It is easy to lose your mind in this confused and chaotic world. Maintaining inner peace is an ongoing challenge. Often, at our moments of deepest calmness—usually right as we step away from our meditation practice—life presents a test to measure our degree of tranquility.
That exact thing happened to me once. Just after finishing a meditation session, a loved one experienced a medical emergency, and I had to rush him to the hospital. Having just emerged from a peaceful and warm environment, I suddenly landed in a shocking, high-stress situation. At first, I struggled to process what was happening.
My loved one simply said, "I lost my hearing. I can't hear well."
I sat there, trying to make sense of the moment, and asked, "Do you have any pain in your body or head?"
"I don’t have any other pain," he replied. "I just can’t hear well."
I quickly took action and checked his blood pressure. It was elevated—understandable given the stressful moment he was experiencing. As I rushed him to the nearest hospital, a swarm of worries invaded my mind. For a brief moment, I forgot my training in peace and love. I reacted to the unexpected crisis with fear, which made everything feel far more overwhelming than it actually was.
While waiting in the emergency room for a doctor to examine him, a beautiful affirmation I had been meditating on surfaced in my mind: “I am a child of God.”
My entire experience transformed in an instant. It was like magic. A profound feeling of comfort and protection enveloped me, giving me absolute certainty that everything would be okay. These are the exact moments when our discipline of daily meditation yields its sweetest rewards.
The outer world is full of noise and delusion. If our minds are entirely consumed by it, we cannot remain conscious of the Divine within. Meditation is our path to inner peace; we must actively create these sacred moments every day to stay conscious, centered, and aware.
In the middle of that crisis, help arrived the moment I remembered an affirmation that woke me up to my true Self: “I am a child of God.”
Help will always come in unexpected ways, but rest assured, it will always arrive in perfect timing to guide us through whatever difficulty we face.
As the beloved master Paramahansa Yogananda once said: “You cannot buy peace; you must know how to manufacture it within, in the stillness of your daily practice in meditation.”