God's Grace: A Time for Thanksgiving
Michael Turner
© 2009 by Michael Turner
“In the fullness of time, when it so pleases God, He brings about a
meeting between a jiva and a Sant Satguru, who establishes his contact
with Naam – the power of God or God in action – the Primal Sound
Current, wherewith a jiva is gradually led on and on until he reaches
the source and the fountainhead of Shabd or the Sound Current. It is
through the grace of God alone that one is initiated.”
- Kirpal Singh (Teachings of Kirpal Singh: Part 3. Pg. 117).
God's Grace is something that we’ve heard about all our lives. We
went to Sunday school, celebrated Thanksgiving, saw “It's a Wonderful
Life”, and all those old holiday movies. And we always said grace at
the dinner table.
Unfortunately, it almost became hokey to talk about grace and holy
gratitude for a while because in the last few decades people became
more and more aware of the difficulties of this world, of the
suffering in it. Especially in America, it became fashionable to be
cynical. I think one of the reasons for the upheavals we had in the
60’s was that people were brought up with the Sunday school, Cecil B.
DeMille, Frank Capra depiction of America. But then through the
evening news and other media they became aware of starvation in
Appalachia and disease and racism, right here, in the land of the free
and the home of the brave, the best of all possible worlds, and a
certain cynicism set in. I have heard more times that I would care to
count, “If God has Grace or love for us, why is there so much
suffering? Why are there so many difficulties in our country and on
this planet?”
Theologians have struggled with this for a long time. Some people
respond that, “Well, you suffer because you’re meant to” or “You've
been bad” or “Life is suffering”. But what it really comes to is that
this is a world of duality, this is a world of friction and abrasion
and conflict and resistance, not unlike isometric exercises. It’s
high density, high mass especially compared to other, inner universes
which are a lot more subtle. Yet because of the intense friction that
occurs here, when you're dealing with friction and resistance, it is
more of a challenge to maintain your spiritual awareness, your
spiritual balance. Yet the rewards for doing so are infinitely
greater than living in a so-called paradise where everything is
beautiful.
In some ways, the conflict and difficulties of our lives are great
examples of God’s grace, because it is through working with resistance
that we grow, develop spiritual strength and polish astounding.
You wouldn't see this brilliance when looking at a ruby to begin
with. And if it could complain, it would be screaming, “What are you
doing to me?” It’s not unlike Rumi’s tale of the chickpea and the
cook, the gist of which is that the chickpea jumps out of the soup pot
and says to the cook, “Why are you boiling me? What are you doing?”
And the cook responds, “I’m doing this to give you flavor. I’m doing
this to bring you into a higher state of expression.”
Kirpal Singh’s son Darshan Singh said that our difficulties in life
are another example of God’s grace, because frequently it is only when
we are encountering difficulties that we turn our mind to God. When
we are happy we are frequently thinking about everything but God. But
when things get tough, when we are suffering in some way, we become
very devotional. We start praying for the end of suffering.
It’s funny. Here it is Thanksgiving, and there is so much to be
grateful for, yet many of us don’t see it. I'm grateful for you being
here. I cannot tell you all how good it feels to share evenings with
friends and make new friends. It’s amazing how we all learn from each
other. That’s one of the blessings of having a planet and this
society to be in. It’s another example of grace that we are given
each other in whom we can see the Light of God in their eyes, and hear
the Song of God in their voices and children’s laughter.
Yet it is also sometimes difficult, because of all the challenging
things that happen in life. It can be difficult to have gratitude,
because frequently our prayers tend to be “Why me?” We ask for a
better job or to relieve the pain that is hurting us, or stop bad
things from happening to us. And sometimes, as the challenges come
fast and furious, it is easy to get overwhelmed by them and be aware
only of the hardships of life, forgetting all of the blessings we are
offered every day.
One of the essences of this path of Shabda Meditation is learning to
deepen our devotion to the Divine, and a key to this is through
gratitude. My Master, Sri Darwin Gross, once wrote a song called “It
just is,” which opens with the words, “Thank you, with Love”. “Thank
you” is a great mantra because when you say, “Thank you” your
spiritual heart opens up and it is through the spiritual heart that
love flows. I’m not talking about emotional love (although that's an
aspect of it), but real spiritual love. It’s this wave of spiritual
love that lifts us up and takes us back home to ItSelf. It takes us
back home to our true nature, which is what we call self-realization.
It takes us back home to God, from which it originally comes, a
process known as God-realization.
By practicing gratitude, by saying to people you meet on the street,
“I love you”, silently through your eyes, or saying “Thank you”, you
open the inner doorway and divine love comes through. In doing so,
even in a difficult situation (you might even say especially in
difficult situations), you feel better in the process. It may sound
selfish to say it's all about feeling better, but one of the things
that I believe is that people should understand on this planet and in
this society that an open, loving, enlightened perspective feels
better. It makes you happier than being uptight.
A lot of people are unfortunately on control trips. A lot of people
use fear to gain political success, to gain leverage and power. They
think that prosperity is based on control, that it is based on
manipulation. People have this thing on this planet (I guess it’s all
part of living in the material world) where they want things to
enhance their lifestyles. They measure their own self worth through
external gratification, through external possessions, and there tends
to be an ethic of “I’ve got mine, now you get yours”. It’s amazing.
Fortunately, not all politicians are this way, and some choose to
focus on hope, gratitude and grace, instead of fear. And this is a
very, very good thing.
I used to work in a bookstore back in the 1980s, and a lot of books
came out which dealt with keys to corporate success. One famous one
was “In Search of Excellence”, and there was a whole bunch of others
as well. They focused upon successful thinking and how successful
businesses worked. And of the themes they kept reprising was how
successful businesses allowed employees maximum flexibility. They
looked to employees’ creativity on an individual basis, and tried to
take their natural talents and see how they would work within a given
corporate body. They believed that every person had a gift he or she
could offer to the whole. Companies that did this increased their own
success. They made employees happy. Employees stayed on longer and
bottom line profits increased. Gross sales, if they were marketing
consumable products, increased, profit margins increased, and
everybody was happier. This was the result of allowing creative
energy to flow through the corporate organism. This is a basic law of
success.
Yet I’m amazed how, decades later, with countless seminars and weekend
retreats that have been given, and lectures and videotapes that have
sold through magazines and TV infomercials, that the ongoing paradigm
is still very much one of control and, from an employer’s standpoint,
the expendability of employees. People actually still operate from
this old mode of fear and control, which is so silly because what
happens when you get into this mode of being and thinking is, you
tighten up. You constrict. It’s just like a clenched fist. You
constrict the blood vessels so there is less spiritual energy that can
flow through. And it’s the Spiritual Current that nourishes us, just
like our blood nourishes our arms and our legs and our entire bodies.
So people may think they're being successful but overall they’re only
hurting themselves.
It’s just like how we see ourselves in other people’s eyes. Anything
we hate in other people is usually something about ourselves we
despise. It is important to realize that we are all particles of God,
and that every person we project negativity upon is really just
another way we project it back upon ourselves. The LightSong of
Divine Spirit has taught me this lesson over and over again. When I’m
angry at somebody at work, if somebody pushes my buttons and I get
into a reactive mode (even if it might appear to be justified), it
just ricochets right back on me. It’s like an instant karmic mirror.
So to me it’s not cost effective. If I feel irritable, I have to deal
with it. I don’t deny it if it’s occurring. But to get angry on any
level is not cost effective. The outcome for me does not warrant what
is put into it, because I feel ill afterwards.
It comes back to gratitude. If you open your heart to love and to
graceful living, you will begin seeing that everything, even the stuff
that’s thrown in your face sometimes, is a gift. It’s all just
mirroring ourselves, which is in turn mirroring God. We learn to come
into balance with Divine Consciousness. And we learn that it’s not
God personally coming down on us, like some guy on a throne casting
lightening bolts saying “I'm gonna get you”. It is just the law of
this universe of action and reaction that whatever we put out comes
back to us. If we unite ourselves with Divine Love, if we just merge
into, melt into love, then there is ultimately no giver or receiver.
There is just Love that is loving and continues to love. And that is
really one of the core principles of developing into God realization,
realizing that we are all part of the same wave of Love and we can
melt into It and let Love lift us up.
Any questions?
Q: To me it looks like people are not content with just existing
or being born, or even having anything. They expect everlasting life
after this life. It’s like a greed thing. It’s not like a loving
thing, it more a love of greed or something. People not happy being
themselves or being here as a person with their family or whatever,
they still want something in the afterlife . . .
M: That’s because ultimately what we’re really seeing is just the
reflection of a soul wanting to expand. Really, it comes from our
desire to grow and prosper and flower, but we are programmed through
living in these worlds of duality to be shortsighted and to
externalize our validation to objects and other people.
]
It’s really just a reflection of the fact that we live in an addictive
society. We live in a society that preaches that the whole core of
consumerism is external fulfillment and gratification of desires.
What are we taught? We are taught to desire. If you look at Buddhism
or Hinduism or Christianity, the Masters always say the same thing:
desire is the ultimate motivating factor. It is a magnetic force that
keeps you bound to this mode of action and reaction, and a continual
dynamic of exponentially increasing desires. It is a core addiction
from which we operate.
The whole key to liberation is when you realize that ultimately there
is nothing to desire, because it already is. Desire implies there is
something you don’t have, that there is something you are not. The
saints say that, in order to truly start on the path to God, you have
to desire God like a drowning person desires air. You have to crave
the nectar of God like nothing else. What is interesting is that,
when you rise up into the wave of Divine Spirit, you get to a point
where you have to let go of even that desire. You just have to relax
and let the River carry you, until you realize that you and the object
of your desire are one, and you reach a state of desirelessness,
ultimate gratification, ultimate gratitude. You realize you already
have everything anybody could possibly want.
Sometimes I look around and see people who are hung up on their
acquisition trips. They’re really into power, status and prestige.
It reminds me of the line from “The Ballad of John and Yoko” which
says, “Last night the wife said, ‘Oh boy when you’re dead, you don’t
take nothing with you but your soul. Think!’” You can have
everything possible in material possessions, and yet you’re still
going to leave them all behind.
It brings to mind the poem “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley,
wherein these people come across a great edifice, kind of like the
monolith in “2001”, and nobody knows what it is. On its facade is a
sign that reads, “Ozymandias”, and commands you to bow down to this
great edifice of a past leader – “Look upon my works, ye mighty, and
despair”. Yet in the end the poem shrugs its rhetorical shoulders as
if to say, “Whatever”. For none of them had any idea as to whom this
person was. He died thousands of years ago and left a statue. But
he’s still dead.
It's a funny thing. When you find God, which is truly your divine
nature, everything comes into perspective. Then you’re able to
function in the dance of life and enjoy it, participate in it.
There’s nothing wrong with this per se. You don't have to be an
acetic living in the woods somewhere in order to find and actualize
God. There’s nothing wrong with having a nice car or a well paying
job if that is the way that you can help express the spiritual energy
in a certain context.
This is a key to co-workership with God. Each of us has within us our
own creativity, our own interests, our own things that turn us on.
This is something I keep coming back to. Some of us are bakers, some
are lawyers, some are ditch diggers, some are computer programmers,
some are firefighters, some are letter carriers. Each of us has
something that we do, and it is through our unique, personal
creativity that God and Divine Spirit reach out and touch others. If
the Divine Purpose wants to touch a couple of souls in an office
building who are awakening and blossoming into their Godhood, one way
it does this is through a spiritual co-worker who also happens to work
at that company. By this person being an open, creative instrument
for Divine expression, the Spiritual Current just passes through their
eyes and their beingness and helps awakening souls around them. If
that person was an acetic and lived in a cave somewhere, he or she
wouldn’t be working in the real world and people in the world would be
cut off from this moment of Divine Grace. So God expresses ItSelf
through all that It flows through. This is the greatest wealth a
person could possibly imagine.
There are great stories of Sawan Singh when he was the living Master
in India. He would be holding Satsang with 10,000 people at the Dera
(the ashram where they had the meetings), and there would be bank
presidents sitting next to sadhus, who in turn were sitting next to
craftsmen and people who were extremely wealthy, people who were
former rajahs and kings and princes. They were all people whose inner
sight and inner hearing had been awakened. They had realized that
their Satguru had arrived, that their ticket home was here, and He was
the conductor on the train of life taking them back. Sawan passed
from this scene in 1948 after initiating about 85,000 souls, and
satsangis like Kirpal Singh and Charan Singh began teaching the path
of Surat Shabd Yoga and offering Holy Naam initiation. After they
departed, other people began doing it.
It’s a continuous thing, one of the great gifts of God to humankind,
and one of the great examples of God's grace. We are greatly blessed
by the fact that the Lord always expresses ItSelf to human beings
through other human beings. This gives us a living example of God-in-
expression which is on our level, not removed somewhere in an ivory
tower or a cave, or confined to the dusty mists of history by a book
or a different plane of existence. Every day, since humankind first
became conscious, there have been living, human instruments of God-in-
expression, which is something that I'm very grateful for. If we can
just awaken people to this basic fact, we would see a whole lot less
negativity and desire-based action in the world, including the work
environment. And we would come pretty close, as close as we'll ever
come, to heaven on earth.
Q: You don’t think it’s a flaw in human nature or character, to be
like that? For example, Adam and Eve, they lived forever, they lived
in paradise and they gave it all up, it still wasn't good enough for
them.
M: Well, what the story of Adam and Eve is really talking about is
that original paradise which is the level of pure spirituality, the
Soul Plane, the Kingdom of Heaven. That level is the True Home, Sach
Khand. Below the world of Sach Khand are the worlds of duality,
extending from the mind on down through the causal, emotional/astral
and physical bodies. By partaking of the tree of knowledge of good
and evil, what that really means is that soul took on a mental body
and became aware of duality. Through it’s own curiosity, it became
stuck in the wheel of cause and effect. I wouldn’t call it “fault”.
If anything, I might call it “shortsighted”. Most people tend, at
some times in their lives, to be shortsighted. It’s part of human
nature. It doesn't make them necessarily bad.
We are all like fruit on a tree in the process of ripening. Some are
more mature and closer to being ripe than others. Is a little bitty
green apple that’s unripe bad? Or is a tomato that's still hard and
green bad? No. It might not be edible . . . yet. But it is
potentially edible. You just have to give it time . . . to bask in
the sun . . . and drink the water of life . . . and it will turn into
something . . . of great beauty . . . which is the destiny of all
souls.
Thank you . . . with love,
Michael
* * * * *
“The saving grace comes through
contact with Naam, and continuous cherish
of His love and saving grace in turn helps
the other way. Both grace and Naam work
in reciprocity and help in developing each other.”
- Kirpal Singh (pg. 118)
“Thank you, with love.
It just is for you, alone.
For we have sailed the cosmic Sea of Life.
For It just is.”
- Sri Darwin Gross. “It Just Is” © 1972
Michae...@yahoo.ca
alt.meditation.shabda
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SFS