Late Night Chat with Jeff Wolverton: Effort and Grace, July 23, 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!

Topic: Effort and Grace: Beyond Paradigms

Dear Folks of Baba,

This Sunday we will explore Darwin Shaw’w book, Effort and Grace, which is an intensive probing into the inner life with Baba. It describes one of the major approaches to Baba by one who was devoted to Him for over 70 years, which culminated in a glorious intimacy with Him. Darwin was always so encouraging and optimistic in what we can do to open up to Baba’s immediate loving presence. Darwin asserts that many of the blocks to this intimacy can be removed by our efforts and by inviting Baba’s ongoing intervention and grace.

Darwin shared with us that at the mental level, we are unconsciously governed by many different paradigms, those of gender, ethnic identity, nationality, social class, the constructs of time and space, but according to him the most predominant one is the paradigm that we are our limited personality self separate from the unlimitedness of God. The goal is not about perfecting the personality, but about detaching ourselves from our personality self. Baba says that we are in essence Love itself which is beyond personality, although Love uses our personality as a vehicle for its expression. We, as love, are beyond form; our home is in the realm of the spirit. I’m reminded of the lines of the French mystic Teilhard de Chardin, “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

How do we give up the addiction to our personality self as the be-all and end-all of life? It requires Baba’s grace as Darwin would say again and again. As we strive to obey Him more and more, to make Baba’s personality and being our focus, we begin to turn away from giving so much importance to our own personality and its immersion in the time and space paradigm. We begin to dissolve into His eternal and formless being, which is our destiny and our birthright.

Each session evokes invaluable discussion that does not require having attended the previous sessions; each section provides a window into the inner life of the lover/Beloved relationship and is virtually independent, like facets of one diamond—Baba.

Everyone is invited to ask questions and share examples from their own inner life. We left off on page and we will begin with the section on

For those who do not have a copy of the book, below is an attachment for following along: https://issuu.com/ompoint/docs/shaw_effort_grace

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