Harmony at Work

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(Excerpted from Swami Kriyananda’s Knowledge, Inspiration, and Energy, Lesson 3 of Success and Happiness through Yoga Principles)

For those who want to follow well-worn paths, familiarity with what has been done before is important. This is the path of tradition, which to a great extent means a path of imitation. To follow this path, one needs knowledge, but doesn’t particularly need inspiration or energy. For success in any tradition, one needs the necessary education taught by people competent to instruct others in the basic “rules of the game.”

I remember the organist at the church where my mother’s funeral was held. The purpose of the ceremony was to comfort the bereaved and to send blessings to the departed. The organist’s job was simply to play a piece of music for the event. What I asked her to play was a composition of my own. She was graceless enough to tell me that she wouldn’t play it because, as she pointed out firmly, “This melody doesn’t end on the tonic note.” In fact she was right according to the “rules of the game.” Had she played the piece first, however, and listened with her heart, she would have seen that, in this case, she was wrong. (more…)

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