Let him Blossom in the Heart

Practice—that is the real thing that matters in spirituality! Scholarship is a burden, it is very often a handicap. So long as God is believed to be far away in temples and holy places, you will feel religion to be a burden and a hurdle. But plant him in your heart and you will feel light, burdenless and in fact, stronger! It is like the food basket – when you carry it on the shoulder, it feels heavy and you feel you are too weak to even carry it during a walk. But sit near a stream and eat it. Though the total weight has not decreased, the consequence of eating the food makes you feel lighter and in fact stronger! Similarly, apply this to the idea of God. Do not carry it on your shoulder, take 'Him' in! Let Him blossom within you! Keep the memory of the Lord and His Glory always with you!

When we do something regularly, we forget in time nearly that it is practice and in that sense it is not only writing and thinking it over, it is most of all regular meditation. It has turned into something we don't think about it, we just do it, it is part of the waking up ritual in the morning. 

There were experiences with self-realization and the question was how I would stay in touch with it and I tried all kinds of things first and it seemed just to get further away and then we began with watching, what was a kind of an adventure as it included getting aware of the own limitations. It began to  load after a certain time as it was not possible to just stop it and get back to where it had been before, it was not really possible to change the mind and not doing it anymore and I didn't think about that before. Watching is not just an attitude of the mind, it becomes part of our life. It felt not possible to get back to the inner distance and just tell, I don't want that, it was a commitment and we had to go to the end and we didn't know the end. 
It was not really possible to explain what I did as we need the words of a self-realized authority. When reading about it all seemed clear in my own experience in a sense it was clear as well, but still it was not possible to talk about it in such a way that it made sense. 

It was about learning or finding a right way. 

After watching for a while what included also waiting, when we watch, we also wait even if we don't know really for we are waiting, it was waiting as well for the unknown even if it had been there a long time ago as self-realization. But to get into practice also felt good. 
There was my job at the office and therefore, life was structured and went on like by itself and the job began to get more important. 

The mind attitude adopted with that practice resulted in respect and it seemed not even possible to tell why respect as it was rooted in watching, it had to do with self-respect and with truth and it was not just about job. 

It was as well a load, it had to do with time and sometimes that was there and not the conflict of it and when it was about changing the job as I was watching and in that sense just alert and doing my job and waiting, it was not just possible to change, something had to happen to change it. 

First we watch thoughts and then it had more to do with the situation and feelings and it expanded to watching moods and that was again kind of challenging, because it was not just clear, it began in a sense to get scary. It was as well present in the dream and it was different. It had more to do with heavy and scary stuff around I had not been aware before and first that didn't make any sense. 

There was a quite young and new manager, the son of the older one, he was starting to work at that same place and around him was something dark and scary and he seemed to be not happy and probably he didn't see a way out, even if he was the son of the GM and he didn't work there for a long time, one morning he committed suicide and I had clear vision of it in the dream stage. 

It was there kind of overwhelming as fear and next morning it was even on the I level totally clear what he wanted to do only it was on the same I level, but it was just watching, so that I didn't make any sense and it was just scary that it was there as the I and not something else and I didn't make such a decision, it was just about watching, I couldn't have changed anything about it anyhow, so the I had to do with a different identification and that is how we got aware for the first time that things look different than we think. At that same morning when I noticed inside that he knew exactly what to do instead of going to work he went under the train.  
We worked at the same place and it was not the same reason for me not getting out of it, I didn't get out of it because I was watching and had to take it as it comes and it was not just possible to change the job when I didn't like it anymore and in fact I started to not like it anymore. 

And a friend of mine as well went for a vacation and didn't come back, so that made it even worse and I had to change something, it felt like kind of nothing could happen in hat way anymore and I felt like I was waiting my time only. 

The situation changed with a job opening, I went for it just to change something, the question was not if I liked it or not, it was about change only and I had to get somehow out of it and in that way it came from the outside, it was not my decision, but everything could change. It was not really about that job, I went for it if I was qualified or not, just to give life a chance for a change and it happened, I didn't get the job, but in the night before they told me that someone else was the better person for that, there was the higher self in my dream as light, beauty and love and when I awoke I knew that is what I had been waiting for. 
It was a clear sign of going back to the self and it happened to be such a clear experience with the higher self, that is what I wanted and not the job, that was the result of the waiting. The job situation was the result of a job application and the waiting was the problem, a job we could always find. 
It was easier at that time then it is now. 

The self-experience was a much bigger challenge and I had been looking for it all over and I had first the experience of self-realization by writing a diary, but afterwards it somehow was gone and not possible to feel it anymore and it seemed like nowhere to be found. 

After the self was in the dream, it was a reflection of light and it felt like all I wanted and had been waiting for, but how should we get there? It was transcendental and now the question came up how and why it had been there finally after all that watching and waiting, how did it happen and why there was that reflection of the light self in the dream stage. Why we didn't know more about it?

There was no way of getting there on the outside level, it was a spiritual reality and it was there due to watching, waiting and it had something to do with character, with going to the end and not giving up until it was there. 

It was clear beyond doubt, but the knowledge was missing, it was not clear at all in the sense that we didn't know it. The mind had no answer for it. 

Therefore, when I got the answer that I didn't get the job I gave notice to my job even the same day. I didn't care about that job really and I wanted to just get out of it as two people had died and later when I was again looking for a job I had never mentioned it, it was like done and forgotten and I described it as part of practicing and learning French. As I had quit in such a way the certificate I got what matters a lot here was nearly only an attestation and valueless and I didn't care, I kept it, but I never used it. I never showed it to anybody, therefore, in that sense the job was for me really more an experience than a job and I had never spoken about that afterwards, when I was looking for a job as I had not been working at the office, it was anyhow of not much importance and really only a way of practicing and learning a language, but what I didn't tell, it was not only about practicing French, but it was about the higher self. 

To get clear with that experience was something else and the real challenge, was the experience with the self and a job we could at that time always find, to integrate that self-experience was much more difficult than I thought it would be. I knew now what I wanted, but I didn't know how of getting there and I didn't find the confirmation of it in my parent's house.

I tried and I mentioned to my mother whatever was possible to tell, but there was no response. I said that I felt guilty when someone committed suicide and I didn't even once spoke with him before, so it was not clear where the feeling of guilt was coming from, but it was clear that I had to do something about it to not feel guilty anymore. 

Guilty for being at the wrong place, guilty for not taking care of it and for not doing anything about it? 

My mother said, maybe you are guilty, but that was not the right answer. 
How can we be guilty if we don't know the person, I happened to just work at the same place and the best answer I got over the years is that the job becomes our I and we are actually directed by the job and it replaces the I, we are not anymore self-directed, but we follow the job and become part of the firm. 
We have to get up, we have to be there and we have a certain time every day and week and it becomes our life, it is a task or duty and the job takes over. In that sense the experience with the higher self was a sign that it was time to get back to myself. 

I have never allowed the job to control myself again in such a way afterwards. 

In that sense it explained the experience and that it was the same I in that guy because we had worked for the same firm and we got lost in it, I had to find a way out of it because I was just watching and I was not able to just stop it and he got in that situation with the family and he was unable of going out of it. 

At my new job at a bank in Geneva I got in touch with the Hare Krishnas, they sold books in the office, it was kind of special that they were allowed to enter the office, but it was not a local bank and that explained it probably and that is how I got the Bhagavad Gita and then when I began to read it, as I noticed it was difficult to understand I began to visit the Hare Krishna temple, it was in an old castle on the lake of Geneva and a beautiful place, but it was not furnished, they lived renounced and slept on the floor. 

That is how I got in touch with a totally different way of life I had not known before and I had been smoking at that time and in my vacation I was in the Hare Krishna temple and I stopped smoking and I really never started again. 
And finally I realized to get a feeling for it, be part of it as I had been part of the firm in my job before and I had to make the experience and to the shock of my parents I went to the Hare Krishnas and I met a young French guy and finally we lived together. I didn't see a way to get clear with the self-experience I had with the Hare Krishnas as it was mostly routine and service to the divinity. By waking up we began with jappa and that lasted about one and a half hour. During that time I noticed I wanted to go inside into meditation and I hoped to be like that in an inner contact with the divine or higher self. 

I heard of transcendental meditation and I got initiated into it in Paris and I really began with it to stay in touch with the higher self. 
I had been meditating before and I did jappa, but finally it expanded into silent sitting and mantra meditation it was also something I could do always and over time and in every situation it just changed with time that I did it mostly in the morning as it began also to run my life with a strict morning and evening routine. I went on with it in the morning only and in the evenings I was more free and able to do something else as well, one time I did dynamic meditation expanding the practice into movement on the body level. 

Practice—that is the real thing that matters in spirituality! Scholarship is a burden, it is very often a handicap. So long as God is believed to be far away in temples and holy places, you will feel religion to be a burden and a hurdle. But plant him in your heart and you will feel light, burdenless and in fact, stronger! 

That divinity is in the heart was the experience when I got in touch with Sai Baba and I went on with regular meditation, but I went to India. 
I was also singing and I like singing, but I went always on with my meditation practice and singing was never my focus. Meditation was the way of staying consciously or unconsciously in touch with the divine.

By meditating in the light of the self I began to have insights and I didn't get any answers, but I got a book about Sathya Sai Baba. I took some vibuthi, holy ash, I found in the book and during practice it felt like a flow of love towards the heart and there it was as a small tiny divinity in the heart. 

It was the first experience with the divine in the heart. 

It is like the food basket – when you carry it on the shoulder, it feels heavy and you feel you are too weak to even carry it during a walk. But sit near a stream and eat it. Though the total weight has not decreased, the consequence of eating the food makes you feel lighter and in fact stronger! Similarly, apply this to the idea of God. Do not carry it on your shoulder, take 'Him' in! Let Him blossom within you! Keep the memory of the Lord and His Glory always with you!

The weight I still felt, but it got lighter when getting in touch with him and after I went there, it was a beautiful experience really to be in his presence, something of the most beautiful we can imagine to be in the presence of a living divinity. 

I went on with practice and the meditation didn't change and even over the years everything around changed a few times, but the memory of the Lord and his Glory we keep inside even if we are sometimes unable to feel it, we go on with practice and don't worry about it, he is there always if we are consciously aware of it or not.