I remember when I first started out with yoga and meditation, and defining my spiritual path. When something would happen in my life that would bowl me over, I was dumb-founded and slightly ticked off! How could this be – when I was doing yoga, working on myself, and as disciplined as one could wish!

Here I was thinking I should be some goddess who defied the trials and tribulations of life simply because I was praying or meditating or doing So Darshan Chakra Kriya every day! But when I could get over that one, I could see in truth that even though my spiritual discipline has not stopped things from happening to me in life, it has definitely strengthened me in dealing with them. Sometimes it is mystifying to see things revolve around again, but I see also, that there are different levels being dealt with, each time deeper, more profound, more revealing, each time making closer that relationship with the soul that the Siri Singh Sahib (Yogi Bhajan) and many spiritual teachers are forever teaching us about.

It has been many years since that time and I have realized many times that life is really a never-ending spiral of change. We change physically with age; we change psychically with the occurrence of life around us and with us; we change mentally with all we learn, and we change spiritually with the maturation of our faith, our spiritual practice and our prayer. Facing change is made hardest by our expectations of ourselves. We expect ourselves to perform perfectly in life and some things in life simply defy perfection. “Now that we’re doing something, why is this thing still happening?”

It is like that with prosperity as well. It’s easy to think, “Well, I give and what have I gotten?” but we don’t always look at the shades and nuances of our financial lives. Looking at our prosperity, although it may not be “picture perfect,” it is an ever-revolving spiral on a conscious journey. Reducing or eliminating debt is a nuance; informing one’s self about savings, mutual funds, IRA’s and education funds is a nuance; your ever-growing consciousness about prosperity is a nuance. Your steady tithing practice is a nuance and all these nuances create a truly perfect picture…the pictures of our real lives.

In the end what we impress ourselves the most with is how we have kept up, and there is a deep satisfaction in the knowledge that despite all odds, we were able to do so. My prayer is that we might all live this knowledge not only in retrospect but in the present as well, that we may just smile in deep satisfaction as life rolls it’s waves over us and we paddle along content in our spiritual practices, our tithing and our prayer.