Category: Spiritual Writings

What Is The Best Religion?

” ‘What is the best religion?’ queried a truth seeker.

‘Self-realization,’ Yogananda replied.  ‘Self-realization is, in fact, the only religion.  For it is the true purpose of religion, no matter how people define their beliefs.  A person may be Christian or Jewish, Buddhist or Hindu, Moslem or  Zoroastrian; he may proclaim that Jesus Christ is the only way, or Buddha, or Mohammed — as indeed, millions of believers do.  He may insist that this ritual, or that place of worship bestows salvation.  But it all comes down to what he is, in himself.

A thousand Christs wouldn’t be able to give you God, if you didn’t first make love to Him yourself.

What does God care how you define Him?  Could any dogma encompass Him, Who is everything and far more than everything?

Don’t you suppose that a Moslem or a Hindu who loves God is as dear to Jesus Christ as any Christian — and much more acceptable to Him than those among his own followers who believe in God with their minds, but have no love for Him in their hearts?

Self-realization is the eternal message of religion.  Whatever your beliefs and practices, the essential purpose of religion is to help you to fulfill your own highest potential, as a child of God.

Your religion is not the garb you wear outwardly, but the garment of light you weave around your heart.  By outward garb I don’t mean your physical raiment only, but rather the thoughts and beliefs in which you enclose yourself.  They are not you.  Discover who you are, behind those outer trappings, and you will discover who Jesus was, and Buddha, and Krishna.  For the masters come to earth for the purpose of holding up to every man a reflection of his deeper, eternal Self.’ “

The Essence of Self-Realization – The Wisdom Of Paramhansa Yogananda, Recorded and compiled by his disciple, J. Donald Walters, pgs. 117 – 119.

In 1917, Yogananda, in India, “began his life’s work with the founding of a ‘how-to-live’ school for boys, where modern educational methods were combined with yoga training and instruction in spiritual ideals. In 1920, he was invited to serve as India’s delegate to an International Congress of Religious Liberals convening in Boston. His address to the Congress, on ‘The Science of Religion,’ was enthusiastically received. For the next several years he lectured and taught across the United States. His discourses taught of the ‘unity of ‘the original teachings of Jesus Christ and the original Yoga taught by Bhagavan Krishna.’ “[63]

 

The Synchronous Process

“Your dictionary definition of synchronicity is sadly lacking.  Synchronicity is nothing less than the universe in operation!  What you perceive as random events, chance meetings, good or bad luck, isolated incidents, and especially what you call ‘coincidences’ actually are energy in motion in perfectly defined and aligned directions to achieve specific results.

This synchronous process is like a stretch of dominoes on end – when the first falls against the second, a chain reaction flows until the last domino has fallen.

However, synchronicity has no beginning and no ending – like the universe, it always is in motion – and synchronous happenings are not as obvious as a straight line.  True, certain happenings in a lifetime stand out from the myriad of others because of their greater importance, and direct tie-ins to those may be held in significance as well, but those, too, are surrounded by the ‘before’ and the ‘after.’

The Earth is a stage for all of you to play out the karmic roles you chose.  The ‘importance’ is the soul’s chosen mission that is being relayed to your consciousness via those nudgings; the ‘simple reason’ for all happenings is that you manifested them by your free will choices.  Nothing happens by coincidence!

It invites  – compels! – you to look at your life in a new light by understanding the significance of the synchronous threads that have woven its design.  When you realize that happenings are purposeful, that they are guidelines and open doorways to karmic completion, you can proceed with more confidence, more excitement, more fulfillment, and joy as you live in preparation for the next.”

Voices Of The Universe, Suzanne Ward, pgs. 67 – 68.

This Step Will Bring You Peace

“Judgment, like other devices by which the world of illusions is maintained, is totally misunderstood by the world. ²It is actually confused with wisdom, and substitutes for truth. To illustrate this: ⁴God offers the world salvation; your judgment would condemn it. ⁵God says there is no death; your judgment sees but death as the inevitable end of life. ⁶God’s Word assures you that He loves the world; your judgment says it is unlovable. ⁷Who is right? ⁸For one of you is wrong. ⁹It must be so. (ACIM, M-11.2:4-9)

In giving up judgment, a person is merely giving up what he did not have. ³He gives up an illusion. He has actually merely become more honest. So it is necessary to realize, not that he should not judge, but that he cannot. 

Judgment in the usual sense is impossible.  This is not an opinion but a fact.  In order to judge anything rightly, one would have to be fully aware of an inconceivable wide range of things, past, present, and to come.  One would have to recognize in advance all the effects of his judgments on everyone and everything involved in them in any way.  And, one would have to be certain there is no distortion in his perception so that his judgment would be wholly fair to everyone on whom it rests now and in the future.  Who is in a position to do this?  Who in grandiose fantasies would claim this for himself?

Remember how many times you thought you knew all the ‘facts’ you needed for judgment, and how wrong you were!  Wisdom is not judgment; it is the relinquishment of judgment.  Therefore lay judgment down, not with regret but with a sigh of gratitude.  Now are you free of a burden so great that you could merely stagger and fall down beneath it.

It is not difficult to relinquish judgment.  But it is difficult indeed to try to keep it. The teacher of God lays it down happily the instant he recognizes its cost.  All of the ugliness he sees about him is its outcome.  All of the pain he looks upon is its result.  All of the loneliness and sense of loss; of passing time and growing hopelessness; of sickening despair and fear of death; all these have come of it.  And now he knows that these things need not be.  Not one is true.  For he has given up their cause, and they, which never were but the effects of his mistaken choice, have fallen from him.  Teacher of God, this step will bring you peace. Can it be difficult to want but this?”

A Course In Miracles – Manual For Teachers, Helen Schucman and William Thetford, pgs. 27 – 29, foundationforinnerpeace.org

Aligning With That Pure, Positive Energy

“All of you are powerful creators.  All of you are meaningful and important.  All of you have come with great reason and purpose.  And if you don’t feel fabulous, you have deviated from the path of who-you-really-are.  It’s time to wake up in the morning and reach for the high-flying disc and train yourself back onto it in order to be who-you-are.

What happens is you tune in to that Source Energy consciousness who is always aware of everything you are doing.  But it isn’t something that just happens.  You have to focus yourself into that alignment.

It’s like when there’s something inside of you that’s calling.  Think of it as ‘a calling.’  But for you to be able to hear the calling, you have to have practiced yourself into the frequency.  And then that calling that you are speaking about feels like inspiration.  In other words, that’s when you start realizing it, you see.  By the time you feel the calling, you’ve been in the frequency long enough that you’re starting to translate it into something that’s meaningful to you.  And that’s a self-taught course.

Source is there for everyone at all times.  And so when you are aware of the presence of Source and when you are not offering a vibration that prevents you from your alignment with Source, then you have those wonderful moments.  And you can do that all the time. And people refer to those who are doing that as masters.  But all of you can do that.  It is the mastery of focus.  That’s what it is.

So when you first wake up, before you begin thinking thoughts of what went wrong yesterday or what you have to do today, you have the greatest potential of aligning with that Pure, Positive Energy.”

Co-creating At Its Best – A Conversation Between Master Teachers, Dr. Wayne Dyer and Esther Hicks (The Teachings Of Abraham), pgs.11-12, 97-98.