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You yourself, the true divine part of yourself, will save you. What's
required is the admission that you made the problem, or more correctly
that you are the problem, and you are the solution. But you have become
so ensnared with the problem you have no idea how to get out of the web.
Sai Baba says being is lost in becoming, life is wasted in dreaming. That's
our condition. His prescription for finding ourselves is 'Forget the world,
Remember God, Never fear death.' He says, 'Dust if you think, dust you
are. God if you think, God you are. All power is in your mind. As you
will so you are. Think only God and you will realize God.' You are whole,
you are eternal, you are love itself. Even if you don't experience it,
that is what you are.
Don't define yourself by your experience and put your trust in that. The
real test is are you supremely happy? Is the delicious joy of ananda your
consistent experience? Happiness, joy, unbounded delight is your very
nature. If that's not what is happening to you and what you are perceiving
all around you, then recognize that something is very fundamentally wrong.
You've done something in your own mind to turn off your own nature. But
that's ridiculous. It's impossible. How can you not be yourself? You have
all power in your mind. You can make time and space and whole universes,
and fool yourself that you are a mere speck within them. But you do not
have the power to undo what God created. There is a God, and He created
you like Himself, and you have willfully chosen to forget the perfect
wholeness that you are. Recognize you have been mistaken about yourself,
you have been misperceiving everything; you don't have any idea what's
going on. Call for help and ask to be shown. The divinity that is your
core, will always answer and show you the door out and back to your home
with God, which you never left.
If you're in the middle of a devastating life situation, great! Don't
waste your devastation. It's an incredibly opportunity. For heaven's sake,
and I mean that literally, don't pity yourself. Transform that devastation;
take full responsibility for all of it and bring all those dark thoughts
to the light. But, as Yaani said, suffering is not required; you can make
the choice right now to awaken in total joy. Recognize that it is only
your own meaningless thoughts that have made a joyless and meaningless
world for you. Let them go and choose for God instead. Baba says that
the easiest way through life is to say 'thanks' in full gratitude for
everything that has been, and to say 'yes' in total acceptance to everything
that is to come. Then, with the past and future thus fully taken care
of, you are free to be totally in the now, creatively present in the freshness
of every moment. It only takes a little willingness to allow a little
switch to be thrown in the mind that moves you from fear to love, from
attack and grievance to joy and freedom.
Sai Baba tells many stories that illustrate this shift of consciousness.
Here is one of them. Imagine the divinity as a child, the divine child,
alone and whole, totally self-absorbed. Being a child full of joy and
playfulness he entertains himself by imagining that he is entering a room
made up of mirrors. Now, everywhere he looks he sees a reflection of himself.
In his divine imagination he puts a mustache and beard on one of his reflections,
a dress and female features on another of his mirror images, he slightly
warps some of the mirrors in his mind to present a thin image, another
a thick image, another a short image, another a tall image, another a
youthful image, another an older image. And so, in his divine imagination,
he has created more himselves to love and play with.
Of course all these images are merely reflections of himself. There is
only one 'I' and all he sees is but himself. Yet, to make the play more
enjoyable he pretends that all these images are separate beings and that
they relate to each other and to him in infinite ways of expressing their
joy, their love and deep communion with each other. It is an ongoing heavenly
party and the divine child plays every role and enjoys every detail of
this celestial play. O, he likes this game very much! It is a thoroughly
wonderful game of pretend.
The divine child can be compared to the ocean. On the surface of the ocean
there will be found so many different forms each with their own name and
characteristics. There are waves, swells, currents, spray, fog, clouds,
snow, ice, steam, vapor, hail, sleet, hurricanes, typhoons, waterspouts.
In short, there are an infinite variety of forms, but they are all just
made of the one substance, water. All are manifestations of the same ocean,
in which water is the one reality. And so it is in this world, the basis
of all names and forms, the one reality is the one divine light, the one
divine child.
Returning to our story, all games eventually come to an end. When the
divine child is done with this one, he turns around and walks out of his
imagined room of mirrors. All his reflections which had instantly appeared,
now instantly vanish, and the divine child is again absorbed in his native
state of undifferentiated consciousness, what Sai Baba calls CIA, Constant
Integrated Awareness.
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