2-12-2007

WHAT IS FREEDOM? HOW CAN SPIRITUAL PRACTICES BE SUSTAINED?

Freedom is lack of control. Normally when you say lack of control, it brings about a physical reaction, your mind begins to think of something going awry, something you will not be able to restrain, something which will overwhelm you, something which will be too large for you to handle. All of these kinds of stressful associations are made with lack of control. And yet, it is this lack of control that really unlocks the golden door of freedom.

Let us understand what lack of control is. First of all, accepting the fact that we are all human beings, control is deeply ingrained in our cellular structure. When we have control over a situation, we feel safe. We feel nothing can go wrong now because I have control over it. Secondly, you might feel if you are able to control something, those you love will also be safe because you can also control the safety factor for the ones you love. So we will try to control our children, let us say, not from any, hopefully authoritative or tyrannical reason, but truly and honestly, from the purity of our hearts where we would like our children to be safe, we would like our children to be protected.

So the control factor, for every human being, really comes from the need for safety; the need for protection. That need for safety and protection arises from another factor, deeper than that (we have so many layers to ourselves) and that deep factor, the deepest of them all, is instinct for survival. That is basic an instinct as an animal who will fight to death in order to protect itself or its flock or family. This instinct for survival that each one of us has makes us want to take control. On the one hand, it seems to help us, where it provides us with an environment where we feel safe because the environment is now moving to my instructions; but on another level, completely, these very same controls actually hinder us from opening ourselves up fully.

Growth and expansion, like in every other field, whether it be business or personal, involves a certain degree of vulnerability. It asks you to be vulnerable to situations that you cannot predict, forecast and therefore, you can really have no control over them. Any one here, who is conducting a business, will know that. They call it a ‘business risk’. I prefer not to call it risk because again the word ‘risk’ brings about very stressful reactions, in our physical and mental bodies. Let’s call it ‘vulnerability’.

Vulnerability does not mean leaving yourself open to hurt, opening yourself to wounding. Not at all! It means allowing yourself to receive whatever is going to happen next of which you have no knowledge. When you want to have control, the universe brings to you what is going to happen next, but because that does not lie in your scheme of a protected environment, you will not even recognize it; you’ll shut yourself to that beautiful new reality that is there, waiting on the threshold, but you will lock it out because it is not part of your controlled environment. And then you begin to form a rut and it is in that rut that our freedom is lost.

What is freedom? Many people feel freedom means a license to do whatever you want. No, freedom is not like that; it’s not like a driver’s license or a drink permit. Freedom is giving yourself a structure, in which you can form your own limitations, in which you can draw your own boundaries. These boundaries are drawn from your wisdom, from your truth, and may not necessarily to conform to those boundaries drawn by others around you. And that, my friends, is freedom: giving yourself the fullest permission to be who you are; to live your life on your rules, to march on your beat. We don’t realize how many parts of our lives are in fact controlled, very indirectly but very strongly, by others. Our very reactionary processes, my friends, are actually influenced not by who you are now but by who you were in a past.

All of us, in different areas of our lives, are caught in time. A small e.g.: the next time you’re with your mother, how old do you feel? When you’re with your father, how old do you feel? When you’re with a friend, how old do you feel? When you’re with your husband, how old do you feel? When you’re with your kids, how old do you feel? Each age will be different. Then how old are you really? And if you’re all of these ages, then who are you? Can you see how spread out you are? Can you see that you’re giving yourself no freedom, in this current Now, to be who you are because every time you’re with mom, you become the chided child of 10; every time you’re with dad, you become the rebellious son of 15; every time you’re with a friend, you become the joyously abandoned collegian of 20; every time you’re with your kids, you become the stern parent of 1,552. (Laughter)

We have to learn to live in this reality. Who am I now? Who is pulling my strings? If X calls me a rude name and I react, who’s pulling my strings? X is pulling my strings, which means instantly, I have no freedom. She has the power over me. Why am I reacting? Because I want to control her and stop her from being abusive to me. But if I am fine with what she says, if it’s an aspect that she sees in me, who am I to say that it’s not? Why must I even defend it?

When you need to defend yourself it means somewhere deep in you, it’s hurt you, it’s touched a chord, and it’s taken away your freedom. Look at every reactionary process and say, “Who is pulling my strings at this moment?” Release every string; every string that you release will automatically have a ripple effect of releasing two more strings on its own. And suddenly, you’re a fuller person; you’re a surer person. That’s freedom: freeing yourself from the expectations of others. You are the only one who has the right to expect anything from you. Freeing yourself from the control of others. You are the only one who has control over you. Freeing yourself from societal conditioning, parental conditioning and accepting only those truths that you are now writing in a book of gold yourself. These are my laws; I live by them. Prepare for yourself a book of life; start on that. Write down the rules you wish to live by, not the rules that anyone else has told you are right or wrong, or good or bad.

Every time you free yourself from one more string, suddenly you sit back, on joyous moment, and say, “Why am I feeling so light today?” Then you realize that there is no one tugging at you from one side or the other. There is no one tugging me from one side or another; I can be as still as I want to be. I can be in complete frenzy of activity the whole day and there’s inner stillness. As soon as I feel there’s no inner stillness and as soon as I feel tugged onto one side, I say, “Hello! Who pulled that one?” Instant awareness! Let’s remove it immediately.

Consider yourself the best gift you ever had and gently unwrap, layer after layer, of the wrapping paper. First, before you unwrap, take out that so-called attractive ribbon, gently. And sometimes, when you feel the tug, don’t react adversely. It’s OK. We’re all human beings and reaction is so a part of our ingrained way of behaving and so sometimes we do go back into past patterns. Don’t let that become another pull. Remember self-chastisement, my dear friends, is the biggest string that can bind you.

 Accept who you are, as I said at the beginning. Give yourself the fullest permission to be who you are, which means: if you are a person who lies occasionally, so what? Be in awareness. As yourself, “Why did I need to lie? Am I scared?” Understand that there is a string here that you need to release yourself from. If you are person who is harsh and mean at times, so what? Again, it’s a reaction. That’s really not who you are. It’s that tugging of that string that is making you harsh and mean. Just release that string. But do you know what we do? We hold onto that string and say, “I’m such a bad person. I’m harsh and mean and cruel”. And as soon as you say all these things about yourself, 20 different strings have attached themselves to you, like prison bars.

Never chastise yourself, never. There is nothing that you do, which is so criminally wrong. And I mean nothing; I’m looking at the whole span of things, like murder, rape, child abuse, whatever. The truth is: when a human being is caught so tightly in these strings, in order to break free sometimes, he commits acts that we judge as criminal; we never see the pain that lies inside; we only see the action. None of us, sitting here, are part of the legal system to judge that. If that’s your profession, leave it in your profession; but as human beings, no judgment. No human being is ever evil, it’s the strings that make them act in a way that makes us all feel that they fall into that awful definition of evil.

When you’ve freed yourself, then the next question is: how do they sustain it? How does one sustain that? We have found there are times when we feel so full, we feel so much in equilibrium, as though all is right with us and with the universe. And then, who knows why, one morning you get up and you are angry and you are snapping at your wife and shouting at the servant and all that equanimity has just disappeared, vanished and you think, “Oh Gosh! I have to climb this mountain all over again.” But that’s the joy; the joy of ascension lies not in the movement upwards but in the downward fall because every time you fall, you rise a little higher after that. Again, when you fall, don’t beat yourself up; understand: Which strings? Who’s pulling them? What is pulling them? As soon as you are aware, break those strings. You’ll automatically float upwards.

Spirituality, spiritual practice, equanimity, can only be sustained when you fall. Don’t think when you revert to past patterns that you’re not sustaining your spirituality. It’s not possible not to sustain it; that’s who you are. How can you not sustain spirituality? Just because you fall back into past patterns, don’t judge yourself harshly. Look at that and say, “Alright! Time to free a few more strings and fly a little bit higher.” Instantly, that situation will not seem difficult to you. It’s our perception that makes a situation difficult. Let’s assume you have a situation where a business partner deceives you and all your dreams come crashing down. You go into a reactionary process, which is but natural, of judging the partner, being angry at him, maybe even being abusive at him. You might react as, “I’m just no good. I don’t know how to judge people. This is the 3^rd time I’ve met with failure. Maybe I should just give up; it’s not working for me.” You’re not bouncing the ball. You’re allowing the bounce to die down. Once the ball has bounced and it’s on its way up, hold it and lift yourself with it. Don’t look at it as a failure or a deception.

Study your reactions, don’t judge them. ‘This is how I’m reacting. In this reaction, who is pulling my strings? What is tugging at me?’ Instantly you have 10 strings with which you have to work. Start releasing yourself from those strings and effortlessly, you will float upwards and higher. Then something else will happen and down you will go again. Your view of this is wonderful. ‘Thank you, Universe! You’ve brought before me some more strings to free so that I can now rise even higher.’ That’s sustained spirituality.

And that brings us to concentration. Concentrate on this moment; not what you want it to be in a future moment, not a past, right now. Concentrate on who you are now. If you can’t answer that: who am I right now? Wonderful! It’s time to start the journey. The journey starts when you say ‘I don’t know’. And once you say: ‘I know this’, then you concentrate on that and then you know a little more and you concentrate on that more and more and more, for what is concentration?

Concentration is nothing else but an unwavering faith in the wisdom that you have. Unwavering faith in the wisdom that you have. Don’t compare yourself to another; there’s no one there (outside of you), everyone is here (within), everyone. The greatest spiritual teacher and guru is here, and you are here, and that so-called ‘murderer’ is also here. You may not like to admit it but our politicians are also here. (Laughter) They’re only different faces that you’re wearing. So when you look at someone, concentrate on you. Everyone wears a different face but they all have your spirit. If you can concentrate on that one fact, you will always be in the now because judgment comes form the past and expectation and hold over another comes from a future and neither exists; both are illusions that your mind has created. When you’re in this now and you have unwavering faith in who you are, in what you know, that moment will expand itself to accommodate who you are, what you were and what you will always be.

Jade Fire

Good evening, beloved friends! Love and embrace of Jade Fire!

Let us now make you experience the truth that there is none save you. Let us help you to understand, connect with, contact, access your finer, finest vibrations, so that you practically, tangibly are able to experience the truth of what was just said, so that you can experience, for yourself, that while there is you, in dense matter form, there is you, in light spirit form and all are just aspects of the formless.

Close your eyes so that you are able to disconnect from matter, from denseness. Let your vision be inwards, outwards, upwards. Flow with the words, flow with the melody.

(Jade Fire sings) Take me home. Take me home.

 Gentle spirit, as I fly, be the wind beneath my wings.

Take me home. Take me home.

Gentle spirit, as I ride, be my stead and ride with me. Let your feet take us far.

Take me home. Take me home.

Gentle spirit, while I breathe, breathe with me the song I sing.

Breathe my melody, take me home. Take me home. Ride with me, fly with me.

Gentle spirit, while I sing, sing with me my gentleness.

Give to me my divine tune. Let me see the music of you.

Gentle spirit, sing with me, breathe with me, ride with me, fly with me.

Take me home. Take me home. Take me home.

As I cry, gentle spirit, hold me.

Let my tears wash my pain. Let my sobs clear the rain clouds.

Gentle spirit, hold me. Hold me.

As I cry, as I cry, take me home. Take me home.

As I laugh, gentle spirit, laugh with me.

 Let my heart feel the thrill of the child.

 Let my soul feel the joy of cheer.

 Let delight take me home. Take me home.

Gentle spirit, as I live, let me live a gentle life of power, a laugh.

 Let me live a spirithood, a Godhood of that which I can see above me.

 Gentle spirit, fly with me, ride with me.

Take me home. Take me home.

Sai Baba/Meera

Aa ja. Aa ja mere pass, o mere saya, aa ja.

Aa ja. Yeh dil, yeh dil ab tera hai, yeh dil;

Aa ja. Aa ja mere saya. Aa ja.

Mere dil me bas, mere ankh me bas,

Aa ja. O mere saya aa ja.

Aa (..) mein (..) ne sakoo, (..) mein reh ne sakoo tere bina.

A baa ja. Ab aa ja. A baa ja.

O mere saya aa ja. Ab aa ja.

St. Germain

“I wish to seek God”, said the young disciple. “I wish to know the Lord”, said the young initiate. “I wish to be like the Lord”, said the young adept. And the Lord replied, “Each time you hold yourself, you feel me. Each time your tears fall down your cheeks, it is I who cry. Each time the laughter bubbles up within you, it is I who guffaw. What seeks you, Oh beloved disciple? Who do you wish to know, oh young initiate? Who do you wish to be like, young adept, for I am you, I am you, I am you.

Jade Fire

Rise joyously. Fly, beautiful Golden Falcons, fly. You do not have even have the imagination to know the beauty of the vista that you can see from that height. Fly, for the mountain is high, higher than any mountain that your eyes have ever seen or will see. And yet, the flight atop that mountain is smooth and easy. And then there is no coming back for atop that mountain is home, is home, is home.

 Fly, fly with me. Let me be the wind beneath your wings. Let me fly below you so that if I see my Golden Flacons fly above, my spirit will soar even higher in joy. Soar, my Golden Falcons, soar. Soar! Be free!