
In talks that Swami Kriyananda gave in the last years of his life, he often warned us of severe economic hardships to come.
How will we live, if the material foundations of our lives should be shaken or destroyed?
I don’t have a single, comprehensive answer, but I pray that the following stories will inspire you to consider that our most reliable “resource,” in good times and bad, is God.
When I arrived at Ananda Village in 1976, the community’s photographer had left three weeks earlier. A major event was in the planning stages, a “Village Fun Faire,” and a photographer was needed.
It promised to be a colorful event, with costumed performers, and even an elephant. I wanted to take good pictures, but I didn’t feel that my old camera was up to the job.
In the early years we lived very simple lives. Where would I find the money for a camera? I stood outside Master’s Market, wondering how to raise the funds, and when reached in my pocket I found thirty-four cents – the extent of my net worth.
But I sensed that if a camera was needed, the money would come. I told God that I would happily do my part if He would provide a way to earn the money.
The next day, a friend called to say that he had written a book for bicyclists, and he needed some photos. Could I take them? The amount he offered was exactly enough to buy a camera that would serve Ananda well.
Fifteen years later, I was training for my first ultramarathon, a race of 50 kilometers (31.1 miles) with 7,000’ of climbing in the high Sierra, when a foot injury threatened to end my running career altogether. I tried all manner of remedies – I tried anti-inflammatory medications, massage, icing, cheap shoe inserts, and special exercises – but nothing worked. I even tried stuffing leaves in my shoes!
Feeling desperate, I prayed for help, and then I heard an inner voice that I recognized as Swamiji’s. It said, “Go see the podiatrist.”
I replied, “But I have no money, and the podiatrist will prescribe orthotics (shoe inserts) that cost $400 – plus he’ll charge $40 for the office visit.”
Again the inner voice said, “Go see the podiatrist.”
Taking my faith in both hands, I made the appointment. Sure enough, the doctor wanted $40 for the visit and $400 for inserts. I asked him to place the order and send me the bill.
The next day, I received a phone call from the same friend who had “come through” fifteen years earlier.
“I’ve written another book,” he said. “Can you do the photos? I need them quickly, and I’ll pay $500.”
This story has repeated itself many times with endless variations during my life at Ananda – perhaps not always as spectacularly, but often enough that I believe broad principles are involved. I’ve seen, for example, that when the need is real and we pray humbly for God’s help, He is eager to give it.
Still, I apparently had a lot to learn about the interplay of money and grace. And in due time, God saw fit to teach me a challenging lesson.
In the late 1990s I was able to make a comfortable living working as a writer and editor in Silicon Valley. But when the high-tech industry crashed in 2001, the company that I worked for began to struggle, and my job fell by the wayside. After 9/11, my other clients reduced their spending, and I found myself essentially unemployed.
I prayed for help. The next day, a friend in the Mountain View Ananda Community told me about a part-time position at Stanford University, in the department where she worked. I gratefully took a job assisting the department manager.
My boss was a wonderful person. I would end my morning meditations by praying to be able to make her day easier, to be supportive and cheerful and to offer her God’s friendship and joy. I loved that job, and I stayed for two years. But then the department trimmed its budget, and my job was eliminated.
I prayed for guidance, and Divine Mother again offered Her help. A woman called to offer me a job at a new research center in the Stanford Medical Center. But I had become attached to my blissful life in the mechanical engineering department, praying for my boss every morning and serving happily. And when a half-time job opened in the department, I decided to take it instead.
It was a terrible mistake that I would regret bitterly. The woman at the Medical Center called again, pleading with me to take the job. Later, I realized that it was the Divine Mother herself, trying to save me from a painful spiritual error. To this day I am saddened to recall how I rejected Her loving offer!
The half-time job in the mechanical engineering department proved the opposite of the previous one. The boss was an avowed atheist and completely unsympathetic to my spiritual ideals. We had no common ground, and I felt that God expressly did not want me to pray for her. The job involved finances – balancing credit card statements and tracking faculty expenses. It was work for which I was thoroughly unsuited – I’ve always been a “word person,” not a number-cruncher. I had a continual sense of not belonging. It was an unhappy time.
As I walked across campus one day on an errand, I prayed for guidance. “I hate this job,” I said. “I’m very uncomfortable with the kind of work I’m doing, and the boss and I don’t get along.” I heard Swami Kriyananda’s voice. “Yes,” it said, “get away from that financial stuff!” I gave notice and left.
For the next six years, I had a terrible time making a living. Why? I can think of any number of reasons, all related to mistakes I had made in the past, including the most obvious one of rejecting the job that Divine Mother had offered me. But dwelling on our mistakes doesn’t help anyone. What counts is what we learn from them.
When I was new on the path, I made a mistake that, at the time, I thought was a humdinger. That evening, as I sat to meditate, I was saddened to feel that I had let God down.
I prayed, “Divine Mother, I guess You’ll just have to accept me as I am.”
Immediately I heard a womanly voice, as of a bustling, efficient mother. It said, “I am not concerned about your faults. I am concerned only with your continual improvement!”
After I left the unhappy job at Stanford, I applied for hundreds of jobs in the years that followed, all of which I was qualified for. I went to dozens of job interviews that seemed to go well, but nothing transpired. I had countless responses to my ads, but I was never hired. I began to pile up debts.
I had a reading with Drupada, a Vedic astrologer at Ananda Village whose counsel had proved accurate in the past. He told me that I was in a deeply inward period of my life – “on pilgrimage,” as he put it – and that I was essentially “invisible to employers.”
It was both a wonderfully happy and a deeply troubling time. I was writing The Joyful Athlete, a book about exercise and sports training, based on spiritual principles. My work on the project brought me joy. But the satisfactions were balanced by a growing unease over my inability to make a living.
Over the years, I had developed an impressive resume, with outstanding testimonials from respected clients, and I had two degrees from Stanford University. Yet – nothing! I had a handful of clients who gave me barely enough work to keep food on the table, but little more. The time of testing stretched to six years.
After five years I had another reading with Drupada. He said that I would shortly enter a period when it would be possible to make a good living. Yet months passed after the “money period” had started, and still there was no change in my situation. I realized that my Guru was capable of holding up my astrological chart, and with a gentle smile, ripping it to shreds, if it would help me learn a needed lesson.
One day, having reached a point when I felt that I was truly at the end of my rope, I had a vision during my morning meditation.
I saw a young man with brown skin and long black hair. He wore a rough, reddish-brown woolen robe, and he stood before a crude rock hut, high in the Himalayas. It was obvious that he had nothing, just a primitive shelter and enough food, but the smile on his face was radiant – it stretched from ear to ear. I realized from the vision that it was possible to be completely happy while having very little.
The vision reminded me of how I had lived thirty years earlier, during my first years at Ananda Village. One year, Swami Kriyananda drew my name in our annual Christmas gift exchange. One of the nuns told Swamiji that I had only two shirts and two pairs of pants. He gave me a lovely pale-blue long-sleeved cotton turtleneck. I loved that shirt – it felt wonderful to wear it, and I was sad when I wore it out.
I knew that I would not truly pass my money test until the lesson had been driven deep into my soul. I wanted to learn the lesson with every cell of my being, so that I wouldn’t have to come back to it again.
I wrote an email to Swamiji. I said, “I am glad that my spiritual teacher is uncompromising.” Swamiji’s secretary, Nayaswami Lakshman, told me that Swami had read my email, and that he had said, “I understand.”
Several weeks later, I had another realization, and I wrote to Swamiji again. I said, “I have come to understand that I am in this world for only three reasons: to love God, to serve His work, and to live simply.”
I sent the email and forgot about it. I would have been content to receive no reply. Even if I became homeless, I felt that I had learned an enduring lesson.
A week passed, and nothing in my financial situation changed. Then I received an email from Swami’s secretary. He reported that Swamiji had read my note, and that he had said, “Very good.”
I can’t tell you how much those words meant to me! It was the most precious message of my life.
The sequel is that, bright and early the next morning, the phone began to ring off the hook. The same online advertisement for my services that had failed to produce a single job in six years was suddenly unleashing a torrent of offers. People were calling every fifteen minutes to offer me work. It was almost scary how many employers were calling and asking me to work for them!
From then on, I’ve had a flow of work that has allowed me to live simply.
Of course, the lesson didn’t simply end there. It wasn’t as if Divine Mother said, “Rambhakta, you’ve learned your lesson – you’ve passed your test. Now you’ll be able to take it easy and find work effortlessly!”
I found that the flow of work continued to the extent that I took time to affirm, over and over, the purpose of my life: to love God, to serve His work, and to live simply.
I began to tithe – for no other reason than from a grateful feeling in my heart. Reflecting on the loving help that Swamiji and Ananda had given me over the years, I wanted to give something back.
I began to participate more fully in the work, by singing in the choir and two ensembles, by writing about Ananda as Swamiji had asked me to do, and volunteering occasionally in our community garden. To the extent that I offered my service cheerfully, from my heart’s love, I found that my life was blessed.
Looking back at age seventy- eight, I see that one of the most difficult and rewarding lessons I’ve had to learn is to go along happily with Divine Mother’s way of doing things. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the Lord.” (Isaiah 55:8)
In America, we like to imagine that we can plan our lives rationally, especially when it comes to money. “I’ll invest so much energy and receive so much in return.” We hope to find security by getting control of the material details of our lives.
How lovely it would be, if our lives could be arranged so neatly and logically, and if we could be rewarded in direct proportion to our efforts. Yet it would be the best possible recipe for forgetting God. Why bother God, if all that’s required to be happy is to learn to pull the right levers and “game the system”?
My experiences showed me that every penny in the universe is wholly and entirely contained in Divine Mother’s purse.
When I serve God’s work, the sense of abundance increases, but when I’m distracted from my life’s true purpose, pursuing vague directions that my ego prompts me to follow, the flow mysteriously diminishes. Abundance, I’ve realized, comes by opening ourselves to its source, which is God alone: by dynamically offering our love and service.
The story has a sequel.
I wrote an article about my experiences with money for Ananda’s former Clarity magazine. When the article appeared, I had a nervous feeling. “Uh-oh,” I thought. “The lesson isn’t over. Something’s missing.”
Sure enough, after the article appeared my income plummeted. For the next five months I once again had a hard time making ends meet. Debts began to pile up, and it was a challenge to pay the rent.
It reached a point where I was utterly baffled. What was wrong with my attitude? How was I displeasing God?
Desperate for an answer, I prayed with urgency, “What am I doing wrong? I want to learn the lesson, no matter how difficult it might be. I simply can’t go on like this. Help me understand!”
I heard Divine Mother’s response. In tones of kindly but exasperated concern, She said: “We are partners!”
I understood my error. Ever since the experiences I’ve described above, I had affirmed the three reasons why I was in this world: to love God, to serve His work, and to live simply. But it had become an empty formula.
“Oh, I’m facing another crisis – let’s see if I can remember the magic formula. Hm, what was it? Okay, Dear Lord I want to love You, serve Your work, and live simply.”
The human heart tires of mindless repetition – the words become a gray blur. I had grown stale, unable to pray with inspiration and energy.
But – “We are partners.” With these words, Divine Mother gave me the answer. Henceforth, whenever I needed work, I would no longer repeat the formula. Instead, I would talk with Divine Mother as a partner. “We need to find work so that we can continue to serve. Divine Mother, show me how to talk with this client. Please guide me.”
If I felt moody, downcast, or drained, I tried to share my feelings frankly. “I’m feeling lousy, Divine Mother, but I want to do a good job. Please help me get out of this mood and expand my heart.”
I realized that being partners meant sharing every moment with God.
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If you would like to spiritualize your relationship with money, I can heartily recommend several books by Swami Kriyananda and Paramhansa Yogananda, as well as Swami Kriyananda’s course, “Success and Happiness Through Yoga Principles.” Here are the books:
How to Be a Success: The Wisdom of Paramhansa Yogananda, Volume 4
The Art of Supportive Leadership: A Practical Guide for People in Positions of Responsibility, by Swami Kriyananda (published under his American name, J. Donald Walters).
Money Magnetism: How to Attract What You Need When You Need It, by Swami Kriyananda (published as J. Donald Walters).