The sun has now set on 2025, and the horizons of 2026 are opening bright and broad before us. It is not for us to know what the coming year will bring—personally, spiritually, materially, or globally. Truly great blessings are coming, without any doubt, as are many difficult trials and challenges. Our part is to reflect thoughtfully on what has come to pass, and to renew our spiritual efforts with courage and strength for what is to come. In the all important words of Sri Yukteswar “everything in future will improve if you are making a spiritual effort now.” This offering on the altar of the new year will bring the grace of God, with joy and blessings, to us all.
Paramhansa Yogananda encouraged all spiritual seekers to use the transition of the new year as an opportunity to rededicate our efforts to “win” the search for God through the vigorous use of will power, and through the divine grace of our Gurus and God. In January 1938, he wrote to students and friends:
“Let us make up our minds that we will win, focusing all our concentration on ceaseless efforts to succeed in the New Year, and we will surely be victorious.”
How can we afford to maintain anything less than cheerful optimism in the new year? God is sat-chit-ananda—existence, consciousness, bliss—and the latter Yogananda qualified as ever-new bliss or joy. Yogananda said that “trying to seek happiness outside ourselves is like trying to lasso a cloud,” but that “your soul, being the reflection of the ever-joyous Spirit, is happiness itself.” Then let us seek and live in the happiness of the soul.
The winds of change are blowing many cross-currents of global events, personal karmas, and life circumstances hither and thither. Like an ancient, steadfast oak tree in the wind, however, the one great purpose of life is forever and only to find God. Every lesser purpose is fulfilled with joy and meaning in that grand design. Let us re-dedicate our efforts in meditation, devotion, joyful service, and maintain an ever-positive outlook on whatever comes our way.
With the coming of the new year we also celebrate the January 5 birthday of Paramhansa Yogananda with millions of devotees around the world. This, too, is a celebration of Spirit and ever-new joy. The message and blessings of the Master are as vital and present as ever. Our own lives are immeasurably blessed by our attunement to Yogananda, and the world turns on its axis by the same power of God that flows through Christ, Babaji, and our Masters, who bless and watch over it.
May the altar of the new year be richly decorated with our love for God, our fellowship and satsang with devotees, and our dedicated efforts to seek and serve God and Guru. As we keep the candles of hope and love burning, our hearts will be filled with that ever-new joy of God and the blessings of all that is to come.
“The New Year has come to greet you…with new hopes, new determination, new will-to-achieve, new activities. In the Temple of the New Year renew your reverence for the unlimited hidden power of God within you.” —Paramhansa Yogananda