Enter the Portal of the New Year by Paramhansa Yogananda

Behold, through the gates of the New Year, the distant gaudy decorations of future achievements glimmering at you and daringly luring you to give pursuit. Simply watching them with the hope of accomplishment will not count. You must start racing calmly at top speed, performing more miracles of greater speed on the way. You must follow a long trail armed with the pistol of Divine determination and must shoot down the robbers of mental and physical idleness, lack of creative ability, doubt, fear, despondency, and bad habits.

The path may be sunlit by opportunities or dreary with trials, but remember to try your utmost, and then try again and again after you think that you have done your best and can do no more. After making such an effort, then, out of the gloom of mysteries, the all-illuminating Light of the Divine Guidance will emblazon your path.

Before His Light all messengers of darkness will fly away and His wisdom will clasp the hand of your infant determination and lead the footsteps of your conscious efforts unerringly, fearlessly, through your strength-testing trials to the goal of ever-satisfying fulfillment. Hope and faith in the Divine guidance of your consciously-initiated, continued efforts for material and Spiritual success will quickly lead you to your goal, already dimly visible through the Portals of the New Year.

Come, ye brother-idlers, shirkers, and enthusiasts, and, with awakened lasting real and continuous striving follow the golden trail of achievement so clearly visible through the assuring welcoming Portals of the New Year.

As you are hoping to return home after the trials of many incarnations, God is impatiently, with a greater burning desire, hoping that you will, of your own Heaven-awarded free-will, soon direct your joyously-willing, truant footsteps to march toward the sanctuary of complete inner fulfillment, there to rest in the homestead of Infinity.

by Paramhansa Yogananda

From Inner Culture Magazine, January 1935