Your life is sacred and blessed as it is. The question is to what degree you realize that day by day, moment by moment. The more you realize it, the more fulfilled, present and peaceful you will be and the more you will be able to contribute.
All life is sacred but that sacredness is veiled by mental confusion and painful emotions and the behaviors and physical manifestations that result. The veil is like sleep; it is an extensive unconsciousness that permeates our waking life, a trance state from which we can awaken.
At times you have had glimpses of awakening beyond that veil. These moments are of great importance to remember for they show you the way. Below you can find inspirations to deepen your embrace of the sacredness of your life.
> On Enlightenment
Question: “Baba, How do we become enlightened?
Maharajji: “Love people, Serve People and Remember God.”
> On the Heart
“Like the planets revolve around the sun your life revolves around your Heart. But you are unaware of your Heart as long as it is obstructed by stressful thoughts and emotions. You live aware of these instead and this is your suffering. Remove the obstructions and realize the eternal light of the Self. This is the highest accomplishment.”
Ram Giri
“If you feel any openness in your heart, I encourage you to say, “Yes, I am open to go more deeply into this understanding,” not by force, but by the full and open will from your heart to say, “Yes I want to go more deeply into that, I want to come home, because I feel like I’m in exile from my own Self.”
Mooji
> On Compassion
“Realization has no value until it’s lived. I would travel to the ends of the earth for one person who is suffering. The desperate, the hopeless, are unenlightened cells of my own body. It’s my own body I’m talking about–the body of the world is my body. Would I let myself drown in water that doesn’t exist? Would I let myself die in an imagined torture chamber? My God, I think, there’s someone out there who really believes there’s a problem. I remember when I used to think there was a problem. How can I say no when that person asks for help? That would be saying no to myself. So I say yes and I go, if I can. It’s a privilege. It’s more than that: it’s self-love.”
Byron Katie: A Thousand Names for Joy.
> On Practice
“Nothing can trouble you but your own reactions. People and situations do not cause you pain. Your thoughts and emotions about them do. You can change those reactions. This is the key to freedom. Feelings and thoughts arise like clouds in the sky. Let them pass through. Focus your mind on the sun in the Heart.”
Ram Giri
> On Evolution
Today we are not involved in biological evolution any longer but in the evolution of consciousness. That changes the rules. Now it is no longer about the survival of the fittest. The time of violence based on fear, of the instinctual survival based on fight or flight is over. Now it is the wisest who will survive. Wisdom is the new criteria for survival. The wisest is the fittest. We have to educate our brains to that.
Wisdom heals and nurtures relationship – relationship between individuals, communities, races, nations and religions. We are part of a web of existence and how we, each one of us, supports this system determines our survivability.
Empathy, caring and non-violence are the new determinants for survival. We need to leave behind our fear and our violence, our competition and selfishness; these are the dinosaurs of today. We have to learn that happiness will be found not in fighting but in cooperation. And the first level of cooperation is to find harmony within ourselves. Without that all our attempts to get along with each other are bound to fail.
What endangers us is the absence of consciousness and the inability to feel with and for each other. To overcome that danger and to thrive we need to be present, not lost in the stream of stressful thoughts; we need to live with an open Heart and not continue to fall for our unconscious negative emotions. Our reality is created by our state of consciousness. The consciousness of wholeness is the Heart.
Ram Giri
> On Thinking
“I work with four-and five-year-old children who suffer from believing the same concepts that adults believe. These concepts are sacred religions; we’re completely devoted to them. “People should come,” “People should go,” “People should understand me,”
“I’m too this,” “I’m too that,” “My wife shouldn’t lie,” “My children should appreciate me,” “My husband doesn’t love me,” “My mother would be much happier if she saw things the way I do.” Whatever story we’re attached to, that’s where our devotion is. There’s no room for God in it.”
Byron Katie: A Thousand Names for Joy.
> On Love
It’s unanimous where I come from.
Everyone agrees on one thing:
It’s no fun
When God is not near.
We are all hunters.
The wise man learns the Friend’s weaknesses
And sets a clever trap.
Listen,
The Beloved has agreed to play a game
Called
Love. …
The wise man learns what draws God
Near.
It is the beauty of compassion
In your heart.
The Gift; Poems by Hafiz; tr: Daniel Ladisky
> On Peace
When you understand that you are one with reality, you don’t seek, because you realize that what you have is what you want.
Byron Katie: A Thousand Names for Joy.
