Monday, March 20, 2017

Whatever Troubles You have, I give you Bliss!

God is not attracted by learning or scholarship, which does not lead anywhere except towards egoism and pride. God is drawn only by pure devotion. Bring to Me, whatever troubles you have, I shall take them on and give you bliss! You rush to the temple or Prasanthi Nilayam and crave to get a darshan! What greater sign of devotion is needed than this yearning? But, this love is not enough! In fact, it does not mean much at all! What is needed is the regulation of that Love, in the form of virtue and service. If you succeed in that, you truly achieve something. Renunciation and divine love should reverberate the atmosphere, and silence as the discipline should fill the place. Have the Name of the Lord on your tongue and the form of your chosen Lord before your eye. If you shape yourself this way, the place where you stand will become Kashi and your home will become Badri.

Swami is talking about God, but he is talking to man, people attracted by learning and scholarship, even thought we need to learn and if it is only for making a living, he is telling us that it leads not anywhere but to egoism and pride. 
We probably think we achieved something when we get a degree and we certainly do in the worldly sense, without it we don't go anywhere. 
God is a different reality and Swami is here the God knower, he knows what he is talking about and when we try to talk about it with our own words, it feels more like guessing or trying to understand it and when we use his words, it gets better, because at least we get aware that we think it over. 
God is drawn only by pure devotion and what is pure devotion? 
He it telling us here from the standpoint of God, what is always a challenge for the mind as long as we don't have the experience of it. 
When coming back here Swami was holding up a book and we began to write, all types of writing and trying to get it, no matter what reason and why and here in those words he is telling us why. After going through steps of thinking it over and getting aware of it, as he said, 'use my words', this thought for the day is a good example, and it is just enough text, not too much so that we are able to absorb it, but it is still enough that we have to think it over. 
Listen, think it over, absorb. 
Therefore, bring to me, whatever troubles you have, I shall take them and give you bliss. 

That is not only a wonderful promise, it is what happened even if I was not aware of it first. 
But I went to Swami because I was looking for truth, as I thought, but the question behind was why I was looking for truth. As he said in the dream and we know, he is the man coming in our dreams to awaken, something was quite not right and I was not even aware of it. He said that I had been let down by my family, therefore, I had to think it over until I would be able to understand it.  
It was during an interview, the shadow was standing above the head of a person I had to translate for and next morning the mother was in the air. 
That was the shadow and the person I had to translate for had health problems, but it was anyhow difficult to associate that shadow with my mother. 
But there had to be a reason, she was talkative and after I had to translate for her whenever we met she began to talk and she didn't stop and I didn't know how to stop her, I tried, but it didn't work and I began to avoid her. 
The problem was somewhere else, she was a mirror, but nevertheless, it felt that heavy that I didn't know how to avoid it. 
There was an interview and Swami asked our group, 'why are you here' and he said, 'self-realization'. 
Self-realization was the ideal and I had written a diary, at the time I had been sixteen and during that writing I had the feeling of self-realization and that's what I wanted and when I had mentioned it, I got all kinds of strange answers, my father called me a communist and I wondered what that had to do with it, nothing at all. And when I mentioned it to school mates, all thought that it was impossible and that it doesn't exist. 
Afterwards my life went upside down and soon I couldn't find that feeling of self-realization anywhere anymore. 
I had no idea why really, but for me it felt like I had to just open my mouth and I got in troubles, even before I said something and I had been thrown out of the house three times by my father, who probably didn't know what he was doing. The problems was in the neighborhood, it was an ex boyfriend who turned surprisingly into an enemy and I was not even aware of it, in my thoughts he was still a friend, even thought a strange friend. 
It was an old trouble thing that had happened with my father years ago and it was in the past, nobody wanted to think of it anymore, it was -  not that again.
But it has caused that much problems for our family that it comes up anyhow always again.  
My mother wanted to go ahead and look forward and after all the past was past and we don't look back, but somehow the situation in the neighborhood was different and whatever the reason why that guy turned into something else, it was not seen at the surface, but it was felt and present as constant disturbance and most of all because my parent's house reacted that way in avoiding it that it turned into such a problem. 
I had not only a problem with the boyfriend, I didn't see why he should be an enemy, but must worse was the family as they didn't want to see it and they were not at my side.

As it was past nobody wanted to hear about it, it was my problem only if I had a problem and therefore, I had to see how I got along with it, but with that attitude it was not even possible of getting aware of it. 
Nobody wanted to see or consider that he had turned into something else and after I went to Swami there was the dream that he said, he would torture me until death. 
Thus, he seemed aware that my family would ignore it and that he could create troubles and for some reason it must have been funny enough to do it, otherwise, who would do something like that? 
It didn't make any sense to me and also not to the others. I didn't see a reason for it, but probably my father had been a reason and they all were alive and expressed their think own thing in that perverted way and even if it was in the past, a village never forgets and nobody wanted to know and think about it anymore and therefore, it was still present and it got worse and not better in avoiding it. 
It had never been possible to even talk about it and also during the time when we dated, I had avoid to talk about the past in my parent's house and my father in that neighborhood and I guess that is how he got aware of it that it was a taboo and that nobody was talking about it and that it was therefore, possible to create problems and those problems I had as soon as the relationship was over. 
It was never really done, he was there in the whereabouts, it was done and not done, it went on silently and hidden, it was manipulation only, that it felt present still and what we found out later, that there was a reason and he wanted to harm and cause troubles, even if it didn't make any sense to me or my mother or the others.
It was not possible to address it, but it was manipulation nevertheless and therefore, it was that thing in the background, it was not possible to name it, but it grew and became bigger and later it was like forgotten, but it went on anyhow in the background as conflict, something, nobody wanted to see and nobody wanted to know about it, but as we didn't get it to the point, it was going on anyhow. It was not a solved matter, but it came up again. 
As I didn't know what it was, for me it felt like I was looking for truth. 

When I came back, it felt not like my country, but the country was where the neighbor lived and he had been that disturbing in my family, that I felt not home anymore as I had been let down by them. 
I was not even aware of it, I didn't know what it was.
It was a kind of surprise the way it came up in Swami's presence. 
That happened so many years ago, I just got some memory of it, I just began school at that time and it seemed far away. 
I avoided it as well, whenever I came home, as soon as I felt that it didn't feel like home, I wanted to fly away again and never come back if possible, but that never happened, probably because I didn't know what it was, I had always to come back. 
And in the ashram after in Swami's presence, a while it felt normal again, like nothing had happened in the past and I felt inside at home.
I tried to keep it and one time I went to Singapore to get a visa to not have to get 'home'. My parents had left that village as well and had retired in Spain, but when my father said he wanted to build a house in Spain it was in the air as illusion and I didn't even know how to tell him as it was not possible talking to them. 
I didn't know how to tell, as it had been such a problem about talking, there was like no way I could tell, another moment 'catastrophe' was above his head, what showed that there was something not quite right and I decided to write it down and I told them that something felt wrong, but they were never really looking at it. 
I noticed that he got scared for a moment and nobody anyhow tried to address it, I guess it must have been my mother, she had an answer for everything and she called it only reproaches and it was just avoided and nobody cared about it, not how I felt, not how I was doing and not how I got along with it, that was not their problem. 
They didn't want to know. 
On the way to Singapore I had the neighbor in my dream, it was in a hotel in Madras and I had to take next day the flight to Singapore and he said, 'I will come back and marry you'. It was very strange, as he was married since a long time.
I had not been in touch with him since many years and it was just strange. 
It was probably twenty years ago in the meantime that he happened to be my first boyfriend. I was still a teenager. 
We went for walks, we had fun and we didn't make a serious relationship out of it, he met a schoolteacher, he wanted to get married with, that is what he said, he wanted to get married with a schoolteacher and a friend of mine told me she had seen him in the cinema with her, it happened to be her neighbor and she became a school teacher and as soon as I addressed it and asked him about it, he was gone. He told me that it had deepened and I never have seen him again. 
He avoided to even talk about it. 
I was very young and I thought, okay and if he is the right one he will come back and he was probably just not the right one. 
I somehow could live with that as I had told him before that I wanted to travel and learn some languages before getting married, as I was only seventeen it seemed anyhow too young for me, my parents always had warned us to not get married too early.
That fitted the picture, when I was on the way to Madras getting the visa that he was in my dream and said, he would come back and marry me. What I didn't like is that I was not asked if I wanted to marry him really, there was something about it that made me feel rather upset not at all happy, it didn't make any sense. 

Not only he but also his brothers went at that time years ago in and out our house and they were befriended with my brothers, but it didn't last all of them were gone later and not one of my brothers called them friends anymore. 
But they seemed to know my parents a bit too well, somehow he must have known that my mother would avoid it by all means or not notice it. 
The parents had a flower business and my mother lived for her clients and she felt also to me like too nice often, I liked a bit more distance with people. 

After all we were neighbors, but I didn't see him again or together with the schoolteacher after all he had called her like that and that is how I got to know her. 
Finally years later he got married and they lived at the same place, they didn't move away. 
What began to feel strange was the fact that he was never talking to me again and when I met them by hazard in doing the shopping for the mother, he starred holes through me and didn't even say hello. 
After all it seemed he had a problem and as I was most of the time not anymore living at that place, it was kind of strange after so many years. 
My life had totally changed, only that part was somehow not clear. 
After that dream with marriage I met someone at the ashram and he wanted to get married and that was for me a reason to get in touch with the neighbor later on and asking him about it why he was in my dream? That gave me an ample reason to bring it up and to address it if he liked it or not. 
It felt like something was wrong and not really done and finished and I tried to know what it was, if there had been a promise given or something open that he was still in my dream. 
When he was gone and we never talked about it, he said we could remain friends and I thought okay, but I never met him again and it didn't feel like friendship. 
His wife was not a friend, she was a rival and I had no illusions about that, but I didn't give them any reason for it. I didn't ever talked to him again, I didn't try anything, when I met her from time to time, she always gave me the feeling like I was a child the way she talked. 
And I wondered what he had told her. 
It was clear that he had no intentions to stand up to me to even be friendly and for some reason he had turned into something else. 
After I got in touch with him I also noticed that something felt not quite right and I asked him why he was in my dream. After I thought everything was okay and I got married at the ashram in Swami's presence in Darshan was, the neighbor is responsible. 
As it turned out it was not really possible to talk it over, his hostile attitude made it impossible and I went ahead thinking I had done whatever I could, what was right, but he didn't care to look at it. 
That was a challenge, why the neighbor? I thought in the meantime as well that it was done with and over, and now it came back again and in such a way, so it was not over after all. 
I was not even aware that I had been thrown out of the house because of the way the neighbor had finished the relationship, I was unable to talk about it, so it created problems and as I put it in question also the problem father and past was in the air again and nobody wanted to see that again. 
After all it was sure, he was not interested in staying a friend, but as we were not anymore in a relationship why should I bother about it?
I didn't realize how much my parents didn't wanted to be bothered anymore about the past and when I said something, my mother said usually, 'what do you have, there is nothing?' But there had not been nothing as I had been thrown out of the house because it was impossible talking about it. If it would have been nothing, I wouldn't have been thrown out of the house because of it three times, that is not really happening because of nothing. 
They couldn't handle it. 
They looked at it like it was only my problem and the manipulation of the neighbor was ignored by my mother and that is how it expanded on the level of the family. 

Whenever that issue neighbor came up I had problems with the family, either they were making fun of it or they overreacted and as I had been thrown out of the house for that reason, but they didn't wanted to face the reality of it or how I felt and that something must have been not right. 
When I got in touch with him because I wanted to get married and I had that strange dream, he was very unfriendly and he didn't even say hello and he said, that he doesn't find that right. 
I felt stupid as I had expected before, but I tried to tell him that I had that dream and I just wanted to know why, I just couldn't ignore it. 
In that sense it was a way to address it and not to ignore it. 
With Swami and the man coming in our dreams to awaken as he was present as the neighbor, it was impossible to ignore it and that problem that there was no way to address it was no more possible, I had to address it, I had to find a way to talk with the neighbor and ask him and I called at his work place. 
We happened to know everything in that village what the others were doing and therefore, I even knew where he worked my sister had told him, even if I was most of the time in India, I still knew after all those years where he was working. 
The way he said, 'I don't find that right', I thought it had to do with his wife and that he should not, whatever that was and for whatever reason, that is how it felt, but he couldn't make me responsible for what he had done before he had met his wife and I didn't want to marry him, but I wanted just to know why he was in my dream. 
One day it was in the dream as manipulation only. 
I still didn't understand it, but it felt like he sensed that my family would be unable to handle it and that he could do that, he wanted to disturb and he was a trouble maker. It was impossible to make them see or even feel what they did during the rest of my life. I got aware of it with Baba, but it was still impossible from my side and from the side of the family to get to the right insight. 
Once I went shopping for the weekend for my mother as she didn't have the time to go herself, we had to do it on Saturdays and I met him and her together at the bakery and I said hello, but they ignored me, they both said nothing and stared a hole into me. 
It was such a strange feeling and when coming back that night I had a dream and it said that he has a village consciousness. 
And I wondered how I would ever be able to understand what a village consciousness is and what that explains really. 
It probably had something to do with Karma, with the past and with the echo coming back from the village consciousness. 
Whatever, my first boyfriend he was during the time writing a diary and it was as self-realization in the air, he was no more a friend. 
He had become a deadly enemy. And there had never been a feeling of self-realization again at that place at least. 
At that time in front of the parent's house was a big field, the farm was sold later on and houses were built and he happened to live in the house just opposite to my parent's house like on our parking lot. Considering the disturbed relationship there would have been a better place to live for them I thought.  
Whatever that was, but we had been something like friends, it felt rather strange if he had a problem with my father that he moved into the house just opposite across the road of my parent's house. 
They were like living on our parking lot, it was in front of our shop, just a few meters away and I went there once for a visit to the shop. My parents had sold it. It was during a class meeting and his wife was standing in the street when I came out of that shop and I left quickly. 
That night it was in the dream as manipulation only. 

I couldn't even go and visit that place what had been my parent's house undisturbed. I didn't expected to feel home, the feeling of home had been gone long ago, but I didn't expect to feel disturbed, but it was disturbing. 
I wrote him an upset letter that he should stop it, that was not long before he died.  
One night I had a dream again and it was also in the dream and it said that he understands that he is responsible, about a half a year later, he was only fifty-seven he died and I was not unhappy about it that the disturbance was finally gone. 
The man coming in our dreams to awaken said, 'harm set, harm get'. 

That is how I got aware that I was unaware of how and why I had been thrown out of the house as a teenager and that I had been let down by my family. 
The reason was the manipulation of the neighbor, they didn't wanted to see it. When that manipulation began, I had lost them. Every time coming back I had the feeling that something was wrong, but I didn't know what it was until it all came up with Swami. 

God is not attracted by learning or scholarship, which does not lead anywhere except towards egoism and pride. God is drawn only by pure devotion. Bring to Me, whatever troubles you have, I shall take them on and give you bliss! 

That is how I brought my troubles to him, even if I was not aware of it. 
He made me aware of it and he said he will take them and give us bliss. As Swami said to us in the interview room, 'why are you here, self-realization'.

I tried to avoid it all my life, but it was not really possible, we were not only not able to avoid it, we had to face it to be able of getting aware of it and I was there in the midst of it and my family when it still came back and they didn't want to bother about it anymore, they just wanted to forget it. 
When I was at the ashram I felt good with Swami and I had over the years adapted to the same attitude as my mother, I wanted it to be over with and forget about it and the ashram seemed to be the ideal place for it as I felt after a while totally normal and okay, why should I got and look at the past and the long ago stories with my family as it was now okay again? That didn't make any sense to me, so I would never have brought my problems to him if Swami would not have brought it up. 
So that after all was how I had been let down by my family. After all it had been my mother's decision going on with business and working hard and it was not up to us living in that environment, I think we all would have moved away if we would have been able to do it, we would not have been in that neighborhood anymore a long time ago. 

You rush to the temple or Prasanthi Nilayam and crave to get a darshan! What greater sign of devotion is needed than this yearning? But, this love is not enough! In fact, it does not mean much at all! What is needed is the regulation of that Love, in the form of virtue and service. If you succeed in that, you truly achieve something. Renunciation and divine love should reverberate the atmosphere, and silence as the discipline should fill the place. Have the Name of the Lord on your tongue and the form of your chosen Lord before your eye. If you shape yourself this way, the place where you stand will become Kashi and your home will become Badri.

He is telling us that we rush to the temple of Prashanti to get Darshan (sight of truth), the yearning is enough as a sign of devotion. 
At that time when I came back here, that yearning was such that it felt even senseless to come back here, what did I have to do here? 
As my life began to feel okay and normal and like it should have in Swami's presence again, I would have liked to stay there forever and I knew we should go back and do our duty, but I didn't know at that time what that duty was. 
I had been a meditation teacher and I began already with looking for answers after I had met Carl, who would have been the right one, with him I wanted to learn how to fly as he liked flying and I let him go to Italy he wanted to become an air pilot and I was unable to go with him as I didn't know how, it was too disturbed. 
Instead I began with the spiritual path looking for answers and it took time, so I was already thirty-six when I went to India and that he would have been the right one came up much later, only a few years ago when the situation got clear and things fell in place and I began to realize why I had been thrown out of the house and why I began to look for truth.
When all that writing began, one day when I went with my daughter to the airport and she went to see her family in the USA, at the airport he was all over, that is how I got aware that he would have been the right one, forty or more years too late. 

But, this love is not enough! In fact, it does not mean much at all! What is needed is the regulation of that Love, in the form of virtue and service. If you succeed in that, you truly achieve something. Renunciation and divine love should reverberate the atmosphere, and silence as the discipline should fill the place. Have the Name of the Lord on your tongue and the form of your chosen Lord before your eye. If you shape yourself this way, the place where you stand will become Kashi and your home will become Badri.

The yearning is not enough, we have to put it into practice. We have to regulate that love in the form of virtue and service and if we succeed in that, we achieve something.
I had to get aware of it when I realized that the relationship with my ex was not what I had hoped it would be and he is going still every year to the ashram, but he doesn't put anything of it into practice. 
The example used in Swami's words of the two bullocks tied to the cart of the inner self, one is the mind, the other one is the intellect and we have to take care of it that we get those two on a different road as they walk the road of falsehood, injustice, worry and hatred. 
The neighbor was walking that road of falsehood and injustice and my ex as well, even if we met at the ashram and in Swami's presence. 

I had been meditating already before I went to Swami, there were insights and I had no idea how those insights should ever make sense. If we meditate regularly we have the Lord on our tongue and he said one day in an interview that all mantras are okay. 
That is important that he said it to take all doubts away as it is not about the chosen Lord before our eyes, but it was just a mantra we got when we were initiated and we used it as a vehicle only and not even knowing the deity behind it and in the sense that it was our chosen Lord, but after having meditated such a long time with a mantra we should not change it ever, therefore, now it is our chosen Lord before our eye and it has become that because we did it for a long time. 

If you shape yourself this way, the place where you stand will become Kashi and your home will become Badri.

Here it is about our home, and in the West we don't know Kashi and also not our home as Badri. 
Kashi is Varanasi, the holy city on the river Ganga, where people go to die in the hope to reach the Lord and Badri seems to be Badrinath, it is as well a holy city and a pilgrimage place. 
It is all about putting it into practice as Swami said with virtues and service and not just about going to the ashram and as my ex even said to make cheap vacation only. 
He was standing in a ruin, it is the house of self-realization, the floor is self-confidence, the walls are self-contentment, the roof is self-sacrifice and if we live in that mansion, it is self-realization. 
If the house is a ruin, it shows us that he followed the bullocks mind and intellect on the road to perdition, that is the road of falsehood, injustice, worry and hatred. After we went for a visit, at night in the dream was a cart of crap, that is the reflection of the cart with the two bullocks the crap is the result of following that road. 
Of the floor of the house were only holes left, the walls had crumbled and there was just some stones left showing that it had been once a wall and the roof was not there all together and he was standing in that ruin and said, 'that is all I could get in garage sales', his apartment if filled with garage sale stuff he told me at the ashram where we met by hazard last year that he got that much garage sale stuff that he doesn't need to buy anything anymore, anyhow he is still wearing the same sweaters he was wearing already twenty years ago when we left. He is not even changing his stuff even if he has that much really. 
And even if everything is full of garage sale stuff, he doesn't wear it and he has to do his laundry every Sunday and even when we come for a visit. 
We had to wait for him in front of the door until he was pleased and arrived and the dryer didn't work, probably there was somewhere a sign that he should do it differently, but he doesn't, his mind is too strong. 
So we had not only with our rental car to go and pick him up as he is unable to drive anymore on the highway and his sister is driving him around, but additionally we had to wait for him as he had to do his laundry. 
And then we had to listen to his comments and we had to finally drive him back to his place again and there was just a cart of crap, it means he had not put anything into practice, he followed the mind and the intellect and he ruined it. 

We had a hotel and mostly his sister didn't like it and it happened to be around the airport, but she said it was not a good neighborhood and we got a rental car and that made us more independent. 
But we tried to cancel it, but it was not possible as it had been a promotion offer, my mistake, I didn't see the small printed letter where it said, cannot be canceled, I did the booking over the Internet unaware of it that it could not been canceled again. Thus, we had to go by it, even if it never really felt okay. 
I did it after coming back from the ashram and my daughter wanted since a long time to go and see them with me together and I thought this time it was the right time of doing it. His sister wanted him to get a different place of accommodation for us and he didn't do it, there has never been any sense of self-sacrifice in him and the man coming in our dreams to awake said, that he took only advantage of it. 
And that is how we get aware of it and get a feeling for it what it means self-sacrifice and no self-sacrifice, the difference is if we have a roof above our head or we have no home and no roof above our head. 

Bring to Me, whatever troubles you have, I shall take them on and give you bliss! 

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