Start with Courage, Faith, Joy and Steadiness

Life is a pilgrimage to God; the holy spot is there, afar. The road lies right before you; but unless you take the first step forward and follow that step with others, how can you reach it? Start with courage, faith, joy and steadiness. You are bound to succeed. Your mind and intellect are two bullocks tied to the cart of your 'inner self'. The bullocks are not used to the path of Truth, Righteousness, Non-violence, Peace and Love, and so they drag the cart to the road that is very familiar to them, namely falsehood, injustice, worry and hatred. As its master, you must train them to take the better road, so that they may not bring disaster to themselves, the cart they are yoked to and to the passengers in the cart.

The road lies right before us. Just start and don't stop until reached. If we start and don't stop we are bound to succeed.

He explains that the mind and intellect are like two bullocks tied to the cart of our inner self. They are not used to the path. The path are the human values, it is truth, sathya, right action, dharma, peace, shanti, love, prema and non-violence, ahmisa. 

This two the mind and the intellect drag the cart as they are used to it, what they see on that road are not the human values, but falsehood, injustice, worry and hatred.

 

We have to train them to take the better road and how do we do it? With one-pointed focus, watch and train the mind and the intellect to see instead of negativity the human values, if we focus on the divine or inner self in us, we might not know it yet, but if we start and hold on to it, one day the experience of it will be there. And it is for all of us the same reflection of light, there is no difference, and that is how we can realize the oneness of all. We start and we go on with steadiness, with faith and joy and with courage we to go on to the end, we are bound to succeed. 

Baba said to a devotee who asked about illusion, why the world is seen as Maya, delusion, he said if there is intent, if we have a purpose and there is work done and there is time past, there will be a result and it will be real and not an illusion. 

With other words, if we focus on truth and watch there will be time, there will be waiting and that is the work done and there will be a result and it is the experience that truth is in our heart. If truth is based in the heart and in direct experience, the reflection will be right action. Truth has to come from the heart and we have all human values. 

If we experience the truth in the heart, we blend it with right action, there is peace, and when we have those three things, truth, right action and peace, we can make the experience of pure love and there will be ahimsa, non-violence. 

If we want to make the experience of pure love, we need to have three things, we need to understand peace, we have to accept truth and we have to accept that path of right action and only when we have those three things, truth, right action and peace, we will be able to experience pure love. 

We have to train the mind and the intellect to take the better road, our higher self has to be the master and not the mind, otherwise, they destroy us. As Swami mentions here, they bring disaster upon themselves and not only to the cart they are yoked to, but also the people in that cart. 

That was the example I had mentioned yesterday about the ruin and how someone can ruin not only himself, but his family with it if he allows the mind and the intellect to go the road they are used to. It is a very common life, nothing special, no ideal, just yak, just boring if we follow only the mind. The ideal and the experience in our heart of truth brings us on the path of truth, right action, peace, love and non-violence and will fill our life with meaning and inner values. The higher self has to be the boss, if we allow intellect and mind to go wherever they want with our cart, it will result in ruin. 

That was the other insight we had when we went last year for a visit with that guy who was standing years before in a ruin and said, that it is all he could get in garage sales. We sat at that strange place where everything was from garage sales, that is really the result of it and we didn't see him for twenty years, but twenty years ago we had that dream with the ruin and now twenty years later we were sitting on a chair, he got from garage sales and everything else there was no other place to sit but some old wooden chairs from the garage sales and an old table, he made same room on it and we had tea remembered old times still at the ashram where we had met long ago and enjoyed his garage sale success and it felt okay, it was even quite nice as we thought, but the same night the man coming in our dreams was present as a cart of crap, it felt in the dream insight like old iron, lots of old iron and only crap was on that cart and I somehow wondered where that came from? And insight with only carp on the cart? But when we listen to his words and we think it over as we just do it now by writing it down, we get to a right conclusion, that is why it was a cart of crap and that is also information. 

That is how we get the answer in listening to Swami's words and thinking it over, here we have the cart of crap. 

We went to the ashram twenty years ago, it was standing in the air, 'it is perverted, you have to get a divorce', we couldn't go back and we went through a hard time because it felt like a punishment, but there was no use, nothing came back at all from that side no matter what we said or did, there was no use even in trying, we could as well say nothing at all and we didn't go back and after we came here, he just made it difficult to us with falsehood and injustice, there was nothing based on Swami's teaching and human values and right action, but there was that insight with the ruin. If we would have gone back, the disaster is not only to the mind and the intellect, to themselves, but also to the passengers in the cart. 

If we have such an example we can get aware of it as well what happened and why, we know that there was no listening to Swami and it is kind of stupid to his ashram, but not putting it into practice and there was no listening to him. 

The information we get is why it is like that today. What is the result if someone allows the mind and the intellect to go the road they are used to with falsehood and injustice and that is the only thing that reflected back afterwards and in that sense we only got aware of it how bad it really was after we left, there was nothing ideal coming back, but falsehood and injustice all along and it was kind of awkward getting aware of it and now we know why, that is what we found after twenty years, we found a cart of crap. 

And what we learn from that lesson if we listen to the master's word, we can see that he followed the road of the two bullocks, and that cart went along the road of falsehood and injustice and there is also intent, but not the right one and no right action, it is not based on truth, but on the bullocks mind and intellect, what is falsehood and injustice and there is as well time gone by and work done, but the result is a cart of crap only. 

He lives in the midst of crap, his is alone and his place is filled with stuff he got from garage sales. If we listen to Swami's words this is an example of the disaster that the two bullocks the mind and the intellect are for themselves, but also for those in the cart. 

As its master, you must train them to take the better road, so that they may not bring disaster to themselves, the cart they are yoked to and to the passengers in the cart.