For a tree
to grow strong and bear good fruit, it needs sunlight, water, and good soil. No
success is ever achieved in a vacuum. While success can mean achieving any goal
one has chosen, true success is that which brings lasting satisfaction of body,
mind, and soul. To achieve name and fame or wealth at the expense of others by
greed, lies, or exploitation is a one-sided and a fragile kind of success. It
is not true success and whatever satisfaction it may bring is hollow.
Success
requires a sensitive balance and dance between self-will and harmonious
cooperation with other people, environment and circumstances. The sapling tree
can be killed by too much water or not enough water; too intense of sunlight or
insufficient sunlight. Scientists opine that the chemical and other
combinations of ingredients that makes planet Earth habitable for humans is
both complex and very delicate. We’ve yet to find another planet such as ours.
Success
comes by creating friendships. When Paramhansa Yogananda (author of Autobiography of a Yogi) came to America
in 1920, he made friends everywhere he went because he was friendly. He
addressed people’s needs, from cooking a meal for them to giving them wisdom
and practical teachings. He never used people but saw others equally as God
manifesting in specific forms. He thus served God in others and did not think
of himself.
Success also
requires concentration upon the goal and the means to the goal, sometimes to
the exclusion of all else but always by keeping one’s priorities clearly in
view. Meditation serves one superbly to open the floodgates to a flow of
intuition onto a field of calm sensitive awareness guiding that rive-like flow,
laser-like, in the direction of one’s goal.
I have lived
in an Ananda Community for over thirty-five years and have seen the power that
comes from the combination of high ideals, practicality, and “the many hands
that can a miracle.” Unless you happen to be an Albert Einstein, most of us
would do well to understand that success comes when we work with and through
and for others. At your workplace, be helpful. Think of the needs of your
co-workers, your supervisor, and the legitimate goals of the company or
organization. Do your best with excellence, creativity, and enthusiasm.
After a
forest fire destroyed most of the first Ananda Community (Ananda Village, near
Nevada City, CA), we banded together (eschewing the opportunity to sue the
local county — a faulty spark arrestor on a county vehicle caused the fire) to
find new ways to raise the money we needed to rebuild. Yes, some donations came
in but most of it came through old fashioned hard work. But we were relatively
inexperienced and without financial resources. We studied business methods,
financing, and marketing, and we encouraged one another and our businesses to
tithe and to use affirmations and prayers. We started a health food store, a
café, a print shop, a gift shop and a clothing store. Each of the these
enterprises struggled greatly but bit by bit they came up and our member-employees
found viable, if simple, means of support.
In time, the
Community rose from the ashes and today when one visits you see a beautiful
Village nestled in the hills, forests, and meadows of the Sierra Mountains. Homes
of many types, shapes and sizes house families, monks, and singles in a
charming and harmonious life of creativity, service, and devotion. A retreat
center, office complex, grocery store, farm, dairy and community center serve
the needs of both residents and neighbors alike.
Our local
East West Bookshop in Seattle, too, is a testimony to the efforts of many
individuals serving high ideals and attracting the grace to be successful.
While the independent bookstore industry has been decimated this store has
survived and flourished. It is the largest and most successful bookstore of its
kind in Washington State. It is a resource center for new thought truth seekers
and offers classes, books, gifts and, perhaps most of all, an uplifted
environment staffed with devotees who see customers as their friends.
Here in the
Seattle area we are engaged in purchasing a rural area farm. Some twenty
individuals have pooled their resources. Small scale, organic farming is a
tricky and risky business if seen from the standpoint of profits. But with the
many hands and resources of a committed group of people which includes the
talent and skills of a few who can guide the fledgling farm, we can create a
success because we understand success is sharing and serving. In our case we
are committed to principles and practices of sustainability and stewardship,
serving God through our fellow man and in harmony with the earth and all
creatures.
So it takes the
initiative, courage and faith of individuals combined with the cooperation and support
of others of like mind — God helping God — to achieve true success. This is an
unbeatable combination, not only to achieve success but to achieve the success
of weathering and resurrecting from in the inevitable setbacks, failures, and
disasters which life can dish out.
The key,
spiritually, is to offer the self to the Self of all. “I will reason, I will
will, I will act, but guide Thou my reason, will and activity to the right step
in all that I do.”
In the life
of Ananda’s founder, Swami Kriyananda, now age 86, but still outpacing his
staff and members in the worldwide network of Ananda Communities in the
unceasing flow of writings, lectures, radio and TV shows, guidance, and
inspiration, we see in real life the power of grace that comes from
discipleship to life and to truth. “What’s trying to happen here” is the
question he has taught us to ask in all things. Yet for all of his creativity,
intelligence and talent, it is now primarily the outpouring of divine Bliss
that one experiences in his presence. For a lifetime of living for God has
brought to him the peace and lasting fulfillment that the soul was created to
re-discover.
Initially
the effort to view oneself as part of a greater reality and to cooperate with
grace is an effort of will. As I have seen in recent Facebook postings, “Life
begins outside your comfort zone!” But in time and as seen in Swami Kriyananda,
that dance of Spirit and Nature becomes a powerful flow of Light and Joy.
When I first
came to live at Ananda Village (just after the 1976 forest fire), it was
definitely outside my comfort zone. But just having returned from over a year
of travel in Europe, near East and India, I understood the value of stepping
outside that zone to find the truth that “could make me free.” I never
hesitated though I could not then know where it would lead.
In a more
cosmic or Vedantic sense, rishis (both ancient and modern, like Paramhansa
Yogananda) have taught that this universe is a manifestation of God. God is
dreaming this material world and we, as sparks of His intelligence and joy, are
co-creators. Yogananda used the analogy of the movies. You sit in the theatre
and become engrossed in the movie, laughing and crying. You forget that the
whole movie is a projection of light from the booth behind you (unseen). A beam
of white light, merely, projecting the true-to- life sound and sight pictures
of the movie. We need only turn our heads to the back (turn within, that is),
and follow the beam of light to its source in Oneness if we would awaken from
the movie-dream of life.
The other
day, puttering in the kitchen at home, I suddenly had this intense feeling-experience
of that flow of cosmic energy oscillating and vibrating all the objects around
and I felt on the precipice of having it all disappear, just as would happen if
the electricity in the movie theatre were suddenly to go out. It was both
unnerving and thrilling at the same time. It was also brief!
The more we
see ourselves as energy, and behind that energy, the Bliss of God oscillating
all the forms and actions of life, the less we need to be always thinking about
ourselves and the more we enter that flow that brings to us the true happiness
(Bliss) that we seek. This, ultimately, is success and the law of success.
Bliss-ings
to you,
Nayaswami
Hriman