As Is The Feeling,
So Is The Result.
Generations of parents and teachers taught children and young people to rely on others. Few were taught, properly, to rely on their own self, who is the same self as every other self, and that divine. Generations of parents and teachers taught collectivism, communism, not self-confidence. Now when the foundations shake — and they always are shaking, sometimes more unmistakably than others — the mis-taught are in a panic, understandably, because the others they were taught to rely on, including family, are themselves looking for someone, something, to rely on. Only the properly taught will survive this crisis with honor, sanity, and prestige intact. Only the self-confident survive a serious shaking of the foundations.
Here on earth [here with others] have we no abiding resting place.
The sense of panic can be made to subside and even disappear with a deep dive and a claim of belonging to The Interior Castle (aka The Mansions), to use Teresa’s metaphor for self-awareness of every self’s right to be God’s. The foundations must shake, now less, now more, in order that the righteous be protected and evil doers be punished. Only God knows who they are, but a reliable sign of the former is their inner calm and spread of the same to those around them.
If there were lawyers jumping the border to do wills for $50 cash each, we’d have two fences with a kill zone in between.
Selfless action is the ideal to be aimed at. But now, everything is measured by the result, the gain that accrues. If you fan a person out of love, when you stop, the person cannot blame you, but when the paid servant stops, the master takes him to task. In the first case, the act is done without selfish desire (in the nishkama way); there is no aim to seek gain. The desire for gain is like the poisonous fangs; when they are pulled out, the snake of karma is rendered harmless. The correct discipline to acquire the desireless (nishkama) attitude is dedication, and that is possible only when you have intense faith in God. That faith becomes steady through spiritual effort. Now, spiritual effort is like the snacks one eats; the main dishes are all of the world, from the world. However, the spiritual must be the major portion of the food.
- Sathya Sai Baba – Divine Discourse, September 15, 1963 / Daily Email, Sai Inspires: Subscription
Βασιλεία του Θεού