An introduction:
A special strength comes from seeking higher consciousness together. It’s true that progress in spiritual growth depends on our individual, daily efforts. And yet those efforts are deepened and sustained through the encouragement we receive from others who share our aspiration.
Group meditation and uplifting fellowship are powerful forces, helping each of us to experience more easily the Divine in the sanctuary of our own hearts. We become keenly aware that we are part of a worldwide community — united by the desire to live with greater peace, wisdom, and joy.
Paramahansa Yogananda gave us one of the most inspiring expressions of shared spiritual endeavor by creating the Self-Realization Fellowship World Convocation, being held this year from August 2 to 8. We hope you can take this opportunity to participate — in person or online — and draw from Paramahansaji’s profound and practical teachings the spiritual sustenance and understanding you seek for leading a truly balanced life.
Below, we present wisdom from Paramahansaji on what we will gain — and what we can contribute — when we support each other in realizing that same blissful goal.
From the talks and writings of Paramahansa Yogananda:
Group meditation is a castle that protects the new spiritual aspirants as well as the veteran meditators. Meditating together increases the degree of Self-realization of each member of the group by the law of invisible vibratory exchange of spiritual magnetism.
As a rope formed of many fibers is stronger than a single strand, so members of a group, by uniting their efforts, strengthen their meditations.
An overcast of spiritual lassitude sometimes covers the light of the soul, like a quick spread of clouds over a clear sky. We have to banish the clouds by the sunshine of good company. This is why I emphasize the importance of good fellowship, or satsanga.
Protect yourself with an environment of noble-minded companions. Surround yourself with goodness….It is very important to put a hedge around your newly sprouting spiritual qualities, and good company is that hedge.
The proximity of others’ spiritual vibrations has the power of raising your own.
When I first took lessons from my Master [Swami Sri Yukteswar], he told me: ‘Surround yourself with spiritual bodyguards.’ It was then that I formed a little group of four people to meditate together. I found that when I spiritually weakened, the other three helped me; and when they weakened, I roused power in them.
If your spiritual progress is at a standstill, or is ebbing, the practice of meditation on God or on any of the Great Ones, in the company of other devotees, will uplift you from your precarious state.
Individual and group meditation both are desirable. In addition, group meditation also recharges the mind with the vibrations of the spiritual convictions of other souls. Meditation in solitude gives depth; and meditation in groups reinforces each devotee’s individual effort with an invisible vibration of combined spiritual power.
The SRF Convocation was created by Paramahansa Yogananda to help seekers of higher consciousness discover the infinite potential within them waiting to be manifested. Learn more about what this transformative weeklong program offers, free of charge — and the different ways you can participate in a part or all of the program.
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