Baba always spoke of not hurting a human heart. This was and is the crucial guide by which to assess our motivations and actions. True sādhana bruises the ego, but it never injures the heart. If you are hurting someone’s heart, you should question your actions and motives. In the last few weeks I have come to see why Baba …
Really Being Positive….
Calling something what it is is being honest, which is truly being positive. Calling something what it is is not negative. What is really negative is not calling something what it is; it is calling something what it is not. So if I am practicing, then I am truly honest with myself. I can choose. I can see what is …
The Way Not To Be….
In the ashram, people tended not to like me. My presence has always had a strange ability to bring out whatever is inside of people. Depending on where they are internally, being around me will bring out the worst or the best. Many times Baba would direct me to walk into some office of the ashram, and shortly thereafter something …
Love or Its Counterfeit….
Love is so much better than power. When we Love, we are at the Source, expressing the Source. Nothing is watered down, nothing is minimized, everything is. Real Love is the essential nature of everything; it is the untainted manifestation of God. Power is shrunken and twisted Love. When we pursue power, we believe we have strength with authority. We …
Guest Blog by Ian Ralby: On Guest Blogging ….
This is the fourth time I have had the opportunity to guest blog. In reflecting on the last three, I realized that I got something out of the exercise that transcended just “sharing” my own experience. Writing these blogs has forced me to practice at a deeper level. In the process of articulating my internal practice for others, I have …
Guest Blog by Ian Ralby: Nirbīja Sādhana….
I have always known, conceptually at least, that spiritual practice has to be a constant and consistent endeavor. Rohini has said it thousands of times: to make any progress, you have to practice no matter what you are doing, whether teaching a class, riding a bike or cleaning a toilet. But somehow I am only just now discovering that I …
Liberation….
Liberation is utterly different from what most people imagine it to be. Baba always made clear that liberation is not for the individual. He always stressed that the individual cannot be liberated, and that the only way to liberation is to give up our attachment to and wrong identification with any separate identity. I specifically went to Baba because that …
Climbing the False Mountain….
Self-esteem is nothing more than the small self’s opinion of itself. It is a tale told by an idiot. Any education that prioritizes self-esteem is a course in unreality; it leads the student on a needless journey across an imaginary landscape of illusory meadows and false mountains. When we fixate on self-esteem, we fall prey to the delusion that accomplishment …
We Are Always Choosing….
We are always choosing. And by thinking we are not choosing, we are in fact choosing—choosing God or not, Love or not. By our very distractedness we are choosing. And if we occasionally think we choose God, we are fooling ourselves, just as when we exercise for ten minutes very intensely once a week, we can fool ourselves that we …
Patience.…
Baba was incredibly patient. Over and over again he addressed an issue from every possible angle for the sake of the disciple. He was always changing and adjusting his approach, so that the student could grasp what he needed to understand. By his very being Baba modeled that patience is not putting up with what should not be tolerated. For …