Thinking of God!

God, just that word can invoke many different emotions and thoughts in a person. For me, I did not resonate with the concept of God for most of my life—it felt overused. Like many, the way I was introduced to the word was through dogmatic religion. When I was young, I was brought to church quite often and I wasn't very interested in it. However, I do remember one Sermon that stood out from all the rest. The paster was preaching and said, "If you are not from this country then get out of here" and there were many audible AMANs. I immediately thought that's not right, how this can this be words of God. I see now it was bigotry; however, as a pre-teen I knew no better. Thus, I stopped caring about religion and God altogether. Oddly I have always believed there was a higher power at play. I now know that power as God.

Now to the point, I would like to start by quoting my Guru Paramahansa Yogananda, "Everything else can wait the search for God cannot." How true have those words have become to me now. I believe God should be the first though when we wake up and the last thought before we sleep and everything in-between, we should be constantly bringing our wandering minds back to God and the great thing is it doesn't have to be the word God it could be any of his/her infinite manifestations, Joy, Light, Wisdom, Love, Cosmic consciousness, The Sun, Moon, The vibration of Aum. There is infinite and you can choose whatever resonates with you the most. Now I am not saying this is an easy thing to do. Once I started this practice it was like my ego was coming up with every excuse not to do it. This is the perfect place for another quote from Master. A Visitor remarked to Paramahansa Yogananda, " It hardly seems practical to think about God all the time;" the Master replied, "The world agrees with you, and is the world happy place?" So, try for yourself and see if it makes the world a happier place for you. Motivation for me comes from knowing life's purpose. God sent us on earth to play in His drama of life for a while and not get entangled in it for incarnations, sizzling with untold misery. He wanted us to watch the drama of life with a clean mental attitude and then return to His eternal home of ever-new blessedness after briefly enjoying His stupendous show — not as a miserable mortal being, but as a blissful immortal, made in the image of God