Gratitude

“Do not forget when you meet Beauty, beauty of every kind—the gorgeous color of

the sunset, the music of birds, the glistening water, the rustling trees, the soft breeze

on your face, the warm sun, the joy of love and friendship—to speak your gratitude

to the Father within for surrounding you with so much wonder and beauty and for

opening your eyes that you might see and enjoy it.”

“I will find something each day for which to give thanks, and thus form the

habit of gratitude for all the good gifts the Father has bestowed upon me.”

~ Paramhansa Yogananda

As we approach the Festive Season and the New Year. I thought I would spend the month of December creating a space to affirm my gratitude for the year 2022 using the healing affirmation by Paramhansa Yogananda

“I will with my own will, which flows from the divine will,

to be healthy to be well, to be prosperous and spiritual,

to be well, to be well.”

To follow my 30 day Gratitude Challenge Click here.

2022 has brought a lot of challenges in my life that I thought I would not be able to overcome. However through God’s grace and in the mist of the sorrows I have been able to have an openess and calmness to face these challenges in a way I am grateful to God for. I started 2022 with this poem that I wrote…

The Heroic Journey

The journey to Self may bring up shadow work

And you may find yourself encountering in a dance

With the dark night of the soul

Your illusionary beliefs may be magnified

Whoever stays on the path

Will find out it is a heroic journey

Uniting souls

Beyond your wildest dreams

Because deep in the shallow waters

Is the work of will

An act of

Love

Reading the poem again really sums up my year. Gratititude is something I have struggled to apply in my life. I have taken out a personal vow for a year with gratitude, I have took part in gratitude challenges, and journals etc. Even though I am grateful that I am healthy and well, I still struggle sometimes to feel gratitude in my whole being. Building a relationship with God has been really important to me where I have and still remain committed to abstaining from alcohol, smoking, and sex so that I can continue deepening my relationship with God.

To deepen my relationship with God I have been attending Satsangs, using Affirmations, Prayers, Chanting, Meditating and Healing Techniques from Paramhansa Yogananda and Swami Kriyananda, provided by Ananda to help me in my times of need.

I have to admit though when I am facing a challenge sometimes praying, chanting and healing affirmations does not come to me as the first things to do. I will worry and rationalise it my mind and then I will remember, I should have prayed or played a chant or meditated for a few minutes just to help me to remain calm in that moment.

We live in a world where it is easier to turn to alcohol, drugs, negative influences, negative thoughts that will intoxicate our being. Than turn to God or to play a chant, or say a powerful healing affirmation from a higher consciousness that will bring us back to our natural state of being.

Why does this happen to us? Why are we unable to connect with these truths? Why do we prefer something that will hurt us than something that is good? Why do we choose negative thoughts instead of positive thoughts? Why is calmness and peace as a quality of God not important when we face trials? Why do we compare ourselves to others? Why don’t we put ourselves first? Our health first? Our recovery first? Asking these questions brings tears to my eyes.

Everyday I have attend Mary Kretzmann daily healing prayers for the world, the planet and for individuals, which I am grateful that she has dedicated her time to provide healing prayers which has helped me and my children tremendously. And as part of my dharma I feel called to attend her healing prayers until she decides to stop or I am called to stop. Which I believe will help me and us connect more deeply with God, Divine Mother and the The Great Masters.

The Ego

A minister from Ananda asked an important question, to keep the question short I have summarised it down to “What would I renounce?” The funny thing was, the first thing I was guided to was the book Nayaswami Order: The Renunciate For The New Age, and I read the Vow of Complete Renunciation.

Vow of Complete Renunciation

From now on, I embrace as the only purpose of my life the search for God.

I will never take a partner, or, if I am married, I will look upon my partner as belonging only to Thee, Lord. In any case, I am complete in myself, and in myself will merge all the opposites of duality.

I no longer exist as a separate entity, but offer my life unreservedly into Thy great Ocean of Awareness.

I accept nothing as mine, no one as mine, no talent, no success, no achievement as my own, but everything as Thine alone.

I will feel that not only the fruit of my labor, but the labor itself, is only Thine.

Act through me always, Lord, to accomplish Thy design.

I am free in Thy joy, and will rejoice forever in Thy blissful presence.

Help me in my efforts to achieve perfection in this, my holy vow.

For I have no goal in life but to know Thee, and to serve as Thy channel of blessing to all mankind.

Here is the link to vow and the book.

I read the vow over and over again. I mean, I am a long way, way from becoming a Nayaswami, but maybe God already thinks I am :). After I read the vow it came to me that I needed to renounce my ego, or work towards renouncing my ego. I then began to read the chapter on transcendinding the ego Click here to read. I came across some excerpts on the ego from the book Conversations with Yogananda written by Swami Kriyananda from the blog Man’s Greatest Problem Is His Ego—His Consciousness Of Individuality.

“Man’s greatest problem is his ego—his consciousness of individuality. Whatever happens to him, he thinks it affects him personally. Why be affected? You are not this body. You are He! Everything is He: All is Spirit.

“Unfortunately, mankind sees everything as separate and individual. The Lord had to create that appearance. Ask yourself, however: Why? Why is this a tree, and you, a human being? The answer is simple: Without that variety, there would be no play! It wouldn’t interest you.

“If people saw that there was only one essence in everything—painting all the scenes, directing all the action, and acting all the parts—they would quickly tire of it. For ‘the show to go on’ there has to be activity, interest. It all has to seem real. Hence, this appearance of individuality.

“As long as man enjoys the play for its own sake, he will go on birth after birth, experiencing life’s pleasures and pains. The Bhagavad Gita describes it as a wheel, constantly turning.

“To get off the wheel, you have to desire freedom very intensely. Then only will God release you. Your longing has to be fervent. If it is, and if you determined no more to want to play, the Lord has to release you.

“He tries to keep you here with tests, but in His higher aspect, as the Cosmic Lover, He hates this show, and wants you out of it. Why shouldn’t He release you, once He sees that you really want Him alone, and not His show: that you want only freedom in Him?

I also read the Illusion From Ego from the from the book the Course in Miracles which was also helpful in helping me to understand the illusions of my ego. I have shared an excerpt from from The Ego and the False Autonomy.

8. The ego believes it is completely on its own, which is merely another way of describing how it thinks it originated.²This is such a fearful state that it can only turn to other egos and try to unite with them in a feeble attempt at identification, or attack them in an equally feeble show of strength. ³It is not free, however, to open the premise to question, because the premise is its foundation. ⁴The ego is the mind’s belief that it is completely on its own. ⁵The ego’s ceaseless attempts to gain the spirit’s acknowledgment and thus establish its own existence are useless. ⁶Spirit in its knowledge is unaware of the ego. ⁷It does not attack it; it merely cannot conceive of it at all. ⁸While the ego is equally unaware of spirit, it does perceive itself as being rejected by something greater than itself. ⁹This is why self-esteem in ego terms must be delusional. ¹⁰The creations of God do not create myths, although creative effort can be turned to mythology. ¹¹It can do so, however, only under one condition; what it makes is then no longer creative. ¹²Myths are entirely perceptual, and so ambiguous in form and characteristically good-and-evil in nature that the most benevolent of them is not without fearful connotations. (ACIM, T-4.II.8:1-12).

All my studies and qualifications have been around counselling, consciousness, healing and spirituality and studying the ego from a psychologist point of view such as carl rogers, Jung, Freud, and Roberto Assagioli. But detaching from what I have been taught and looking at the ego from God’s view has been challenging and healing for me. However I will remain to continue to work on renouncing my ego from Gods view as I have come to realise that the ego, has been the main cause of why I have not been able to express my gratitude fully.

A dear friend said to me Gratitude is our natural birth right, we were born to receive with abundance, and as we develop and grow something happens where we are know longer aware of this truth. Instead we become separate and strangers to what truly belongs to us. Turn to God and receive him, separation is our greatest delusion, our thoughts should be, thoughts of God, goodness, wisdom and not thoughts of negativity that will lead us to lower vibrations. This really resonates with me and I keep it close to my heart.

Blessings & Love

Rev Dinah Pemberton

I Want to Pour the Scent of Gratefulness at Thy Feet

The doomsday clouds of inevitably tragic events thundered and poured down sheets of suffering on my life. My courage almost drowned in fear, as a million  difficulties rose up to destroy me. Only by clinging fast to Thee did I survive.

Now, when the cannons of uncertainty boom before me and the shells of calumny, persecution, and fierce opposition fall rain‐like around me, I am ever protected in the impregnable fortress of Thy love. I am so grateful to Thee!

When the light of good fortune dawns again, as it must always, following every hard night of struggles, it is easy to smile welcomingly at the pleasing sunrise of Thy grace. During dark nights of misfortune, however, I find it even sweeter, now, to offer Thee the flowers of my appreciation for being always there, protecting me. I offer all my gratitude at Thy feet of deep, inner communion.

Receive me, my Eternal Beloved, in sacred silence.

~ Paramhansa Yogananda