We have some informal chat after every arti, the "post-arti party"! But once a week, Jeff Wolverton joins us for some serious mining of the spiritual depths. Join us for conversation, more readings, songs, quotes - you never know what treasures will be uncovered!

Topic: Transformative Moments with Baba

Dear Folks of Baba,

For many of us, our most transformative moment was the moment we came to Baba, and the description of this moment is often the most touching. However, there are also many other pivotal and instructive moments in our life with Baba that are also invaluable to share. They take many unique forms: sudden insights or flashes of intuition that have served as course corrections to how we live our life, inner experiences or dreams that have opened a door to a deeper relationship with Baba, a moment in which we were given a fleeting glimpse of the soul. We may have received from Baba an unfailing way to access His presence in the course of our day. There are also exchanges with one of the mandali or someone in our daily life that have provided guidance at a critical time. For some of us, there have been moments in the tomb or in Baba’s bedroom at the Myrtle Beach Center in which something was communicated by Him that touched us deeply.

Not all transformative moments need necessarily be positive on the surface. Sometimes realizing how selfish we’ve been may be an invaluable turning point in our lives. We may have put too much emphasis on work, for example, that caused us to not give enough attention to a loved one and we lose them. We may have bottomed out on alcohol which drove us to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting that began a real change in our lives. You may have suddenly felt within to turn away from a self-centered habit of being. Baba has said, “A new line in the divine picture is sketched only when some individual takes life forcefully in his hands, breaks up the old patterns and insists on creating something new by his own inner vision.”

What moments in your life have you found to be transforming? What were the circumstances and events leading up to these moments? How have these changes played out in your life? Did they create an instant change and have the results unfolded over time. We will all definitely benefit from hearing your awakening moments.

“When pure love is first received as a gift of the Master, it becomes lodged in the consciousness of the aspirant like a seed in favorable soil, and in the course of time the seed develops into a plant and then into a full-grown tree.”

Meher Baba

In His love, Jeff

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Sahavas for Everyone. First and third Wed of the month.

"Desperation" (from Twelve Ways of Realizing Me) by Meher Baba. ❤

Love to all no exceptions! ❤

Jai Baba!

Hosted by Laurent Weichberger in SC

This event was recorded live. To be first to be notified of a new video on this channel, please hit the red subscribe button, then the notifications bell. To join future live events, see www.babazoom.net. Please join our Facebook group: www.facebook.com/groups/meherbabafamily

We have some informal chat after every arti, the "post-arti party"! But once a week, Jeff Wolverton joins us for some serious mining of the spiritual depths. Join us for conversation, more readings, songs, quotes - you never know what treasures will be uncovered!

Topic: Telling Others About Baba

Dear folks of Baba,

This topic has again come up and it bears delving into a second time. Some of my most awkward moments in this life have been when I’ve been asked by someone suddenly, “Who is that person on the locket you’re wearing?” Sometimes my words come out spontaneously and surprise me by how apt they are in meeting the situation. But at other times, I am lost at what to say, especially when it is someone I know. One of the easiest moments of sharing about Baba is on an airplane with someone next to me I will most likely never see again!

We probably all have struggled to explain who Baba is to those who haven’t heard of Him, and we have also had to face being around family, neighbors or people at work who we fear might strongly disapprove of our life with Baba. These situations are often challenging in their own way. How do you deal with these? Do you say directly who Baba says He is, or do you skirt around the issue by referring to Baba as a spiritual master from India or deflect the question by talking about His teachings instead? Do you have a usual way of introducing Baba or do you often have to use your intuition each time in assessing the situation? Baba has said, “Your job is to bring My name to the ear of a person, and My job is to bring it from ear to heart.” You may feel relieved that He has discouraged “proselytizing” which often puts people off. I’ve heard a wide range of approaches to sharing Baba, and they are all valid. I’ve never heard a fellow Baba lover say, “Mind your own business!” when that is exactly what one might fantasize sometimes. Explaining Baba to others can definitely be a challenge, and in some cases, there can be a natural fear of being rejected or even scorned. There is also a resistance to sharing with others something so sacred in this profane world. Do you feel pressure from Baba to tell others about Him?

It can be difficult and even alienating when family or colleagues or people in our neighborhood express their outright disapproval of our following Baba. How can we explain that we had no choice; it was our destiny. In some cases, the Baba-lover may become an outcast, the black sheep of the family, and are never really accepted. This can definitely be very hurtful and even lonely sometimes, especially when there are no Baba-lovers or spiritually aware people where one lives. Some have chosen to go completely within in their life with Baba to avoid being hurt or disapproved of. Others have joined meditation and religious groups, spiritual centers and yoga classes to find like-minded people who are more likely to understand them. Joining zoom meetings has been a godsend for those who find themselves cut off from family and friends. Have you had to deal with alienating circumstances and what have you done?

I think most of us try to say things about Baba that we feel will resonate with others, and when their attention drifts, we tend to re-adjust, like making a wrong turn and our GPS has to recalibrate. Sometimes even that doesn’t work. When the Bombay group had a booth at a large city-wide fair, they contacted Baba at Meherazad for help in answering the question, “Who is Meher Baba?” He replied through Eruch, “He is the One who provokes that question in you: the Being of all beings.” I have found if I offer this response, I often have to wait until later in the conversation because this answer is so unusual and seemingly esoteric.

It is only natural to want to share what is most precious to our heart, and yet it might be better to wait until we feel there is a real receptivity in others.. Francis Brabazon , one of the intimate mandali, once recommended to first become friends with others before telling them about Baba. I think it will be informative and helpful to hear what others have done in these examples. Some of their methods might be directly applicable to our own situation.

In His love with the help of friends, Jeff

To join the email list for Late Night Chats, contact Angela

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Nick will tell stories he heard from the Mandali, in the context of trying to live a life of the spirit. Questions and comments welcome!

Hosted by Diana Goodheart in NC

This event was recorded live. To be first to be notified of a new video on this channel, please hit the red subscribe button, then the notifications bell. To join future live events, see www.babazoom.net. Please join our Facebook group: www.facebook.com/groups/meherbabafamily

Sahavas for Everyone. First and third Wed of the month.

"Desperation" (from Twelve Ways of Realizing Me) by Meher Baba. ❤

Love to all no exceptions! ❤

Jai Baba!

Hosted by Laurent Weichberger in SC

This event was recorded live. To be first to be notified of a new video on this channel, please hit the red subscribe button, then the notifications bell. To join future live events, see www.babazoom.net. Please join our Facebook group: www.facebook.com/groups/meherbabafamily

We have some informal chat after every arti, the "post-arti party"! But once a week, Jeff Wolverton joins us for some serious mining of the spiritual depths. Join us for conversation, more readings, songs, quotes - you never know what treasures will be uncovered!

The Topic: The Illusion of the Personality Self

Dear folks of Baba,

After a Baba meeting in the home of Darwin and Jeanne Shaw back in 1970, a small group of us were standing around having the usual apple juice and oatmeal cookies that Jeanne would serve us. I was near Darwin, and he looked over at me and said casually in his usual low-key manner, “Jeff, you are not the personality self.” Inside, I went completely blank, stunned, and then I thought: “I am not Jeff? How is it that I am not Jeff?” I had no place in my consciousness to put that! Up until then I had thought that the whole purpose of this life was to get to know myself, to delve deeper and deeper and go on improving and developing myself until I reached the goal! And here, in his casual, unassuming way, Darwin was basically telling me I’ve been barking up the wrong tree altogether! I was in my mid-twenties at the time.

I felt the truth of his words at a deep level within, and I thought to myself: I’ll just file that away for now and see if I evolve into the truth of his words. From time to time, Darwin would say, “The personality self is just a storefront for the soul. We put so much importance on the window displays, dressing them up and changing them with the seasons, when we could go within and enjoy the priceless merchandise!”

Before Darwin’s casual remark to me, it had never occurred to me that I was not my personality self. Imagine someone saying to you that you are not you! The challenge facing me over the next decades was how to create some inner space between my awareness (consciousness) and my personality self in order to realize the truth of his words. Darwin was of great help in encouraging us to think of ourselves not as a base of operations as almost all people do, but rather as a vehicle or conduit. Things are coming through us rather than fromus. This is a monumentally different paradigm for viewing ourselves. It is not the flute that is important to us as listeners, but the music from the musician that comes through the flute. This is actually the basis for the provisional ego that Baba encourages us to cultivate.

When we are viewing our personality self from a standpoint within, we begin to enter into the timeless, spacious realm of our being that most of us enjoyed in very early childhood before the personality was fully developed. And when we view our self as our personality only, we naturally think of others as being merely their personalities, and as a result we fail to connect with their soul, their essence, which is behind and deeper than their personality; our attention is distracted by their window displays. We are relating to others, so to speak, storefront to storefront, not soul to soul.

In a private conversation one day, Eruch said to Dan Ladinsky, who would stay for periods of time at Meherazad, “There has been no Eruch for years. Through His grace, I have become the perfect witness.” In my view, Eruch was no longer seeing through the lens of his personality self but through pure awareness itself. He had surrendered his personality self to Baba. In our efforts at surrendering and giving our life to Baba, we are actually moving toward the experience of letting go of the desires connected with the personality self, tuning into a “state of flow” and allowing Baba to take over.

Are you sometimes able to view your personality self from outside, to witness life flowing through you rather than from you? What situations in your life do you feel yourself as a vehicle, a witness to life unfolding before you? Do you feel an immense inner freedom and relief of not always being the doer, that Baba is somehow orchestrating things for you? Or do you find that in relating to others, you are most impressed by their personalities and miss some of their deeper qualities and Baba within them? Have you observed that in identifying with the personality self, you experience yourself trapped in a subjective bubble and find it difficult to empathize with others?

“I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God sending love letters to the world.”

Mother Teresa

In His love, Jeff

To join the email list for Late Night Chats, contact Angela

This event was recorded live. To be first to be notified of a new video on this channel, please hit the red subscribe button, then the notifications bell. To join future live events, see www.babazoom.net. Please join our Facebook group: www.facebook.com/groups/meherbabafamily

We have some informal chat after every arti, the "post-arti party"! But once a week, Jeff Wolverton joins us for some serious mining of the spiritual depths. Join us for conversation, more readings, songs, quotes - you never know what treasures will be uncovered!

Topic: Baba’s Presence in Our Day

Dear folks of Baba,

One of you suggested this topic and posed this question to ask ourselves: “There are many special places in this world to which folks can travel and experience the gift of Baba’s presence. But what about the places where we live, these places Baba has put us? Where you are, where you live, is there a special time or place you sometimes feel the gift of Baba’s presence? Even though the mind may be rattling away in the background, are there times when Baba brings your heart to center stage? Does His presence at times happen unexpectedly? Do you feel Baba’s presence alone, in group situations, or both? Sometimes Baba’s presence brings a deep feeling of calm and clarity, sometimes longing, joy, tears, sometimes all together. Can you describe Baba’s presence?”

Expanding on this topic, how does Baba show up in your life? What special times and places in your day do you feel Him with you? In opening up to Baba, He enters personally into our lives--wherever we are, at home or work or on vacation—through us, His divine presence seeps into these places, and we and others respond naturally to the atmosphere that is created. When I go to the homes of Baba lovers (as well as others who are focused on the divine), I feel the warmth and expansiveness of His living presence that they have cultivated through their continual loving focus on Him. I have no doubt that these places actually become a repository of His divine impressions that are tangible and can be felt.

We are discussing places here, but are there times of the day that are imbued for you with Baba’s loving presence? Time itself can become inhabited for us by Baba. He has recommended the practice of “dressing our soul with Baba”: the first thing in the morning, at twelve noon, around five o’clock and just before going to bed. Baba has said that with this practice, we will eventually feel His presence throughout the day. There are also the times we devote to the prayers, and spare moments during the day when we “steal away” to Baba. Maybe in the car on the way to work is a time set aside by us to remember Him. Do you find that there are special times that can be reminders of the many ways we infuse our remembrance of Him into our lives so that every day is an adventure with Him? Aren’t those moments wonderful when Baba just shows up spontaneously without any effort on our part?

How do you experience Baba’s presence? What are some of the places in the course of your day that invariably remind you of Him? What special times bring His presence for you? Feel free to describe some of the unique moments and places which you share with Baba.

“It is important for each of us who love Baba to be with Baba. Baba is with us, every second, but it becomes complete when we are with Him.”

Mani, Baba’s sister

In His love, Jeff

To join the email list for Late Night Chats, contact Angela

This event was recorded live. To be first to be notified of a new video on this channel, please hit the red subscribe button, then the notifications bell. To join future live events, see www.babazoom.net. Please join our Facebook group: www.facebook.com/groups/meherbabafamily