PATIENCE - A Paragram by Paramahansa Yogananda

I was doing my meditation last night when I picked up this card from my paragrams. I thought how apt it was especially these days when my life seem to be revolving around things that are in the process of fruition ... like waiting for Peter's business to fully take off, waiting to see my vegetable seeds grow, waiting for the weekend so I can spend time with my personal projects, waiting for my money to come in... waiting to bum around again... waiting... and more waiting.

Come to think of it, my previous post on becoming an inverse paranoid had something to do with patience too. I guess I haven't been doing my best that the universe has chosen to give me a sign in written word, practically shouting: Jen, be patient! Your wishes are at hand...

When tilling ground for the cultivation of crops, one needs patience to destroy all useless weeds; and to wait, even though the ground appears barren, until the hidden good seeds sprout into plants. It requires still more patience to clear the field of consciousness that is overgrown with weeds of useless attachments to sense pleasures, which are very difficult to uproot. Yet when the field of consciousness is cleared, and sown with seeds of good qualities, plants of noble activities sprout forth, yielding abundantly the fruits of real happiness. Above all, have the patience to seek communion with God through deep meditation and to become acquainted with your indestructible soul, hidden within your perishable earthly body.

Sometimes I forget how God's blessings swoop in the minute I rid my mind of "weeds" such as worries, negative thoughts and undesirable feelings. There's a certain discipline to it. It's a lot like love such that you say yes to it even when you don't feel in love because that's the commitment you made.

Same thing with cultivating good thoughts, positive feelings and actionable results. Even when at first the ground seems barren, the roots of blessings are forming and before you know it, harvest season is at hand.

So Jen... be patient. ^_^

MAGNETISM - A Para-Gram by Paramahansa Yogananda

Spiritual magnetism is a drawing, uplifting, expanding power. It is a quality of the Spirit. By soul magnetism in man, a person draws to himself friends and desired objects, and acquires profound knowledge. You should strive for that magnetic power, which has limitless range and depth. You can develop spiritual magnetism by deep meditation upon Aum (Amen, the Word) and God. Through its divine power, you can accomplish in your life the materialization of all your constructive ambitions. God's magnetic drawing power is in you. If you radiate love and goodwill to others, you will open the channel for God's love to come to you. Through meditation and service to mankind, you will develop divine love, the magnet that draws to you all good.

Since I was a kid, I've always been interested in spirituality,the concept of the divine, the higher power if you will. This curiosity got me interested in becoming a nun when I was ten years old, then experimenting with another religion as an adolescent. I am Roman Catholic on paper. Then some time back in college, I was baptized a born-again Christian. Somewhere along the way, I lost my faith and became an atheist. But that just brought me nothing but misery, and so I turned agnostic instead. I've been an agnostic my whole young adult life. I do believe in what most people call "God", a higher power which I believe we will never ever fully understand, but it's there. I even have this theory (which I got from my husband, and which he got from Stan Lee) that after this higher power, this God, created all that there is, He just simply moved on and abandoned us (in a non-negative kind of way). I mean, think about it. The Catholic Bible says that we are all created in His own image and likeness. Therefore it means, that we all have the capacity within us to be Gods ourselves, to create our own worlds too, our own reality. And many of us have been doing that for the longest time that's why our species keep surviving, we keep discovering better things for us. I mean, He is God after all. He can choose to abandon us and move on to greater things if He wants to. This higher power has already given us everything that we could possibly ever need to thrive and live in peaceful bliss. We have this beautiful Earth in which we live in (it's just too bad that we are destroying it in the process too), we have our free will to be able to do what we want, we have our conscience and intuition to help guide us to the right path (it's just too bad also that most of us choose to ignore them), we can become magnets (we actually already are and many of us just don't know how to use it) so we can attract and gravitate towards us the things, people, and events that we want. So what else can we yearn for?

I've tested this theory a few times recently. Through meditation upon this higher power, I was able to get some simple things I want. Simple things like having the house renovated (all of a sudden, I got three jobs to help pay for it), wanting to travel on weekends (I've been doing that almost every other weekend since January came in), wanting to just laze around the house and relax (I easily let go of my two jobs without any no fuss), then an opportunity came for me to help my siblings financially (I easily got one job back as if on will). It's as if, whatever it was that I needed at that particular moment (without the greed and just purely out of love and search for inner bliss), the universe simply gave it to me. Other people out there don't have it this good. Perhaps, if we all just learn to tap into this spiritual magnetism in all of us, the lives that we all have now can be so much better.