Engaged in Service

Many social workers visit hospitals to do service. Most of the work done, like fanning patients, writing letters for them and singing bhajans, appears mechanical. It is done as that is what is defined as service and done without paying heed to what the patient really needs! That is incorrect.

Service must be done with the full cooperation of the mind, gladly, intelligently, and reverentially. The patient should not feel disgusted at the fussiness of the social worker, but indeed look forward to their arrival, as that of someone near and dear!

If you do not like one type of service, do not engage in it. Do not burden your mind by the unpleasantness of a task. Work done mechanically is like the flame of an oil-less wick. Your mental enthusiasm is the oil, pour it and the lamp will burn clear and long.

Baba (thought for the day)

 

Tonight I awoke and stirred a soup and it didn't look good. And it is kind of funny, because he tells that the patient should not feel disgusted at the fussiness of the social worker, but indeed look forward to their arrival as someone near and dear.

And I felt disgusted by that soup.

That is the engagement.
And I usually don't like to be in groups and I feel that the task is rather unpleasant if there are lots of people.

 

Do good, be good, see good, that is the way to God. (Baba)

 

Seeing good has to be permanent based on truth.

Yesterday it was about a house in the dream. 
And I said, great let's build a house and that house was out of wood and too small and open on one side and I fell over the edge, there were too many people in that small wooden house and they sat on their places as members in rows and I was just hanging on, it was very uncomfortable. 
I was one of the first ones in the house, but it was open end and I was pushed over the edge.
I feel like that patient, but I am disgusted of that house and the expectation of those people sitting in rows not moving one inch away to make room for others. I don't think I find a place in those rows and in that house, it is too small, I am just hanging on.

And about the soup, there was too much ugly stuff in it and it didn't look like it will turn out good. The ingredients were not okay.

If we go in a hospital and we take care of a patient and ask that this patient is healthy first to see only good, we will not be a good social worker, because in a hospital we are confronted with the sickness of body and mind and we should do service gladly?  

 

Service must be done with the full cooperation of the mind, gladly, intelligently, and reverentially. The patient should not feel disgusted at the fussiness of the social worker, but indeed look forward to their arrival, as that of someone near and dear!

 

In Baba's presence we had the feeling that there was someone who was always near and dear to us. And that is also my way at work if I am focused on his words, it is not mechanical. But if I would focus only on that work, the mind would get tired and enervated, because it would be mechanical. I feel usually okay and joyful at work, but that is only possible because I keep the focus, if I would not keep the focus, I would get bored by that same work.

 

Work done mechanically is like the flame of an oil-less wick. Your mental enthusiasm is the oil, pour it and the lamp will burn clear and long.

 

But my work is not social work, it is just work.

My sister was a social worker and she stopped doing it and she went into shiatsu, because she felt overwhelmed by the task.

It was rather arduous, 'too many patients' for one person. She was not able to do a good job for one person only and focus on one patient, because of the job. She had to take care of all of them, they don't have money for quality, but quantity. There was not enough room and space to take care that she felt okay too. It was exhausting and a constant challenge. And I guess if you have a full day job like that, you are burnout and not able to do that type of additional service, it is just not possible. 

We were teaching meditation, it was an around the clock job. Lectures Wendsday, Thursday center evening, Friday second lecture, Saturday initiations, Sunday checking, Monday checking, Tuesday checking and the week began the same again, Wendsday lectures.

But in the 80th we didn't have as many initiations anymore and it got less, but I liked it in the beginning and I always worked part time at the side of it. That was dedication.

I was in a relationship with the national leader and it didn't end well. Yogis are our friends and that means, do good, be good, see good, but it didn't take a long time the inner view changed and it was still sunshine environment, but the air broke in pieces. It went by nearly unnoticed on the sunshine background and blue sky, it still looked sunny, but I guess it said that there would be nothing left but a heap of shards. 

It felt like a bad dream, when they all felt like enemies or when I noticed that I felt exposed to the leader. It was conditioned by the teaching. We didn't look at it as truth and reality, but only stress and forgot about it again. I noticed there were many things I didn't inquire about, it felt like stress only, because everything was stress with that meditation technique.

It felt a bit more alarming when they appeared like puppets on a string and the hand was not there holding them. That means the master was not present.

But afterwards I went back to the center and there was a black hole in meditation. That was alarming and now it was not okay, but I had no idea what it was. In the mean time I know that a black hole is about lost trust.

It was already gone too far at that point. There was the fear to get sick and to lose the mind or to die of tiredness. In that moment I got aware that it was a problem and not no problem and no question about invincible as they had said.

That is when I got inside in touch with Baba. I took some vibuthi, holy ash to feel better and there was divinity in the heart. But still the seeing good went on and I thought maybe the master would help and I went with the leader to see the yogi.

That was a catastrophe, because above his head was 'criminal'.

If our insight is breaking in pieces, it means it is our insight, even if it was caused by the leader and I had to face the consequences, anyhow it was not the right path.

But who would like that? 

For once friendship and gone. The feeling still there, the friend no friend, the yogi no present master, the technique no right path.

And I went on seeing 'good' until I was in the interview room and Baba said, how do you feel and I said good Swami, and he said that is not true. I had to face truth and not only see good.

After that 'engagment' in center work and teaching meditation around the clock, I felt uprooted and was as long as I could in Baba's presence, usually a half a year. I didn't want to go back to face the result of that disaster in my country.

It felt like everything gone what had been my life before. It felt like alienated. And I was afraid of it.

Only after I came back from the US I went to face the leader. He was still the leader at that time. It had turned into a nightmare and I tried to look at it.

It overshadowed also the time with Baba. It was too heavy, it felt like impossible to be understood and not able to integrate it.

After Baba left the body he asked how it looked now and only afterwards it really began to make sense.

I don't know what the hell I had to do there. Seeing the truth is one thing, but being able to go through hell is another thing.

I wanted to get aware of the observer, I never thought of hell.

And the catastrophe was above my father's head already when that story with that leader began.   

Being able to see truth and to see good, I guess that is an art and Baba was able to do that, but when we do it, it ends in a catastrophe.

If there is love, we are able to see good, even if we think it is not good. But it is not that type of love. When the catastrophe was in the air, we were not even afraid of it, only seeing good, trusting in that appearance of meditate and all problems will be solved.

It was time and life wasted, the years gone and all that for an experience of hell. It is kind of unbelivable that this has happened.
Is that the truth I wanted to face?

For that I didn't need to go on a path of reality and talk to people about enlightenment.
That was a farce and the opposite of what we talked about. It had nothing to do with safety, nothing with enlightenment, nothing with reality and truth, but everything with 'crime' and wasted time. 
And that happened with the leader, it was a catastrophe.
I had worked for free for a criminal, the input was good, the outcome a catastrophe and that behind the image of yoga, enlightenment and yogis are our friends ...
That leader was a criminal, that is why the yogi was also one, finally. 
The good thing about it was, I was out of it in a few years, the others are still in it.