Your Homeland Is Infinity

“These few years of your earth life are just so many seconds compared to the eons before you were born, and to the endless reaches of time still to come, long after you leave this world.

“Why be identified with this brief material interlude? These are not your body, your family, your country. You are only a visitor here. Your homeland is Infinity. Your true life-span is eternity.

“Never lose sight of God. This world will go on without you. You are not as important as you think! Into the dustbin of ages countless billions of people have been thrown. It is the Lord’s recognition we must cultivate, not other people’s.

The Soul Cannot Find Its Lost Happiness in Material Things

“The soul cannot find its lost happiness in material things for the simple reason that the comfort they offer is counterfeit. Having lost contact with divine bliss within, man hopes to satisfy his need for it in the pseudo-pleasures of the senses.

“A baby cries for a toy only until he gets it. Then he throws it away and cries for something else.

“Isn’t that the way of the worldly man in his ceaseless pursuit of happiness? As soon as he gets one thing, he loses interest in it and goes rushing in pursuit of something else. Nothing in this world ever satisfies him for long.

“On deeper level of his being, however, he remains aware of his former, supernal state in God. True satisfaction eludes him, for what he seeks, while rushing restlessly from one sense pleasure to another, is his lost happiness in the Lord.

“Ah, blindness! How long must you continue before, suffering from satiety, boredom, and disgust, you seek joy within, where alone it can be found?

Seek Ye First the Giver of All Gifts

“The purpose of human life is to find God. That is the only reason for our existence. Job, friends, material interests—these things in themselves mean nothing.

“They can never provide you with true happiness, for the simple reason that none of them, in itself, is complete. Only God encompasses everything.

“That is why Jesus said, ‘Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all these things should be added unto you.’

Seek ye first the Giver of al gifts, and you shall receive from Him all His gifts of lesser fulfillment.”

Excerpted from The Essence of Self-Realization: the Wisdom of Paramhansa Yogananda

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