Daily Deliberations

 

APRIL

By PARAMHANSA YOGANANDA

APR. 1. The power of Thy love crucifies all my thoughts of doubt and fear; that I may rise, triumphant over death, and ascend on wings of light to Thee.

APR. 2. Real love is that which is happy in the comfort of the beloved.

APR. 3. Teach us to conquer the Satan of dividing selfishness, which prevents the union of brother-souls into the one fold of Spirit.

APR. 4. Teach me to discern all laws of virtue not with dread but with love.

APR. 5. Teach me to remember that virtue may be difficult to follow at the start, but that when I obey its laws, it will adorn me finally with the laurel of Thy happiness.

APR. 6. May Thy glory shine in every nook of my consciousness, in every temple of my love.

APR. 7. 1 disconnected the rays of my mind from the little territory of the senses and switched them on in the land of the Infinite.

APR. 8. Let the flowers of my devotion blossom in the garden of my heart, with the dawn of Thy coming. Let me weave a garland of them, and place it at Thy feet.

APR. 9. Drive disease from our bodies; shake our minds free from weakness; destroy darkness evermore by the presence of Thine eternal flame.

APR. 10. May Thy light of love forever illumine the altar of our hearts.

APR. 11. Meditation is that special form of concentration in which the attention which has been liberated from restlessness is focused on God.

APR. 12. God is the indwelling Self of man and of the whole universe.

APR. 13. Hold on to love, truth, meditation and service.

APR. 14. Think of nothing but light, and ignorance shall disappear.

APR. 15. All the todays of my life are determined by the actions of all the yesterdays, and all the tomorrows depend upon the way in which I live all the todays.

APR. 16. Ignorance must first go from within us; then it disappears without.

APR. 17. Have faith everlasting in the teacher, teaching, and God. You shall see the goal: lo! it is there before you.

APR. 18. True friendship is the light with which we can help one another to see and pass through the door of Heaven.

APR. 19. When in mutual service we forget the little self, then only will we see the one big Self of the Spirit running through us.

APR. 20. May the bird of my love escape from the cage of personal limitations and fly singing the song of the Spirit through all hearts and minds.

APR. 21. When I was blind I found not a door which led to Thee, but now that Thou hast opened my eyes, I find doors everywhere.

APR. 22. 1 am submerged in eternal light. It permeates every particle of my being. I am living in that light, for the Divine Spirit has filled me within and without.

APR. 23. Every gust of my prayer opens an unentered door in the vast temple of Thy Presence.

APR. 24. Open the petalled bars of our heart-buds, and let our imprisoned fragrance of love rush out to meet Thee.

APR. 25. With the wind of cosmic Perception, the fragrance of our prayers will float to Thy Temple of Infinity.

APR. 26. Prayers are like plants which daily grow new blossoms, the flowers change, but the plants remain the same.

APR. 27. 1 want Thine everlasting happiness that I may make everybody happy forever in Thee.

APR. 28. God manifests Himself through the hidden intelligence in all material transformations.

APR. 29. 1 will let the peace without join the peace within. My Father's peace, which is like an ocean, is filling my body and mind. I rest in the joy of this blessed peace now.

APR. 30. When the match of devotion is scratched on sacred walls of the soul, the invisible flame of Divinity sprin forth.

MAY

MAY 1. Not even to God's elect does the sky always send down manna.-Galsworthy.

MAY 2. Be wise, not easily forgiven are those who setting wide the doors that bar the secret bridal chambers of the heart let in the day.-Tennyson.

MAY 3. The secret of success is constancy of purpose~Disraeli.

MAY 4. Glad but not flushed with gladness since joys go by. Sad but not bent with sadness since sorrows die.-Swinbume.

MAY 5 We only find rest in effort, as the flame only finds existencie in combustion~Amiel.

MAY 6. The mind flies like a bird in the sky of worldly pi :asne as long as it is not pounced upon by the falcon of Knowledge.-Kabir Saheb.

MAY 7. Life is a loom weaving illusion.-Vachel Lindsay.

MAY 8. To be saved is only this, Salvation from our selfishness.-Whittier.

MAY 9 The dry river bed finds no thanks for its past. -Tagore.

MAY 10. Kindness consists in loving people more than they deserve.-Joseph Joubert.

MAY 11. The fly sat upon the axle-tree of the chariot wheel, and said: "What a dust do I raise!"-Aesop.

MAY 12. Be not ashamed to receive the truth from wherever it comes, even from an inferior.-Ibn Gabi-rol,

MAY 13. Count this sure, that every defeat coils a spring in you which will one day give you force to overcome. You, too, will have your victories as sure and glorious as any. Fight on and never despair.-J. William Lloyd.

MAY 14. Leaving the Lord, who sustains even the rootless creeper, whom shall we search?-Rahim,

MAY 15. The wise, through not thinking, become foolish, and the foolish, by thinking, become wise.-The Analects, CCS L

MAY 16. The little secret joy of God that sings forever in, the clay-A. Corbin.

MAY 17. The soul forever and forever, longer than soil is brown and solid-longer than water ebbs and flows.-Whitman.

MAY 18. There is no shark like hatred, there is no torrent like greed.-Dhammapada.

MAY 19. God is unfathomable, and every man fashions Him in his own image.-Savonarola.

MAY 20. What befalls thee of good, it is from God; and what befalls thee of evil, it is from thyself.-The Koran.

MAY 21. We see with all we have seen, we do with all we have done, and we think with all we have thought.-Phylos.

MAY 22. There is but one great need for all the race, the need of knowledge to uphold its faith.-Ella W. Wilcox.

MAY 23. He who knows other men is discerning; he who knows himself is intelligent. He who overcomes others is strong; he who overcomes himself is mighty.-Lao Tze,

MAY 24. 1 laugh at what you call dissolution and I know the amplitude of time.-Whitman.

MAY 25. Nobody will throw a stone at a tree that bears no fruit.--Sadi.

MAY 26. Learn, as if never overtaking your object, and yet as if apprehensive of losing it.-Confucius.

MAY 27. The secret of religion is not clothes, nor temple bells, nor shaven heads nor long prayers, nor rites, nor physical tortures, but truth and love.-Guru Nanak,

MAY 28. Other heights in other lives, God willing.Browning.

MAY 29. Creation and destruction-or more correctly, the ability to create or the ability only to destroy-are the principal signs of the two types of men.-OusPenski,,

MAY 30. 1 have drifted like a happy cloud before the wind. Now I will learn to be the wind that blows the clouds.-L. Adams Beck.

MAY 31. That which sees must be kindred and similar to its object before it can see it. Every man must partake of the divine nature before he can see Divinity.-Plotinus.

JUNE

By WALT WHITMAN

JUNE 1. Dazzling and tremendous, how quick the sunrise would kill me, if I could not now and always send sunrise out of me.

JUNE 2. These furies, elements, storms, motions of Nature, throes of apparent dissolution-you are he or she who is master or mistress over them, Master or mistress in your own right over Nature, elements, pain, passion, dissolution.

JUNE 3. To me all the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow, All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means.

JUNE 4. 1 believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journeywork of the stars.

JUNE 5. Why should I wish to see God better than this day? I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then; In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass.

JUNE 6. What behaved well in the past, or behaves well today, is not such a wonder; The wonder is, always and always, how there can be a mean man or an infidel.

JUNE 7. It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall, The dark threw its patches down upon me also, The best I had do seemed to me blank and suspicious.

JUNE 8. I acknowledge the duplicates of myself, the weakest and shallowest is deathless with me, What I do and say the same wait for them.

JUNE 9. And I say to any man or woman, Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.

JUNE 10. Myself awaiting my time to be one of the supremes, The day getting ready for me when I shall do as much good as the best, and be as prodigious.

JUNE 11. Wisdom cannot be passed from one having it to another not having it, Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible Of proof, is its own proof.

JUNE 12. Births have brought us richness and variety, And other births will bring us richness and variety.

JUNE 13. And as to you, Life, I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths. (No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before.)

JUNE 14. Of the progress of the souls of men and women along the grand roads of the universe, all other progress is the needed emblem and sustenance.

JUNE 15. The great laws take and effuse without argument.

JUNE 16. Do you think matter has cohered together from its diffuse float, and the soil is on the surface, and water runs and vegetation sprouts For you only, and not for him and her?

JUNE 17. 1 will make the true poem of riches, To earn for the body and the mind whatever adheres and goes forward and is not dropped by death.

JUNE 18. To be in any form, what is that? (Round and round we go, all of us, and ever come back thither.)

JUNE 19. 1 swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell.

JUNE 20. The efflux of the soul is happiness, here is happiness, I think it pervades the open air, waiting at all times.

JUNE 21. 1 am an acme of things accomplished, and I an encloser of things to be.

JUNE 22. 1 do not know what is untried and afterward, But I know it will in its turn prove sufficient, and cannot fail.

JUNE 23. Each who passes is considered, each who stops is considered, not a single one can it fail.

JUNE 24. Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touched from.

JUNE 25. Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.

JUNE 26. 1 exist as I am, that is enough, If no other in the world be aware I sit content, And if each and all be aware I sit content.

JUNE 27. 1 help myself to material and immaterial, No guard can shut me off , no law prevent me.

JUNE 28. See ever so far, there is limitless space outside of that, Count ever so much, there is limitless time around that.

JUNE 29. 1 am larger, better than I thought, I did not know I held so much goodness.

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