the tongue speak?”
Your true identity is the mind of mind, the eye of the eye, and the breath of the breath. Go there and you will find the beginning of a spiritual solution to any problems you believe you have. Here is how Meher Baba described this process of overcoming one’s ignorance as we are defining the term here.
“Thus, though he begins by seeking something utterly new, he really arrives at a new understanding of something ancient. The spiritual journey does not consist in arriving at a new destination where a person gains what he did not have or becomes what he was not. It consists in the dissipation of his ignorance concerning himself and life, and the gradual growth of that understanding which begins with spiritual awakening. The finding of God is a coming to one’s own self.” Your objective in applying this ancient wisdom is to dissipate your ignorance concerning yourself and life.
THE SECOND APHORISM
The mind of the truly illumined is calm because the peace of God within all things is known, even within the appearance of misery and disease.
This second aphorism brings to mind the adage that the three truly difficult things to do in life are: returning love for hate; including the excluded; and saying, “I was wrong.” It is the first and most difficult item, returning love for hate, that I want to explore here.
As I was studying the ancient words of Patanjali I came across a reference that implied the following: God cannot express God’s self in you when you are not at peace. As I thought about those words I had a deep realization that God is love. I recognized that it was in a state of stillness that the realization occurred. If it requires stillness to know God, then we need to be in a place of loving calmness in order to be able to have God’s assistance in problem solving. Thus, the most difficult thing to do, to return love for hate, becomes much simpler when we are able to be peaceful because that is actually God expressing God’s self within us.
When we return love for hate we express the peace of God that is within us. Our response has a calm and loving quality. This calmness is a vital aspect of the consciousness that makes it possible to tap into spiritual solutions.
I’ve selected two passages from the Bible to reinforce the relationship between stillness or calmness and God. By taking the scriptural statement and reversing it, we can clearly recognize what happens when we are unable or unwilling to choose stillness. So, “Be anxious, or fearful and you will not know God” is what we have in place of “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10).
Instead of “God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him” (I John 4:16), we would have “God is fear and he that dwelleth in fear cannot dwell in God, nor God in him.”
Probably you are thinking that this makes sense. God is still. God is love. When I am neither, I have no chance of allowing a spiritual solution to present itself. But how do I get to that place of calmness? I believe you can move into that state of knowing God within through stillness by intentionally choosing calmness in moments of anxiety or fear. Yes, you can choose to be calm at any moment by reminding yourself that you are no longer choosing to live by your conditioned past. It is largely because of our conditioning that we leave God behind when we leave calmness.
We have trained ourselves to be fearful and anxious when presented with problems. If we choose, we can retrain ourselves to be calm and to allow God to express God’s self in us once again. As I discussed in chapter one, problems begin, unequivocally, in our minds. We may have to remind ourselves that our mind is where the problem exists, nowhere else. Thus the “illusion” which I mentioned earlier. Correct the error, and the illusion disappears. Our conditioning has led us to the error of thinking of ourselves in terms of finite beings.
James Carse, in his book Finite and Infinite Games, describes a world of finite games in which winners and losers, rules, boundaries, and time are all extremely important. In the world of finite games, titles, acquisitions, and prestige are of paramount significance. Planning, strategy, and secrecy are all crucial. To become a master player in the world of finite games you have an audience who knows the rules and who will grant you a reputation. Being identified with losers in the finite game is frightening and dangerous. The finite game values bodies, things, and reputations. The ultimate loss is death.
In his book, Carse explains that the final result of the finite game is self-annihilation because the machines that we invent to assist us in this finite game of winners and losers will destroy those who rely upon them. Technology, marketing, productivity are all terms to encourage players to buy more machines and one’s worth is dependent on how many machines players have and how well they operate them.
There is also the infinite game, which you can begin to play if you so choose. In this game there are no boundaries; the forces are infinite that allow the flowers to grow and those forces cannot be tamed or controlled. The purpose of the infinite game is to get more people to play, to laugh, love, dance and sing. Life itself is infinitely non-understandable. These forces were here before we were and will continue beyond the boundaries of death and time.
While the finite player must debate and learn the language/rules to operate all the machines, the infinite player speaks from the heart and knows that answers are beyond words and explanations. This is not to imply that players of the infinite game cannot also play finite games, it’s just that they don’t know how to take the finite games seriously.
This is a choice. We are in a world where secrecy, competition, fear, and weapons are part of the equipment used to play the finite game of life. We know that the categories of “winner” and “loser” are highly valued. Players who prefer to spend more of their time playing the infinite game also play the finite game. I think the following excerpt from the workbook for A Course in Miracles says it delightfully.
“There is a way of living in the world that is not here, although it seems to be. You do not change appearance, though you smile more frequently. Your forehead is serene; your eyes are quiet. And the ones who walk the world as you do recognize their own. Yet those who have not yet perceived the way will recognize you also, and believe that you are like them, as you were before.”
This is a prescription for knowing the peace of God even when there is the appearance of misery and disease. The choice is to play mostly infinite games, but while playing the finite games, refusing to take them seriously. Others may think you are serious, but you know better. You know you see your world in the terms of an infinite game. You will smile more frequently, you will feel serene, and you will access spiritual solutions.
I will conclude this section with a story told to me by my friend Gary who lives in New York, but was raised and schooled in India. Each year at the completion of the school year in June, Gary’s father sent him to live with a master teacher (guru) in an ashram with many other young boys. Here he would be immersed for a couple of months annually for the purpose of heightening his spiritual awareness. There were two large cabins at this particular ashram, and on the first day of the summer, all the boys were given the following instructions.
“You are to remain in total silence for the first four weeks. No talking at any time. If you break silence even once, you will leave the silent cabin and live in the second cabin where you may talk to your heart’s content for the rest of the summer.”
There was no threat of punishment. Simply leaving the silent cabin was the only consequence of breaking the silence.
Gary told me that he was able to go for about four days without talking the first year. Then off he went to cabin two. In the second year he went approximately ten days, and in
