not the outfit not the religion not the ritual All was the Self of All not the education not the money not the pedigree All was the Self of All not the institution not SYDA not something else All was the Self of All not someone else not the things not the place All was the Self of All Swami …
Our Real Story Saves Us….
Every moment of our lives is about having character and integrity; being truthful, honest. Being with our experience, whatever it is, means being honest with and about our experience, through and through. When we are honest about our experience, that constant honesty frees us. If we are honest about our stories, we can learn the right lessons from them. But …
Gossip….
Do you know the difference between gossip and history? Do you know the difference between gossip and an entertaining story? Do you know the difference between gossip and a teaching story? Gossip actually derives from the Old English godsibb (“god-kin”): a word for someone with whom you are linked through sponsorship at a baptism. Over the centuries, it gradually evolved …
Seamless Always….
There are certain questions we need to ask ourselves constantly: Do I have public and private faces? Do different people get different versions of me? Can I be good without someone else being bad? Is how I act in line with what I profess? Am I seamless? In order to be seamless, we have to have good boundaries. This seems …
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 …
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 …
My Apparently Useless Gift….
When I owned my school of Tai Chi Chuan in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I had a lot of energy. People would feel it and even I would be overwhelmed by it, yet I had no wisdom. People thought I was something more than I was because they were entranced with the energy and identified me with it. The energy knew things; …
Living Sādhana….
You can’t think your sādhana. And yet that is exactly what so many people do. They think good thoughts and believe that is sādhana. They wear “pure” clothes and eat “pure” food and act “purely”. They “believe” they are doing everything to succeed in sādhana. They are in fact going about it all wrong because they are approaching practice as …
Seamless….
What you see is what you get. When we are clear, what you see is what you get. There is nothing to hide and nothing to reveal. We are. We no longer hide from ourselves or others. Usually we present our best foot when meeting with people socially, professionally or even in the privacy of our families. This means that …