Late Night Chat with Jeff: E&G - our Real Work, Dec 10, 2023, live on Baba Zoom

We have some informal chat after every arti, the "post-arti party"! But once a week, Jeff Wolverton joins us for some serious mining of the spiritual depths. Join us for conversation, more readings, songs, quotes - you never know what treasures will be uncovered!

The Topic: Our Real Work

Dear folks of Baba,

We are continuing in the chapter on “Our Real Work” in Effort and Grace on page 101. In this chapter, Darwin introduces Baba's work of opening our hearts to the divinely human qualities within and expressing them in our day-to-day life. How do we access the divinely human qualities—such as patience, generosity, humor, empathy, courage, enthusiasm and honesty—from within the deeper recesses of our heart and live from there? How do we distinguish these qualities from the lower currents of the emotions, desires and impulses that are clamoring to be expressed? This is the inner battle we struggle with: the competing forces of our nature. We have spent lifetimes habituated to giving in to the lower currents and now we are having to make heroic efforts to transmute these into the loving currents of our higher nature.

Here is a quote written by Mani, Baba’s sister, in her own handwriting. I am not sure if they are her words, but clearly they are her sentiments:

Why were the saints, saints?

Because they were cheerful when it was difficult to be cheerful,

patient when it was difficult to be patient, and because they pushed when they wanted to stand still, and kept silent when they wanted to talk, and were agreeable when they wanted to be disagreeable. That was all.

It was quite simple and always will be.

It is clear from these words that great efforts must be made, but thankfully this ongoing struggle gives our life meaning, and we have the satisfaction of gradually making progress over the years in accessing the divinely human qualities that flow from Baba. Behind the scenes, He provides the inspiration and insight to persevere in this Real Work.

One of the illusions we have to rise above is equating good or virtue with love. Although our standards of good/bad or virtue/vice that we inherited from our conditioning (our sanskaras) have been helpful guides along the way, we have to eventually access Baba’s love, which originates from beyond the sanskaras; that is, this love, which starts out pure, must express itself through our sanskaras, and in the process often gets distorted and diminished. Victor Hugo, the French novelist, once wrote, “Virtue, as in the case of vice, is a calculated action. But love is not calculated. It wells up in the heart and expresses itself spontaneously.” Baba has made it clear that “good is not the goal.” Once, in one of my early trips to India, Eruch said to me, “The accumulation of virtue is not the goal.” His words were life-changing.

How do we open ourselves to this higher love? What ways have worked for you? Have you seen in your own life the distinction between good and love? Have you noticed that with good and virtue, there are always strings attached? What is required is to become more and more a vehicle for the free and spontaneous flow of love, with no calculation or selfish ulterior motive.

In His love, Jeff

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