Calmness Leads to Peace, Harmony, and Success

Many people know the way to peace and permanent happiness but are slow to follow it. They take lessons, then forget. Make use of your spiritual training. Live a godly life yourself, and everyone who crosses your path will be helped just by contact with you.

If you want to live in peace and harmony, affirm divine calmness and peace, and send only thoughts of love and goodwill.

“Be even-minded in the face of pleasure or pain, gain or loss, victory or defeat. In this way, you will incur no sin.”

~Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 2, Stanza 38

The above stanza can be interpreted to give guidance to the worldly man, the moral individual, and the spiritual aspirant:

Anyone who seeks business prosperity should keep his mind unruffled through sudden material gains or losses. A businessman who is not over-elated by success finds that his concentration is not deflected from the path of even greater success.

On the other hand, the businessman who becomes depressed by business failure loses the focusing power of his concentration, and thus is unable to make renewed efforts for material success.

Every worldly man seeking success must keep his mind calm to meet the constantly changing circumstances of his life. He must be able, like a tractor, to move easily over ups and downs in the field of life.

Calmness: the Resting Place of the Ever-New, Joyous Spirit

A devotee who meditates regularly but finds himself the victim of a sudden explosion of subconsciousness restlessness should not be discouraged nor stop making renewed efforts at deeper meditation and God-contact.

Until one is anchored in the Infinite, he must valiantly race his mental ship of concentration on the calm or rough seas of inner experiences until he reaches the shores of unending communion with the Infinite.

A yogi whose mind is like a rippleless lake, free from the waves of temporary mental elation, sadness, or emotional disturbances—due to loss or gain, victory of failure—finds within himself the unruffled clear reflection of the Spirit.

An unruffled calmness can be gained by deep and deeper meditations. This constant calmness ultimately becomes like an all-penetrating light which runs through all matter into the heart of the omnipresent Spirit.

The aspiring yogi must keep his mind steadily fixed on the inner perception acquired by meditation, and should not allow his mind to be ruffled by temporary outbursts of superconscious joy, or the temporary explosions of subconscious restlessness.

Such a yogi finds his unchangeable altar of calmness the resting place of the ever-new, joyous Spirit.

Excerpted from How to Have Courage, Calmness, and Confidence by Paramhansa Yogananda