On God & the Purpose of Life by Somerset Maugham

“I couldn’t believe in a God who wasn’t better than the ordinary decent man. The monks told me that God had created the world for his glorification. That didn’t seem to me a very worthy object. Did Beethoven create his symphonies for his glorification? I don’t believe it. I believe he created them because the music in his soul demanded expression & then all he tried to do was to make them perfect as he knew how”.

“I used to listen to the monks repeating the Lord’s Prayer; I wondered how they could continue to pray without misgiving to their heavenly father to give them their daily bread. Do children beseech their earthly father to give them sustenance? They expect him to do it, they neither feel nor need to feel gratitude to him for doing it, & we have only to blame for a man who brings children into the world that he can’t or won’t provide for. It seems to me that if an omnipotent creator was not prepared to provide his creatures with the necessities of existence, material and spiritual, he’d have done better not to create them”.

“It was hard for me to believe that God thought much of a man who tried to wangle salvation by fulsome flattery. I should have thought the worship most pleasing to him was to do your best according to your lights”

“But that wasn’t the chief thing that bothered me; I couldn’t reconcile myself with that preoccupation with sin which, so far as I could tell, was never entirely absent from monks’ thoughts. For the most part, I think, that generally the badness in people was due to heredity, which they could not help, or their environment, which they didn’t choose; I’m not sure that society wasn’t more responsible for their crimes than they were. If I‘d been God I couldn’t have brought myself to condemn one of them, not even the worst, to eternal damnation. The reverend Father preaching in the church was broad-minded; he thought that hell was the deprivation of God’s presence, but if that is such an intolerable punishment that can justly be called hell, can one conceive that a good God can inflict it? After all He created men; if He so created them that it was possible for them to sin, it was because He willed it. If I trained a dog to fly at the throat of any stranger who came into my backyard, it wouldn’t be fair to beat him when he did so”.

If an all-good & all-powerful God created the world, why did he create evil? The monk said, so that the man by conquering the wickedness in him, by resisting temptation, by accepting pain, sorrow & misfortune as the trials sent by the God to purify him, might at long last be made worthy to receive His grace. It seemed to me like sending a fellow with a message to some place & just to make it harder for him you construct a maze that he had to go through, then dug a moat that he had to swim, and finally build a wall that he had to scale. I wasn’t prepared to believe in an all-wise God who hadn’t common sense. I didn’t see why you shouldn’t believe in a God who hadn’t created the world, but had to make the best of the bad job he’d found, a being enormously better, wise, and greater than man, who strove with the evil he hadn’t made & who you hoped might in the end overcome it. But on the other hand, I didn’t see why you should.

The good fathers & priests had no answers that satisfied either my head or my heart to the question that perplexed me.

“I found that the Hindus believed not halfheartedly, not with reservation or uneasy doubt, but with every fiber of their being. I never got over the wonder of it. The Hindus believe that the Universe has no beginning & no end, but passes everlastingly from growth to equilibrium, from equilibrium to decline, from decline to dissolution, from dissolution to growth, & so on to all eternity”!

And what does the Hindu think is the object of this recurrence?

The Hindus believe that such is the nature of the Absolute. They say that the purpose of creation is to serve as a stage for punishment or reward of the deeds of the soul’s earlier existence. The soul passes from body to body in an endless course of experience occasioned by merit or demerit of previous works! This belief in transmigration of souls has a very practical effect on the lives of those who believe it! After all that is the test.

What is the journey to ones goal? Liberation from the bondage of rebirth. According to the Vedantists the self, which they call the atman & we call the soul, is distinct from the body & its senses, distinct from the mind & its intelligence; it is not part of Absolute, for Absolute, being infinite, can have no part, but the Absolute itself. It is uncreated; it has existed from eternity & when at last it has cast off the seven veils of ignorance will return to the infinitude from which it came. It is like a drop of water that has arisen from the sea & in a shower has fallen into a puddle, then drifts into a brook, finds its way into stream, after that into a river, passing through mountain gorges & wide plains, winding this way & that, obstructed by rocks & fallen trees, till it reaches the boundless sea from which it rose.

But poor little drop of water, when it has once more become one with the sea, has surely lost its individuality.

“Yes! You want to taste sugar; you don’t want to become sugar. What is individuality but the expression of our Egoism? Until the soul has shed the last traces of that it cannot become one with the Absolute”. 

What does Absolute actually signify?

“Reality! You can’t say what it is; you can only say what it isn’t. It’s inexpressible. The Indians call it Brahman. It’s nowhere & everywhere. All things imply & depend upon it. It’s not a person, it’s not a thing, and it’s not a cause. It has no qualities. It transcends permanence and change; whole and part; finite and infinite. It is eternal because its completeness & perfection are unrelated to time. It is truth & freedom”.

But how can a purely intellectual conception be a solace to the suffering human race? Men have always wanted a personal God to whom they can turn in distress for comfort & encouragement.

It may be that at some far distant day greater insight will show them that they must look for comfort & encouragement in their own souls. I think that the need to worship is no more than the survival of an old remembrance of cruel gods that had to be propitiated. I believe that the God is within me or nowhere. If that’s so whom or what am I to worship – myself? Men are on different levels of development, & so the imagination of India has evolved the manifestation of the Absolute that are known as Brahma, Vishnu, & Mahesh & by hundred other names. The Absolute is Isvara, the creator, & ruler of the world & it is in the humble fetish before which the peasant in his sun-baked field places the offering of a flower. The multitudinous gods of India are but expedients to lead to the realization that the self is one with the supreme itself.

Is it not just austere faith?

“Not at all! I’ve always felt that there was something pathetic in founders of other religions who made condition of salvation that you should believe in them. It’s as though they needed your faith to have faith in themselves. They remind you of the old pagan gods who grew ineffective & weak if they were not sustained by the burnt offerings of the devout”.

Advaita doesn’t ask you to take anything on trust; it asks only that you should have a passionate craving to know Reality; it states that you can experience God as surely as you can experience joy or pain.

“I found something wonderfully satisfying in the notion that you can attain Reality by knowledge. They recognize that the true path to salvation is won by the way of love & the way of works called the Karma. But it is never denied that the noblest way, though the hardest, is the way of knowledge, for its instrument is the most precious faculty of man, his reason.

According to Hindu religion they teach that man is greater than they know & that wisdom is the means to freedom. India has taught that it is not essential to retire from the world for achieving salvation, but to only renounce the self. Work done with no selfish interest purifies the mind & that duties are opportunities afforded to man to sink the separate self & become one with the universal self”.

“I went up to the forest retreat in the evening & got up before dawn. I climbed to the spot from where you could see the sunrise & the valley below. I waited. It was night still, but the stars were pale in the sky, & day was at hand. I had a strange feeling of suspense. So gradually that I was hardly aware of it, light began to filter through the darkness, slowly, like a mysterious figure slinking between the trees. I felt my heart beating as though at the approach of the danger. The sight that was displayed before me was simply grand as the day broke in its splendour. The sun rose. Those mountains with their deep jungle, the mist still entangled in the tree tops, the bottomless lake far below me. The sun caught the lake through the cleft in the heights & shone like burning steel. I was ravished with beauty of the world. I’d never known such exaltation & such a transcendent joy. I had a strange sensation, a tingling that arose in my feet & traveled up to my head, & I felt as though I were suddenly released from my body & as pure spirit partook of loveliness. I had never conceived. I had a sense that knowledge more than human possessed me, so that everything that was confused was clear & everything that had perplexed me was explained. I was so happy that it was pain & I struggled to release myself from it, for I felt that if it lasted a moment longer I should die; & yet it was such rapture that I was ready to die rather that forgo it. No words can tell the ecstasy of my bliss”.

What makes you think that it was anything more than a hypnotic condition induced by your state of mind combined with solitude, the mystery of dawn, and the burnished steel of your lake?

“Only my overwhelming sense of reality! An experience of the mystics, it is impossible to deny the fact of its occurrence, the only difficulty is to explain it. As if for a moment I was one with the Absolute.

Does the idea of Absolute forces you to believe that the world & its beauty are merely an illusion --- the fabric of Maya.

It’s a mistake to think that the Indians look upon the world as an illusion; they don’t; all they claim is that it’s not real in the same sense as the Absolute. Maya is only a speculation devised by those ardent thinkers to explain how the Infinite could produce the Finite. Samkara, the wisest of them all, decided that it was an insoluble mystery. You see, the difficulty is to explain why Brahman, which is Being, Bliss, and intelligence, which is unalterable, which is ever and forever maintains itself in rest, which lacks nothing and needs nothing and so knows neither change nor strife, which is perfect, should create the world. Well, if you ask that question the answer you’re generally given is that the Absolute created the world in sport without reference to any purpose. But when you think of flood and famine, of earthquake and hurricane and all the ills that flesh is heir to, your moral sense is outraged at the idea that so much that is shocking can have been created in play. Saints of Indian look upon the world as the expression of the Absolute and as the overflow of its perfection. God cannot help creating and that the world is the manifestation of his nature. When I asked how, if the world was a manifestation of the nature of a perfect being, it should be so hateful that the only reasonable aim man can set before him is to liberate himself from its bondage, The saint answered that the satisfactions of the world are transitory and that only the Infinite gives enduring happiness. But endless duration makes good no better, nor white any whiter. If the rose at noon has lost the beauty it had at dawn, the beauty it had then was real. Nothing in the world is permanent, and we’re foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we’re still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it. If change is of the essence of existence one would have thought it only sensible to make it the premises of our philosophy. We can none of us step into the same river twice, but the river flows on and the other river we step into is cool and refreshing too.

‘The Aryans when they first came down into India saw that the world we know is but an appearance of the world we know not; but they welcomed it as gracious and beautiful; it was only centuries later, when the exhaustion of conquest, when the debilitating climate had sapped their vitality so that they became a prey to invading hordes, that they saw only evil in life and craved for liberation from its return. But why should we of the West be daunted by decay and death, hunger and thirst, sickness, old age, grief, and delusion? The spirit of life is strong in us. In old age it is not for the man to leave the world and retire to a cloister, but to live in the world and love the objects of the world, not indeed for themselves, but for the Infinite that is in them. If in those moments of ecstasy I had indeed been one with the Absolute, them, if what they said was true, nothing could touch me and when I had worked out the Karma of my present life I should return no more. The thought filled me with dismay. I wanted to live again and again. I was willing to accept every sort of life, no matter what its pain and sorrow; I felt that only life after life, life after life could satisfy my eagerness, my vigour, and my curiosity’.

‘It may be that there is no solution or it may be that I’m not clever enough to find it. Ramakrishna looked upon the world as the sport of God. “It is like a game” he said. “In the game there are joy and sorrow, virtue and vice, knowledge and ignorance, good and evil. The same cannot continue if sin and suffering are altogether eliminated from the creation.”

The best I can suggest is that when the Absolute manifested itself in the world evil was the natural correlation of good. You could never have had the stupendous beauty of the Himalayas without the unimaginable horror of a convulsion of the earth’s curst. The Chinese craftsman who makes a vase in what they call eggshell porcelain can give it a lovely shape, ornament it give it a perfect glaze, but from its very nature he can’t make it anything but fragile. If you drop it on the floor it will break into a dozen fragments. Isn’t it possible in the same way that the values we cherish in the world can only exist in combination with evil?’

Living needs ‘calmness, forbearance, compassion, selflessness, and continence.’

‘I should have thought that wisdom consisted in striking a balance between the claims of the body and the claims of the spirit’.

‘That is just what the Indians maintain that we in the West haven’t done. They think that we with our countless inventions, with our factories and machines and all they produce, have sought happiness in material things, but that happiness rests not in them, but in spiritual things. And they think the way we have chose leads to destruction.

Money is nothing to us; it’s merely the symbol of success. We are the greatest idealists in the world; I happen to think that we’ve set our ideal on the wrong objects; I happen to think that the greatest ideal man can set before himself is self-perfection. ‘Isn’t it worth while to try to live up to?

‘But can you for a moment imagine that you, one man, can have any effect on such a restless, busy, lawless, intensely individualistic people as the people of America? You might as well try to hold back the waters of the Mississippi with your bare hands.’

“I can try! It was one man who invented the wheel. It was one man who discovered the law of gravitation. Nothing that happens is without effect. If you throw a stone in a pond, the universe isn’t quite the same as it was before. It’s a mistake to think that those holy men of India lead useless lives. They are a shining light in the darkness. They represent an ideal that is refreshment to their fellows; the common man may never attain it, but they respect it and it affects their lives for good. When a man becomes pure and perfect the influence of his character spreads so that they who seek truth are naturally drawn to him. It may be that I lead the life I’ve planned for myself; it may affect others; the effect may be no greater than the ripple caused by a stone thrown in a pond, but one ripple causes another, and that one a third; it’s just possible that a few people will see that my way of life offers happiness and peace, and that they in their turn will teach what they have learnt to others”.

Extracts from ‘The Razor’s Edge’ by Somerset Maugham

Collected by Shriratan Daga

AND, WHAT HAVE I LEARNED SO FAR ... ??

So, this is it! We're coming to the end of another year and I have to be very honest with myself about how far my inner life has developed. One thing for sure is that I have not carried through with all my intentions for change outlined at the beginning of this year for one reason or the other. Life decided to do Her own thing and take me in other directions! Goddess Wisdom has dawned on me in areas where I least expected and that is really much to be grateful for. It now reinforces my belief that if I place everything in the hands of God, and follow the dictates of my heart, the Holy Spirit takes over and reinterprets it for me as God would have me do it. That's neat!

The last few years have been spent moving away consciously from the three dimensional interpretations of the scriptures, of old beliefs, of life, etc. It has been a big challenge for me because it started leaving me vulnerable and open which was very disconcerting for me as a human being. But then the road to my True Self  is not about refining the human aspect, its about rediscovering my spiritual one.

I remember when I first encountered the idea that my whole world is an illusion, it knocked the socks out of me. Whhaaattttt???? This information actually gave me no relief. It stunned me and it seemed so laughable that I thought God was really playing a cruel joke on us. I was terrified. I felt alone, scared and abandoned. Did God actually throw us to the wolves? At that time I was in a sea of confusion.  I knew I had to find my very own path, but I just did not know how to do it and this information was not helping me in any way. As much as I wanted to completely detach from formal religion, it also helped me to believe in something beyond me even if that Being was a so-called "punishing, jealous, judgmental God"!! It took many years to understand the truth of this statement (that the world is an illusion). And then the real journey started excavating all of 'me' and creating space for God to walk in.

Awakening happens differently for everyone. It begins to happen when you start the unraveling of yourself, when you begin to understand you are definitely not this body and mind and that you are much much vaster than you can ever imagine. It happens when you can begin to see the world from a place of Love, Oneness and Connectedness. For me it happens on a daily basis. Life is no more that soft, mushy, mushy thing. Life has opened my eyes wide open and made me see the Reality of Itself. My Awareness opens me up more and more and releases the untruths I have believed in for aeons. It also cuts through ancestral beliefs which has been passed down through generations. Wow! that is some cleaning to do.

I understand more clearly now why disasters and natural calamities take place. All of these happenings are a result of wrong beliefs and thoughts that have reached such proportions and magnitude at the  mass consciousness level, that an explosion and a bursting has to take place. Explosions are always lethal. Cyclones and storms cause mass destruction. Floods and killings cause tremendous suffering. THERE IS NO PUNISHING GOD doing any of this. This is the most childish and ignorant belief ever amongst humanity. God is NOT involved in making and causing suffering to anything or anyone. So, I have left God out of it. We are responsible. I am responsible. I have contributed through my own destructive thoughts to the mass destruction of life.  When we talk any other language other than Love, destruction has to happen. 

But destruction brings with it new beginnings. It breaks open hardened hearts of the common man and spurs him to tremendous acts of compassion, love, service and awakening. And if we are conscious enough, we can take this a huge step further: WE CAN BEGIN OUR OWN JOURNEY OF REMEMBRANCE, OUR OWN AWAKENING. 

Death brings new life always. When we mourn death it is simply because we have no idea about LIFE, about our own Divine Nature. Life is only about Spirit. Period. 

Armed with this understanding, I now look forward to new possibilities and new beginnings. I am grateful for every moment of my life. Life always happens for our own learning. Everyone you meet is only about that. Those are the only lessons. When you begin to understand this, you can't help loving them as God would have you love them: like yourself! It does not matter who comes and who goes in my life. What matters is that I keep myself hollow as much as possible to allow all events to pass through me without resistance and judgment. So, what have I learned so far? Life is not what you see. Life is beyond the seer and the seen. Not so philosophical when you get right into the heart of the matter. And most important, all of this stuff that you think you "see" is actually not happening in reality but only in your mind. And that is why no one else sees the world that you see, but only you. That is a revelation. 

And so it is. Namaste!

~ Lavina ~

This Is Who I Am

Well, I have started out writing this blog with an amazing photo quote from Bentinho Massaro that took my breath away!

Today, there was a blog posted on facebook which, once again, left me feeling so inspired by this young awakened Soul. He is talking to the mother of a young son who is a drug addict and his answer to her queries are simple, yet deeply profound. Definitely not the kind of answer the world would approve of.

"That the choices that he makes might actually be perfect for his journey. And that by taking away his catalyst, his pain, his suffering, his challenge, his struggle, his addiction, by taking that away for him against his free will, a few things will happen: You will postpone his eventual epiphany. You will make him use again, because he might stop at some point, but if it’s not out of total free will, it’s not permanent. Your giving off the vibe that something is wrong, not that everything is perfect. You will emphasize that, and therefore you will continue to exacerbate his struggle, even though you don’t want to. And by exacerbating this struggle, he’ll probably feel more addicted or grab for the things that he knows makes him feel different or good, in this case potentially heroin."  ~ Bentinho Massaro ~ / Source: http://www.choosehappythoughts.com/help-someone-struggling-with-addiction/

The reason this quote resonated with me so deeply is because this has become my level of thinking and it has given me a sense of peace and taken away the guilt that I was experiencing for such a long time. I stopped listening to the judgments, the comments, the labels, the blame, etc. etc. I started becoming immune. It was my way of forgiving myself and letting me nourish myself with my own Love. Isn't it all too often that we do not know what to do as "grown-ups"? 

Though I have been treading the spiritual path for so long, there are some deep rooted issues that still need healing and change. I spent my entire adult life trying to fix them in my mind and heart in the way I believed, which is through dialogue, but little has changed until I finally came to the realization that the deep karmic issues that take our whole life clearing are there for a very definite purpose - not as punishment, but as purification and that, we personally, do not have all the answers, most of which are unseen. It is not my job to take away all the pain another person is experiencing, just as it is not anyone else's job to take away mine. Infact, that pain, that wretchedness, the hole that seems like an endless pit, is there not to be filled up with worldly answers and things, but for God to enter and take over that space, identity and falseness completely. One can only be there to hold the person with one's own heart and spirit and allow the person to see in reality what the purpose of life is. Each Soul has to find his/her own salvation. Contrary to some beliefs, there is no savior. We have to find our own salvation and our own way back to The Source. This realization enables you to make massive changes from within. If you are not progressing in your thought system about who you are, you are stagnating. And when you are in stagnation, you are stuck and cannot move further internally or find appropriate answers to deal with self issues in the appropriate way.

When I discovered Bentinho Massaro on Facebook, I literally felt myself awake fully while reading his posts. Infact it opened some part of my mind that began to feel a great desire to write little heart poems, which I did in my journal, and I found myself in that mood the entire day writing most of the time. Maybe it was because I was ready and open to move away completely from my seeming weaknesses and focus on my strengths - a shift, so to speak. Whatever the reason, I felt I was experiencing a genuine openness I had never experienced before. The wonderful thing about my most cherished spiritual teachers is that each comes with a gem of his/her own that is so unique that one cannot be compared to another. Bentinho is just one more added to my small list of profound teachers.

There will be all kinds of people crossing our path everyday, if not in real life, then on social media. Learning to deal with them and their emotional baggages is an art that comes with time.  I have found a way to deal with them. I ask them to do a self inquiry and find the answers from their own Sacred Heart. Some people find it a very "spiritual" approach and don't want to go there, but what can I say? Are we not all Spiritual Beings having an earthly experience?

All answers come from the heart. The heart knows what it knows and it will always, always lead you to your highest good. And it eventually will tell you : "THIS IS WHO I AM".

Peace. Namaste.

True Change

Change is something I have been aspiring to forever. The more I tried, the more difficult it appeared. The bad habits were like addiction. The self hate was a favourite past time. As for guilt, you name any situation and I have already felt bad and guilty about it. Because I believed all of these self-created stories, I was willingly absorbing judgments and labels other people were more than ready to bestow on me! My environment never seemed to fail me and reinforced all of these errors I held about myself.  Understandably I was in a very great hurry to change all of this stuff which made me very unhappy. I lived in a constant state of frustration and low self esteem. My impatience soaked me up leaving me feeling in despair. The harder I tried to be a "good" person, the more I was failing. I reasoned with myself alot and questioned even more. They included questions like:  I was on "The Path", why then was I unable to create worthwhile change? .... When are things going to be different within me? etc. etc.

These are good questions to ask. They act as a compass and direct you True North.  As I began a a relentless self inquiry, answers were unfolding themselves automatically. What I began to understand was that a True Path involves an absolute and complete turnaround change. You cannot hang onto or hold onto any false belief of the life you are giving up. There is no half-and-half. Until that is realized, change will be minimal and a struggle. True change is REBIRTH. You have to die to your old self completely. This is by far the hardest endeavor for me. But I now have a far better understanding what true spiritual practice is and that is a huge place to start from. I was helped further when I encountered James Twyman's "The Art of Spiritual Peacemaking." It is a huge book in terms of  spiritual depth and requires you to trust that  once you start The Peacemaker's Path, all changes are taking place within. On the outside there is nothing obvious for a long while, but that does not mean just because you cannot see something, it is absent or not happening. You have to develop Trust, Faith and Patience. Divine Patience is the surety that something is going to happen in eternity and infinity. When you begin to think this way, then suddenly everything seems to be happening very fast. Time begins to collapse. The construct of time does not apply here. This is where you begin to learn to feel yourself through the Path of The Unseen. I started meditating, pondering and contemplating the following passage from the book. It took more than two years for me to begin to comprehend what it means, and as it began to sink into my subconscious mind, I began to see that I was going about my life backwards.

PATIENCE

There is no time in which you will be judged. There is only NOW, and you have already accepted the finality of your soul's  TRUTH. Understand this and Divine Patience will be yours. Then time will have no meaning to you, for you will know the ultimate conclusion of your life: Full knowledge of your True Self.  How can you be anything but patient if you know the path you walk? Even if you do not see the castle in the distance, still you are certain of your eventual arrival. And the more certain you are of this, the sooner you will perceive this reality. Only Divine Patience offers immediate results. There is no hurry, then, for the ending is sure. Enjoy the path you walk and admire the beauty of the landscape. Turn one more corner and you are there. Today I ask that you imagine yourself to be the enlightened being I perceive, filled with patience. Imagine how you would act toward others if this patience were yours. Imagine this new life and embrace it now."

~ The Art of Spiritual Peacemaking, Lesson Six ~

Source: Rooftop cafe view of the Taj Mahal. Image by Daniel McCrohan / Lonely Planet.

 I don't want to go into the details of how I experienced an enlightened view on this because it is said that one should not talk about one's experience with anyone except with a truly like minded person who understands your experience, since the more one talks about personal spiritual experiences, the more the experience begins to feel diminished.  Suffice it to say that I finally understood that the ways of the world are not the ways of Spirit. No matter what you hear, read or believe, ultimately you have to source your own answers from within. Nobody can dictate to you how you should develop a relationship with your own Soul. Neither, can you be a parasite and thrive off someone else's spiritual intuitions and experiences. It will never ever work for you completely.  That is a really good thing because, it proves no two persons in this universe are alike and one size does not fit all. You can only be guided by someone else's path. That is all that you can do. Teachers can only share their knowledge and guide you into your inner Self. Beyond that, you have to develop your relationship with Spirit on your own. Don't waste your time promoting someone else's spiritual ambitions. Those are the ways of the world. Focus only WITHIN.  As I released all my follies, I began to feel directed to the next step, and then the next step, etc. If you look at your life from the aspect of your physical body, it will take millions of lifetimes to perfect. But if you look beyond your body to your True Self, you will realise, the Purity, the Truth and The Self is lying hidden in your very Being waiting to be tapped into. Then the body slowly becomes the channel it is meant to be. Healing begins to take place in spirals and layers as your move inwards and radiate outwards at the same time.  People who are looking for the same thing that you are aspiring to, will be drawn to you like a magnet.

This journey is not for the faint hearted. It is a solo journey. Eagles fly alone. Sheep move in herds. You have to decide if you want to be an Eagle or a sheep.  

True change happens from within. True change cannot be coerced, coaxed or manipulated. When you seek change with all your heart, your heart will convey to The Source your deepest desires and as you allow your free will to give permission to Spirit to work on you, you will not even notice that something big is happening within. It creeps upon on you in a good way, like when you suddenly discover you are no more reacting to the situations and people the way you used to in the past. You begin to stop caring about the things that are not of Truth and you begin to feel Peace in your Heart, the likes you have never experienced before. And that is how it happens.  And you want it to happen more and more. You experience moments of pure bliss - free of worry totally. It is unexplainable. All you need to do is surrender your difficulties and problems and the Holy Spirit does the rest. You have to stay connected with  your Path and every time you deviate, you have to bring yourself back. If you don't, you will experience some physical discomfort whenever you are not doing right by your Soul and you will be reminded .... gently at first .... and then with a harder knock if you still don't pay attention. You Soul is relentless. It will not leave you - this human being that you you are masquerading as, for even a second. Your Soul is your direct connection to The Source and it wants only what is God's will for you.

Do not let anyone diminish you in any way or judge your path. You can achieve this by NOT responding to them at all. They will not understand anyway.

Infinite Patience means you KNOW everything is going to be ALRIGHT. Heck! more than alright - its going to be superb!! Just don't let time dictate the change. And then you will see everything is happening very fast. They call it by a couple of names - Divine Timing and Divine Order.

And that really suits me fine. Om. Amen.

Creativeness Through Self-Knowledge

"There is no method for self-knowledge. Seeking a method invariably implies the desire to attain some result and that is what we all want. We follow authority - if not that of a person, then of a system, of an ideology - because we want a result that will be satisfactory, which will give us security. We really do not want to understand ourselves, our impulses and reactions, the whole process of our thinking, the conscious as well as the unconscious; we would rather pursue a system that assures us of a result. But the pursuit of a system is invariably the outcome of our desire for security, for certainty, and the result is obviously not the understanding of oneself. When we follow a method, we must have authorities - the teacher, the guru, the savior, the Master - who will guarantee us what we desire; and surely that is not the way to self-knowledge.Authority prevents the understanding of oneself, does it not? Under the shelter of an authority, a guide, you may have temporarily a sense of security, a sense of well-being, but that is not the understanding of the total process of oneself. Authority in its very nature prevents the full awareness of oneself and therefore ultimately destroys freedom; in freedom alone can there be creativeness. There can be creativeness only through self-knowledge."

~ Jiddu Krishnamurti, The Book of Life ~

My Life.

My life is my purpose. 

I have a moral responsibility to make it look good, 

the best that I can. 

My life is my Gift. 

It is the only thing I have in this world that belongs to me. 

I Am always wanting to use it well, to flaunt it and to shine through it. 

To dramatize it and make it look good. 

There is every opportunity to do whatever I want. 

And what I will always want is to be happy - really and truly happy.  

This whole drama from start to finish has a shelf life, an end point. 

I can frolic and be joyous or I can just lament. 

Any which way, it all has an expiry date. 

When I am through with it, the sun will set and 

I will pass on like a mist passing over a river 

forever gone from this experience 

with no proof that it ever existed.

My Sun sets when my Soul moves on.

But my Soul Light will forever shine on.

The Light Cannot Be Given To You By Another

"Most people, when they are confused, disturbed, want to return to the past; they seek to revive the old religion, to re-establish the ancient customs, to bring back the form of worship practised by their ancestors, and all the rest of it. But what is necessary, surely, is to find out whether the mind that is the result of the past, the mind that is confused, disturbed, groping, seeking, whether such a mind can learn without turning to a guru, whether it can undertake the journey on which there is no guide. Because it is possible to go on this journey only when there is the light which comes through the understanding of yourself, and that light cannot be given to you by another; no Master, no guru can give it to you, nor will you find it in the Gita or in any other book. You have to find that light within yourself, which means that you must inquire into yourself, and this inquiry is hard work. No one can lead you, no one can teach you how to inquire into yourself. One can point out that such inquiry is essential, but the actual process of inquiring must begin with your own self-observation."

~ Jiddu Krishnamurthy ~