Question posted to Mahavatar Babaji on Wednesday’s blog comments:
Dear Utpalavati:
(Please note Gurudev and Mahavatar Babaji have changed my name -- Swamini Vishwalakshmiananda).
Dear Maha Avatar, dear Babaji,
I wanted to ask whether you could give us spiritual aspirants some advice on how to deal with the stress of modern life? I find that I am easily disturbed in my Sadhana through thoughts about the time, about my work, what I have to do today, whether I like what I need to do or not... this spiral of thoughts and feelings makes me very, very nervous and agitated and thus, effects my relationship with Him!...
(Babaji Continues): We quote Swami Vishwananda, your Guru. Ask yourself the following questions and then follow your Guru’s teaching by placing his teachings into your life in all circumstances, all situations.
Can we help ourselves in painful circumstances in life by changing ourselves?
Sri Swami Vishwananda:” Love can be joy; it's not hurting always only. There is a mystical joy, a mystical form of love that you can discover even in pain. This pain is not a pain of saying, “Oh, I’m having pain.” For example: ‘Yesterday I went to this place, I hit myself and now I have pain.’ It’s not a physical pain and it’s not an emotional pain that you create with your mind saying: “Yes, I want to be painful today”. Pain of love is so intense. The Saints know about it. Their hearts pain to be with the Divine. They cry for it. Read the life of St. Francis. Do you know how much he was crying always? But it does not have to be intensive always like that. Right now we are talking about the pain of love, but St. Francis also had great joy. This sensitivity can manifest itself also as being painful. It's not really painful, but it’s a longing for the Beloved One.”
Am I surrendered to whatever the Divine sends and does not send?
Sri Swami Vishwananda: “During darshan, I was holding a little young child; it was so sweet to look at how the child was. She came to me, she had the candy, and the moment she turned to the mother and looked at the mother, she didn’t even want the candy. She wanted to go to the mother. It brings me great joy to see this surrender, you know.
“Then I said to the people: Imagine if the whole world would be like that, if they saw the Reality. If they knew about God and they knew the illusion, they would let go of the illusion and run towards God-Realization. It was really great. The child didn’t bother about the sweet, or the chocolate, nothing! No toys even mattered to the child, because the mother was the most important. That’s why whenever we do things, it comes to a point where we lose this satisfaction, because whatever we do on the outside, which is just material-centered, has a limit and it is finished after some time.”
Ask yourself: “Do I want to be free?”
Sri Swami Vishwananda: "We could be free, but our mind doesn't let us be free. We can see the Lord everywhere, but our pride always stops us. We can Love Him, but our expectation is always there, too. When one lets go of these three things, one will be really, fully into Him.”
Could it be that your Guru is teaching you through life, through your present experience, through challenges?
Sri Swami Vishwananda: “I won’t teach you the way a normal teacher will teach you. I teach you through life, through experience, through challenges. That’s how you will build up your spiritual strength. If you are not strong enough, you will not be able to make it, because to get Self-Realization, to get God-Realization, you can’t be weak. You have to be very, very strong to get it. That is how life is.”
Are you humble in your present circumstances? God is pleased with humility!
Sri Swami Vishwananda: “how can we learn humility? The best is to pray for help to look inside to see what God wants us to learn in any situation and pray for God to help us transcend it. It’s true sometimes those things come on the way that we don’t understand. Even if you try to understand, you find it very difficult. You see, it’s simple, everybody wants their own idea to be heard first, and they don’t want to hear anybody else. If you already have made up your mind about something, thousands of people can tell you to do something differently and you will have some difficulties of doing it. In your mind you already have planned it; you have already expected!
“Very often people come and ask me questions and I tell them, and sometimes they are happy and sometimes they are not happy. You see people want to hear what they want to hear, but in every situation we can learn so much. We talk about humility. One way of building up humility is to be able to learn from others from a situation which is wrong, but we have to stay in a state of non-judgment.”
The result of all this inner work, and above all any circumstances, any situations in life will be alleviated by enacting the following teaching from your Guru!
Sri Swami Vishwananda: “Open up your heart and Cry to God, asking: "God reveal yourself. Help me that I can call myself the son of God, the child of God! Finally you can say the same as Christ did: "Oh, yes, I am One with God."
Blessed Be,
Mahavatar Babaji
1 comment:
Dear Babaji,please allow me to add my thoughts concerning felt stress,unrest and spiral of thoughts
during sadhana practice.As mind and body go together,disturbance in the mind always is accompanied by disturbance in the body.Calmness and silence during meditation always purifies the body through the release
of stress and strain.This physical process activates some mental activity,we experience a thought.It`s
a natural process.What we have to learn is to accept whatever is happening in our practice and to continue always knowing that bliss is
unavoidable in divine timing.JGD
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