Living Grace
Daily Inspiration for Meditation and Contemplation
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Spiritual Grafting
Do you remember learning about grafting a branch to a tree in school? Farmers do this to care for trees with weaker root systems. For example, if an apple tree has a weak root system, it cannot provide the branches with the necessary nutrients that will enable it to...
Spiritual Grafting
“God has sent me to you. My help will always be given to devotees all over the world, if they keep in tune with me.” Yogananda A few months after my twelfth birthday, I ran into an old Italian woman, dressed in black, on a street in my neighborhood. She stopped me,...
Gospel Truth and Yogananda’s Wisdom
As human beings we constantly aspire to greater and greater levels of meaning, joy, and love; we can’t help ourselves. This is not a bad thing at all. Rather than denying or repressing this aspirational aspect of our nature, we should both accept and embrace it,...
Weekly Summary July 26 – July 30, 2021
Monday: Free will is an actual reality, though we seldom understand it because it involves a paradox: our capacity for free choice does not develop by our doing whatever we want or by simply giving into our impulses; this actually enslaves us. No, the power to choose...
Necessary Temptations
I hope that this week has shown that we should not view temptations through a myopic lens, seeing them as only evil. We are also tempted to do good, to be joyful, to be creative, to live meaningful lives, to serve, to love, to bring light into the world. For example,...
Necessary Temptations
“I have not come to be served, but to serve.” Jesus A major temptation in our culture is the will-to-power. This temptation has to do with the impulse to constrain, control, and compel. It becomes particularly dangerous when God is taken out of the equation of...