The Diamond is found amidst Rocks

Never yield to indolence or despair. Suffer loss and grief gladly, for they help to toughen your personality. The diamond is found amidst rocks; you will have to blast through the vein to get gold. Follow the strict regimen that the doctor enforces in order to make the medicine yield the best result. The battery of your ‘car’ is charged when you come to Puttaparthi or when you go to some other holy place. Or at least that should be the aim of the pilgrimage. Charge the battery of your spiritual effort and then, after you return home, do not keep the car idle. If you do, the battery will run down; take the car around and keep it going; then the battery will charge itself. So also, if you do not continue the holy company, the good attitude, bhajans, and remembering God’s Name as part of your life, all this charging will turn into a waste.

We have to accept loss and grief gladly as it toughens our personality, so my attitude was after all not that wrong, the problems was only that I didn’t know why it felt not right in that environment of my parent’s house, something was constantly disturbing and it came up with Swami and the insights and today it is clear why it felt disturbed and it was ignored by the family but the disturbance gone or seen as it should have been, the feeling of it is also different.

Are you ready to accept all that grief and loss gladly?  

I had my coffee on the balcony, the sun is a bit less hot in the meantime and I was thinking of how things change and how I felt years ago in the ashram in Baba's presence, the time before my daughter was borne. 

During the time in my parent's house we were not aware of the environment and the neighborhood we lived in and it was not seen the right way or better my mother wanted us to see it a certain way, her way and therefore, it was a distorted view of it, loaded with guilt and bad feelings and the way my parents handled it, they seemed to ignore it and they just worked hard and afterwards they went to Spain my mother was not even able anymore to go back there and to look at it or to face it.

The feeling of who we are has to do with the environment in which we grew up and it is not only the parent's house. We have been part of that if we wanted or not. 

When that basic picture changes and the feeling for it is not the same as before and the reflection has changed and is not disturbed anymore, we can see it again, but the feelings  are different now and we get aware of things we were not aware of before and that is kind of strange. It is like waking up in my own life, it was just too disturbed to be felt in a proper way. First I have to accept a different environment and not what my mother wanted me to believe how it was and her tortured view of it is kind of difficult to take. 

That is probably why I began to look for truth already as teenager because today looking back I am aware of it what it was not right and why it could not be right. 

It is like she separated our family from the rest and she wanted to see only that, it was like on an island in the ocean, even if we were very much part of the environment, in her mind we lived in her world of flowers and everything was fine and if we said something, no matter what, we got the answer, 'what do you have, there is nothing'. 

After we accept that it is a different experience if we see it the way it really was, by that getting aware of the strange state of mind of hers and why it didn't make sense, now feelings are coming up which have not been there before, and that is kind of shocking, but also good, it has to come up as it was always hidden behind a too disturbed surface to be felt and to be able to see it how it really was.

Never yield to indolence or despair. Suffer loss and grief gladly, for they help to toughen your personality. The diamond is found amidst rocks; you will have to blast through the vein to get gold. Follow the strict regimen that the doctor enforces in order to make the medicine yield the best result.

The battery of our car was charged when we went to Puttaparthi and actually it is still the same, it was also charged last year in Puttaparthi. I had problems to walk and I was sitting a lot just at the coffee shop and listening to Veda changing going on and Bhajan singing and I had my coffee, so that I didn’t have to walk to the Darshan ground, it seemed that far away as my hip was in pain. But there was that experience of ‘pure love’ in the air as it seemed out of nowhere, there was no reason for it and I was a lot writing on my computer as I am always.

The battery of your ‘car’ is charged when you come to Puttaparthi or when you go to some other holy place. Or at least that should be the aim of the pilgrimage.

We should be able to feel his presence here and among devotees and that is why we should be grateful that we can serve others, only in that service we feel his divine presence. The same was present during the time as mediation teacher and that is the same, it is the service to others, that is the wisdom of Veda, but when we once experience Baba’s divine presence and realize that the divine is beyond time and space, we also know why he tells us that we should thank God for the opportunity he gives us to serve others, because without that it is not possible.

Swami served every minute the others to the last breath when he was in the inside present in the dream and when he left he said, ‘no more husband, nothing left but an empty Western shoe’. 

Baba was present to the last breath serving us.

Charge the battery of your spiritual effort and then, after you return home, do not keep the car idle.

We should not keep the car idle. We should not let the battery run down and in service to others the battery doesn’t run down. 

If we use the car, the battery will charge itself, if we serve others with our car, other devotees, how is the battery charged by itself? 

By getting aware that Baba is present, he is not only in Prasanthi Nilayam, that was his body and the divine presence is felt everywhere where devotees are. 

We have to serve them and face our pain and loss and whatever it is and welcome it the way he tells us here to do it, because it makes our personalities tougher, that is also the reason I went on with my ex until Baba came and made it clear from the inside, I wanted it to be a Baba Lila. 

I wanted to get tougher and stronger and I wanted to learn from it and no matter how I got into that situation, I was not looking for a way out if it should be his Lila and I didn’t expect my family to help. 

But it was kind of sad getting aware that they lived in another world and there was no answer, that was not great, not even my mother was writing back, no comforting words and it was all strange and upside down and I had no feeling for my mother and her ways of seeing it anymore. 

I waited for Baba, as it should be his Lila, but I wrote them once of twice, without getting any response and that was rather sad. Getting aware of the state of her mind was difficult.

Whatever that was with my ex and if he took only advantage of it and he went the path of least effort, it was enervating and nerve consuming, but for me it had to be a Baba Lila no matter what.

If you do, the battery will run down; take the car around and keep it going; then the battery will charge itself. So also, if you do not continue the holy company, the good attitude, bhajans, and remembering God’s Name as part of your life, all this charging will turn into a waste.

That is why we have to continue the holy company (other devotees), the good attitude, the Bhajans and we remember God’s name or our mantra and go on in mediation, we don’t want the battery to run down. 

If we don’t keep holy company and with service to others are charging the battery we have all those precious experiences with Baba in Prasanthi and as he is telling us here, it will turn into a waste. 

How could anybody want that by carelessness wasting all the precious experiences of his divine presence? But if we don’t take good care of it, it is possible as we can see in his words that it gets wasted and lost and the battery will run down.