Difficulties are no Hindrance

The more you grind the sandalwood, the more it yields sandal paste. The more you crush the sugarcane, the more it yields sweet juice. As the gold is heated more and more, it becomes purer and shines with added brilliance. Likewise, the good qualities in a noble person blossom more and more as one passes through the vicissitudes of life. Embodiments of Love! The difficulties of life do not cause any hindrance to a person pursuing a noble course of life. In spite of these, he always remains at peace and contemplates on God constantly. Of all the living beings, to be born a human being is the rarest occurrence (Jantunam Narajanma Durlabham), so this life that you are gifted with is indeed a great good fortune. Having been blessed with such a human birth, you should develop noble thoughts and experience bliss within. Only then will you be truly fortunate.

We had an interview together with people from the same country. In one of those interviews he said, 'follow the master, fight to the end, finish the game'. Even when he spoke individually to people in the room, we usually remember only what was for us. After the interview I began to wonder, how I could follow the master and how to fight to the end and how to finish the game.
When something came was there and it was not clear or for some reason or for some reason it seemed it had been avoided in that past, now it began to come and it following the master I began to address it usually it was by some unknown reason in the dream.
After I went to Swami I was staying at the ashram as long as possible, without that I had to go against the rule, it was limited by the visa and by the time we were allowed to stay at the ashram. Swami moved always from time to time to Whitefield and his other ashram near Bangalore and when coming back it was possible to start new again.


There was a reason why I wanted to leave on the spot again when coming back here, because it usually didn't feel good, it was like I had not roots in my county and I didn't know what I was doing here. As long as he was near and in Swami's presence, things felt great and okay, but when coming back I didn't know what I was doing here, it was like cut off and a few times it said in my dream, when we don't know the source, we cannot understand it. The question was, what was that source, it was unknown and why. The source is as well mentioned when it is about the divine, with him we were at the source, the question was rather, what else we didn't know?



I had left the parent's house with lots of troubles, later I thought it had to do with time and the changes in that time, but during my stay at the ashram there was the neighbor in the dream and I began to wonder why and as I had to follow the master, I began to address it. That is how I got aware that behind the not knowing of the source was something else, the troubles I had with the parents was mostly due to that neighbor. We had been friends and somehow and for some unknown reason he had turned into the opposite and it was just not possible to talk about it in my parent's house, either they avoided it or they overreacted or they made fun of it and as I was unable of talking about it, I was not even aware of the problem that existed in the neighborhood what my mother mostly tried to blend out in her life. But the problem was not gone, it was constantly present as disturbance in the air. 
They had a business and she worked hard, tried to keep a good relationship with the customers and the rest she tried to avoid. Therefore, whatever the reason it was not possible of talking about it and at a certain time everything what came up when I was present, was just avoided, it felt like my time had evaporated or they were in conflict with me, because my presence made a time come up they wanted to forget for some hidden reason, later it was in my dream as attachment and pride.

That is how we got aware that it didn't feel okay because the problem was real and it was totally avoided by the family, it had to do with shame, it was not even possible to address the issue without that we had to face only problems. And later Swami said in the insight in the dream that I had been let down by the family.
There was a problem, but it was avoided and in my presence that problem came up always again and they went on avoiding it and I felt like a constant trouble maker as my presence brought it up just because it was part of my time, they avoided not only the problem, but also that time. It was always a strange feeling when we went for a visit and when we know how, it does make sense, but when we don't know how, nothing makes sense and it was just a king of disturbance in the air I brought up constantly with my questioning it, for them it was only disturbance and it had not reality to it and with time I believed them, they were right and I was wrong, but with Swami I got aware that I was right and they were wrong. Going for a visit was always a challenge as it was not possible of talking about anything but superficial stuff and about their life that was okay, we had to listen how they made the garden, what they had changed, while they didn't wanted to know anything about what I had experienced or done in the past time. It felt like I was constantly avoided and I tried later with letters to tell what I had to, but it didn't change really, but that is how I got aware that the problem was real. 
I called it a pattern, because it began when I was a teenager and later nobody knew anymore why I had been thrown out of the house, but everybody thought there had to be a reason for it and I was responsible for it, 'I should not' it was the answer for everything and my mother always knew the answer, we could count on her, she knew it without that she even had to question it, either I should not or I was just blaming them for I don't know what, she never had a second thought about it and that all my life. It was incredible and impossible getting to her. And I had tried about everything possible and it was all in vain. 

That is how and why I began to search for truth already in my twenties and it was living in our neighborhood and it had to do with the neighborhood. At that time I was already a long time no more living in the parent's house, but nevertheless, it was still there, the neighbor had been my first love and we had been good friends during a time when I wrote a dairy and during that time I had the first time the feeling of self-realization and I didn't know how much it had to do with him. After the relationship was finished it began to feel that strange and disturbed, I stopped writing and later didn't find anymore a way going back into it and also not why. 
I tried to know the reason why I had that feeling of self-realization and it was totally gone and no matter what I did, it didn't come back.

In one of the interviews Baba asked us, why we were with him and he gave the answer, he said, 'self-realization'. Thinking it over later at the ashram I began to feel that I had been right and something else was not as it should have been and therefore, something else was not okay. When I went for a visa to Singapore avoiding to go back to my country, one night the neighbor was in my dream and that is how I began to question it and that is how it came up, it said as well that he was responsible. One day I had enough and I wrote him and asked him why he was after all those years still in my dream. 
That is how I got aware that he had turned into the opposite, the way I had known him before, during the time we had been so called 'friends' was not present anymore, the memory was not as I had it in mind and by questioning it I began to get aware that it was all different and the issue came up mostly in the dreams and in big time lapses, it could be that there was no dream for two years and I already hoped it was done and finished, as it was about following the master, fighting to the end and finishing the game. When he was in my dream again by following the master, I asked him to stop being in my dreams. Even if he was not the one who was able to be in dreams, Swami is the one who comes in our dreams to awaken, but the fact that he was present as neighbor showed that it was not yet done. He avoided it, but went on in the background with whatever that was, until it was present as manipulation only. By questioning it came up and was present again and not in the past.
It was not memory, it was presence again and the whole past came up like that in the present and with it the avoided conflict which had expanded and the impossibility of talking about it, whenever I tried to address it, they overreacted.
It was in the air above the head of my father, it was there as 'disaster' and that was kind of scary and I wrote it down and sent it as letter to him and I never got an answer, but my mother she had the answer as always for everything, we blamed them for everything and by that it was done, it was her way of seeing it. And that was not a way we could address the catastrophe that was in the air and we could do anything about it. She always had that answer ready and no matter what, it was a kind of standard answer and I never understood how she was unable to see it. 
As Swami said, if there is conflict, we have to address it or it expands and that is why it had turned into a catastrophe, it expanded and nobody noticed it. 

That is how the problem with the neighbor came up in Swami's presence and it had been avoided by the parents and mostly the mother and it expanded to the family and he died later on and Swami as the man coming in our dreams to awaken said, 'harm set, harm get.'
That is how we had fight to the end. It was my mother who called me and told me that he had died and we met at that time, it was around my birthday and she mentioned it and when she said it, there was a precipice in the air. That is why she was not reachable, there was no bridge over that precipice and Swami said that precipice means pride. 
That was the source of the disturbance going on. 
By following the master we couldn't avoid it, we had to address it. But I only did it when it was present in the dream and there was reason to follow the master, otherwise, I didn't wanted to get into more conflict as necessary.
But the dreams were always there again and once it said, manipulation only.
That it was upsetting had to do with his presence and him living at that place, in all those years I had moved away as far away as I could and stayed away and I tried to go back only when I had to and it was not possible to avoid it. It was as well painful always getting aware that something felt wrong.

That is how I got aware that mother was avoiding not only that in her life, she avoided also other things and later when I talked about it she said, it was too much for her and she didn't wanted to face it.
She was looking at the present only, the past was gone and forgotten and we had to look forward and not back, that was right, but only in Swami's presence I realized that it was possible to make out of a virtue a vice in using it wrongly and making it look ideal when in reality it was just avoiding it.
That was the reason why I wanted to stay as long as possible at the ashram and I avoided of going back to my country if I didn't have to.
It was not what mother claimed it was, she made herself believe that she did something else and that she was the one who had accomplished it what in reality was a catastrophe.
After my father died, she said, 'it is done' and it sounded like she was responsible, it was all upside down. They lived in Spain in a nice house, but he died not peacefully in the bed. He fell from a palm tree and he called three days before my younger sister and announced that it would take only three more days. It felt really sad to face that later on. 
He fell from the palm tree and died some days later in the hospital, my sister told me that he wanted to die and he asked them at the hospital to let him die.
He was later in my dream and said he had to show me something, he was at a very dark place in the riverbed and when the water came, he couldn't go out of it, it was very dark and the light was far a way like a small star.
The masters tell us it is the future far away like a small star in the moment of death and it is the reality of the mind. If we lived always for the mind only it is for the future and the future in the moment of death doesn't exist, only the present is there, the moment of death and when we lived in our mind always for the future, it will not be possible anymore in the moment of death.

Swami is telling us in these words that our life and the difficulties in our life is no hindrance to a person pursuing a noble course in life. In his presence the problem neighbor and disturbance in the neighborhood came up and he made me aware of it and it was still possible to fight it during the neighbor's life time, what meant for me, going into distance and telling him again and again to stop it and he didn't do it, he was living just opposite the road of my parent's house and I had a dream, it was his wife in that dream they were living in the new parent's house in Spain on our parking lot, it showed that the past conflict was in the present again, even if the house was sold and they had moved away, they were still living on our parking lot, she was wearing big sun glassed and she looked at the border they had crossed together, I guess that is how it came back to him, after all they lived too close to my place and for her it was not only peaceful as we had been once in a relationship.
She was wearing big sun glasses, what is usually a sign of blindness and one night he had been in my dream as a blind man with a stick, he had difficulties to find the way and he didn't do the right thing, if it was about harm set, harm get.
Thinking it over we get aware of it and we are able to put it into practice, this is the meaning when he is telling us, more we grind the sandalwood, it will yield into sandal paste. He mentioned that we have to think it over and see it in our own life again and again, something that it not often practiced as it seems. 
We tend to think, it is done forget about it, but every time when we write history and see it in his light, the truth is coming up and that is it turns into sandal paste or we crush the sugarcane and get sweet juice.
It is not done, in my family my brothers and sister have the idea of the mother and how she made them see it and that creates only problems still today. It was kind of a challenge to follow the master and to set it right and the rest I guess time will do. 
It is for everybody totally different then we thought it was.
Already when my father planned to build the house in Spain it was in the air as illusion and at that time I didn't know if was in a spiritual or material sense, but it was in both ways an illusion, he didn't find what he was looking for and his problems were not solved with the house in Spain, too much was unresolved behind to be a peaceful experience. 
By thinking it over we heat the gold more and more and make it shine. 
We have to set it right, it was another time, I had to tell my story and how with Swami at the ashram truth came up and there was not no problem like my mother liked to see it, but there was the problem that she found every way possible of avoiding it. If we are avoiding truth that is not a good quality.

The more you grind the sandalwood, the more it yields sandal paste. The more you crush the sugarcane, the more it yields sweet juice. As the gold is heated more and more, it becomes purer and shines with added brilliance. Likewise, the good qualities in a noble person blossom more and more as one passes through the vicissitudes of life. Embodiments of Love! The difficulties of life do not cause any hindrance to a person pursuing a noble course of life.

It was a kind of self inquiry what resulted in getting aware of the parent's house in a totally different way then they wanted to see it. We also had to to see the difference between sathva, rajas and tamas and that it is the tendency of tamo guna, making out of it something else. It makes out of a vice a virtue and a virtue a vice.

And we went ahead, we meditated and just went ahead, we were contemplating on God constantly or what I called the light, what is not different from God. We are born as humans and in all those around us there was no awareness of the great good fortune of having a human birth, there was all over the mind only and the idea that something is achieved with hard work and being mind only, what is an illusion, but not only in the spiritual sense, but as well in the material sense.

 In spite of these, he always remains at peace and contemplates on God constantly. Of all the living beings, to be born a human being is the rarest occurrence (Jantunam Narajanma Durlabham), so this life that you are gifted with is indeed a great good fortune. Having been blessed with such a human birth, you should develop noble thoughts and experience bliss within. Only then will you be truly fortunate.

This morning I was in my meditation thinking that we transcend the mind with meditation. We go beyond the mind and last night before going asleep I as well did it for a short while, just thinking of God and knowing by transcending the mind and with meditation we are in touch with him and that was enough to make me feel good.

My daughter was last night at the phone for a long time and I was kind of upset that it went on for so long and this morning that was kind of still in the air when waking up wondering how she would feel rested if she was on the phone instead of sleeping and when I reflected about my meditation and just thinking about God, I just felt awake, okay and ready to start the day. After all she is not a child anymore and it is her problem if she doesn't sleep enough, she has to deal with it.

Swami said that in the interview, 'just think about God' and I never new how to do it, but that is what is done during meditation, when we take a mantra and repeat it, we transcend the mind and when we transcend we forget thoughts and we forget time and space and when we are back, we are in thoughts again, therefore, it is nothing else but thinking about God, knowing we cannot know God in the mind, we have to go beyond the mind to be one with God.

That is why during meditation if we repeat the name, we just think about God. He said not long ago in a thought for the day that in the Gita Krishna explains of all the sacrifices he is the repetition of the name and Swami also said in an interview, that all mantras are okay, when we meditate and think the mantra, we repeat the name and it means nothing else but thinking about God always.

Knowing that there is the light, we just do it, to keep in touch with our own higher self, we just think about God and contemplate about it constantly and it is a good feeling knowing that we are doing it. It is during meditation when repeating our mantra we are thinking constantly about God, because the name is not different from him.