Development of Wisdom and inner Inquiry

But, there is a practice even superior to meditation.
The ultimate spiritual practice is the development of wisdom.
Wisdom emerges from inner inquiry. It is the spiritual practice of looking deep into the essential nature of everything. If you faithfully pursue this inquiry, you will gradually reach the supreme state of peace and bliss.
This is the unique goal of human life, a goal which all mankind will one day achieve.

Inner Inquiry - the Path of Wisdom
Sai Baba Gita pfd

I guess that is where this leads, I just don't understand what it has to do with a job, but maybe there is nothing to understand and it just has to do with feeling and worries in the mind we have to get aware of it and it is just part of that inner inquiry.

The Three Stages on the Wisdom Path

To reach the state of abiding inner peace, you begin by inquiring into the very heart of everything. This is the process of inner inquiry, the first stage on the wisdom path. Then you must make use of the deep insights you have gained by applying the spiritual teachings to every detail of your daily life. This is the second stage.  

If you continue with this practice unfailingly, then, in time, you will reach the goal of God-realization and enjoy unending bliss. This is the third and final stage on the wisdom path. (Baba Gita)

Equanimity and Joy

True joy comes from equanimity.
Do not be carried away by or attach any importance to worldly things. Use your time and effort to control the vagaries of the mind and develop mental steadiness. Equal-mindedness; means that you remain unaffected by victory or defeat, by profit or loss, by joy or sorrow.

Accept whatever happens, whatever comes your way, as the gift of God, to be enjoyed with great satisfaction, regarding it as a gift of love given to you for your own good. When your heart is not swayed by worldly things, when you treat all people and all things with equal-mindedness, then you will experience true joy.
Then your heart will be filled with feelings of love and satisfaction, and you will know the true joy of devotion.

Baba Gita

 

It feels kind of amazing, it is always about joy. Without joy there is no love. 

Tapas, coordination of Thought, Word and Deed

Your heart is the ceremonial altar; your body is the fire place; your hair is the holy grass, darbha; wishes are the fuel-sticks with which the fire is fed; desire is the ghee that is poured into the fire to make it burst into flame; anger is the sacrificial animal; the fire is the tapas you accomplish. People sometimes interpret tapas as ascetic practices like standing on one leg, and so on. No, tapas is not physical contortion. It is the complete and correct coordination of thought, word and deed.
When all words emanating from you are sweet, your breath becomes Rig Veda. When you restrict what you listen to and prefer only sweet speech, all that you hear becomes Saama gaana.
When you do only sweet deeds, all that you do is Yajur homa. Thus, you will be performing every day the Vedhapurusha Yajna, the yajna which propitiates the Supreme Vedic Being.
Baba (thought for the day)

To integrate holiness in our daily life is a skill. I don’t feel like skilled at all. It began when I was twenty being focused on the higher self and my life is conditioned by it. It means whatever I can do to get more freedom I have to do, because it feels heavy.

Water and Soap to Clean the Heart

Cleanse the heart with the water of love and the detergents of prayer and contrition, so that the stains of desire will be removed. Then God will pour His Grace into it. If you yearn for God, you should give up attachment to the external world and to the body (Loka bhranthi and Deha bhranthi). There is no use trying to put one foot in one boat and another in a different boat.

You may have been a spiritual aspirant for 20 or 25 years, but if you worry more about physical needs and comforts than meditation and spiritual progress, then the years of practice is of no value, as there has been no progress. The waving of the camphor flame (aarti) at the end of the prayer or bhajan session is to remind you that your sensual cravings must be burnt away without leaving any trace behind. You must offer yourself completely to God, to be merged in His Glory.

Baba (thought for the day)

If we see the heart as vessel, we have to take care that it is clean and we put in the water love and in the detergent prayers to remove the stains of desire, then God will pour his Grace into it.

That means we have to clean the heart.

Face the Devil, get aware of the Lesson

The first step in spiritual life is to have compassion.
A person who is kind and loving never needs to go searching for God.
God rushes toward any heart that beats with compassion-it is God's favorite place.
Amma (Mata Amritanandamayi Devi)

 

If we make one step towards God, he rushes towards us. One step and he makes a thousand towards us, but we have to make the first step.  

But if we take the mind for God, we don't make that step and he will not rush towards us and if we live in arrangements with the mind and just think it is love, but it is not, how can that work out?
It is not compassion and not love. If we keep bad habits and do not meditate to establish better habits, he will not rush towards us too.
There is an effort needed, we have to make the first step to know the difference between God and mind and if we don’t do it, we stay deluded in a mind state and it can go on forever.
We think it is God, but it is only the mind. And when it is about fame, we want to convince the other about ego values and are not open to learn.

If it is ego arrangement going on thinking he will give, he will not give, because the step we make is not in direction of God, but in direction of the ego and we don’t get aware of the mistake in our thoughts, we are stupid.

Are You Enlightened?

Man is endowed with the special instrument of discrimination, of judgment, of analysis and synthesis, which among all animals, he alone possesses.

He has to develop this and utilize it to the best purpose. Through this instrument, he can realize the Immanent Divinity.

Upanishad Vahini

It is not difficult, it is easy. If we are the same, isn’t it easy? What do we need to know about being the same?

The insight is not easy. Why not? Because is it not direct seeing on the level of our eyes and sense perception, it is insight in consciousness. Time, effort, work are needed to get to the result of understanding it, meditation, waiting, observing, discrimination.

And can we even understand it?

What is behind that incredible knowledge?

Get rid of Bonds and Karma by Discrimination and Detachment

While entangled in the Five Elements, man is attracted, distracted or disappointed by them; all this causes distress.
Wealth, possessions - vehicles, buildings - all these are transmutations of the elements.
Man craves for them; when he loses them or fails to get them, he spurns them.

Upanishad Vahini

Transmutation of elements of our mind mirrored in our possessions and that is in the Upanishads. With my parent's house I decided to go for the opposite, but I was scared of it. 

Upanishads and Relationship

The Atma is ever pure, ever free from attachment, for there is no second to get attached to.

The Mundakopanishad (III-i) mantra says: Two birds, ever together, with significant and subtle wings, are perched on a tree. (The tree is the body and the twin birds are Jivatma and Paramatma). One bird is engaged in tasting the fruits, (The Jivatma experiences joy and grief from the deeds it engages itself in). The other just watches. (The Paramatma is subtler than the subtlest and is just a Witness). (Baba)

Upanishad Vahini

What is the relationship between those two birds, the Paramatma and the Jivatma, the experiencer and the experience?

The Experiencer has to be Properly Attuned

What is this experienced world?

It is the world of material objects, emotions and thoughts. The scientists, economists and politicians are continuously striving to improve the scheme of things in the external world so that the experienced becomes better and better.

But this is only fifty per cent of the whole situation. We must also take care of the other side, the experiencer.

Even if the total scheme of things in the external world could be made ideal, but the experiencer is not properly attuned, his life will be miserable.

Thus the yogic seers of yore found that unless the experiencer is evolved and properly developed, no happiness can be assured in this world. So they started concentrating on this particular work of evolving and developing the experiencer.

Now who is this experiencer? It is one's own self, the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual components which together make up the total personality of each human being.

Yogamag

That is the answer I was looking for in the past years. It is about the relationship between the experiencer and the experience.