How to Face Life's Changes

Yogananda Paramhansa

Description

How Will Changes in Life Affect You?

Many feel that they come to break us down, though changes come not to destroy us, rather, to help us grow in understanding and to learn the lessons we must to reach our highest potential. In this book, How to Face Life's Changes, be guided by Yogananda, tap into the changeless joy of your soul-nature, empowering you to move through life fearlessly and with an open heart. Learn to accept change as the reality of life; face change in relationships, finances, and health with gratitude; and cultivate key attitudes like fearlessness, non-attachment, and willpower.

The Wisdom of Yogananda series features writings of Paramhansa Yogananda not available elsewhere. These books capture the Master’s expansive and compassionate wisdom, his sense of fun, and his practical spiritual guidance. This series includes writings from his earliest years in America, in an approachable, easy-to-read format. The words of the Master are presented with minimal editing, to capture the fresh and original voice of one of the most highly regarded spiritual teachers of the twentieth century.

Sujets

• Santé et bien-être
• Bien-être émotionnel
• Bien-être émotionnel
• Personal Growth
• Philosophie et théologie
• Swami Kriyananda
• Spirituality
• Eastern
• Religion
• Happiness
• Paramahansa Yogananda

Informations

• Publié par: Crystal Clarity Publishers
• Date de parution: 01 novembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781565895973
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

How to Face Life s Changes
Paramhansa Yogananda
T HE W ISDOM OF Y OGANANDA , V OLUME 9
CRYSTAL CLARITY PUBLISHERS Commerce, California
The Wisdom of Yogananda series
How to Be Happy All the Time
Karma and Reincarnation
How to Love and Be Loved
How to Be a Success
How to Have Courage, Calmness, and Confidence
How to Achieve Glowing Health and Vitality
How to Awaken Your True Potential
The Man Who Refused Heaven
How to Face Life s Changes
How to Spiritualize Your Life
How to Live Without Fear
2022 by Hansa Trust
All rights reserved. Published 2022
Printed in United States of America

CRYSTAL CLARITY PUBLISHERS
1123 Goodrich Blvd | Commerce, California
800.424.1055 | crystalclarity.com
[e-mail]
ISBN 978-1-56589-340-5 (print)
ISBN 978-1-56589-597-3 (e-book)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 2022040612 (print) | 2022040613 (ebook)
Cover designed by Tejindra Scott Tully
Interior layout by Michele Madhavi Molloy

The Joy Is Within You symbol is registered by Ananda Church of Self-Realization of Nevada County, California.
C ONTENTS
Publisher s Note
Introduction
1. Accepting Change as the Reality of Life
Everything Must Change
The Cosmic Movie House
How God Manifested Creation
Affirmation
2. Key Qualities for Facing Change
Acceptance, Calmness, Fearlessness
Non-Attachment
Strength, Perseverance, and Will Power
Even-Minded and Cheerful at All Times
Overcoming Habits
Wisdom During Life s Changes
Affirmation
3. Changes in Relationships
Lack of Harmony
Separation
Loss and Grief
Affirmation
4. Changes in Prosperity
Financial Difficulties
Losing a Rich Lifestyle In Economic Crisis
Affirmation
5. Changes In the Body
Illness
Aging Body
Affirmation
6. The Supreme Change: Death
Affirmation
7. Finding That Which Never Changes
Identify With the Soul
Relationship With God, Faith, Prayer
Meditation
Affirmation
Appendix
List of Illustrations
About the Author
Further Explorations
P UBLISHER S N OTE
Dear Reader:
Always realistic, practical, and entertaining, Yogananda is not afraid to express the all-too-obvious challenges we face, and also to share clear and powerful solutions and directions.
Paramhansa Yogananda came to the United States from India in 1920, bringing to the West the teachings and techniques of yoga, the ancient science of soul awakening. He was the first master of yoga to make his home in the West, and his Autobiography of a Yogi has become the bestselling autobiography of all time, awakening fascination in Westerners with the spiritual teachings of the East.
Yoga is the ancient science of redirecting one s energies inward to produce spiritual awakening. In addition to bringing Americans the most practical and effective techniques of meditation, Yogananda showed how these principles can be applied to all areas of life. He was a prolific writer, lecturer, and composer. He lived in America thirty-two years, until his death in 1952.
The articles included in this book are taken from several sources: the lessons he wrote in the 1920s and 1930s and articles of his that appeared in Inner Culture and East West magazines, published before 1943.
Our goal with this book is to let the Master s spirit come clearly through, with a minimum of editing. Sometimes sentences, redundant in the present context, have been deleted. Sometimes words or punctuation have been changed to clarify the meaning. Most of what is included here is not available elsewhere.
May Yogananda s words on facing change infuse your life with greater courage, clarity, and inspiration.
Crystal Clarity Publishers
I NTRODUCTION
We all must deal with major changes in our life: in our work; in our close relationships; with the people or colleagues around us; with new, unexpected and, at times, unwanted circumstances; with our financial situation; with sudden or chronic illness; with all kinds of loss; with aging and physical changes; and finally, with the approach of death. Major life changes can be highly destabilizing, and often we are not happy about them but would have preferred that things had stayed as they were before. We cling to our memories of the past and to the thought if only it hadn t happened!
What we need to realize is that constant change is an important part of the divine plan. It is not meant to hurt us, but quite the contrary: change comes to us intelligently, intended to help us grow, aiding us in developing greater inner strength.
Change, in other words, is a positive event which is indispensable: it is like a wise, though often tough, teacher in the school of life. Would we, the students, ever learn and evolve without it? So how can we deal with life s changes positively? How can we find inner security in times of worldwide change, when our entire planet is unstable and insecure?
That s exactly what the following thoughts from Yogananda will help us understand. He explained that this whole world is like an engrossing movie which Spirit (the Eternal Consciousness, or God) projected on the screen of space. Its constant change has a dual purpose: to entertain and educate us. Yogananda explains: God continues to act in order that all his deluded children may know that this universe is only an ever-changing cosmic motion picture, not to be taken seriously but to be accepted as an entertaining and educational spectacle.
Change is inevitable, and our future will certainly bring about major changes to the whole planet. Yogananda sometimes remarked, quite casually, that in the future, mankind would see innumerable changes in its way of thinking, living, and behaving: a change toward international and inter-religious unity, interplanetary travel, and countless new ways of dealing with reality.
Life won t remain as it is now. We have already seen major changes recently in our society, but perhaps they are only the merest beginning. Let s calmly prepare for them, applying the ancient yogic teachings.
Our hope is that this book will help you to welcome all changes positively, wisely, and joyfully.
Chapter 1
A CCEPTING C HANGE AS THE R EALITY OF L IFE
Everything Must Change
Life s pictures, in order to be interesting, must change constantly . Who wants to be subjected over and over to the same old comedies, the same old prosaic events, the same grim, increasingly gray tragedies? We all want variety. Some people can hardly bear to see twice the same movie at the movie theaters. Therefore, does the Cosmic Director of this great motion picture of life keep on changing things to keep the show interesting.
Indeed, one can never drink twice at the same spot from the same water out of a running brook. One can never live exactly the same event twice. Brooks flow - events change - we are not exactly the same now as we were even a minute ago, for our thoughts change, and the sum total of our reality assumes ever different proportions.
Everything is undergoing a process of change. These changes are either detrimental or beneficial to the object which changes. For example, if I take a glass and strike it on the floor, it will be changed, will it not? But this change would not be beneficial; it would be harmful to the object. However, if I polish up the glass and make it shine, and clean from it the bacteria which infests the lining, that change will then be beneficial.
Resurrection means any beneficial change to an object or to a human being. You can resurrect your old furniture in the carpenter shop. You can resurrect your house through the help of architects, but we are talking of resurrecting the human body: therefore, resurrection means any uplifting change. You cannot remain stationary. You must either go forward or backward . Isn t that a great and marvelous truth, that in this life you cannot remain stationary? You must accept changes which are either harmful to you or those which are beneficial to you.

The Cosmic Movie House
The young, the old, the king, the slave, the most famous of all time, the renowned of each nation, the popular father, the much-loved mother, the warm friends, the joyful lover, the sweetest, most faithful beloved, the dog, the whale, the bird, and the lily are all assembled to play new dramas on the screen of time. History, introspection, immortality, time, space, ether, reasons, memory, God, and His gone-forever saints, are the only audience in this Cosmic Movie House .
We are the actors. Stars, rivers, oceans, spiral nebulae, sun furnaces, cataclysms, cloudbursts, lightning, yawning spaces, snow-white winters, flower-decked springs, leaf-carpeted summers, weeping rain, and sorrowful clouds, all stand ready to help us play the drama of life and death, of coming and going, of appearing and disappearing, and perhaps of reappearing.
Once in a while reason lets us peep through the windows of history and look into the storehouse of the countless hidden reels of pictures of primeval, Paleolithic, ancient, and modern times. We know that there is only a small permanent audience of those who have never died in the Cosmic Movie House . Millions of human actors came in the past, acted their parts in joy and sorrow, as we are now playing ours, and then disappeared behind the drop scene.
In each lifetime, man is given many chances to play comedy, tragedy, or the joyous drama of Life, according to the wishes of the Producer Karma (past action), and then he has to go out of that particular picture forever. In spite of the phenomena of reincarnation, each person lives as the same individual but once, because he does not recall his previous lives. Shakespeare lived once as Shakespeare. John Milton, Napoleon, Genghis Khan - each lived but once. Even if Mussolini were the reincarnation of Caesar, he would not remember or know it.
Each life is one moving picture, with various parts and acts. When death overtakes that life, the picture must be shelved forever. Each life,