Live happily in the Present

We either think of the past or the future and ruin the present. Past is past, forget it. The past which is dead and gone, is useless. Work for your progress by living in the present, and in the moment. Future does not always bring happiness. And so far as the past is concerned, how much happiness have you experienced in it? Therefore, live happily in the present. What should we do in the present? Follow this maxim: Less luggage more comfort makes travel a pleasure. We should not worry about the past at all. Thinking about the past will not do any good to us. Therefore we should lead our life in the present and achieve all-round progress.

Baba (thought for the day)

This is kind of challenging to me, because Baba said to us in the interview room, follow the master, fight to the end, finish the game and by following the inner master a lot of past stuff is usually coming up, but it doesn't mean living in the past.

In trying to understand the insights in the light of the past experience and whatever comes up, comes up. Usually I do not think about it if it is past or not, I just think about understanding the insights.

Baba was in a dream and there were two Babas, one as the insight and the other one as the next step.

If we want to get to the right conclusion, we have to listen and to think it over and to absorb. But it doesn't mean living in the past. It is ruminated until we see it in the right light and it is not a matter of how long it takes or about past, it is more a question about getting the right answer and that is of course now and in the present.

Baba always said when it was about interview, one day we will get inner view and at that time we didn't know what it meant, what a personal interview in the inner view was like. In the meantime I am familiar with insights and inner view.

Baba also said he is the man who is in our dreams to awake us.

The first really great personal interview in meditation was during the first birthday celebration I had spent in Baba's presence.

We were happy that it was his birthday and therefore, went into meditation and there he was during meditation. He opened the door, he was dressed in white and there was a beautiful golden light.

 

He asked me a kind of strange question, he asked, why I was that old and not yet married. It felt like shame, because he said that old. But he was right, because there was a problem of age and a cause for inner anxiety, because I had been in a relationship before and after we went to Baba it didn't work anymore and we had to face it, we had just wasted years with that guy to finally start new again after we went to Baba and if I wanted to become a mother I had to hurry up, because the internal clock was ticking. And it always takes time to get in a new relationship, but in the ashram that was hardly possible.

That was my first inner personal interview, because he opened in that meditation interview the door and let me in the interview room and there was a golden light.

It was a very beautiful inner interview; it felt great, because of that golden light. It felt also good that I didn't have to worry about time and that he would take care. At that time I was focused on him and not on marriage.

We are in the West not used to arrange marriages as it is the custom still in India, therefore, I didn't know if it was about an arranged marriage or if it was a spiritual purpose and I thought in time we will know.

 

Inner views, it is not a dream only, but it happens in the dream or in meditation or sometimes even in the waking state, it can be like a vision standing in the air and I got used to it during Baba Darshan, if something was on my mind, the answer came like that. Once I was thinking about 'illusion' and how to understand it and in that moment I had forgotten that I had seen years ago when my father was talking about building a house in Spain, that there had been illusion big in the air above his head in black letters – illusion. It didn't feel great and I didn't know what to do about it, it didn't feel very good and even less that it was not possible to talk about it. I tried to approach it in different ways and it was all the same, it was no possible and finally I had to give up and I thought that we had to go through the experience.  

Thinking about illusion sitting in Baba's Darshan that was just what came up, even if in that very moment above the head of Baba, he was walking back to the mandir, and he had turned his back to us, it was above his back in the air in big black letters – I am real. So my conclusion was, that must be better, but I didn't know in what sense better.

I just tried to hold on to him rather than to the illusion, whatever that means. In doing it we realize that we do not get to the right conclusion just like that and that it needs more listening and thinking it over to be able to absorb.

A guru has the task to get us to a right conclusion, but in that moment it was just about love and experiencing that amazing love in Baba's presence, it expanded and filled the whole universe and that was a feeling, it was not just a thought.

Did you ever get aware that something fills the whole universe? That were the type of experiences we could get in his presence, that something expanded and filled the whole universe.   

And I asked myself, what is the universe and how did I get there to feel that?

But once I was standing at the side of a tree and the roots went deep in the soil and with the roots it reached a pond and I took a header into the water and was in the ocean, there was nothing but silence, above, below and all around and I got scared and called for Baba and that got me out of that inner view.

That was not a feeling of the universe, but of eternal silence all around, nothing existed but silence.

I met a devotee and he thought that I was the wife Baba gave him, because he wanted a wife and he had asked Baba for a wife and a career.

I had been in an interview and I had to translate for another devotee, she was French and didn't understand the English enough, but the strange thing was that Baba asked her who that girl was and he talked about me and he asked to whom I belonged and what our relationship was.

I was the translator and I happened just to be in the same group. We went after that interview to the mountains and at that time I disliked it to go back to my country, because my parent's had left for Spain, that was probably part of that illusion I had seen in the air, they were not anymore in my country and therefore, there was nobody anymore coming back.

So when my father said he would build a beautiful house in Spain, the illusion in the air said that it would not be a new home, because coming back there was nothing anymore, they were gone and they lived alone somewhere far away, we saw them when coming back from India, but we had to go to Spain to see them and afterwards I came back in my country and worked some time and left again for India and that made me feel uprooted, most of time I was in India.

I went ahead with that devotee who was from New York and I hoped he would be right, but when we got into troubles, there was not place I could go back to.

It was in every way possible an illusion when he said he would build the most beautiful house in Spain, because it didn't serve the family. We had to go to Spain to even see them and I was with the baby in India and had no place to go when we had problems. 

It was very difficult to come back and as it got only worse with my ex, he had a dream and in that dream Baba told him that I had to go and make peace with Baba.

He abused the dream, it was for him not a Baba call, in his sight it was ridiculous if someone had to go and make peace with Baba.

That was a shocking insight to see such a mind of a so called husband.

We went to India in the ashram and only after seeing Baba it was clear that we shouldn't go back to him and we had to fly back to Spain and spent months with the parents, what was not that easy, before we could go back in our country.

We got a flat from a devotee. He went for a half a year to Australia. It was very complicated to come back. And Baba was in my dream and said, but only brother.

That guy had told me that he had two flats, and I thought I had time to look for an apartment for us. I wrote him about the Baba dream and he corrected it that the second one was no more, so what did he expect us to live together?

He didn't like it at all that I had that Baba dream, it was a warning and he began to get real strange and we had to look forward fast to find our own place.

We were lucky that we got an apartment just at the side of the school, my daughter didn't have to walk even over the street, it was just a field in between our house and her school and the daycare was also just at the side of the school. For the beginning it was just great.

So we felt taken care of by Baba, because everything was arranged easy, when it was in reality real difficult to come back, because my parents walked around with their huge dog, a greyhound and looked after their garden and nice house and nice view in Spain, but as family they had lost their function, they were not there anymore.

It was after all not easy coming back here.

There had been that illusion in the air, when the father said; he would build a beautiful house in Spain. The house is gone, it was sold ten years ago and there is nothing left. It was just uprooting and they were also not happy finally, too alone and away from everything in Spain. Nobody lives from sunshine and beautiful ocean-view alone.  

And since we are here, we are more or less alone.

The family is difficult and there was nobody we could use for anything and it was not possible for me to work full time with no support of the family.

The family is troublemakers, lots of critics, finding faults or even mobbing, it was kind of out of hand, no family we can count on or trust, it was in any way hard to get aware of it. We came back here with the help of a devotee, because with the family it would not have been possible.

That was the 'illusion' in the air when my father said he would build a beautiful house in Spain, a house that was just for holidays, but no home.

The house alone doesn't count; we have to make it a home.

We came here with no help of the family.

Baba said that we were let down by the family. That was actually already a reason I went ahead with the devotee from New York, because his family seemed caring and I hoped to get a new family with him, but that was also an illusion, he is not only not caring, he was just taking advantage of it.

As it had already before been difficult with family, always troubles, I had enough of it. But since we are here, we have to even avoid the contact.

It is that difficult, we have to be careful about every word we tell and it is not possible to just be as we are, without the kind of feedback we do not care about. Everything seems wrong.

It is not funny, that is why I always tried to go away from them.

I read not long ago that enemies attract each other and that it is possible to be born being enemies in the same family.

That could be very well the case in my family. Once in the inner view the father was present as Nazi and the family in the concentration camp. That was the reflection during the inner child work, it didn't feel good.

Now I get along if there is something, but otherwise, we do better not expect anything. In the inner view it was all dark and black, the level of brother went into abuse and the inner master said that he is not interested in my message.

I had years ago initiated him in TM mediation, so therefore, it was still an issue. It created for a short time a different feeling, but it was only a short time and that is now the outcome. It is not anymore the time when I came back from Paris and all began with TM, it has changed. And the brother in the US is going down the escalator again and again, letting us down I guess. That is how we get aware of the insights in time in telling the story.

We either think of the past or the future and ruin the present. Past is past, forget it. The past which is dead and gone, is useless. Work for your progress by living in the present, and in the moment. Future does not always bring happiness. And so far as the past is concerned, how much happiness have you experienced in it?

Past and future are mind and Atman is in the present.

If we live happily in the present, we do not project our mind issues in the future. It is not the same if we follow insights and the inner master; it has nothing to do with the past, but with self-realization and being able to feel it.

It is about learning the lesson and life is the best teacher. We cannot just ignore the past and even traumatic experience and think, I live in the present and the past is gone, that is living in denial.

This seems often wrong understood, because in following the inner master it needs lots of work to understand the insights right and only when we feel it and we go through it we get a feeling for it.

If someone tells us, we are just going to repeat it, but it will not be understood if we have not made the experience. It cannot be conscious integrated awareness, if we are not able to feel it.

With my ex it was finally in the inner seeing as ruin, he was wearing a red woman skirt and a black fur jacket and he said: That is all I could get in garage sales. He always wanted to go to garage sales only and I got tired of it. In the beginning it felt like fun, but in time it changed, probably he projected whatever he did work etc. in the future and only after we had left, he went to his sister's house and it took him again four years of college to finally change once more his profession and direction and finally he is in the library now and found a job.

He was a big baby; he expected my family, who already was letting me down before, to take care of all of us, no use to tell him, he didn't hear it. He had a mind of stone.  With my family it was certainly not possible.

In writing about it there is always a certain moment, we do understand it. The picture of the ruin I still don't understand yet.

Could be it has been ruined because he lived in the future or in the past, I don't know, because I didn't live in the future or the past, but it was difficult to get anything out of him, he said strange things like, when he did something wrong, he asked me what I had done etc. It never made sense to me what he did, in time Baba was in my dream as vampire and with a long nose, but I had no idea why he looked like that.

I just tried to do my best and I had to take care of a small child and that kept me busy. I don't remember that we talked about the future or the past, I just remember that when I told him to go to college, if he couldn't find anything, he still had a back door open, but he didn't tell me, he probably still hoped he would get it from me or my family.

He wanted me to go and sell earplugs with a neighbor and he planned to sit at home and write his financial newsletter, he never made any money with.

I worked with children and Montessori and he as well, but somehow that didn't work out also.

When Baba left the body, he said that he was just taking advantage of it. Only after we didn't go back to him, he went to his sister's place. She told him he should come to her place after his mother had died. In no time he went there, already a month later he was in New York and now he began again to study. It seems he understood that he couldn't go on projecting it on us or in the future and ruining our life by that.

With the time talking had become useless.

Whatever he said, it went nowhere or resulted in abusing me and my family because we didn't take care of him or insulting me because I didn't do it or whatever that was, I never understood his state of mind really. It was kind of incredible that I had met that guy with Baba.

Baba tells, that he doesn't give mantras, the mantra we should think is, 'I am God, I am God, I am not different from God. Dust if we think, dust we are. God if we think, God we are. 

He must have been thinking only about dust that the house was in ruin finally, instead of a house what was left was only a ruin, there was not roof, the walls gone and the even the floor had holes only. He sat in our house, like it would be his mother's or sister's house and took just advantage of it instead of doing his duty and take care of his family, he expected us to take care of him and if we were not able to do it, he waited that my parents would do it and there was no use that I told him, that my parents would never do that, he sat there and waited and it felt lethargic and it was like he couldn't move. Nothing worked, because he didn't want to work. Afterwards he went to his sister's house and began to study again and sat there the same way, nothing doing but sitting and waiting and he told us that he would take the path of least effort and he felt that lethargic and not moving, stuck, he expected everybody else to take care of him only, while he was not able to do it. We worked together at Montessori, but I had to draw everything for him and he went on dreaming of his financial newsletter. That was also a dream, because he thought with that newsletter he could work all over the world, if he would have been successful, he thought because his former boss was successful, he could do it as well. No way he could have done it like his former boss; he had not the drive to do it.

Nobody is going to achieve something like that in going the path of least effort and being successful, so all that stuff he said was anyhow only bullshitting us, in reality he took only advantage of it that is how Baba makes it clear in the inner view.

He went on dreaming, talked like he could do it and now after all I know it would never have been possible, so he was just bullshitting us and he just took advantage of it as long as it lasted. He talked like that, even if he didn't make any money with it, he expected me to take care of the money part and go and work for him. And he began to always go to garage sales, so he could get cheap stuff and tell everybody, that he got a Lacoste blouse for a dollar.

That was the type of life we had with my ex and in the shadow of a Sai Baba, who said love only and do your duty and always take care, he was waiting for I don't know what until Baba was in his dream and told him that I had to go to him and make peace with him. After we didn't go back and he couldn't go on anymore taking advantage of it projecting all his problems on us constantly creating troubles only, while he sat there unmovable telling us he needed help and such bullshit …, doing nothing at all, but taking advantage of others. It lasts as long as it lasts…

As long as I was there, he could do it in the name of being a devotee and that Baba gave him a wife, and she should take care of him as long as he was waiting for Baba giving him as well a career. After realizing how disturbed that was, it was in the insight present as amok and seven will be killed and tonight and it happened the same night. I got that upset when I realized how we had been used in the name of Baba and he was going on waiting for the career, it was difficult to get an idea of it ho perverted it really was, it was too bad to even get the idea of it. Baba told him as well in the dream that he will not give. That was the type of person I had met in Sai Baba's presence who said to me that I was just the wife Baba was giving him and that he knew I was the right one, someone, who should be able to take care of all his problems, someone who should be able to take all his stuff he did and whatever he did wrong, someone present for him, so he didn't have to take care of it. The result was a ruin, he was dressed in woman cloth what also tells that he was not a man, but he behaved like a woman and instead of acting, he was waiting that others took care of him. If I look at it a spiritual way, we can see it as dust. Think dust and you will be dust.

We either think of the past or the future and ruin the present.

It didn't work, the question is why?

If I see it in the light of the words of Baba in this thought for the day, it feels like this guy was expecting the future to take care of him. It was lethargic and dull and he didn't act in the moment, but was looking for some kind of strange solution somewhere with Baba or my family somewhere not planned in the future or I don't know where, he could probably go on like that still for a long time.

It was impossible to talk with him on a normal basis, actually, he felt sometimes totally nuts and as I got into that trap with Sai Baba, I began to tell, because I was afraid that someone would get hurt or killed, if I would get mad, because he drove me nuts and I was in Oregon and the family war far away, while I was afraid if I would begin to shout around someone would get killed, I began to tell …, with Baba it happened, Baba will find a way.

With that dream that we had to go and make peace with Baba, ex could blame and abuse, insult and find faults, and feel good about his own perverted thoughts, we let him go on as much as he liked, we didn't say a word anymore. He only found faults and not once it came to his mind that it could be a Baba dream and that therefore, we should look at Baba dreams another way. He went with full speed ahead, when he was once in the mood of it he was not to stop anymore and he could go on and on like that as it seems forever.

Usually, if it happened with Baba or if it was about a Baba dream, people see it as the highest or they see his divinity in it and admire it.

But he didn't see a miracle, for him it was just a means that he could go on blaming others for his own sick and perverted mind and I didn't say a word anymore, I let him talk and listened and wondered, how I got in such a situation.

It was the end of it, we never went back. I saw him seven years later, we were at the same time for ten days only in the ashram when he usually went there, we went, but because of school, daughter had to change school and the divorce agreement I had with me, that was how Baba took care.

He said in my dream that we had to get a divorce, because we were not listening. That is how that question about listening came up. It was in Baba's presence that he was probably able to realize that it had been Baba after all and he signed.

We would not be divorced still today, that is sure.

But as he lived so far away over the ocean and in New York, we didn't feel it that much, we just felt that it was not done and not finished. Seven long years, in that time I wrote him often angry emails and he ignored it …

That was the relationship that began in the ashram under the pretext that it was Baba. He said he knew that Baba was giving him a new wife and I went ahead, but I was never sure about it. It meant in his head someone he could take advantage of, someone, a wife, at his disposition, he could ask about everything to make him feel better, I should have solved all his problems and he had to give nothing back in return. That is not exactly the type of experience we would like to have.

Dust we think, dust we are.

We either think of the past or the future and ruin the present.

In that light he put the solution in the future, instead of taking care of it in the moment and in the end was nothing left but a ruin, dressed in ridiculous woman cloths as a man and telling, that is all I could get in garage sales. The picture is the woman who wanted to be taken care of. He was no man. And Baba was just there to fulfill his expectations and desires and the real teaching about duty and ceiling on desires, he had no idea about it, he just turned it around as it pleased his mind.  

We cannot live happily in the present alone.

It was not possible to change or influence that state of mind.

For me thinking about it in the light of Baba words help to get over the pain and the frustration. I went already a few times through all those emotions coming up and it is a lot of negative energy in it.

I also would rather like to talk about Baba miracles, like others. But if there has been a miracle in it or if we want to see it as a miracle, we have to look at the way how we got out of it. How he said it in his dream, so that my ex went on blaming, abusing, making fun of it and it didn't come to his mind that it was a Baba dream and that it should wake up him finally, it was a wakeup call, he was not present and he was not in peace and it was not possible to ever be in peace with him.

It was his dream, he was that convinced that I had to go and make peace with Baba, projected everything outside of his problems and issues, as he did it all along with everything, he sent us to Baba expecting a changed wife coming back and he never thought about it that it could be all different, that he should change and that was great. We went out of it, without even a fight, just following the dream.

He didn't notice it; it got only clear after we didn't go back.  

It showed us his state of mind, it felt closed and even stoned and paved, in the dream after Baba said, 'no more husband, nothing left but an empty Western shoe, there was a pair of brown, ugly, old worn-out, male shoes.  

It felt like a shock to wake up in such a situation.

It had been based on Baba and was still like present in Baba's presence again, when he signed the divorce agreement, but it was just like a dream, there was somehow no reality in it, he lived a dream. It was a dream only that I was the wife Baba had in store for him and I hoped to get answers that way and got into it always more until we couldn't get out of it anymore, it was like too far gone.

The last months with him felt that ugly, it felt like paved, I was sure he would have rather killed us than letting us go. When I talked about it that it doesn't work that way and that was still in the ashram, that quit and silent and soft spoken guy grabbed an iron pot and hit with it again and again on my head. I thought I would be traumatized from that and never get normal again or he would kill me.

Therefore, I was sure, he would rather kill us than letting go of that dream that I was the wife Baba gave him and the dream of Baba to come to him and make peace with him that was for us the ticket to freedom. Once we were gone, it would have been self-destruction to go back into that situation again.

But that guy is still waiting, silently as he did before, looking at himself as a lovely guy … who has done nothing and a wonderful person.

I get the shivers to just think of it.  

There is a difference between going through our feelings and getting aware of it and living in the past and it is often wrong understood. Because when Baba tells, listen, think it over and absorb, we cannot do it without seeing it in our own life.

He tells us also that life is the best teacher. And he tells us, that Tapas is, first discrimination, therefore, we have living in the past, what is mind or thinking it over in the light of his own words, what is Tapas, spiritual work. First discrimination, second seeing it in our own life and that is not possible without thinking about the past, but it doesn't mean living in the past. And third, we should go on no matter what obstacles are there. If people misunderstand it and think it means not thinking about the past, when he tells us not to live in the past, we do not use right discrimination. Living in the present is Atman, living in the past orientated to the future that is mind only.

Dust if you think, dust you are – that is the past and the future and the mind.

God you think, God you are – that is the present and Atma.

Therefore, live happily in the present. What should we do in the present? Follow this maxim: Less luggage more comfort makes travel a pleasure. We should not worry about the past at all. Thinking about the past will not do any good to us. Therefore we should lead our life in the present and achieve all-round progress.