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My Guru, Maharaj-ji, once told me, “Enjoy everything!” These days I try to simply love everything that comes my way, whether animate or inanimate, pleasant or painful. I hope you too can learn to absorb life’s ecstasies and distresses into your spiritual practice so they are just more grist for the mill.
Sooner or later the realization comes that nothing we can think of is going to do it.
We end up going through hell in meditation to quiet our mind, not because somebody says, “You ought to quiet your mind,” but because our agitated mind is driving us up the wall, and it’s keeping us from getting on with it.
In the icy peaks of the Himalayas, we see the perfection of it all in the evolutionary journey of beings. And at the same moment, the caring part of us is like the bleeding heart of Jesus, and we look down and see the blood on the snow. We keep both of those in mind at every moment so we can help beings who are suffering in the way they need to be helped. If we are really going to help them get out of the illusion, we ourselves must not get lost in the illusion.
The pure Buddha, the mind that is clear of attachment, exists anywhere in perfect harmony with all the forces around it.
And it all just is, but without form. Because in order to know form, we have to be separate from it.
“My commitment is to truth, not consistency.”
Ram asks Hanuman, “Who are you, Hanuman?” Hanuman answers, “When I don’t know who I am, I serve you. When I know who I am, I am you.”
A lineage that is pure is one that catapults us ultimately out the other end; it isn’t designed to make us followers of the lineage. It is designed to take us through itself and free us at the other end.
A less pure teaching of a lineage traps us in the lineage, makes us a Buddhist or a Christian or a Hindu, not a free being, because when the people who lead do not have the full connection, they cling to the vehicle rather than to the truth toward which the vehicle is directed, and vehicles (institutions) corrode unless they are constantly fed by the living spirit. And the living spirit comes only through beings who are it. We can become organizational groupies as part of our path, but if we know it’s not enough, we must have the honesty to let it go.
The freaky thing about death is the anticipatory fear of it.
The abstract point of this is that we don’t do anything to anybody else, anyway. Actually, people do things to themselves, and we are merely the environment in which they do it when they are ready.
At the moment of death, if we let go lightly, we go out into the light, toward the One, toward God. The only thing that died, after all, was another set of thoughts of who we were this time around.
Within the perfection of this divine plan is included the freedom of an individual to choose to be harmonious with, or to go against, the law.
The optimum strategy is to act as if we have free choice and to choose always that which we feel is most in harmony with the way of things.
“I am the thought I.”
“Thank you.” He’s not putting them on or up-leveling them. He’s saying, “There’s a teaching here, and I’m getting it; thank you.” What’s bizarre is that we get to the point where somebody lays a heavy trip on us and we get caught, and then we see through our caughtness and we say, “Thank you.” We may not say it aloud because it’s too cute. But we feel, Thank you. People come up and are violent or angry or write nasty letters or whatever they do to express their frustration or anger or competition, and all I can say is thanks.
If we follow our heart, there is nothing to fear. As long as our actions are based on our pure seeking for God, we are safe. And any time we are unsure or frightened about our situation, there’s a beautiful and very powerful mantra—“The power of God is within me. The grace of God surrounds me”—which we can repeat to ourselves. It will protect us. Grace will surround us like a gentle force field. Through an open heart, one hears the universe.
You have all the time in the world, but don’t waste a moment.
