Treasures Along the Path

Energy and Willpower Spiritual Renewal Week 1975 Thursday Class Energy and willpower – learn to direct your energy Energy is the link between the mind and body Use energy to overcome dullness and preoccupation with likes and dislikes Practice willingness and enthusiasm for success in everything Energization exercises are a way to learn to direct your energy in powerful ways The world out there see...

Right Attitude: Basis for the Spiritual Life – 1/10/1985 One of the leading and most helpful attitudes to develop, is listening and being open to learning. It’s a common delusion to think that whatever attitudes we hold define who we are and therefore say, why should we change? People can justify having wrong attitudes by saying that ‘this is who I am.’ This is not who you are. It’s an energy patt...

Giving and Receiving – give and receive graciously with love Kriyananda discusses the importance of giving in such a way as to invite reciprocity. He explains that it is just as necessary to learn to receive graciously as it is to give graciously. It completes a circle when we leave an opening for others to give back to us. The most important thing is to give God your heart. When Kriyananda was as...

Attitudes have a great deal to do with overcoming negative emotions. We can choose what attitudes to support. You must reject that which is going to hurt you, before you can completely embrace that which will help you. Rejection in this case does not mean with an attitude of judgement. The more you try to tune into people and listen closely to what they are saying, the more you begin to feel actua...

Keys to Overcoming Delusion include staying positive and recognizing when you are in delusion. Helpful attitudes and higher consciousness can free you from ego and outer attachments. This is a world of duality.  Try not to be affected by polar opposites such as likes and dislikes, pleasure and pain,  joy and sorrow. To support this work, go to: https://www.ananda.org/support/treasures/

Circumstances Reflect inner Attitudes – Kriyananda speaks on the importance of right attitude and of having complete faith that God will take care of us. The clearer our hearts are, and the more sincere our love for Him, the more He will respond. Try to accept “what is.” You can be happy in yourself no matter what happens. This talk is from A Way of Awakening Aasta TV series from India – 365 twent...

Learning to Trust God – Give Him a chance! If you give Him a chance you will find that He is there, and that He will take care of you. We spend a good part of our lives looking for fulfillment in this and that. We must seek all fulfillment in God. In order to trust God, we ourselves must become worthy of His trust in us. If we are willing to do whatever’s necessary to find God, then He will be the...

Joyful Surrender is related to the goal of our existence: to realize ourselves as the Atman, the eternal spirit. Kriyananda describes the principle of yagya which means sacrifice. Sacrafice is essential if we want to succeed in our spiritual endeavors. If we want to be truly free, it is important to surrender all that we are to God. There are two ways to approach God described in the the ancient t...

How to Please God – do everything for God and with God. Throughout all our tests we need to love God. The only reason for human life is to love God. When we act from will and ego involvement, the results are never truly fulfilling no matter what we accomplish. When we work only to please God we experience God’s sweetness and everything falls into place.  Kriyananda talks about the incorporation pr...

Attunement to the Guru –  God is the guru and discipleship is not to a person, it is to life! We will be given all the tests in life that will help us grow spiritually, and the tools and grace  to meet those challenges. Attunement is the key to spiritual success. Look at life in a positive way. Everything that comes can be an opportunity to learn. Yogananda said, “The greater the will, the greater...

8/5/1978 Creativity & Initiative is a means of bringing creative energy up the spine and using it to develop spiritually. This talk is a thorough and very intriguing discussion of creativity. Kriyananda  begins by explaining the caste system and how that relates to our ability to achieve different levels of consciousness. We progress through those levels of understanding as we evolve spiritual...

11/23/1978 Devotion vs. Emotion – give your pure love to God without emotion. There is only one thing God does not have – our love. The definition of yoga is the neutralization of the waves of feeling. We need to develop devotion and love for God and at the same time to dissolve our feelings of likes and dislikes. In fundamentalist religion there is devotion, but it also has an element of emotion...

Circa 1978 Learning how to concentrate your forces allows you to put all of your energy in one direction. Here are on the battlefield of life knowing that we want to resolve the battle by achieving peace.  There are two ways of achieving this peace. One is to put out enough energy to win a victory and the other is to give up. If you give up, you are surrendering and running away. Each time you ove...

Talk Given: 7-31-1984 Karma is inevitable but can karma be changed? Karma means action. Great saints have said the everything is ruled by karma, which operates by the law of cause and effect. Once you understand the laws of karma you can take steps to change unhelpful thoughts patterns or behaviors that may keep you in a cycle of karma that you would like to change. Kriyananda gives a very helpful...

Find All You’ve Been Seeking – 8/25/1979 Find All You’ve Been Seeking through a direct experience of God. Specific meditation techniques free up energy in our nervous system. Meditate and clear away all extraneous ideas. Realize that you are one with God. We can experience ever existing, ever conscious, ever new bliss. Be clear on what you goals are, not other’s opinions. To support this work, go...

Environment is stronger than will   – community life supports spiritual progress. Kriyananda speaks about what it takes to produce that “right environment” that can change the course of our destiny. He shares with us the importance of living with the consciousness of peace that will help uplift all mankind. People living together in a community create a magnetism that accelerates everyone’s spirit...

Joyful love is centered in the heart. When we direct love upward toward the spiritual eye, toward God, the energy rises. When the energy is rising, you can change the level of your consciousness. If you can bring your level of consciousness high enough, you will find divine inspirations coming to you automatically. Try this as a deliberate and daily practice: learn to live from the spiritual eye,...

True Happines is found by seeing unity in all things. True happiness manifests when we are more considerate of other’s wellbeing and include them as a part of our reality “God doesn’t count your mistakes, He counts whether you love Him or not.” — Swami Kriyananda. To support this work, go to: https://www.ananda.org/support/treasures/

Fulfilling Your Destiny – God is the Doer in all circumstances. Go within and ask for guidance. The most helpful thing we can do for the world is to open ourselves to God’s divine power, and allow His greater energy to be what we transmit to others. The one constant in the universe is God’s energy flowing through us, and that’s who we really are, not the personality or things we do. Our mission is...

When you think that in all you are doing, it is God doing it through you, you will feel a sense of freedom. Yogananda said ‘I killed Yogananda long ago. No one dwells in this temple, but God.’ Realize that our love is really God’s love flowing through us. Love God in all, and you will see that problems are only real, to the extent we give them reality. Everything is solved in God’s joy. Try to fee...

How to Deepen Your Spiritual Life – do everything for and with God. Offer everything up to Him. When we do good works and serve God, we move beyond our little selves and become God’s instruments.  We come to realize that we are a part of a greater reality and our sense of identity expands. It doesn’t do any good to repress the ego. Live joyously for God. You will become more and more free, more an...

God as Divine Mother – feeling close to God as Her child God can be visualized as having a form. First, we need to think in terms of God with a form to be able to reach the realization of God in a formless state. God is neither male or female. God is not literally a mother but an aspect of consciousness. Yogananda said, ‘thoughts are universally, not individually rooted.’ Depending what level of c...

Devotion and Spiritual Growth – do everything for, and with God. In this talk Kriyananda goes right to the heart of the teachings: how to love God more. He reminds us that God doesn’t care what we know, but how much we love.  Divine Mother likes simple devotion, and in prayer she responds to the quality of our hearts, not our words.  When we meditate with just our minds it doesn’t feed the soul; w...

Arrive at understanding using the mind & the heart The subject of intellect vs. heart is a very, very important one. They have found that there is a certain amount of gray matter in the heart. Western culture has been one-sided in the direction of intellect. Yogananda said the motivation of human beings is twofold: to avoid suffering to attain happiness. The joy of God and the joy of your soul...

When we develop intuition we can transcend the limits of the intellect. We need to have balance in our lives with using both intuition and the intellect. Kriyananda encourages us to develop our intuition, explaining that through the intuition, we gain access to the wisdom of the universe. In fact, it is only through the intuition that we can gain complete understanding of anything. We each have ou...