Swami Kamalananda
Speaks on "O Come, All Ye Faithful"
Sunday, December 20, 2015 at 11:00am
Your Temple will be adorned on Sunday in many traditional Christmas ways: The tree on the altar, wreathes, pointsettias and lights all around to warm our hearts for worship.
We take time to reflect on the first Christ-birth. For ages mankind has commemorated the birth of those souls whose birth on earth has come as given by God to awaken us, to guide us to a salvation promised by them, and to bring “peace on earth” and “goodwill to all.”
The essential thing is that we strive to see Light within ourselves. When people are conscious of the light in themselves, then that light will shine through their lives in greater purity and radiance than the world will ever know.
The Angels,
Gracious Lights of Soul,
bending near the earth
in me
touched the golden harp-strings
of my heart,
and all worlds
in silent obeisance lay
to hear their voices:
“Peace and Joy!
Peace and Joy
unto All!”
Upon this midnight clear
I listen to their
Word
resounding
Still.....
—S.K.
From the Gurus and Swamis: AUM
"Our One Father, we are traveling by many true paths unto Thy one abode of Light…. Make us feel that the diverse religions are branches of Thy One Tree of Truth….Bless us that we may enjoy the intuition-tested, ripe, luscious fruits of self-knowledge hanging from all the branches of many-voiced religions."
—Swami Yogananda Paramahansa, from "Whispers from Eternity"
"Traveling on the path of eternity,
Thou hast come to lead us on the way of perfection.
To awaken within us the realization of our immortal nature
Thou hast descended upon this earth.
To bring peace to our sorrowing hearts
Thou hast taken thy place among us.
Thou art Christ,
The source of wisdom and bliss.
We bow to thee in adoration and joy."
—from: "Prayers of Self-Realization" by Swami Premananda
"A person needs his body to bring into fruition and creative beneficence the divinely endowed qualities of his soul. What a lamp is to the light, the body is to the soul."
—Shyamacharan Lahiri
Noble Thoughts: ("Let Noble Thoughts come to us from all sides." —Rigveda)
"Free from all limitations of birth am I. I am the changeless Reality, the Supreme Lord of all creation. Yet by the power of my own mystic law I come into being.
"O Bharata, whenever and wherever divinity becomes subdued and humanity struggles to emerge out of ignorance, then and there I incarnate myself.
"To assure salvation to the virtuous, to awaken the ignorant, and thereby to manifest divinity on earth, I incarnate myself from time to time."
—"Srimad-Bhagavad-Gita," Ch 4, vs 6-8
"For nowhere can a mind find retreat more full of peace or more free from care than his own soul."
—Marcus Aurelius