This Spiritual Renewal Week talk explores how to cultivate true and lasting happiness through spiritual principles. The main points are: letting go of the ego and sense of separation, choosing to embrace positivity while releasing negativity, and staying close to God's ever-present love and joy within. It emphasizes that real happiness comes from our divine nature rather than external circumstances.
Specific suggestions include unmasking the "I" thought, making lists of what you appreciate about others, seeing everything with a sense of "wow", and remembering that God loves us unconditionally like an only child. The overall message is that by attuning ourselves to the bliss within, we can live in abiding joy.
Transcript
Nayaswami Anandi:
Well, when we come to Spiritual Renewal Week and we think about making spiritual progress, we often think, “Okay that means more meditation, more devotion”, and so on.
Choosing Happiness
But as you could tell from Gyandev's talk on energy, and it's certainly true for happiness, it's certainly true for success, that it isn't just that if we meditate right we can have energy, if we meditate right we can have happiness or success, but as we apply our thinking to developing more energy, to developing more happiness, to cultivating happiness, to cultivating success, it very much is an essential ingredient to finding God, to meditating more deeply, to having more bliss in our lives.
The other night, Swami shared a joke that Yogananda, he said, used to love to tell, with so much laughter you could probably, could hardly understand what he was saying.
He said, “There were three men: an Irishman, an Englishman, and a Scotch, a Scotsman. And they all went to a bar to have a drink. They all had a glass of whiskey and a fly landed in each drink. And so the Irishman saw the fly and he just went [spills drink] and you know a third of his drink flushed out along with the fly. The Englishman reached for a spoon and delicately, you know, picked out the fly and put it on the table. And the Scotsman grabbed the fly and squeezed it.” He said Master would say, “Squeezed it”. [laughter]
So the people who have Bliss, they live in happiness, it overflows, but they also use happiness. Swami said, “Use laughter and happiness as a sword of battle to maintain your even-mindedness and cheerfulness.” We are Bliss. As Swami talked about on
Monday, God is ever-conscious, ever-existing, ever-new Bliss. And God became us. He didn't create us, like the Sistine Chapel, He became us. So there's no part of our being that doesn't have Bliss.
But the thing is, Bliss…it's conscious, it's alive, it's trying to get through to us. But our eyes are not on the Bliss, our eyes are looking outside to find happiness, “I need happiness. How can I find it?” Meantime, the Bliss is bubbling up inside of us all the time.
There's a classic story that's told of the musk deer. You know the beautiful perfume called musk? It has a heavenly scent to it. You may not know it comes from a pouch inside the chest of a deer that lives in the Himalayan Mountains. And this deer is enchanted by that scent, it smells it all the time and it wants to find it. And it wanders through the Himalayas, looking for that beautiful scent and it even throws itself off a cliff if it thinks that the smell is down below. It dies, the hunter comes along and takes the pouch right out of its chest. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?
The happiness is here all the time and we need to look for it. So meditation is a way of looking for it, but, and with meditation, we, we find it, but also we have to know that it's our choice. We have to choose it. We have to choose to be happy. And as we choose to be happy, it changes our consciousness.
We know that from meditation, the structure of our brain changes. Our energy comes more to the prefrontal lobes, which happens to be the seat of happiness in the body, the seat of a feeling of joy and well-being. But also as we choose to be happy, the same thing happens. That same structural change happens.
So that as the more we choose to be happy, the easier it is to be happy. And the more we choose to be moody, the easier it is to be moody. It's just structure, it's just energy movement. So we want to look in that direction and say, “How can I choose to be happy?”
Master said about our Path, he said, “A spiritual path should be definite.” So when we meditate, we don't just sit in the silence, which is something that many people on many paths do, but we have very directed techniques: Energization, Hong-Sau, Kriya… they're all showing us the pathway of how to bring energy into the spine and up to the brain and deeper and deeper into the spiritual eye, and it's very specific.
And in the same way as our inner life, we want to go through our outer life, and have it be directed. We don't want to just wait and say, “Well, maybe I'll be happy if I get the right partner, if I get the right house…maybe happiness will flow my way” but to say, “I can be happy right now.” Just as Gyandev was talking about Haridas: it's my choice, I'd certainly rather be happy than not. So we choose it.
I wanted to talk about three, another list of things that can help us, luckily I didn't overlap Gyandev’s list, three ways that we can help ourselves tune into happiness.
The Illusion of the Separate "I"
And the first of these is to get rid of the “I”. Not this eye, this “I”. Get rid of the “I”. And it's not of course easy to do. But even if we can unmask the “I”, it can help us. Have you ever felt moody and just thought to yourself, “What am I thinking right now?”
And you dive deep, and you'll find there'll be an “I” there. ”I deserve more than I'm getting right now. I should be different than I am. What do people think about me?” Just “I, I, I”. And if you can unmask it and say, “I don't care, I don't have to worry about that.” Let it go. You'll find you can choose happiness much more easily.
There is a disciple of Yogananda that shared a story about her early life in the ashram, living with Yogananda. She came as a young woman. And in the early days of the ashram, Yogananda would often take sightseeing drives in the car and he would invite several of the renunciates to go with him, just to get away from the phones and just to be out in nature and so forth. And so she was invited on a number of those drives and was of course very joyful to be with Yogananda.
And then some time passed, and she realized she hadn't been invited on those drives for a long time. And she saw other people going on those drives with him. And suddenly she began to think, “What have I done? I must have displeased him in some way. What have I done, what have I done? What can I do differently?”
And she found herself plunging into a terrible mood which lasted for weeks, in this kind of, “Where am I going wrong? What have I done wrong? Why isn't this happening?”, and so on.
And one day, she had the thought, “Look at you! When you came to this ashram, you didn't even know Yogananda went for drives with people. You were happy all the time! Why? Because you were thinking of God all the time!” And she just woke up, and she threw out that thought which was paralyzing her, and she just felt her happiness return. And just then, one of the nuns came running up and said, “Master is here! Come down to the gate.”
And she went up to greet his car as it drove in, and he looked at her very deeply. And she could feel him saying in her head, “You finally got my message.” There's nothing out there that can make us happy. We have to let go of that which confines us.
So you have heard us introduced as Nayaswamis and you've seen there's a lot of blue happening at Ananda right now and you may be wondering, “Is this a fashion statement?” or something like that. But last year, Swami Kriyananda created a new renunciate order; he mentioned this on Monday.
And a number of people here have taken vows of various sorts and it was really wonderful. They were all vows of letting go of the ego. And it was really wonderful to feel the joy level go up as the ego, sort of, each person sort of, left a little ego behind and the overall joy level of the community went up.
But one of the most wonderful parts of one of the vows, the Nayaswami Vow, the Vow of New Swamis, is a line that I think is breathtaking to many of us. For some of you here, you won't find it at all appealing but for many, it will resonate. And that is the line, “I know I no longer exist as a separate entity, but offer my life unreservedly into the great ocean of Awareness.”
And it's such a marvelous thing, whether you feel that you're ready to take a vow like that, to have in the back of your mind. And when things don't… seem to be going south, and your mood seems to be going south…just say to yourself, “You know, it's not my worry. I don't exist.” There's God happening here.
Lately, I've been thinking about the community, the world as just little waves of Consciousness. We're all not separate, we're all part of the ocean, just little separate waves of Joy coming up and we don't need to worry about this particular one.
Embracing Positivity and Letting Go of the Negative
A second, a second point to help us with our happiness, is to release the negative and embrace the positive. This past year, we had a wonderful class called Happiness and Success through Yoga Principles. And we met with a group of Ananda people who were very enthusiastic to change. And so one of the classes was on “Harmony in the Workplace”. And I gave an assignment, something I tried in my life and found effective, but I wasn't sure what would happen, and I was really surprised at the results which were very positive.
I suggested that each person take someone in their life that was not a perfect relationship, could be at work, it could be in your family, whatever, and do two things: First, make a list of every single thing you dislike about that person. Not things like, “Oh, they're an idiot,” but very specific, very creative and clear and insightful things that you think about this person. Make it, write it all down. In other words, get it out of your subconscious mind and put it on paper.
And then, make another list of everything you love about this person. Everything you appreciate about them, every subtle thing that they do that is meaningful to you. And then take your first list and shred it, burn it, get rid of that list of everything you dislike, and focus your mind on what you like.
Well, at our following class, we had you know a lot of interesting responses but my favorite one was a woman who said that she works in town and a man that…she takes care of patients…and a man who lives with one of these patients, she can't stand him. And so she wrote a list like you wouldn't believe of all the stuff she didn't like about this person, but she couldn't think of one thing she liked. But what was so sweet was she didn't stop there, she said, “I’d better work on that.”
So she went to work and she decided she had to look for something that she could relate to. And she saw that he was sketching, and so she asked him about his sketching. And that was a little interesting. And then she thought, “Well, this is good.” And then she found something else he was doing, I don't know, feeding the birds or something that could be a discussion point. So she discussed that with him. And she kept her eyes open and kept adding to her little list…things that he did that were interesting…and talking to him about it at the same time.
Well, by the time we met, which was only two weeks later, this man was greeting her at the door with a wave and a smile and they'd forged a friendship. So she'd taken something that was unhappy and turned it into happiness, simply by letting go of the negative and embracing the positive.
I just heard something from my sister-in-law about her grandchild and I want to share it because it's something that I've been trying lately. She has a one and a half-year-old grandson. He's just walking around and she said as he sort of toddles around, she hears him going, “Wow, wow”. It's really a cool thing to do, try it! Drive to work and just start saying, “Wow! Look at these souls! Look at these trees! Look at these engines around me! Wow!” So, thinking about the positive.
Swami is just a master at that, he lives in positivity. A couple of years ago, he was in India and he had surgery. And after the surgery, he was very weak and he couldn't do much but lie in the hospital bed. And one of the Ananda folks came in, and they heard him chuckling, in the bed. Why was he chuckling? There he was, lying in the bed, he couldn't do anything, so what was he doing? He was telling jokes to himself. [Laughter.]
Happiness as a sword of battle
Happiness is a sword of battle. Happiness and laughter is a sword of battle, to use when you need it. Sometimes you see Swami telling jokes out of the pure joy of himself, and sometimes, it was a sword of battle. “This is how I'm going to express happiness, no matter what is going on.”
In the yoga teachings, they talk about reincarnation and how we forget, you know, we start each life anew. But they also say that each day is a new Incarnation, and each breath is a new Incarnation. So if things are not going so well in our lives, and I know people face very serious things, when you go to bed at night, you may not..., you think, “Well, this is just the way it is”, but at least give your attitude and say, “Okay, I go to bed. This is my last Incarnation with that attitude. I wake up with a fresh one in the morning.” Inhale and start with a fresh attitude on that same situation, and see what happens.
He also said every breath is the same way. So let's just take a moment now, I’ll just give you a millisecond, and if you can think of anything negative in your life, in your life that's maybe not right here, and just think of some feeling, perhaps discouragement or fear, and just inhale it, [double inhale through the nose] tense your body, throw that feeling out [double exhale through the mouth].
Just let go of the negativity. Take a deep breath that's full of positive Joy. So embrace the positive, accentuate the positive, release the negative.
Staying Close to God's Love
And the third thing, the third point, is to stay close to God. Very much what Gyandev was saying, make God your nearest and dearest. We make a very, very big mistake when we think God is judging us. We didn't meditate, we didn't meditate well, we didn't do what we should have done, whatever, we aren't living up to our potential. All those kinds of things are a big mistake because they push God away.
Swami recently said, “God is like a child. He has no expectations.” Isn't that staggering? Can you even think about that? God has no expectations of you. He just loves you, just the way you are. But, “Doesn't He want me to be better?" Or, “Doesn't He want me to be free?” Yes, of course and He loves you just the way you are and so we want to stay as close as we can to that love.
Yogananda said he was asked, “What's the difference between a guru and a disciple?” And he said, “Both are made of the same ocean, the Ocean of God's Bliss.” That’s all we're made of, Guru or disciple. He said, “Some souls want to push their energy far out, away from the ocean, as they express their ego, as they express their enthusiasm for the senses. As Gyandev was saying, reaching out to embrace.
But what happens to those tall waves? They come crashing back down again. But he said, “Some waves never want to leave the ocean, ocean bosom, and those, that's what a Guru is, the little bulge of the ocean never wanting to be far away from the Bliss of God.”
So it's not that you can't that Guru can't write books, can't start organizations, can't be one of the most effective people going, but never leaving that closeness to the ocean bosom. Yogananda said,
Those who think God far away, they never find Him. And those who think God close, they find Him to be the nearest of the near and the dearest of the dear. Living close to God, feeling God with us, as the nearest of the near.
I was thinking recently, we are all children of God. We've heard that many times. But we need to remember, we're only children, we're each, each one of us, is an only child. Okay, God doesn't have billions of children, He has one: You.
And in each moment, it's just us and God. And He's giving us the same loving attention, whether we're Jesus Christ or the worst criminal, the same loving attention, because we're his only child. But what's the difference between a Jesus Christ and someone who's not?
That one is making the connection, that one is depending on God's love, depending on God's happiness and looking for that within all the time. “I must be close to You!” And in that, what could be more happy than that?
[singing]
