If I do good things, will good things happen to me? I remember there was a scene in the end of the movie, The Razor’s Edge, where Bill Murray says, “There’s no reward for a good life.” I think it’s time to explore.

If I do good things, will good things happen to me? For sure, good things will happen to you. Will bad things happen to you? Probably.
It’s a very interesting question, because woven within the fabric of our culture is the Christian ideawhich is a misunderstanding of some people in India also, when we start talking about Karmaand that is, that if I do all the right things, if I’m a good person, then only good things will happen to me. In the New Age philosophy, we’ve even gotten to the point of thinking that if bad things happen to me, it must be that I did something wrong. They go back and try to find the cause: the dirty word that they said or the harsh action that they didthat they mowed their lawn and must have killed insects, so now they have a flat tire today. And it becomes an intellectual game.

Going back to what really happens in the Deity Yoga Practices we’ve talked about: we are creating super-structures within ourselves, organizing structures that have the qualities of our highest possibilities. Basically, that’s why I choose a Deity, a Deity is manifesting love and compassion. As I work with that, I am creating a whole new organizing structure of perception that I’m going to use as the way in which I organize my perception. And because it’s the way I organize my perception, it is, in fact, the Foundation Stoneor Foundation Structurewith which I create. So I’m actually creating, I’m manifesting the qualities of the Deity that I have aligned myself with on a very deep level.

That manifestation is immediate, direct, and very palpable. I mean if you can’t feel it, you know, then you’re idealizing it, you’re not living it. And what we’re trying to do is to get out of the realm in which we just think about being spiritual, and into the realm of Living our Spirituality.

Yogi Sean is the student of Swami Ramananda and the author of Dancing in the Fire of Transformation, The Everyday Sanyasin, and Experiments in Awareness, a workbook for yogis.

From Teaching No. 9 of The Third Testament

25. Be watchful and pray, I repeat frequently, but I do not want you to familiarise yourself with this gentle advice, rather that you study it and put it into practice.

26. I tell you to pray, for he who does not pray, will surrender to thoughts which are superfluous, material, and sometimes unsound, with which, unknowingly, he encourages and fosters destructive wars, but when you pray, your thought, like a radiant sword, destroys the veils of darkness and the bonds of temptation which today are imprisoning many beings, saturates the environment with spirituality, and counteracts the forces of evil.

30. Pray, O disciples, and perfect yourselves in your elevation, so that your words of teaching and love will find an echo within the heart of your brethren.

32. When you succeed in elevating your feelings above so much human misery, the most sensitive and sincere petition in favour of your brethren will emerge from you, and that vibration of love, that purity of your sentiments, will be the most powerful swords which will destroy all the darkness that wars and passions of men have been creating.

You ask yourselves: “Then, why do the children of God live in the world, destroying and annihilating? What force motivates them to disavow and destroy one another when they all emanated from the limpid fountain of the Father? What are those forces, and why has not God, with His infinite power, stopped the advance of men who destroy the peace? Why does He permit wickedness among mankind?”

42. Listen, O disciples: The spirit possesses as his heritage, the freedom of will and the conscience, and every man at birth, is endowed within his spirit with the virtues, and can make use of them. In his spirit is the light of his conscience, but at the same time that the matter develops, so do the passions and bad inclinations, these being the ones that battle against those virtues. God permits this, because where there is no struggle, there are no merits, and this is what you need in order to ascend along the spiritual path.

What would be the merit of the children of God if they did not struggle? What would you do if you lived filled with happiness, as is your wish in this world? Would you expect spiritual progress if you were surrounded by comforts and riches? You would be at a standstill, for merit does not exist where there is no struggle.

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