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: The Spirit--What is It?

Dear folks of Baba,

Darwin Shaw in his book, Effort and Grace, refers again and again to the realm of the “spirit” and unfortunately this term is usually very vague in the minds of most people. Baba has explained that when the soul interfaces with Creation, it is known as spirit. The soul is sovereign, pure and independent and it does nothing. It just is. It is outside of creation, but as “spirit” it is intimately connected with our life and with all the activities in this world. As I gathered from Darwin, the spirit is the loving awareness that participates in everything, all the events of our life, and yet it remains untouched. It remains always still even though the body, mind and heart are activated by its presence. It is like the sun that shines on everything and yet nothing dims its light.

The spirit does not acquire any impressions in the activities that it participates in; it is the body, mind and even the heart that collect innumerable impressions from what we do. The spirit does not have its origin in the sanskaras; its presence flows from the Soul itself (Baba). Unfortunately, our awareness is usually trapped at the level of the body, mind or heart. When our awareness rises to the frequency of love, it is in the realm of the spirit. From there things just flow with love, and no impressions are created. The light that comes through what we do is directly connected to the degree that we are being loving—that is, expressing our better angels, the divinely human qualities. This love expresses itself primarily through the heart.

How do we rise to the level of the spirit? Our problem is not our awareness of the body, mind or heart; it is our identification with them. Our delusion is that we are convinced that we are our body, our mind and our heart, as Baba has told us. We think that they are real, and for this reason we remain at the lower level. Our challenge is to penetrate to the spirit that is present within the body, mind and heart. But how to detach from the identification with the body, mind and heart, which we have been doing for eons of time? Baba tells us that focusing on Him who is love itself, or any of the Avatars or Perfect Masters from the past, in any way, shape or form, is the supreme and most effective way. When we are in the state of love, we automatically rise to the level of the spirit. The more we express the divine qualities of love, such as patience, empathy, forgiveness, humor, purity, beauty, generosity, the closer we are to the realm of the spirit. Very gradually, we have to withdraw the tentacles of awareness from being enmeshed in the body, mind and heart in order to attain a direct experience of the spirit. As Baba has said, we all have fleeting moments of merging with the spirit, and our aim is to make them permanent. Darwin used to reiterate that rather than thinking of ourselves as a base of operations with our ego in charge, we have to strive to become a vehicle or conduit of the loving spirit within us. Gradually, after decades of effort and Baba’s grace in helping us to live in the spirit, all the elements of life begin to merge into a oneness; our experience of being separate from others, from all of life, from our Soul and Baba, begins to dissolve. This is the theme and gift of this book which Darwin explores, offering many methods and practices to bring about this merging, which is our destiny—a returning Home. How do you experience the spirit in your day-to-day life?

“To penetrate into the essence of all being and significance, and to release the fragrance of that inner attainment for the guidance and benefit of others, by expressing in the world of forms, truth, love, purity and beauty—this is the sole game which has any intrinsic and absolute worth. All other happenings, incidents and attainments can, in themselves, have no lasting importance.”

Meher Baba

In His love, Jeff

PS: We begin on page 13 in Effort and Grace

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