Extending the kingdom of heart from your own to others
In feeling God, you most extend the territory of your feelings. You feel for your own heart; now you must every day begin to feel more and more at one with the hearts of others, their woes, struggles, joys and weal. To feel others’ hearts means not only that you must remain absorbed in loving and working for yourself, but you must learn to work and spend for others, protect and love others with the same degree of interest and enthusiasm as for yourself.
See God in those who hate you.
Begin to feel interest and helpfulness and love toward one soul today, another tomorrow, another day after tomorrow. And let these feelings be active, not weakly passive. Try to love and help others actively each day, especially those who love you. Keep on doing this until you can do it even to those who care nothing for you. And at last let the feeling of love and good will and helpfulness go forth to enfold even those who hate you. This is the real, practical way by which the soul can spread its victories from heart to heart, ever enlarging its boundaries, until at last it can recover its rightful kingdom of all the hearts of all creatures.
Feeling all hearts, you will feel the One Heart of God.
Your unceasing love and unselfish readiness to help others without distinction of sex, creed or caste will make your heart big enough to receive all humanity therein. And once the love of all human beings and all living things shall have entered into your heart, your heart will be the One Heart of God. Feeling all hearts as one, you will feel the One Cosmic Heart beating behind all hearts. Recognizing no individual selfish love, feeling the same love for all, you will feel the One Great Love which is everlasting and forever burns as pure white flame on the universal altar of all hearts. Say silently to your own soul: ‘‘I shall drink Thy Love alone from all cups, O God! From the gold and silver and crystal cups of the world and from the shining invisible cups of human hearts, I shall drink Thy Love alone!”
Feeling all hearts as one, you will feel the One Cosmic Heart beating behind all hearts.
Help yourself in the forms of others.
Recognizing the God-love burning in all heart lamps, you will see and feel only God-love flowing through everybody and everything. Every time you meet a receptive human being, demonstrate by actions; and then make him feel your interest in his physical, mental and spiritual welfare. Never neglect to do whatever you can for yourself in the forms of others. To know the Spirit, you must become the Spirit and find yourself as manifested through the bodies and minds of others. Make the bubble of ego one with the ocean of Spirit. Make it big, so big that you can behold all the bubbles of living beings floating in it. Break the boundaries of the small selfishness and include in boundless unselfishness all living beings, universes–everything ever created in the past , existing in the present, and to be created in the future.
Chant the Song of Cosmic Consciousness:
‘‘So be Thou, my Lord,
Thou and I, never apart;
wave of the sea,
Dissolve in the Sea!
I am the bubble;
Make me the Sea!’’
Excerpted from How to Love and Be Loved by Paramhansa Yogananda
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