The Inner Kingdom
May 30, 2022by Sherry Chow
Yesterday’s Sunday Service talk on the Inner Kingdom brought us all back into the bosom of God. Padma Haldar shared with us in her usual organized way the why, how and what of the inner kingdom, but as her talk unfolded, her words essentially peeled away the layers of ourselves to reveal the Divine Self within. The layers are the dream, the divine show we’re all engrossed in, but as in Swami Kriyananda’s song Through Many Lives:
"Through many lives I have drunk the cup of laughter:
no man could tell the pleasures I have known.
The stars and the endless sky.
If one could count, would come to billions.
Yet as vast as are their numbers,
So many years I’ve wandered far from You.”
Most of us have forgotten our inner connection to the Divine, but are reminded here and there by mystics and poets such as Francis Thompson, whom Paramhansa Yogananda admired. Referring to his poem The Hound of Heaven, Padma offered that instead of us needing to seek God, “the Divine is running after us and we are the ones hiding from the Divine. We are hiding in the nooks and crannies of our egos…but the Hound of Heaven is not giving up, he’s coming after us again and again.”
What a comforting thought that is, for Divine Mother to be running after us like a mother chasing after her strayed children! We do not need to find Her as much as we simply need to allow ourselves to be found again. The gig is up, for Mother is coming, and not a moment too soon!
Padma continued by quoting Yogananda: “He who created us yearns for our love, and we shall never be happy, until we give it.”
By these words we were all exposed completely, like the unfurling petals of a flower to the morning sun. Those present and listening yesterday opened to the light of these shared truths, basking in the love that we know was, is, and always will be ours.
So let us love in return, so God’s light may shine forever on the sanctuary of our devotion.
