As we welcome the new year, all of us in Gurudeva Paramahansa Yogananda’s ashrams especially remember our worldwide spiritual family in our prayers that God may bless your lives with inner peace and happiness, and with success in fulfilling your worthy goals. We thank you for your loving thoughts, holiday greetings, and remembrances during the Christmas season, and for your many kindnesses in the past year. In our hearts we treasure always the divine friendship that unites us in God and Guru’s ideals and Their eternal love.

This year marks the hundredth birth anniversary of our beloved Sri Daya Mata on January 31st. Her divine life has touched us all, and though her soul is free in the blissful realms of light and joy beyond this world, the love and care she showered on Guruji’s spiritual family in both East and West is with us still. Gurudeva’s words, “Only love can take my place,” found full expression in her and will always resonate in our consciousness through her beautiful example. May that love and her positive spirit and faith in God, inspire you in this new year and always.

The beginning of each year offers us the blessing of a fresh start in our lives, an opportunity to reinvigorate our noble aspirations and to energize our will to materialize them. It motivates us to enlarge our perspective by looking beyond the experiences and patterns of the past, with renewed zest to explore the potentials the future holds. The inner security to face that future joyously, fearlessly, and with positive expectations comes as we anchor our lives in the One who has created us in His image. Gurudeva told us, “Each of us is a child of God. We are born of His spirit, in all its purity and glory and joy. That heritage is unassailable.” If we enter the new year with the conviction that we are not a frail human being but an indomitable soul, endowed with the freedom to rule our mind and will, and persist in exercising wisely that ability to choose, no habit or circumstance will be able to stand in our way. We will find that even those situations that stretch our capacities or challenge our understanding bring to us what we need to dig deeper into our consciousness and release the full power of our soul.

When in meditation we perceive God’s presence, our consciousness becomes more malleable, allowing His light and grace to dissolve unwanted patterns. As we live increasingly in the thought of Him, joy and power to accomplish flow to us from that Infinite Source, and we understand more fully Gurudeva’s words, “God can do anything, and so can you, if you identify yourself with His inexhaustible nature.” By your faith and determination, you can realize that truth and encourage others through your own victorious life.

Wishing you and your loved ones a new year filled with God’s blessings,