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Sometimes Things Don’t Work Out As Planned

April 20, 2010 | Click here to print.

[1]In these past years my faith has been tested. Some things don’t come easy for me, as a matter of fact it can be said that includes most things.  I spent years building walls around me trying to protect this self from feeling more pain and fear and the Guru has spent even more time tearing them down. Those around me have seen me stumble, fall, and embarrass myself beyond belief. It seems that no matter how hard I try to do something right and to do it with love, disaster follows to play havoc with all my intentions.

In these last few years I have run into walls of suppressed emotions that seem to block my efforts to the point that it seemed better not to even try anymore. To spend time in practices for what? Where was the joy that I heard so much about? What I was feeling was not joy but indifference. Thoughts came to me like: Is this as far as I can go in this lifetime? Is there someone else who can take me over this bridge? When I looked for the joy coming from the Guru what I saw there on the outside was exhaustion, seeing Ma’s body in that state was painful and again the question would arise, where’s the joy?

My thinking was mixed up but slowly things began to come clearer. One of Guruji’s disciples once wrote that in the first years of being a disciple and being in the presence of the Guru we need to develop faith and trust in the Guru. This is one of the most important steps that a disciple must take. It is important to really understand this because it takes great faith later on to cross the razor sharp edge of our past samskaras and merge with the divine. This is what devotion is all about. Crossing through this can be frightening only because the mind makes it so, but ones faith and trust will decide the outcome. When one gets to this step it is so easy to say, well this path served me for a long time but now it’s time to move on, and even beneath that is the feeling that the Guru has let you down. There is a lot of pain that comes with thinking this as it’s easy to play the victim role. It is easier to blame than take responsibility. Yes, the Guru plays a big role in our advancement on the path, but we ourselves play even a bigger one. One of the joys that comes to a Guru must be when the disciple, no matter how hard the path gets, never gives up, they have that faith. Ma once said that a saint is an ordinary person with tremendous faith. May we all become the example of this Love, Faith and Devotion then we will feel and know the Joy that comes from within.

Once while seeing a disciple going through these feelings of fear, anger, etc., Ma was crying and I was confused so I approached her as to why she was upset. She said this was her work, her duty as a teacher to allow the students to go through painful experiences at times, but this does not stop the Guru from feeling our pain and flooding us with compassion.

The more we believe, the more we will see into the Greatness of the Guru.

Garlands Of Love And Pranams To The Guru!
Seva


Editors note:

Sharing experiences is one of the best ways to inspire hope, aspiration and a sense of spiritual community. Please consider sharing your own experience as you feel inspired.  It needn’t be long.  From time to time we will have compilations of shorter writings.

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Lotus image copyright Kiran Doshi. Thank you Kiran!


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