Articles in the Spiritual Practices Category
Our family experienced several episodes of extreme financial difficulty before we found the right balance between living simply and attracting the money we needed.
Navi kriya is a good technique to practice before meditation. Focus on the third chakra has a special virtue. It stimulates the consciousness of self-control.
Frank Laubach was a Christian mystic who believed that practicing the presence of God would do more good for humanity than political and diplomatic schemes devoid of God.
If you can concentrate more deeply, your meditations will be more fulfilling and their depth and length will automatically begin to increase.
I believed in Yogananda’s path, but was frightened to do the one thing he seemed to suggest above all others—meditate—for fear it would make my situation worse.
If, in your sincere desire to follow God’s will, you make a mistake, God will correct that mistake. But, always listen and don’t presume.
One morning during meditation, thought came to me very strongly that I should memorize Yogananda’s poem Samadhi. My initial reaction was, “I could never do that!”
When yogis speak of living in the spine, they’re referring to the “astral spine,” the primary channel for life-force in the body.
Kundalini is the energy at the base of the spine that pulls our energy outward and downward. Before we can achieve freedom in God, this energy must be awakened and united at the highest center in the brain.
Human suffering is not a sign of God’s anger with mankind; it is a sign, rather, of man’s ignorance of the divine law.
I first learned of chanting from friends I met at a yoga retreat who taught me two of Paramhansa Yogananda’s chants. This discovery was like artesian water surfacing in a sun-baked landscape.
Redirected to the point between the eyebrows, the creative force awakens one’s powers of spiritual perception.
“What’s wrong with my meditations?” I asked myself. “Why isn’t there more focus, more joy? My attitude had been wrong: I had been meditating based on what I would get out of it.
Last year while I was in New Jersey on a lecture tour, Thomas, my host, discussed how his meditation practice had helped him calm a potentially dangerous situation.
Each of us has countless opportunities to do God’s will, but it’s not always easy to know what it is or to follow it if it goes against our desires.
Swami Kriyananda recently challenged Ananda members to practice the presence of God for five minutes a day. It doesn’t sound like much, but this practice has the potential to transform our lives
Before becoming pregnant, I was meditating at least two hours a day and teaching 12 – 15 yoga postures classes a week. Now, with two young children, I was doing none of that.
Why forgive one who wrongs you? Because the desire for vengeance is a karmic cage that imprisons both individuals and cultures into enduring suffering.
If you want to deepen your spiritual life, one of the most important things is to make God your partner in every undertaking. This is not easy.
Most of us, when we try to meditate, have too much restless momentum in the mind and the senses, or we expect to see God with our senses.
Devotion is the deep yearning of the heart for God. Many great masters have emphasized devotion as an essential ingredient of the spiritual path.
Self-offering is a natural step for the devotee when our love for God has deepened through the practice of devotion.
Visualization is a powerful method for achieving material or spiritual success.
To meditate successfully one needs to be like the long-distance runner who accepts whatever terrain he encounters.
God-contact can be achieved through regular, intense, long-continued meditation. Steadily use your will power until the cosmic silence is broken and you receive His answer.
With the sword of devotion I sever the heart-strings that tie me to delusion.
Paramhansa Yogananda wrote Whispers from Eternity to show us the attitudes of the soul that draw God’s response to prayers.
“Yoga Therapy for Over-coming Headaches” offers step-by-step guidance for banishing the hard to treat problem of headaches.
On the spiritual path we need fiery self-control. In everything that you do, do it with fire! Do it with energy!
