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.

If we see ourselves as instrument, we have to clean the instrument that is something we have to do. If we don’t give up attachment to the world and the body, we get nowhere. If we have one foot in one boat and the other foot in a different boat, we fall into the water.

He reminds us that even if we have been spiritual aspirants for more than twenty years, if in focus are our physical needs and our comforts and not meditation and spiritual progress, then all the years of practice are of no value and are in vain, there has been no progress.

The waving of the camphor flame (Arti) at the end of Bhajan session is to remind us that our sensual craving must be burnt away without leaving any trace behind.

You must offer yourself completely to God to be merged in His Glory.

How to get there?

I began to observe and focused on the higher self. It had to be there, but it was no more felt, it was gone. Where could it go and why was it not there anymore? When I went for a visit home the reflection was emptiness and frustration. Years before in waiting and writing my dairy one day it was in the air – ‘self-realization’ and there was a relationship with a neighbour son. We went for walks together, but it was somehow open. I thought he was a friend, but that was the guy who turned later on into the opposite together with his wife, who was from the same place.

The feeling of self-realization came up during that time. Later I couldn’t relate to it anymore, I didn’t see it anymore. It seemed it had to do with ‘friendship’, it was in that ‘Yogis are our friends’. But friendship didn’t hold, it turned into the opposite and was later reflected as naive and dangerous.

During the time in the Ashram in India I left to Singapore and had to get a new visa and he was in my dream and spoke about marriage. And coming back I met my ex and he also spoke about marriage and that felt not like hazard, it was like a replacement. To make sure I did from my side the best I could, I went back before going to New York and contacted the neighbour. He refused to talk, said that he found that not right, no mention about taking care of it. I thought it was all what was needed in that situation and I went afterwards to New York and we got married. But even in that sense this guy was responsible, because he didn’t care to look at it. Years later it was reflected in the dream as ‘manipulation only’, that somehow arranged him and he had no interest in taking care of it.

I didn’t understand that, whatever it was, it had to do with hidden past stuff, with my father, his wife and marriage, with the village consciousness and probably it made it more interesting as he was living always at the same place and same road!

When it reflected inside that he had understood and his responsibility came up, I felt relieved. But on the outside there was no immediate change, it was too far gone. He had his life and life style based on that, a few months later we got news that he died during grass mowing.

Nobody had expected it, he was young. Like that it ended. But it had overshadowed life and it seemed for years impossible to end it. There were the ridiculous comments from family side constantly making fun of it, seemed kind of a never ending issue of harassment.

He was successful in his manipulation, he disturbed the family on about all levels. It was dangerous and probably in that sense naive to ignore it. It destroyed the family. I was into non-violence, but if I would have gone into the opposite, as there was no way out and such a resistance and it went into my private realm, they went over the border and lived practically on the parking lot of my family. I don’t know what it would have needed to get him out of way. I avoided to even think of it.

But it was also a sign that my family ignored it and he could do it. He could put up his tents in front of our door and they thought it was just funny… and ever ignored, how it felt to me. They used the opportunity to make fun of it. He gave them an reason that they could get into abuse and they seemed to just have waited for that and went for it.

That was my first touch with self-realization which had turned into the opposite, self-destruction. My relationship to him was gone, I couldn’t find it anymore. I didn’t even remember how he had looked. The guy in front of the door was a stranger. The manipulation disturbed everything. He was not the one, I had thought he was.

In that light I couldn’t see myself anymore and what had happened, and in the disturbed light of my family I lost even my childhood memories. He destroyed my living place. I grew up there, but with that manipulation going on I couldn’t remember anymore how it had been being a child there, my childhood was like hidden in a fog and when I tried to mention it, they just laughed about it and made fun of it.

In the ashram reflected that I had seen him as cancer and he was a scorpion. I saw him differently than he really was. He turned out to be dangerous and I lived in that spirit and feeling of the mother who saw no danger and wanted to see everything only as good.

As it turned out differently and not good, I was to be blamed and nobody else, while she was holding on at her way of seeing it. I should not and everything would be okay, she didn’t allow her world to be disturbed and that made it even more dangerous, because she avoided to see the reality of it. It was upside down.

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.

Even if we have been for 25 years or longer a spiritual aspirant, as long there is anything else, the higher self cannot be there. Only when we are able to let go, the reflection of it can be experienced as the observer. 

Our relative existence is a lesson, only if we go beyond the lesson, we can get aware of the master behind and the one who is learning the lesson, otherwise, if we stay caught in the game, it is not possible to go beyond it. That is natural law and has to do with the realization that our higher self is ‘that’, it goes beyond the mind and the body and it is never changing and always true.