The following post is an excerpt from the talk “Spiritual Opportunity in the New Year” in Sri Daya Mata’s book Only Love: Living the Spiritual Life in a Changing World. Sri Daya Mata, one of Paramahansa Yogananda’s closest disciples, served as president of Yogoda Satsanga Society of India/Self-Realization Fellowship from 1955 until her passing in 2010
My prayer for each one of you in this new year is that you may fulfil your highest and noblest aims on the spiritual path.
You who seek love divine, may you find it; you who seek understanding, look not for it in human relationships but from Him who is the Fountain of Understanding; you who seek strength, courage, or humility, may you go to the one great Teacher who can help you acquire these qualities, who can awaken the sleeping divinity within you, that you may behold yourselves as true children of God.
In memory I hear our blessed Guruji’s urging at the new year: “Wake, sleep no more! Wake, sleep no more! Wake, sleep no more!”
The way to peace, joy, happiness, and love divine is to keep your consciousness centred on and at rest in God. Concentrate upon one idea: God alone. “Thou art my Polestar; in Thee I live, move, breathe, and have my being. I seek naught else but to love Thee and to serve Thee.” Make this your constant prayer in the new year.
Concentrate night and day on God, and become drunk with His love. He alone is real. In His love lies wisdom, humility, joy, compassion, understanding, and fulfilment. May each one of us seek that love more earnestly.
Meditate more deeply and strive to serve God with greater willingness, with greater conscientiousness and concentration.
It isn’t enough just to serve; consider it a great privilege, and serve with zeal, with joy, and with love in the heart.
Singing songs of devotion to God, may we carry that joyous consciousness throughout all the days of the new year, that we may close the year as we have begun, thinking only of the One.
