Realize that to have friends one must first be a friend. Make friendship a priority in your life.
So what Jesus taught must be understood from the deepest level and that is one of the best sayings to show that he was talking in that way. In the book Revelations from Christ, I found out something that Yogananda said. That Jesus had said son of men and son of God, and people often misunderstand so sometimes the translations themselves are wrong for that reason. So when he said son of man he meant his human body and personality. When he said son of God, he meant the infinite Christ consciousness with which he'd obtained oneness.
It's not insincere to say you're happy if your determined to make it true and live in that consciousness.
Learn to live more in the Self. Come down a little bit to eat and talk as necessary.
We've got to be long distance runners on the spiritual path. We want to run as fast as we can, but at the same time realize that if God isn't at the end of that 100 yards, we don't fall flat of exhaustion. We've got to have whatever rhythm it takes to be able to go on for incarnations until we find that state of perfection we've been seeking.
The greatest thing that will please God is that you maintain an attitude of unshakable joy.
Understand that there is no relationship between your inner happiness and your inner joy and the outer things that you experience and behold in the world, that it all begins with you, the world is a mirror to your own Self, when you can look at things and feel joy not in the things but in yourself.
Don't live to be unhappy, live to be happy. If you live to be happy you'll find the things that make you happy. And as you do that you find that sharing with others makes you much happier than taking from them.
Sociologically, I think it is the most important thing going on in the world today. Because you can't change people by force. Communism made a great mistake in trying to inflict its beliefs on everybody. People have to find their own understanding, and if you can offer them an example that will inspire, they will come naturally to it. Ananda tries to offer this inspiring example.
The secret of success is doing things not merely because they are popular, but because you deeply believe in them.
Laughter is a medicine you've got to use to drive away blues.
There are realities we all share, regardless of our nationality, language, or individual tastes. As we need food, so do we need emotional nourishment: love, kindness, appreciation, and support from others.
The thing is that the ego cannot cure itself of its own malady of egoism; it's already infected by the disease itself. And that is why it is necessary to go to a guru who knows God and by absorbing his consciousness into yourself, you discover that you aren't this ego. You cross that abyss and you find that you are infinite.
My master's visualizations were so powerful their condensation into matter was mere signature. Donald Walters, formerly Kriyananda, author of The Path about his guru Yogananda.
You can accept it that it may be true what somebody else says, but until you have experienced it, it is not dynamic to your own awareness.
Feel that you are happy without any cause for happiness.
The truth is that we are a part of God. God could not have created anything except out of his own consciousness. We're all his dream, and our duty in life that God has assigned to us, that the universe has placed squarely in our laps, is to find out who we really are. "Gnothi seauton," as the Greeks used to say. "Know thyself. " But to know thyself, if you trace it back, to the deeper and deeper levels, you discover that that self is not your body or your ego or your personality or your country or anything, that's just a sack of self-definitions that you carry around with you
I was always seeking truth from childhood. And I identified truth with many things, with science, with politics, with art, and I kept coming back to the thought that without God I can't get to what I'm looking for.
Spirituality means seeking experience. Not just belief.
Attachment is the state of ignorance or forgetfulness, and thus clinging to a memory of enjoyment