Inspirations

I sit here, in the early morning silence, as I do every morning, dedicating my first breaths and thoughts of the morning to the Divine in my sitting practice...

I begin as I do, every morning, by reading my Master's inspirational words for the day...

As we enter deeper into this season, these readings from Yogananda focus on the role of silence in meditation and prayer:

"The true practice of religion
is to sit still and talk to God.
But you don't get to that point of intensity,
you don't concentrate enough,
and that is why you remain in delusion."

"The silence habitual in Sri Yukteswar [Yogananda's Master and Guru]
was caused by his deep perception of the Infinite.
No time remained for the interminable 'revelations' that occupy
the days of teachers without Self-Realization.
A saying from the Hindu scriptures is:

'In shallow men the fish of little thoughts
causes much commotion.
In oceanic minds, the whales of inspiration
make hardly a ruffle.'"

I ponder the deeper meaning of these words, drinking them in, savoring them, then masticating them - and noting where I must work more deeply...

Then I read these other quotes while checking my email, before leaving to visit a dear friend in the hospital who recently suffered a stroke.

He is a gifted healer himself, and I will visit him with another friend who is also an incredible healer. Together we "hung out" several years ago, as we were beginning to walk our individual paths in healing.

These quotes seem almost complementary to the ones I just shared:

"The function of prayer is not to influence God,
but rather to change the nature of the one who prays."
- Soren Kierkegaard

"Spirituality is the sacred center
out of which all life comes,
including Mondays and Tuesdays
and rainy Saturday afternoons
in all their mundane and glorious detail...
The spiritual journey is the soul's life
commingling with ordinary life."
- Christina Baldwin

"It is not my business
to think about myself.
My business is
to think about God.
It is for God
to think about me."
- Simone Weil

Beautiful thoughts with which to start a morning as we navigate all that life gifts us with throughout the day...