Good morning. Nice to see you all here. As Padma said, we have a very big wedding going on in Lake Stevens today. So many people are there, but look, we look full. This is wonderful. And those online, thank you for coming this morning too.
I volunteer at East-West Bookshop in Edmonds once a week. The lady I volunteer with, Ellen, and I have a similar enjoyment of many different kinds of books. We have a very good time on those Wednesdays when we come and work with Rika. I found in my hands, or she handed to me the other day, a book that she said I had expressed interest in. It was a curious experience for me because it was very scientific, with all kinds of geometric shapes in it. I said, “Ellen, I didn’t express an interest.” She said, “Oh, yes, you did.”
So yesterday I opened the book to see what it was, and it was totally beyond me. I couldn’t get into the parallelograms and all those things. It was a scientist. I really don’t know what he was doing. However, because this is the topic of intuition, I opened the book at the front. You know how when people write books, they often put quotes at the front of each chapter? Well, here he was, my good friend, Einstein. Chapter one: “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift. And the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” Very interesting way of putting it. And yet I’ve been thinking about this, thank you, Mr. Einstein. I realize that an interesting thing is happening right now in this dawning Dwapara Yuga, which is one of the cycles of time that they talk about a great deal in India, and it’s integrated into Yogananda’s work. That understanding that we are constantly evolving through cycles of time, which bring us into different ways of communicating. Here we are in a time that is very materialistic, and our way of communicating in most things is very rational. Of course, the computer adds to all of that. Yet there’s this little flow of interest in creativity. I’d say it’s become quite a big river. If you look at the books that were available maybe 10 years ago, there are maybe 50 more of them now that approach the subject from many different points of view.
Swamiji, or Swami Kriyananda, who founded Ananda, wrote a book called “Art as a Hidden Message.” For me, who has practiced art just about all my life in different forms, that book is a challenge. I enjoy many of the chapters, I understand many of the chapters, and there’s still always something I can’t quite grasp. That keeps it right on the top shelf of my bookshelf, and I’m trying to get deeper and deeper into it. Robin is helping, and she and I have gotten together to do classes on art. Art is a wonderful way to explore the intuitive mode.
The rational mind is wonderful. You know, I was a librarian. I understand researching and figuring things out and putting things together, and we all go through school and get a relatively broad education in intellectual pursuits, but it’s only one way of going at it. Yogananda’s teachings and our attraction to the spiritual path, I think, come from that intuitive place where we understand there is something beyond the facts. There is something beyond this world that is very, very important for us and for our development. And that’s of course, the spiritual life. What the spiritual life demands isn’t that we take things apart. There’s a lot of intellectual pursuit in the spiritual life, but the real question is how is it going to change us? What is it that we need to do? Certainly, what we need to do is to open up to the stillness. That’s become a very important word for me lately. I’ve used several different words to express how it feels to come close to God. You can say joy, as we had in the reading this morning. Yes, that’s certainly true, and peace and love, certainly. But right now, the word that I’m using for understanding is joy. I found a little expression that Swami wrote in, probably Living Wisely, Living Well. And he says to (let me think if I can put this together), oh, it’s in front of me, in my room. I see it every day and every day I look at it, I’m surprised, “Talk to God about everything.” Talk to God about everything. Just yesterday, I wrote to my friend Suzanne Paree, who’s a calligrapher, and I said, “Can we work together to put a little card that just says, talk to God about everything?” She responded right away and said, yes. And, “What about putting a piece of art behind it?” I hadn’t thought of that, but that we’re in that project now. What it is about that little phrase, talk to God about everything is it brings me back like nothing else has so far to that stillness and to that engagement. So it’s not stark. Stillness isn’t stark. Stillness is our true nature. And talking to God is the soft flow of the light of God. When you’re invited to talk to God about everything, imagine what you gain from that.
Every moment that I read that, I’m probably engaged in some other pursuit. And it’s so needful to me to remember that I can ask God about this. It doesn’t matter what I’m doing. It doesn’t matter what’s in front of me, whether I’m doing my—I still keep a checkbook. I check up on the bank to see they have it right—but to talk to God about everything, it’s just so sweet. So, I’m going to make a lot of those little cards. I think I like to put them down here on the desk so everyone can pick it up and try it as a reference point each day. It’s really quite lovely.
I have recently, established a kind of devotion to Yogananda’s mother Gyan Prabha Ghosh, who’s pictured here. I don’t quite know how it happened, except probably the time when Padma had the inspiration to ask Patricia to help her create this beautiful portrait of master’s mother. Kriyananda, our spiritual teacher, said, perhaps it would be the right thing for us as devotees of Yogananda to see Yogananda’s mother as our divine mother. Mary is good, yes, but let’s try this. So I’ve been really deep into it lately. She is a wonderful companion. She is a wonderful companion. And again, that feminine energy, that loving you, no matter what kind of trouble you get into, it’s all there. She raised eight children after all. And she raised an avatar, quite a saint, I’d say.
Yogananda once said that with reason one-millionth of reality is revealed. Imagine that. So why are we spending all our time on this quality of reason? Well, in the cycles of time, you know, the way we are drawn to spend our time and to solve the problems in front of us changes. There will come a time when we will, as a people, be connected intuitively. So, intuition is the pathway to spiritual nourishment. I have been trying to apply this in the work I do as an artist. So you would think, I work as a collage artist. That means little pieces of paper. Many collage artists go way beyond that. They do buttons and ribbons and strings and all kinds of objects. That hasn’t appealed to me. So it’s paper. But then you think, well, how do you get any flow into that? Well, it’s just like any other medium that you use in art. You pull yourself into the stillness and with a sense of what you’re trying to create, you just pull those pieces of paper in and try them out and see if things are flowing and the image is coming. You try to stay in the flow. You try to stay in connection with God and guru while you’re doing it. Then the lovely thing is you can always pull something off. When you pull something off, it’s often more interesting than what you had put on top there. It’s what the glue holds onto. It’s interesting. So, pulling off is a big part of collage. Then there can be magical moments. I remember when I was creating a collage, which I named Astral Gates, the idea of the image, which was sort of a nature image and a sky image with purples. There were greens and purples, and it was an image of a mountain and all of that. So, it was natural to think of the astral because Master tells us, Yogananda tells us, that the astral is more and more beautiful than this. So, there it was, Astral Gates, but something wasn’t working with the painting. So, I got up from the table where I was sitting and went to get a drink of water. When I came back, the sunshine had broken out, and a stream of sunshine was coming across the picture. It just put a stream right across the mountaintop and onto the green. I just grabbed a pastel probably and went and put those sunshine lines in there and the thing was finished. To me, that’s a description of the intuitive space. As you well know, you can be in that when you do lots of different things. I’m sure there are many of you who are intuitive cooks. It’s being close to the feeling quality of life. It’s being close to much more than the mind. We are so much more than the mind. But bringing the two together is what Swami Kriyananda was so fabulous at doing. He was able to be a writer trying to help all of us tune into the principles of wisdom and getting along with others and educating children and all of those things, as well as delineating the meanings of the Bhagavad Gita and the teachings of Christ. So, it’s not that the intuitive has to stay in its own little box, it’s available in all the different ways in which we work. As the title says, it’s simple. It’s a simple thing, but it demands a lot of discipline, because we spend our lives being outward and engaged and we forget to talk to God about everything. And when we remember to talk to God about everything, then we can bring much more to bear on what we have ahead of us to do.
You know, it’s been interesting for me. Besides the mother, I’ve developed a real love of birds. I have two feeders outside my window and I live with the community manager. She gives me permission, although bird seed leads to all kinds of other things. I will take them down if she ever tells me I have to. But a decision I made when I started feeding the birds was, I wouldn’t learn their names. I knew some of them, but I wasn’t going to learn their names. I’ve enjoyed doing that kind of thing. I really enjoy going to botanical gardens and all the little signs. But I wanted to experience them. They don’t know they’re named Chickadee. They don’t know they’re named Sparrow. I wanted to just appreciate them for who they are. So, there’s the guy with the orangey beak and the really dark black head. I don’t know what he’s called, but I don’t necessarily want to know what he’s called. I just want to live with bird-ness. They are a riot. I mean, they are really something. And the mother bird takes care of that baby until they’re both the same size. Sometimes the baby’s bigger and it’s still wanting to have the mother feed it. Anyway, it’s a very charming experience and very enjoyable and keeps you in the heart, the heart side of yourself.
I was speaking with a friend the other day and she’s taking the course called The Art of Spiritual Counseling. I was very struck because she was giving me an interesting description of how practice counseling is done. Since I haven’t taken the course that Padma is currently engaged in and has developed for many years, but I’ve taught in it, I was very fascinated because I hadn’t seen practice counseling going on. I realized how much intuition can be developed in that process and in a very present way. Padma suggests that you sit together and each one of you take on, well, one becomes the counselor and one takes on a part like an actor. She tells you, “You are a person who has done this and now you’re feeling trouble and now you’re coming to ask about it.” On top of which a spiritual counselor does not give advice. Swami said it’s useless to give advice. Most people don’t follow it anyway, that was his experience. But what you do is you hold the space, you get into your stillness and you listen and you help the other person to reveal what their wisdom is, what their next step is through their own intuition. You get into this holding, holding of the flow of intuition between you and amazing things can happen. One of the things that does happen is they will suggest that they’re going to do something. It may be contrary to your sense of saying things, but you have to hold your tongue. You have to have them speak more about that because it’s bringing out the best in them. It’s bringing out their innate wisdom. This is what the intuitive flow is all about. Thank you.
I’m going to read from Whispers from Eternity by Paramhansa Yogananda: Number 156, Demand for the Rising of the Aurora of Intuition.
“Infinite spirit. Thy presence is hidden equally behind the warm rays of the sun and the cool light of the moon. Those lights through welcome and wonder, though welcome and wonderful reveal only mother nature’s splendor in matter. They reveal not thee. To me, they are therefore darkness, thy all revealing, majestic and supreme light shines not on, but from within the center of everything. Therefore, creating no shadows, shadows in this world reduce light itself to non-light. In theory, I have known this now, Lord, take all the darkness away from me. Wherever I sit with closed eyes, enclosed in my own darkness, come to blaze upon me in glory. The aurora of intuition that’s suffused in its light. I may gaze rapidly on thee with worshiping eyes.”