Dear folks of Baba, The micro-managing of our lives—with all the struggles, dreams, fears, ambitions, successes and failures that this entails—can all be carried out more effortlessly and efficiently and simply by the love and support that Baba will happily and freely give to us. What is an eternal burden to us can be given over to Baba, so that our day unfolds more and more in His way and not in our way which continually seems to require so much decision-making, so much guess work and so much ongoing anxiety. Baba would like to take over our lives for us, but we don’t have a clear understanding of how to let Him. The mandali, Baba’s intimate ones who lived with Him, were forever urging us to give everything to Him, but how is this to be done? Is there a method or practice for turning our spare moments throughout the day over to Baba? The mandali were embodiments of various practical and touching ways of doing this. In my many hours of being with them and asking countless questions, here are some of the most helpful practices they shared in gradually turning our day over to Baba. The mandali brought home to us that Baba’s love is continuously flowing into us every moment through our soul, and from our soul into our mind and heart, and eventually into our day. Unfortunately, this river of Baba’s love, which begins so pure and pristine at its source, has to pass through our mind with its interminable swirl of thoughts and cauldron of beliefs of right and wrong, good and bad, spiritual and unspiritual, and it also has to pass through our heart with all its congestion of emotions, desires and feelings. This pure and pristine river, as it flows into our day, unfortunately picks up the residue and sometimes even the pollution of the mind and heart along the way which can create a massive congestion in the moment we find ourselves in. This pristine river is then sometimes experienced as a murky stream, or a stagnant bog, and yet occasionally, if we are fortunate to be open to Baba’s grace, a fresh flow of pure water. All that we do that is not inspired directly by love leaves an impressional residue in us. Is there something we can do in the moment to encourage this pure and pristine river to flow through us without contamination? Yes, according to the mandali. Whatever we are feeling in the moment--anxious, happy, angry, lustful, greedy--we can let it flow in an energetic stream toward Baba before us (or however you might describe this giving). When we lose this flow of love and instead feel our negative side in the moment, we can let that flow toward Baba. He is right here before us always, face to face; He is not just in some transcendent state far above and beyond us. As Eruch would say, we have to “kid” ourselves into believing He is right before us, and one day we will experience that this had been true all along. Baba’s being is impression-less as Eruch and Darwin Shaw have said, and all our impressions that we give to Him, good, bad and ugly, are instantly dissolved in His being, but only one layer at a time. When the flow of our love becomes congested in the good, bad and ugly of our minds and hearts, we can give these less desirable impressions energetically to Baba. Over time, the obstructions and the congestion they cause, begin to break up and loosen due to the force of giving them to Baba in the moment. Often taking decades, our life begins to flow more and more with Baba’s love, and our day starts to unfold in His way, and we are relieved little by little of the burden of having to micro-manage our life. In addition to these efforts, any remembrance of Baba and the taking of His name in our spare moments is continually dissolving automatically our massive accumulation of past impressions (sanskaras). As we give Baba the “strangers in our heart”, we make more room for Him to live in us. Our life, as Darwin has said, eventually becomes a “constant state of giving to Baba.” If this is all we did in our spare moments throughout the day, that would be enough to experience a very fulfilling life. We constantly forget that Baba is always right before us, personally waiting for us to see the sun of His shining personality through the clouds of our impressions, and give ourselves to Him. Prophet Mohammed once said, “Between you and Me, there are forty-nine veils. Between Me and you, there are no veils.” The glorious overall theme of Darwin’s book, Effort and Grace, is about giving ourselves little by little to Baba, which culminates in our complete surrender in which He takes over the reins of our life. As it says in the Bible, “Not I, but Christ liveth in me.” This is the supreme destiny of everyone! What is your experience of giving things to Baba? In His love, Jeff P.S. We are continuing after six weeks on page 52 A link to the PDF of Effort and Grace: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xrR75eksY-tErdKZm9aOBs3omuhioasb/view?usp=...
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