A message and a poem from Kavita (an American chela).
Beloved Guruji:
It is with great longing that I write these words to you. I would so love to be with you and everyone there. You are in my thoughts daily. In these few months since I last saw you, I have felt your love and presence many, many times. My practices are going well for me. It is slow and subtle, but I continue to find peace within. I pray your health is good, and God willing, that I will see you soon.
My deepest love,
Kavita
And here is a poem from her:
This is for you:
Thanksgiving
These are my thanks that I am giving you
For all the times when you have seen me through.
For all the times you looked right into me
You reach inside and all my terrors flee.
With constant love you silence all my fears
My heart fills up with grateful, healing tears.
Redeemed once more, the child in me is reborn.
And for right now there is no need to mourn.
DIVINITY ALWAYS HAVE TWO SIDES
If Divinity is omnipresent and within each and every cell of you, then negativity is also a product of God. Who says God is only positive? What we have to learn is to see the positive side of God and to portray it in our lives. Who can call the rain negative and the sunshine positive? They are both part and parcel of each other. If you have a cloudy day, who can say that the clouds are not important, even though they obscure the sun? But without those clouds, which the sun itself has produced, there would be no rain, and you would have no food.
All good teachings will teach us to see both sides of the coin. How can you have a coin with only one side? If it were printed on only one side, you could not even buy a box of matches with it. Mind you, it would be nice to find a coin with only one side; it could become a collector’s item. But our duty is simply to see the positive aspects of everything, because everything is positive. Even your negative thought, which you regard as negative, is underlined with positivity.
I am feeling ill today and trembling because of my sugar problem. Okay. But I see a beauty in it. Why should I not tremble? I am trembling because of my blood condition, diabetes, and what is wrong with it. I accept it to be positive. I do not wallow and say, “Ah, this is negative, negative, negative.”
BEYOND THE CLOUDS, THE SUN IS STILL SHINING
So, although Divinity is composed of positivity and negativity, we want to see positivity only. The reason is that we want to be happy, because there is greater happiness and peace in positivity. And yet the opposite of the word itself, unhappiness, has just attached the “un” in front of it. It is still happy. So, we can negate negativity. Just throw away the “un.” And that is how we will see within ourselves everything positive, even in that which is negative. Someone slaps my face. Okay. You regard that as negative. But I might have a toothache, and that slap might cure it. Do you see how we have to look at things? All the negativity around us comes from our thinking, and we can use the same energy to turn it into positivity. So, negate the negativity and choose positivity.
Everything we feel or observe, every thought that arises in us, can be seen for what it truly is. For everything is a product of peace, and even in negativity and positivity, peace is present. But being patterned, with conditioned minds, people tend to look at the worst side of things: “Oh, it is a cloudy day.” Yes, I observe the cloudy day; I see it is dark and grey, yet I know the sun is behind it. If you fly in any aeroplane, the aeroplane goes beyond the clouds, and you see the sun.
So go beyond life’s so-called negative clouds; that is what our teachings are all about. As we read Kavita’s letter, she means her practices have brought about a subtle transformation in her, and she always feels peace within. That is the condition that has to be created within us by ourselves.
Positivity can never exist without negativity, and negativity cannot exist without positivity. But where is your attention? That is important. That attention is created by the mind, and then the mind thinks, “I am the doer.” Well, you are not the doer at all. Everything in life is done for you, and I have said this many times before. You put in your ten percent, and the ninety percent comes automatically. So that little ten percent is what we need. By channelling our thoughts toward betterment, toward sunshine, even when there are clouds in the sky, the sun, to repeat again, exists beyond the clouds.
Can we call the clouds negative and the sun positive? No. The clouds are created by the sun. The sun itself, with its heat, draws off water vapour to form those very clouds. And we complain about the gloomy day. Who says clouds are gloomy? Who says your thoughts are gloomy? Your thoughts are always positive, but you look at them through gloom. A jaundiced person will see everything yellow. So we get rid of the jaundice of our minds. And the greatest jaundice that man suffers from is thinking that he is the doer. How can he be the doer? He cannot walk from here to that door on his own without the divine energy within him. He cannot even lift a hand. Do you see?
RECOGNISE THAT EVERYTHING IS GOOD, AND GOOD WILL CHANGE INTO GOD
Here we return to the matter of attitude. What attitude do I have in life? If every thought, whether positive or negative, contains the element of love, then that negative thought soon passes away. Remember, it is the same energy you are using. Whether the thought is positive or negative, it is the same energy. The emphasis may differ, and it is shaped by our patterning.
Anything that is patterned can be unpatterned. It is like taking a piece of string and tying it around your finger. If you can tie it, you can also untie it.
Every pattern of our minds can be seen from a different angle, and that is your 10 percent as the doer in practical life. The rest, the other 90 percent, is done for you automatically. If He is the doer of everything, then why should you worry? You leave it to Him. You say, “Ah, God, do what the hell you want to do; I am not going to care.” If you do not stop caring about the petty, little things of life, you will get into a worse mess. So, stop being a mess and stop messing around.
Life is something so beautiful; it is truly to be appreciated. When you appreciate life, you know the meaning of love. And when you know the meaning of love, you know the meaning of Divinity. It is the same. Everything is the same. I love a person who hates me more. I mean, there is no one in the world who hates me; they love me to pieces. You will be surprised that I am keeping myself together. Keep yourself together through the power of love, and therefore all the scriptures say, “Love thy neighbour as yourself.” But I would add to that not only your neighbour.
So, who is the doer? You need to recognise, and that is why you are given this mind, this thinking ability, which separates you from an animal. And what should the mind be thinking? That everything in this world is good. And when you recognise that everything is good, slowly the one “o” in “good” will be rubbed away. It will fade away, and there is only “God.”
DISCOVERING THE SELF WITHIN, FROM DUALITY TO ONENESS
The problem is the mind. When you can transcend it, go beyond it, and watch it act, another part of you, this part of the heart, will tell you, “Ha, the mind is playing tricks. Let it have fun. Who cares?” You become the observer, and then nothing can affect you. What really observes is not you, but the real doer. He is also the observer. So, when you reach the point of being able to observe objectively, the mind will not affect you. It will not affect you because you have become non-attached to the mind. You let the mind perform. Let the mind do whatever it wants to do. To hell with it. And when that is ingrained within you, you will be pouring out the heart that is within you.
A true master might analyse your mind, but his greater task is to open your heart. And when the heart is opened, you become increasingly receptive to everything around you, because the heart only sees, feels, and acts in goodness, which is godliness. Is God not good? He sure is.
So, when we stop thinking of ourselves as the doer, we surrender to a higher force that is within us and all around us. The easiest place to start is that place within us. If you have some awareness and recognition of what is within you, you will automatically project it to everything outside you. That is how one starts, until you feel that there is nothing outside you. Everything is inside you.
So, this is the process that you start with: duality; you progress to qualified non-duality; and the last step is total non-duality. If everything is found to be within you, what can hurt you? Nothing can hurt you, because no one would deliberately hurt themselves. And with this sense, one can find greater happiness and peace.
WHEN NONSENSE MAKES SENSE, FROM HUMOUR TO COMPASSION AND KINDNESS
There are three things you must indulge in: sense, common sense, and nonsense. People do not even understand the word “nonsense.” Where you do not make sense of anything, it is fun. The greatest humour in life is based on nonsense. And when you view it with common sense, you develop a real sense of what is nonsense. It is beautiful, beautiful.
So, man should be a combination of all three: sense, common sense, and nonsense. It is a greater art to be able to view nonsense with sense. Then you see the humour in it, and you find life to be filled with fun, because you have developed the sense and the common sense to see the nonsense, and nonsense is humour. You become humorous. Not tumorous, but humorous. For who wants a tumour on the brain? I think I must start doing operations on all of you. Cut away those tumours. You see. It is an unnecessary pressure on the brain, and because of that pressure on the brain box you find things going wrong or right. Here is another way out: instead of having a brain in the head, fill it with sawdust. Then you will not be able to think all the rubbish you think about. But feel, feel, feel. Feel the joy. Feel the beauty. And you will see with clear eyes all the beauty around you.
I was telling someone that the two most sensitive parts of me are the soles of my feet and my eyes. My feet have become so sensitive because of walking around this stupid world. I can feel all the rubbish that is going on in this world. That is why my feet are so sensitive. And my eyes are sensitive because I see all the rubbish around me, which should not be there. But by feeling with the feet and seeing with the eyes, it has helped me to become more and more compassionate. And it has made me more and more kind. It has made me feel more. That if you have a headache, I feel your headache; if you have a toe ache, I feel it too. And if you have a bottom ache, and there is another word for that, I feel that too.
LET GRACE FIND YOU IN THE BEAUTY OF EFFORTLESS LIVING
Every sentence I speak is a poem in itself, and poetry wells up within you. It is not the mind at work; it is the heart at work, expressing itself spontaneously, and that is what we need. That is what we need, that spontaneity of life where we just flow, and flow very gracefully. And when you flow gracefully through life, you attract more and more grace to yourself. That is your 90 percent. Your 10 percent is just to be gracious. And that 90 percent of grace just dawns on you. It does not wait to come in by the door. No. It is always waiting at the door. And your 10 percent is in opening the door to let it in. If the room is stuffy, what do you have to do? You just have to open the window, and the fresh air will come in by itself. You do not need to go and call it. Like another analogy I have used somewhere, I do not know where, you do not need to go and chase butterflies all over the field. Make your garden beautiful and the butterflies will automatically come.
And that is how life is lived. That is how the beauty of life is received. Then you say, “Ah,” in gratitude, in thanksgiving, that “Lord, you have been so merciful to me.” The trials and tribulations anyone goes through are created by themselves, by their own little minds, of which they use very little. Because if they had to use more and more of the mind, they would be able to comprehend everything, become aware of everything. And in that awareness, going a little step further, you will find everything to be so, so beautiful. When you see things around you as beautiful, you attain greater and greater beauty within yourself.
How aware are you? Everything can be transformed into fun and laughter. Everything. You can be very serious in the wisdom you impart, yet you also know how to laugh. Now we are coming back, not to the tumour, but to humour. Yes, that is the way life is lived.
… Gururaj Ananda Yogi: Satsang US 1986 – 55
