It is easy to feel helpless in the face of conflict in the world around us, yet our thoughts and prayers can be a powerful force for good. Ananda’s Spritual Directors recently shared on this subject. Jyotish writes:

The world desperately needs our prayers and goodwill at this time.

The extraordinary events taking place in the Ukraine and Russia, as well as around the world, are sending out waves of dark, disturbed energy. Each of us must do what we can to counterbalance this darkness with light.

Paramhansa Yogananda gave a strong warning to the world in 1939, when Europe was on the brink of a World War II. Among other things, he said:

“Why do world suffering and misery arise? When people all over the earth are happy and prosperous they are in tune with God, and the entire vibrations of the earth in relation with the planets are harmonious. But as soon as one nation starts fighting with another, or selfish industrial gourmands try to devour all prosperity for themselves, it brings depression. And when depression starts in one place, it begins to spread everywhere, owing to the vibrations that travel through the ether.”

“World War I created wrong vibration in Europe first, which then spread all over the earth, and where there was no war, influenza appeared. The agonies of the people who died in the world war created the subtle cause of the epidemic.”…

Yogananda might have been speaking today rather than over eighty years ago about aggression and pandemic. But implicit in his warning, if one looks deeper, lies a message also of hope and instruction.

These times of conflict can be a springboard to higher awareness, if we see them as a warning to raise our consciousness.

Don’t wait for others to act. Let peace begin in your own mind, and let it spread to those around you in ever-widening circles.

If bad vibrations can cause disease and depression, then good vibrations can create health and prosperity. It is our responsibility to send out strong radiations of peace and goodwill to counteract and neutralize negative ones.… we, individually, must also strongly confront the darkness of these times.

Each of us can pray for peace, act as angels of mercy to everyone we meet, and fill our thoughts and relationships with peace and harmony.

… Everything is made of consciousness. With our uplifted consciousness, attuned to God’s higher laws, we can help strengthen the light so it can prevail…

I am making a pledge to do my best to act throughout each day with peace and harmony, and to strongly radiate those vibrations to the whole planet. Will you join me?

Devi shares: After the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York on Sept. 11, 2001, Swami Kriyananda wrote a letter to the Ananda communities worldwide. He said, “Though I very much wanted to pray, this drama is so vastly complex that, lacking a clear focus, no prayer of mine, surely, could be very effective. Then I thought of the prayer attributed to Saint Francis of Assisi*: ‘Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace.’ And I thought, What better prayer than this for such a time?

“Divine love is a force. . . . If we understand that by loving rightly it is God’s love we express, He will be able, through us, to uplift the world’s consciousness… 

Recently Jyotish and I took part in a very moving online satsang with Ananda members from both Russia and Ukraine. As people from both countries spoke of their suffering, confusion, and anguish, many of us were weeping. One man from Russia said that his mother was Ukrainian and his father Russian, and he was filled with inner turmoil seeing what people from both countries were enduring. Another woman, a Kriyaban living in Kyiv, told of the extreme hardship and fear caused by the constant bombing of her city.

That day I began praying for the people of both countries, but I focused especially on this one Ukrainian woman as a symbol of everyone involved.

I suggest that you too, as you pray for a resolution of this conflict, also visualize one child frightened by the destruction of their home; or one mother grieving over the death of her soldier-son; or one anguished soul yearning for peace. Focus your prayers on one of them. By deeply tuning in to one individual, vibrationally you can reach the hearts of many…

Receive God’s unconditional love, share it with others as fully as you’re able… In these ways, the power of divine love will expand out from you and me to reach many. Eventually it can uplift the consciousness of the whole world.

Seeking the One Heart that beats in all breasts,

Nayaswami Devi

Video- Jyotish and Devi lead prayers for the world

Listen to Yogananda’s Peace and Harmony Prayer