PREPARE YOURSELF TO BECOME RECEPTIVE
Any illness or any happening in our lives that makes us more conscious of Divinity is good. Because you are not going to Divinity, but Divinity is coming to you. How much more blessed can you be? You never go to God; you never go to Divinity. Divinity comes to you, always, because you have prepared the ground. Knock, and it shall be opened. You do the knocking, and He opens the door. Do you see how simple it is?
What we have to do is to prepare the ground for that Old Chap to enter. You do not need to go to call the butterflies but have a nice garden and lovely flowers, and the butterflies come on their own – because you have beautified the garden. Fresh air is outside. You do not need to call it, “fresh air, come in, come in” – you open the window.
All these things in life that happen to us are blessings. The only thing we have to do is prepare ourselves so that those blessings descend upon us—we create the conditions within ourselves, and all the blessings are there.
If you have the condition within yourself to be happy, you will be attracting more and more and more, and the other way around. If you feel miserable, you will become more miserable. These are basic laws of nature and unavoidable laws of nature. They function by themselves.
It is like a watch. You wind it, and it will keep running the whole day, but you have to wind it. Nowadays, people do not like wind watches anymore because of the quartz watches you get that do not require winding, but our lives are not like quartz watches. You have got to keep on winding all the time, and in that winding, we become unwound. What are you unwinding? Your karma, your samskaras, all the dirt, muck, and dust there- feel it, unwinding?
While winding up your life and setting it into motion, you are simultaneously unwinding it.
Any happening in our lives has an advantage. The very cause that made a person become ill made him also become more conscious, perhaps still on the surface, more conscious in his yearning to find his Maker. The reason why he wanted to find his Maker or that inner Self, the Kingdom of Heaven within, is because of fear of leaving the body because it is ill.
If it is properly analysed and looked at sanely, there must be something in any fear that we can convert into a blessing, and it will inspire us to more and more blessings. Your life becomes so unwound that the complexities are not there, and we become our simple, real Selves.
When we move from complexity to simplicity, many virtues are added to us. The simple person will always be humble, kind, and compassionate.
WHEN THE GARDEN IS READY, THE BUTTERFLIES WILL BE THERE
You know the old saying, “a mighty oak from an acorn grows.” If we start with one little thing you might regard as virtuous, you will find it forever multiplies what it attracts. Have a beautiful garden; you do not need to call the butterflies. They will all come on their own and make your garden even more attractive, with beautiful coloured and varied hues flitting around in the garden.
My mother puts breadcrumbs on the porch at the back, and these beautiful birds, the robins, came and pecked at it. We did not need to go and call those birds, those lovely robins, but we placed the breadcrumbs there, and they came. Likewise, in our lives, if we cultivate, do our spiritual practices regularly, and do our meditations regularly, we will find that our entire lives can change.
Because with our practices, the mind becomes calmer. The conscious level takes you deeper and deeper into your real Self, the Kingdom of Heaven within, and it takes you to your deeper Self.
When you go to your deeper Self, the energies you draw from there naturally make your thoughts more powerful and positive. By having more powerful and positive thoughts, you can become a master of the world—not only of this world but of the Universe.
The most beautiful part is that the deeper you draw from within, your desires will become unselfish. They will become selfless desires. You are not only adding happiness and joy to yourselves but also to the environment and others because you become selfless. Our main problem in life is this non-selflessness. We are always too centred upon the self, the little self, the small self, instead of the big Self, which we are.
… Gururaj Ananda Yogi: Satsang US 83 – 110
