Swami Kriyananda
Quotes
An American disciple of Paramahansa Yogananda, he was a spiritual teacher and the founder of the Ananda communities. He dedicated his life to spreading the teachings of Kriya Yoga, emphasizing the importance of meditation and spiritual practice as paths to self-realization. He wrote extensively on spirituality and yoga, offering guidance on how to live a balanced, purposeful life that integrates spiritual practice with everyday activities. Through his leadership, Ananda became a global center for spiritual learning and service.
Swami Kriyananda
Quotes
An American disciple of Paramahansa Yogananda, he was a spiritual teacher and the founder of the Ananda communities. He dedicated his life to spreading the teachings of Kriya Yoga, emphasizing the importance of meditation and spiritual practice as paths to self-realization. He wrote extensively on spirituality and yoga, offering guidance on how to live a balanced, purposeful life that integrates spiritual practice with everyday activities. Through his leadership, Ananda became a global center for spiritual learning and service.
A deliberate attitude that you have to hold in your mind as one of the basic rules of yoga is to remain even-minded and cheerful.
It's the fact that your body and your personality are not God. God is you. But you can't say you are God just as the ocean is all the waves, but you can't say one wave is the ocean. And so you manifest God in a way that you don't understand. Man himself is the image of God, but he doesn't see that image in himself. And you need to meditate, and there will come your answer, not looking in the mirror.
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.
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.
To be happy, you must live in, but not for, the present moment.
Laughter is a medicine you've got to use to drive away blues.
The secret of friendship is expressing kindness with your eyes and through the tone of your voice, not only with words.
Be thou a true yogi. A yogi who understands that everything he's looking for is really inside himself. Learn to live more in the Self.
The greatest thing that will please God is that you maintain an attitude of unshakable joy.
The churches had left me cold, but I thought there's got to be a God. I remember going out, this is in Charleston, South Carolina, and my desire then was to be a playwright, and I was studying theater, and I went out one night, late at night, and I asked, "What can God be if there is a God?" I wasn't sure there was a God, but if there is a God, what must he be? Well, he can't be a judge, who's up there just waiting for us to make a mistake so he can clap us into hell. There's got to be something more than that.
Live more quietly. Live more seeking God's presence in your own heart.
Happiness is a question of attitude, not a question of what's happening out there.
As you begin this day, tell yourself, Today I am incarnated anew! I am released from the hypnosis of my old habits and mistakes! Everything that I have long dreamed of doing I will accomplish in this, my new life.
It's not insincere to say you're happy if you're determined to make it true and live in that consciousness.
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.
Leadership is an opportunity to serve. It is not a trumpet call to self-importance.
Religion is organized, and spirituality is what the individual feels in his relationship with truth and with God. And although spirituality may be expressed in a religion, many people are spiritual and never go to church. They aren't religious in the sense that they practice a certain type of discipline.
The secret of happiness is the determination to be happy always, rather than wait for outer circumstances to make one happy.
Your enemy is still yourself. You don't have enemies. They may be self-styled. I have plenty of self-styled enemies. I don't wish them harm.
It's a mistake to think that God has conflict with anything. He's everything. So the more close you are to God, how can you be in conflict with anybody? Conflict comes from ego, and from thinking, "I'm right and you're wrong." If I can reach the point where I understand that what is right for me may be different than what is right for you, that would be a good step. But most people don't reach that point, and so they fight about it.
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.
That's what life is for, to find that joy in yourself.
Happiness is self-generated. It depends on one's attitude of mind. The basis of happiness is the simple fact that the deepest reality of our own nature is ever-existing, ever-conscious, ever-new joy.
