The only thing I really teach and talk about is Love. I may go to Love from this angle or that angle, but the truth is I only am talking about Love. One could say my profession is that of an internal sanitation engineer: I remove garbage, facilitate the removal of garbage, and encourage everyone to take out their garbage …
Emotional Maturity….
Baba used to say we have to have a strong mind and ego to get rid of the mind and ego. Watching many people over many years, I have found that he was so right. People with undisciplined minds could not last around Baba; they were unwilling and had made themselves unable to do the hard exercise of practice. Sādhana …
Guest Blog by Stacey Lambrow: Finding My Life….
If I had chosen to live my idea of a normal life I would be uneducated, unemployed, and entirely dependent on a man who hates me. I would be living a miserable life. Since I chose to listen to, and learn from, Rohini, I have a great career working for one of the world’s leading rare book, manuscript, and 19th-century …
Becoming Human….
Are you a sinner? No. Is your proxy a sinner? Yes. Being truly normal is being truly human. We are made in God’s image, and we should act it. Stop thinking of God as a selfish being. We believe that, since we are made in God’s image and we are selfish, then God is, too. But to act as God …
True Normal….
There is a difference between conventional and normal. Most people, when they hear the word “conventional”, tend to think in terms of other people and see particular situations, groups, cultures, or religions. The word “normal” tends to encompass a larger, vaguer area, and people tend to think of it as applying universally. Many times we conflate the two words, and …
Guest Blog by Ian Ralby: The Choice To Practice….
At the conclusion of the course on “A Spiritual Survival Kit” (see here), I asked for the chance to guest blog in order to share some reflections. Having grown up with my mother as both my mom and my teacher, I have witnessed her teaching and her students’ development from a fairly unique vantage point. I vividly remember when she …
Shakti and Wisdom….
Everybody loves energy. It is everywhere, and manifests in countless ways. Without energy, there is no life. In my tradition, the term for energy is shakti; the shakti is God’s power of manifestation. Spiritual energy is latent, asleep, in each of us. And the term for that spiritual energy is kundalinī-shakti. In order to return home to who we really …
Imagination Isn’t Practice….
Sit in the room and be realized. Do not offend anyone or make anyone uncomfortable. Then leave and resume your ordinary habits. Is this what you think sādhana is? Around Baba, there were people who did just sit around and then go home. Their discomfort came from their fellow ashramites, so their interactions and relationships looked very much like the …
Removing a Shell….
The six-year-old girl looked intently at her image in the mirror. She saw an old Chinese man with high cheek bones, grey hair knotted on the top of his head, sharply slanted eyes, and a long thin beard. His expression was serious, his eyes intense. “I’m in the wrong body,” she thought. “How did I get here?” This old Chinese …
Recovering Our Agency….
“The world is a mess. We are a mess. This is just the way it is. There is nothing we can do. It hurts, but there is nothing that can be done”. All of these are normal statements and concerns expressed everywhere, by all sorts of people. Yet for most of us, “concern” will be as far as we go. …