Late Night Chat with Jeff: E&G - the Inner Life, Dec 3, 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!

Dear Folks of Baba,

We are coming to the chapter in Effort and Grace entitled “Our Real Work” which starts on page 100. 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. Here is how Darwin introduced a buddy and myself to this work:

Back in 1970, we were traveling around the country, visiting some of our college buddies. One lived in a small town in upstate New York, which “happened” to be near Schenectady. We had heard that an elderly couple lived there who had first met Baba in the 1930s, and one day we got up the nerve to call them and see if we could meet with them. The couple was Darwin and Jeanne Shaw. Little did we know that this was the beginning of a lifelong relationship in Baba with these two rare souls. This was our destiny though it seemed at the time to be just a chance happening.

There is much to the background to this story that could be said, but most importantly, through this couple we were introduced to the inner life with Baba. We had been following Baba for about two and a half years, and we had practically no idea about the "inner life". We thought we would just go on living our lives with Baba and somehow the “inner life”, as vague as it was for us, would somehow just happen automatically. In his very unassuming manner, Darwin brought home to us the concept that we have the potential of creating inner space in our heart, an approach entirely new to us. We can pro-actively empty the strangers from our heart—our desires, emotions and impulses—and give them to Baba. And in doing so, gradually create an inner space for Baba to live in us and enable our awareness to see within.

Over time, in emptying our hearts to Baba, we began to observe within the inner currents that dominated our lives; it was like lifting up the hood of a car and seeing how the engine actually operates with all its many interlinking parts. What we began to see on the one side and before us, so to speak, was our sanskaric conditioning, our standards of right and wrong, good and bad, spiritual and unspiritual—all fed by our desires, emotions and impulses—which we had inherited from our upbringing. This side is our reactive nature, and is very confining. On the other side, deep within the heart, we became aware of "our better angels", which Baba encapsulates in the divinely human qualities of “truth, love, beauty and purity.” This deeper side of our interior was very liberating; it “responds" to life rather than reacting to it. The qualities such as patience, empathy, generosity, humor, creativity, courage, honesty, tolerance and enthusiasm all flow from these divinely human qualities which percolate directly from Baba into our deeper hearts. We came to see that these qualities are not emotions or even feelings, but are divine attributes that enter us from beyond our sanskaras. This understanding gave immense insight into the workings of our interior; we began to see after many decades the difference between our sanskaric currents of emotions, impulses and desires and the divine currents flowing directly from Baba. The former currents are driven and excitement-based, while the latter are full of substance and flow from tranquility.

Going back to this chapter, Darwin talks about the real work, which he describes by quoting Baba’s own words, "To penetrate into the essence of all being and significance and release the fragrance of that inner attainment for the guidance and benefit of others—by expressing in the world of forms, truth, love, beauty and purity—this is the sole game that has intrinsic and absolute worth.” Our work, Darwin conveyed, is to become more and more receptive, more open within, to these divine qualities flowing into us from Baba. This requires, for example, that we work at sublimating, as Baba says, anger into patience and tolerance, greed into generosity and desire into purity. Over time, these efforts inspired by Baba, which Darwin calls the “real work”, result in a perennial flow that truly blesses our lives and this world with Baba’s inclusive and unconditional love.

It is important to say that Darwin's is one of the major approaches to Baba, a conscious inner journey, but he would say that this is not the only way to Baba; there are other approaches that are equally valid.

In our Beloved Baba’s love, Jeff

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