The Quality of Love

Develop the quality of love. Do not hate anyone. Develop the faith that whatever happens to you is good for you. Think that whenever you encounter any difficulty or suffering, you alone are responsible for it. On the other hand, if you insult anyone knowingly or unknowingly, that someone else may punish you some day. Pleasure and pain are the products of your own making. The merit or sin you commit, follows you like a shadow always. Many today give sermons to others, without they themselves following what they advice. What value will your advice have? Whenever you read or listen to a noble thought, it is of no value to you until you practice it assiduously. Help your fellow human beings at least in a small measure. You will be helped in return when you need it most. Never blame others for the difficulties you face. Never abuse anyone. Love all and treat everyone as your brothers and sisters.

If we develop the quality of love, we get aware that whatever happens to us is good for us or we think it is Karma and therefore, there is a reason for it. That is what I usually thought when things didn't feel right and there was no way of questioning it. If it didn't feel right, it was not a problem, but only my problem and that is what I had learnt when I was still a teenager and my mother didn't wanted to be bothered about it. 

But that way of thinking made me get into inquiry, even if I didn't wanted to. First we began to meditate and by regular meditation hoped everything would get okay and answered and no problem and for a while it really looked like that, if we don't ask question, we don't need to get an answer, but it didn't change the situation in the parent's house that things were avoided. 

But it is still present, it is in the family, in my sister and my brothers, it is still not right and still avoided and with the younger brother it was kind of difficult getting aware that a conversation was impossible, he turned every word around and it ended in what Swami is telling us here, never abuse anyone, but with him every word turned into that. In a way he constantly overreacted, he was too emotional and it took time and some insights and dream to realize in that stirred up and unclear energy that it was the same, the result of the parents and my mother saw it like that and he was seeing it like her and that means everything I said was anyhow not right. 

I tried talking to him and usually we do an effort when it is about family and love and we think we should develop love. 

The man coming in our dreams to awaken said, that he is really not interested in my message. 
That means it was the end of it, the end of trying as he said, follow the master, fight to the end, finish the game. That is how I knew it was the end or that every effort to appease the situation would only create the opposite, we got to the point with the conflict and more could not be done, we had to let go and let it be and accept it the way it was. That is what he said about truth, we have to accept it and sometimes truth is that we cannot change it. 

Some time later he was in my dream and I hugged him and when I told my sister about it as with her we often talk also about him and she is the one who is touch with him still, she said, that I am in peace with it. 
I am not worried about the problems he has. On that point we have realized that it is the result of the parents and rather a catastrophe and that we cannot change it. 
I know I cannot do anything about it and if I would try it would only be misunderstood and it would be more or less time and energy waste or even do harm and the opposite. 
Some time before the death of my mother I drove with her to his place and we went for a visit. After that visit in the dream it said, that my brother does the worst he can do and I got worried and asked him what he was doing. 

But only later in that sense it got clear why it was there as the worst he can do and why I shouldn't try to get rid of the conflict, as it was never possible to talk in the parent's house, it is as well not possible to address it on the spoken level. 

It was as in the dream as the result of the parents, in an insight I saw my father he was just in the same height and the younger brother was above it like out of an overview like a black shadow. 
When I first had a dream at the time driving back from Spain, my parents were retired in Spain, when there was conflict, the father usually let it out on me and it was of no use to write Swami letters to keep me out of it, they found a way getting me involved the writing to Swami made that I was in distance just watching and not getting into it also not when he blamed me for it or punished even me for it. 
I went with mother to the bus station and we left without goodbye even if he knew we wouldn't see each other for a year or more.
I had been in the Sai Baba ashram for six months before and I went to my parents trying to know what went wrong always, and I wrote it down usually and when it got really bad I sent the letter away to stay in touch with Swami in keeping some kind of distance with the parents and their issues, to not get too involved in their problems. 

I know from my childhood that when they had problems, instead of looking at it that he usually let it out on me and we just needed to say a word or be at the wrong place to be in the midst of it and then usually I asked myself, what I had done afterwards. 

That situation was once mirrored at the ashram, it was during a festival and we sat in the crowed of people and it was before Darshan, I was most of the time meditating to stay inside in the midst of the crowds. I was glad when we could sit down and I closed my eyes and was in meditation, so I had missed the moment when Swami came out of the door and I noticed only that something was going on when someone at my side said, 'don't hit'. 

In the meantime a Western woman was running towards Sai Baba who was starting to give Darshan in front and she was guided back by the seva dals and one woman as it seemed had hit her with something. I didn't see the whole thing, I just opened the eyes as I was sitting at the side of the other woman who said, 'don't hit' and when I opened my eyes I saw the woman who had misbehaved and the seva dal, getting her out of the huge gathering of thousands sitting in front of us and we were all scared of the chief seva dal, she was called Mataji and I happened to look in her eyes and I made eye contact in the wrong moment. 
She had noticed that someone said something, but she didn't know who it was and when I looked at her she looked in my eyes and all others avoided of looking at her and she shouted at me, 'who are you to tell us how we should do our job?'

I was like in shock, I didn't expect that and as I had been in meditation I felt it even more, I was part of all the others and if I made eye contact in the wrong moment, I got in troubles, but it felt kind of like in my parent's house.

I was scared of Mataji and one of the worst moments was, when we had once interview, I had been taking care of the group and when we were sitting on the veranda waiting for Swami to take us in the interview room, Mataji seemed to never forget anyone and she came to me and said, 'troublemaker' and I was that scared really and when Swami came out to get us in the interview room, he walked around the women sitting at the floor and finally he sent one away, she had been part of our group, but she had thrown her scarf at us and left and Swami told her, 'go, no scarf'.

So there was a trouble maker, but the other had to go and in that moment I felt that scared really. 

Lucky he knew what we couldn't say in the parent's house, there it was all upside down. 

After that strange incident and I didn't know what had happened and why he the father was upset and why he behaved like that and it was impossible to address it or talk about it without getting into more troubles, I had the dream while driving back in the bus that the youngest brother was the result of those two. 

In the meantime years later it does make sense and we cannot expect anything good if that conflict is the reason for it. 
And we know in that sense that he does the worst he can do and that the conflict was never addressed and when there is conflict we have to bring it to the point, as Swami said, otherwise, it will expand. 

As it was not brought to the point also not by the parents, it has expanded and it is like a shadow above the family now in the younger brother who does the worst he can do. 

And there is nothing we can do about it or the best we can do about it is to keep in distance and silent and not to try to get it to the point, as Swami's words. 
When he said as the man coming in our dreams to awaken, he is really not interested in my message, it was telling me in that way that we got it to the point as much as possible and now I had to let go. 
Whatever I would tell or not tell, he is not interested in it anyhow. It is time waste and I cannot make it okay, it is the result of the parents and we got it to the point even if I don't know it, it was for me a sign that I had to stop it and let it be or let go of it. 

It was impossible to address it and the same it had been in Spain, thus it was not clear what it was, it was just clear it would expand and we don't know what it was, we just know it was not okay and he was not happy about something, but we don't know what it was, it was not possible of talking and when we tried with mother we didn't get anywhere but getting avoiding answers like, you should not. 

I told her when leaving and she came with me to the bus that it was a shame, and I don't even remember what she said or didn't say, as she avoided it as well, it was impossible to address it, we had to deal with fits of rage making itself air like that and we didn't know why and it was not possible of taking to him when we tried we provoked another fit of rage and that means we were also avoiding the talking as we knew he could get violent and it felt dangerous trying of taking to him. 

Once he saw in the TV the Maharishi and at the time I had been with TM, I came back from Paris with TM and when he saw him he asked me, 'why you didn't tell me that?' And I looked at him, but I didn't say anything, but I wondered what he meant with telling him that, what could I have possibly told him? 

First of all it was not possible of talking to him at all and how should I tell him about a Guru and a yogi when it was not possible of talking and I got some kind of used to it, I didn't even try anymore and later he really began with TM and I had initiated him, because I had been a meditation teacher. My sister was a siddha as well and she had told him and after he began, for a while it felt great, it was a good time for the family, but it didn't last long and he didn't do it for a long time and I was not too surprised, I was surprised that he began. Probably the Maharishi had a bigger effect on him than I thought. 

I don't remember that I ever said more to my father than how are you and everything okay. When he said that, 'why didn't you tell about it', I only got the impression that he was not aware that I it was not possible of talking to him whatever the reason, it was always in the conflict with the mother and to keep out of it, there was just no way to address it, I had tried about everything to change it and it was only possible of taking to her, but not to him and I wrote him a few times in the hope that it would get better or change something, but it didn't. 

It felt like totally cut off, it was impossible to address any conflict or to bring it to the point and often I forgot it, mostly after I had been a while with Swami in India in coming back, I had forgotten it and I was kind of surprised when I got aware of it again. 

It felt like only the mother was present, he was there only as problem in the background or at her side, but there was no way of exchange between him and us or at least between me and him and with my sister it was a bit better as it seemed, but it didn't end well. After she did TM, she went into a social worker training and there she met a psychiatrist who did therapy with drugs and she got into that and at that time I was in New York when I got letters about 'incest' issues and that therapist had even written books about 'incest', but for her it was the experience and as she was in the social worker training they questioned the childhood and the question was there if there had been incest in the family and who was to be blamed the father of course. 

Even if he said was swearing it that nothing like that ever had happened, she didn't believe him and she was convinced it was the father. 

It had been in that sense the father role, but it was that psychiatrist and his wife, she told me once that she had seen her as mother and that means he was father, they replaced the parents in that moment, but my sister got out of it and blamed afterwards her father for it and he had difficulties with it and he was unable to really get rid of the blame and the role of the mother was anyhow always making him the bad guy and she had to save him, that was kind of her message. 

It was a codependent energy between them and I got aware of it when I did an inner child workshop. 

As I had the experience of the parents with Sai Baba it was easy for me to realize that the role had switched and that it was that psychiatrist and the drugs that got her into that role and she met the father in that guy and when I read that he had written even books incest what means it was about his therapy work what no medical doctor should do really, he went over all limitations and he had free sex in his community and lots of kids. He had two big families with ten or more kids and more kids of other women at the side and that all legal and under the protection of his medical status and it was all legal. 

What I think what happened is that the incest issue was projected on the real father and he was unable to get rid of it. I never believed it. I got about ten letters in that time from her and she accused me of not going into it and that I must have had as well such experiences with my father and I said, there had been nothing, if there would have been something, it would have come up at the ashram with Sai Baba, that was clear. 
After a while at the ashram the whole problem neighborhood and parent's house came up and all different then I thought it was. 
I was there and I thought as I was already ten years regularly meditating that I had done a lot of work and I didn't expect things to come up like that as the man coming in our dreams to awaken if there was a problem, he was in the dream as that problem and the same way after mother came back from Spain and later when she died, the problem incest came up again, but it was not with father, but the younger brother who had no distance and who mixed into about everything personal and I told him a few times, that it was not his business and that I am not going to talk about private stuff with him. 

It was present as abuse and incest and in that sense, it had nothing to do with the father, but with the brother. The father was in such distance, it was not possible of talking to him, he was like cut off and it was maybe the result of the mother saving idea that she made sure, he was not there and in a way she cut him off from us. 

It was kind of like mobbing going on in the background, it was once in my dream as mobbing and it was the mother the dark person in the midst of it. 

When something was wrong, she was usually talking someone else about it and not addressing the conflict, but making it expand. That is how I got aware of it. 

Once I wrote her a letter, it was just about the dream I had after my father died, he was at a dark place, the light was far away like a small star and I wanted my mother to give me some kind of feedback or feeling about it. It was impossible, I had said it a few times when the family was present and I got a reaction from everyone, but not from her and after ten years I noticed that I didn't get a feedback from my mother and that is how I wrote her a letter and told her about it and that I would like to get some kind of reaction to that dream from her side. 

She didn't answer, she told my brother about it and I guess that is why it came up that he does the worst he can do, so not the best, but the worst. I mentioned the dream of the father and got the answer that he will get a lawyer if I don't leave mother alone and I wrote him back that it was only about a dream, what was the big thing about it? But in the dream was the father and the energy of the father. 

I didn't get an answer anymore, but the conflict got worse until I got that insight that he is not interested in my message and he is living in Thailand anyhow, so there is no more contact. 

I tried to be in that letter as nice as I could just telling her that I needed some kind of feedback from her side, it was a dream, but she didn't know what to do with dreams as it seems and nobody else talked about a dream and asked her something about a dream. 

After her death she was as well in my dream and said that she didn't get the last sermon and I looked with my sister at it and finally I guess we got to the right conclusion, it could be because I didn't forgive her, but it is kind of difficult or impossible to forgive, if we don't see the role she was playing. We think we forgive, we forget it, but forgiving and developing love is different. We cannot develop love if we are unable to forgive. 

Often after I had seen my mother I came back all upset and not happy at all and I was not aware what it had been that made me feel like that and as soon as she was back here we had only problems and it was that difficult in the family and only problems that I tried to stay in distance. 

It is part of it that we have to get aware of it first to be able to forgive. 

Develop the quality of love. Do not hate anyone. Develop the faith that whatever happens to you is good for you. Think that whenever you encounter any difficulty or suffering, you alone are responsible for it. 

We can think that we are alone responsible for it, but we still have to get aware of it. And it is not Swami as the man coming in our dream telling us to just forget about it, not at all, if we can forget okay, but when we cannot forget about it and when it is alive as conflict in the family it is alive and it is not possible to forget, we suffer the result of the parents, that is what it said in the dream when driving back from Spain years ago that the youngest brother is the result of the parents, therefore, it is an ongoing thing and it is not finished and just forgotten. 

We are responsible as we can think it is our Karma, but nevertheless, it is as conflict alive in the family situation and still there as conflict, that means it is as well Karma, that is what the parents did and we cannot change it, but we can get the insights and live in peace with it or not. 

When that thing came up with the psychiatrist and the father role and the incest issue, when I mentioned it to my sister, she said she finished with it and it was done and it was impossible of talking about it, even thought I was sure it came up because it had turned into a family issue when she blamed the father for it. 
I talked with her about it as the psychiatrist died not long ago as well and I mentioned the parent's role, but I didn't impose on her that I was sure that it was due to him and not due to the father. It is kind of clear that it is due to the therapy work and not enough distance and it was projected on her own father. He was in the father role and she projected it on the father, the question is why she was projecting it and why she looked at the father always as the bad guy and what the mother did with her way of talking to all others about it and not addressing the conflict and bringing it to the point. 

On the other hand, if you insult anyone knowingly or unknowingly, that someone else may punish you some day. Pleasure and pain are the products of your own making. The merit or sin you commit, follows you like a shadow always. 

During an interview I had to translate for a person who had health problems and after that interview, she made totally something else out of it and told me that Swami meant me and not her and I was aware during the interview that it was my shadow, that shadow was above her like standing in the air. 
After that interview next morning it was my mother in the air and I wondered what that shadow had to do with my mother and we can see that the shadow is following us and it is the product of our own making, that has to do with Karma, the merit and sin we commit and the shadow following us always. 

That is why I was facing it no matter what, because I said, if it is my shadow and it is following me better face it now than trying to avoid it. 

It is just the question if we can do it and face it. 
Thus I went last year to New York and met my ex, even if a few years before just thinking of it I kind of got nuts and I didn't want to see him, now I was able to see him after we had met in India at the ashram again. Something happened I thought impossible still some time before. It as well feels like a conflict and it was not possible to address it, so it said in the darshan, it is perverted, you have to get a divorce and that time I didn't know what it was - perverted, it means as well upside down, spiritually upside down. In the meantime I think I got the idea of it. It was as well conflict and we had to go in distance and just be in distance until time will take care of it. 

Many today give sermons to others, without they themselves following what they advice. What value will your advice have? Whenever you read or listen to a noble thought, it is of no value to you until you practice it assiduously. 

In our last study circle we talked about being in mediation always and we talked about the neti, neti and it is kind of difficult talking about it with people who have not the experience of it. 
After I came back from the ashram and we didn't go back to my ex, we followed the master and there was no doubt about going back, there was no peace and he had a dream and it said, I should go to Swami to make peace with him that was in his mind, for me it was a Baba call, but after four months in Swami's presence, we had a good time, as I didn't get the flight back to Bombay I had to get a flight still and we had not enough cash to get the flight from the ashram to Bombay. It was possible to fly from Puttparthi to Bombay at that time and the six year old daughter happened to have a high fever, so I tried to get cash with the credit card and my ex had cancelled it. 
It was still possible of using it, but it was impossible of getting cash and that is how we got aware already at the ashram before we left Swami that there was no peace. 
As he is telling us we need to blend truth and right action, we will get peace, if we separate truth and right action only pieces will be left. 

We went to him because he is truth and right action and there was peace and when we got to the point of leaving the ashram we got aware of no right action from the side of her father, he didn't care about our wellbeing, he didn't care about truth and right action and therefore, peace was impossible. 
Today we know why at that time we just followed the master, we had to fight to the end to be able to finish the game and after I came back last time from New York in the dream his credit card was in pieces. 

That we had to get cash and we got aware of it, that was of course as well Swami as we shouldn't go back if the peace was already disturbed and made impossible the moment we left the ashram.
I was not very glad about it, I had to come back here and start new again and get a divorce and face the reality of perversion, what means no matter what I said, we taked with a wall. 
After I came back I began with 'neti, neti', constantly thinking not this and not that, mostly in the bus I enjoyed it, when something came up some kind of feeling, instead of thinking the mantra, what made me not really forget it, what I had tried before, I said not that and by taking the power away, it was possible to forget it. 
With time if there was something coming up, I just said, 'not that' and that is how we can transform our day into constant mediation, because we always think not that and get aware of the mind and that we are just pure consciousness. 

It was easy for me talking about it in the study circle, as I have practiced it, but it was not easy for the others to get the feeling for it. If we practiced it we get a totally different feeling for it, after a while thinking not that constantly I was unable to not think not that and I began with dynamic meditation as I had a teenager daughter and she was kind of challenging and following the master I as  well began to do inner child work and also dynamic meditation with movement and dance. 
By thinking 'not that' it was possible to melt with the rhythm and music and that was a good experience. That means after coming back here I was kind of occupied with 'not that' in the aim to not forget who we really are until Swami was in my dream before he left the body and I began to have so many Baba dreams and he came from the inside and that is how I forgot it again to think constantly not that and he said during dancing that I should stop dancing. I began again with silent sitting meditation. It is kind of like a second nature, next year it will be forty years that I am regularly meditating and it helps to settle down and to stay in touch with our higher self. 

Help your fellow human beings at least in a small measure. You will be helped in return when you need it most. Never blame others for the difficulties you face. Never abuse anyone. Love all and treat everyone as your brothers and sisters.

With mediation we thought we help our fellow human beings in such a way that we just meditate and purify our consciousness, we also have a positive effect on the collective consciousness. 
If we are in peace inside, we don't blame others for it, if we are somehow in a disturbed mood, we blame the others for it and it is like everything is coming up what ever has been there. We should not only treat our brothers and sisters like that, but everyone. 

And with my ex after coming back last November I had a hard time to feel just okay for a while, he made me feel depressed when we met with his sister, my daughter asked me after a while, if I feel okay and I said, yes, but I had a headache, I was just looking at that situation and felt depressed, because it was that depressing, I was silent and I said nothing anymore and my daughter felt that something was wrong. 

I had some difficulties to just get back to a normal feeling for a while coming back I still felt depressed, but we go on with mediation and that is what we do since forty years and that is how we get over it in time and on a certain point it gets normalized again. 

If we are inside in tune with him, we get over everything, we don't feel disturbed by family and by anything that is mind, he takes care of it, but that is not just a sentence and we think he takes care of it, he really does in our dreams. 

It is the inner master, he brought the conflict to the point and we have to follow the master. When we think we have to develop love, we think we should have a peaceful family life, but when one does the worst he can do, he does the worst he can do and no matter how much we try it will not get better, it will only get worse, therefore, it is better to not try and to let it be as it is not possible to change it and we will see in time. 

And more over my mother burdened me with it before her death she said, I should take care that the family gets along, what was kind of nice, I could see it as a blessing as she trusts in it that I am able to do it, even if the best way of taking care of it is in just staying in distance. I stay in distance and I don't do anything but following the inner master and live as much as possible in peace with it. 

That is why we shouldn't blame anyone for it, when we live in that inner place, there is nobody to be blamed but ourselves if we are unable of living in peace with it. 

At the end of the month in my sister's place, there is a disco for all ages and I went a few times and last year I didn't go at all and this year again and as I know dancing as well as dynamic meditation, this year it was a great experience, the same experience we had years ago with meditation and it was interrupted and disturbed at that time by the boyfriend who happened to be the national leader. 

It had to do with meditation and transcending the mind, by going beyond limitations. Before I didn't know what the disturbance had been and I had a few times asked me sister about it, but it never got clear. 

Feeling that harmony in dancing again as we had it years ago with our common meditation practice, it got clear in what way it had been years ago disturbed by that stupid guy who said, he could do with her whatever he wanted, in his fantasy only, but by that he expressed the thought and reality that he as the leader could do with the people whatever he wanted and they were like puppets on a string and he was the leader and the hand which had made them puppets on a string was not there, that was the master he was not there and when his former girlfriend came back from a big course, we have lots of troubles and finally the whole thing broke in pieces and at the end in the insight or dream stage all turned into enemies. 

What had been great and a wonderful experience before with my sister together as she was also into it and my father began with meditation and the younger brother, it had turned into conflict. 

And at the end all felt like enemies and it was with the sister actually, and it had turned into conflict and it seemed impossible of getting it to the point as it was on that level of a meditation movement and all seemed part of it when they all turned into enemies. Something was wrong, but what? How getting aware of it on the level of all, it seemed impossible. The result was a black hole in meditation, no light and the fear of losing the mind or death of tiredness. It was overwhelming and heavy. 

That is how I got in touch inside with Baba, when I took some vibuthi as the meditation felt just not good and it somehow had turned into conflict, no safety, even if they always tell 'safety first', that was gone, evaporated or broking in to thin air. It was a problem really and I guess that is how it got to the point, with dynamic meditation and when it is only for a few minutes, but it is possible to change everything if we really go beyond the mind. 

In the dream with my father after he had died, he was at a very dark place and the light was far away like a small star, what has to do with the mind, in the moment of death we have no future anymore and if we live always for the future, it is far away like a small star.

But there has also been a bridge, but he was in the river bed, the bridge was there, but he was not on the bridge, he was in the river bed. 

I got a painting of Thomas Kinkade with a bridge what somehow reminded me on that dream it is the nature like my father would have liked it, but there is no river bed, there is a river flowing in the painting,  the Broadwater bridge. 

That painting reminds me on the last dream I got from my father when he told me in the dream how he had died and when I think that there is no water and he is in the river bed and it deep and too steep getting out of it, we can get the feeling for it. 
It is kind of sad always new again, that is how I remember the dream with my father, how it should have looked or could have, but he was in the riverbed it was dark and he didn't get out of it anymore and the light was far away like a small star, when the water came, there was no way out.
What I like in that picture is not only the bridge, but as well the light and it is not just a small star.