The ‘Lilacs of May’- Swami Kriyananda

On our journey toward God, we often experience things only fellow truth-seekers can understand. Far from appreciating it others “just don’t get it!” As Sonal beautifully describes her feelings of the spiritual search we learn how her life was transformed after watching Finding Happiness and how her heart is filled with bliss on hearing Swami Kriyananda’s songs.

Imagine. All your life you have been singing a song. A strange music, which only you could hear. When you shared it with those around, they couldn’t understand, resonate, to appreciate was far.

And then comes a letter. A letter that will fly you to a place where ALL people understand the music you were listening. All live in harmony abiding in the peace that the music of that Song brings. This letter for me was the movie – ‘Finding Happiness’. A docu-drama on the real life of a spiritual community in California. After watching that movie, and meeting Swamiji in Spirit in 2019, It felt like all my prayers that my heart mutely sent out through decades were heard at once. Like they travelled many universes looking for the answer, and now the creation boomeranged me with an Answer.

The movie, isn’t just a movie – it is the nectar of the full-life’s work of Swami Kriyananda, a direct disciple of nineteenth century Yoga Master Paramhansa Yogananda. And the testimony of his life was the consciousness of the people in the community. All involved in the filming of project – as a spectator one can tell, that they all were operating from a place of Higher awareness.

Autobiography of a Yogi changed many lives. I read it in 2012, but I had to come to my Guru Paramhansa Yogananda and God, through this “Letter” from Ananda in 2019. The fruits Masters’ teachings being lived in lives, helped me access and understand the teachings in a way that I couldn’t miss (thankfully). And what a total Gift is that. No longer did I need to flee to the mountains, when I found Saints living just few miles away! Each person’s life and energy spoke to me – radiant with God’s joy and a love for service. The principles of ‘high thinking and simple living’ and walking the path of Self-realisation with soul-friends – felt like entering a laboratory of Self-exploration and expansion. Ananda communities are a cultivated environment for nurturing soul-growth.

Living in God and serving him was Swamiji’s whole life, and he has left us a bounty of spiritual resources that can help us absorb & share the Light further. On his Birth Anniversary, I bring all the gratitude that my heart can hold, and offer it to him. Sharing Swamiji’s song that filled my heart with bliss. I hope you find it as a ‘call’ to experience a richer and a fulfilling life, lived for God.

Emerald Isle:

Come hear, while I sing you of emerald hills,
Of valleys and meadows so fair

That all who have seen them have carried away
Memories in their hearts, friends, like the lilacs of May:

Oh, my song is the story of the lilacs of May.
My song is the story of deer on the hills,

Of larks that soar, seeking the sun,
Of nightingales lifting the curtain of night

As with music they bring down heaven’s blessing of light:
Oh, my song is the story of God’s blessing of light.

Come join me in singing of that emerald isle,
Of flow’rs that, like jewels, besprinkle the lea,

Of waterfalls eager to embrace the wide sea
As we with our Maker united would be,

As we with our Maker reunited would be.
Come hear, while I sing you of emerald hills,

Of valleys and meadows so fair
That all who have seen them have carried away

Memories in their hearts, friends, like the lilacs of May:
Oh, my song is the story of the lilacs of May.