative power of Spirit.
When you have peace in every movement of your body, and peace in your thinking, and in your will power, and peace in your love, and peace and God in your ambitions, remember—you have connected God with your life.
In the video “How to Spiritualize Your Actions,” Swami Anandamoy (1922 – 2016), a much-loved SRF minister and direct disciple of Paramahansa Yogananda, illustrates the need to spiritualize our actions in order to find ultimate inner peace and happiness.
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