There is only the oneness of infinity. Each of us is infinite and eternal and yet so often we cling to life as if we were as finite as a drop of water, when in fact we are the shoreless Ocean.

Does a man who has infinite wealth grasp feverishly for every dime he sees on the sidewalk and then suffer when someone else grabs it first?

When we are still in our hearts, perceptions of reality increase. Our true nature blossoms.

When we cling to that which is perishable, we necessarily let go of that which is eternal. When we hold onto form, we lose the grasp of the formless. When our focus is on limitations, we lose the focus of the unlimited, and when we hold onto falsehood, we let go the hand of truth.

There is a tidal wave that takes everyone to the shore of Truth. It is ever-advancing. The knowledge of this is within every soul.

God is within us all. It is self-evident to the one who perceives the inner life. It is beyond the scope of the gross senses, and yet it is self-supporting. For it eternally exists — the source of our being — the Infinite Source of Bliss.

When we know this as truth, we cling to the finite and the passing no more. Fullness replaces emptiness. Light replaces darkness, and joy replaces suffering.

Why are so many of us dragged to this realization screaming and kicking like children being separated from toys?

Perhaps we each have our appointed time for that trip to infinity. Some are ready. Some are not. Some walk freely. Some are dragged in chains.

Either way, it is a dying to an old way of life — dying unceasingly and going blind in seeing perfectly the Eternal Beloved — the Christ, the Prophet, the Buddha, the Avatar — beckoning to us for that final, eternal embrace.

It’s important to understand that there are different degrees to which one may receive this love. For the rare fortunate one, it could mean a complete drowning — an elimination of the limited ego resulting in God Realization. For most people, however, it is more of a melting, an embrace from divinity. It serves the purpose of focusing the consciousness on the life of the spirit.

In my life, I have experienced the latter a few times. Each time. tears flowed out of immense inner joy. To me, each of these experiences were revelations that God is Love, that God is the sole reality, and to paraphrase Meher Baba, closer than my own breath.

To have that experience is to know that unbounded love and joy are real. It is life changing. Once someone becomes the recipient of this Divine Love, his or her life changes to a different playing field. As Dorothy said, “We’re not in Kansas anymore.”

No religion has a monopoly on Truth or Love. I’m sure just as many Hindus have been the recipients of Divine Love, as have Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, or Jews.The Divine Beloved is Infinite and could care less about religion. Infinite Love is concerned only about Love. Nothing else.

Recently, just a couple weeks ago, I had the opportunity to witness someone experiencing this Divine Love. It was wonderful to see. It happened at the Meher Spiritual Center. Here’s what happened:

One Sunday afternoon a month I volunteer to give a tour of the Meher Spiritual Center to newcomers. And to make the tour interesting, I tell a story about the origins of the Center.

The day before I gave this most recent tour, I spent several hours preparing for it, weaving several stories into my narrative. And these stories were about a few people, whose lives were transformed by Divine Love, which led to the founding of the Meher Center. One of these stories goes all the way back to 1876 and the invention of the telephone. I decided I would start the tour with a question, “What is the connection of the Meher Center to the invention of the telephone?”

But before I started the tour, I noticed that a woman was already in tears. She and her husband were visiting Myrtle Beach from New York and were staying in a timeshare nearby. This was the very first time they had been to the Center. She said the tears started just before they turned into the Center from Highway 17. And when they got to the parking lot, they were both in tears.

I told them that tears played a significant role in the history of the Center, and that I was going to share that on the tour.

To my tour group, I shared the story of Thomas Watson, the assistant to Alexander Graham Bell, who was made famous because his name was the first words ever uttered on a telephone when Alexander Graham Bell said, “Mr. Watson, come here…”

I told them that Watson was 22-years-old then. But when he was 77, he had an experience that was so profound wth Meher Baba, that he invited, arranged and paid for Meher Baba and a few of Meher Baba’s disciples to come to America for the very first time in 1931.

He met Meher Baba after hearing that Meher Baba was coming to a retreat in England called Devonshire. Receptive to new experiences, he went there from America and waited eagerly for Meher Baba’s arrival. He was able to stay in the retreat’s main building, on the second floor of a multi-storied house in the English countryside.

On the morning that Meher Baba was expected to arrive, Watson woke up with tears streaming from his eyes. He noticed that his pillow was wet with tears. He didn’t know what was happening to him. He got out of bed and looked out his window, enjoying the beautiful morning view and wondering what was happening to him. What was the meaning of this experience, these tears, this spontaneous joy?

What he didn’t know was that Meher Baba had just arrived in the house and was just then climbing up the stairwell to his room, a floor above Watson’s. As Watson was staring out the window, Baba saw him through the open door and silently walked up behind him.

Watson felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned around and saw for the first time, Meher Baba. More tears started flowing. Watson’s heart was the recipient of Divine Love. He said he gained at last the knowledge of God and Love for which he had been searching most of his life. He said that meeting Baba that morning, in his room, was the culmination of his quest for the Living Truth.

A few days later he invited Meher Baba to America, and volunteered to make and pay for all the arrangements. Baba refused Watson’s offer several times, but finally agreed.

As I was telling this story, I checked again with the woman from New York. She was still crying — having her own joyous inner experience.

I continued with the tour, telling them that this trip that Watson arranged was Meher Baba’s first visit to America. And it was on that trip that Meher Baba met Princess Norina Matchabelli and Elizabeth Patterson, the two women who not only found the land for the Meher Spiritual Center, but who would begin the magnificent work in 1944 of developing the Meher Center. I told you there was a connection.

I also shared with the group something interesting about Norina Matchabelli, that when she was first told about Meher Baba by her friend, Jean Adriel, she had no interest: “Who is this Master at whose feet you would worship? How can you worship at the feet of any man, even though he calls himself a Master? Women like ourselves, who have had such deep inner experiences, need no man to show us the way to God. How can you allow yourself to be drawn into such foolishness?”

But when she was told about Thomas Watson’s experience and his weeping upon meeting Meher Baba, she replied: “Well, when your Master arrives, I must meet him. I too would like to weep.”

It turned out that she wept a lot. In fact, from the moment that Meher Baba’s feet first touched American soil, she did nothing but weep, without even meeting him. It was so profound that she had to cancel all of her social engagements (and they were considerable for she was the wife of a prince and a theatrical star of the hit play, The Miracle). Jean Adriel wrote that “the old hauteur of sophistication was replaced by child-like wonder.”

I checked again. The woman from New York was still weeping.

I talked about Norina eventually meeting Meher Baba and her heart breaking in an ecstasy of pain and how Meher Baba would sit by her bedside to sooth her pain.

There are other stories, too. But if you want to hear them, come take the tour.

Anyway, I found it an interesting synchronicity that on this tour on which I planned to talk about a few people’s experience of Divine Love and how it transformed their lives, that I got to witness someone having an experience of Divine Love while I was telling the stories.

It added a special dimension to the whole tour.

I think more and more people are going to be having those kind of experiences. I think it will be eventually happening on a universal scale. Meher Baba referred to a New Humanity coming about from “a release of love in measureless abundance.”

I also remember the story of a famous Indian saint named Kirpal Singh who visited Meher Baba several times. Kirpal Singh was known for giving his followers inner experiences, such as seeing lights and colors and hearing celestial sounds, and he told Meher Baba that he too should give his followers these type of experiences. (I had a professor at the University of Cincinnati who followed Kirpal Singh for that very reason.)

Anyway, Meher Baba handed Kirpal Singh a book about a special school for boys that Meher Baba ran in 1927 and 1928 called the Prem Ashram. The book was called Sobs and Throbs because all the boys at the school wept uncontrollably due the divine love they were experiencing. Meher Baba told Kirpal Singh, “This is the experience I give.” Kirpal Singh then understood.

Love, when received as a gift from God, is the experience that gives one the conviction that God alone is real. More and more people are being prepared for these type of experiences. How could humanity not evolve to a higher level of existence — a new humanity.

Until then, all we can do is love for the sake of love.

And the woman from New York: I was told two days later she was still weeping.

Over the weekend I became sick. I lost my voice. I probably have bronchitis. I have a fever, chills, no energy for work and too much discomfort for sleep. And the end result is feeling miserable.

And yet, it serves a purpose.

Illnesses and the suffering they bring are opportunities. Most people don’t realize that while they are going through them, but some, after it has passed, do. I’ve even heard of cancer patients (from the director of a cancer institute) wishing they had the disease years earlier because the experience was so transforming.

When feeling sick and weak, a lot of the limiting patterns of life are broken. Things that formerly seemed so all-important are pushed to the bottom of the list. What was formerly unimportant take on a new priority. The claims of the spirit prevail over the claims of the ego-mind.

Until something like an illness breaks the patterns, life becomes so habituated with deadlines and money and excitement-seeking that we forget about the subtle things of life that give it the deepest meaning and flavor.

A supposedly higher lifestyle is supposed to lead to greater happiness but more often than not, it focusses energy on meeting the financial demands of the higher lifestyle. The great disciple of Meher Baba, Bhau Kalchuri, calls it “Bill Meditation.” It’s all the game of the ego asserting its separateness from others, trying to stand out, to be noticed, to be congratulated. We make progress only if we are able to progress from bill meditation to something that nourishes the soul.

What is real meditation? Meditating on what is real. Eternal values — love, truth, beauty, knowledge, oneness, understanding, ethics and aestetics. It’s also meditating on Masters who embodied those values in everyday life — great souls like Ramakrishna, Ramana Maharshi, Meher Baba, St. Francis, Rumi, and Hafiz.

But being laid up in bed invites new interests. They float to the top as the old encrusted habits, like ice of ages past, melts away. Habit patterns that were part of the old identity are weakened. A lot of the attachments begin to fall away. The mind slows down and perception of true and lasting values becomes clearer.

It’s like the world’s economic health. It brings a lot of suffering and hardship. But in the long run, the world will be better for having gone through it. Corporate greed is being addressed. Huge bonuses for executives of failing companies are being addressed. The darkest shadows of corporate excess are coming to light. When the light of consciousness turns on, the darkness of unconsciousness vanishes.

But back to physical health and illness. Great suffering brings with it great spiritual insights. People who are suffering from illnesses and accidents begin to see the transitoriness of life. Little things like a flower blossom or a smile from a child touch the heart. And sometimes happiness comes for no external reason at all. That is when you know from experience (and not from a book) that true and lasting happiness comes from within. That is mysticism in its beginning stage.

Mysticism? Yes mysticism. Suffering seems to launch a lot of people into mysticism. I know it did for me over 33 years ago. And when a person becomes mystically inclined, it is a new way of life that will never be given up. It is a clear perception of reality. It comes with the knowledge of what is illusory and what is real. It differentiates between the Real Self and the False Self.

A mystic would never consider stealing the money from someone to pursue their own selfish desires. That’s because a mystic knows that the inner joy he has come to know increases when he is able to share that joy with others, by touching the hearts of others.

To be the cause of suffering of others is only inviting more suffering on himself. Why? Because we are here to learn — we are spiritual beings striving towards spiritual freedom. And to learn the lesson the lesson of suffering, he too will suffer from the hand of another. Then he will understand. Without the lesson there is no learning.

We live in a world of oneness. We all have effects on each other, even when we don’t see it. Just the elevated spiritual vibration of someone walking into a room has an impact on everyone else in the room, without a word being spoken. It’s just like adding hot water to a tub of water that has already started to cool. All of the water is affected. Not some drops, but the whole.

Don’t curse your illnesses. They have a purpose. If you are really fortunate, they will unveil to you the highest purpose of life — to discover the Infinitude of who you really are.

Remember that the next time you have your head in the toilet heaving up a $100 meal from a restaurant that made you feel so chic and high-class. It’s amazing what opportunities life can present.

As we walked around the room we could see how much thought and effort had gone into each painting. They were colourful, energetic and as varied as the women who had painted them. There were themes like pregnancy, nursing mothers, abstracts, flowers, portraits of women, nudes, sculptures, pieces that included poetry, woven hangings, gourds (one made into a bird house and another one made into a vase), and many more in variety of mediums.

Two of the women were the main planners of for the placement of the paintings and they went back and forth checking colours and flow and which sizes would look good together. There was a lot of cooperation in the group and everyone was called upon for their opinion. All opinions were taken into consideration and experimented with until a consensus was drawn. All the paintings that had been submitted were accepted, as opposed to other shows, like juried shows, where some are rejected. There was a real effort made to include everyone and show everyone’s piece to its best advantage.

There was a wall of small acrylic paintings called self respect is my inner light. Those paintings were done by women in a shelter. After going back and forth for a couple of hours we finally had the placement down and then began the hanging. Two people started from one end of the gallery and two started from the other end. We didn’t do any measuring. We all agreed from experience that it was better to just eyeball it and basically hang the paintings with spaces between them that felt intuitively right.

It was a show about women, painted by women, (we didn’t make a rule about that, but 95% of the paintings submitted were women’s art), hung by women in the spirit of how women work together and cooperate in doing a task.

This spirit of cooperation and communication, sharing and including everyone, when applied globally, is the only way to create a better world. It is the feminine values which will go on to sustain the world, not the competitive “me first” values which typify the general values in the world today. It is the women, (mothers) and artists of the world who can demonstrate to others a better way to live. And men are not excluded. Every man has a feminine spirit within. Each one of us has to find the feminine spirit within. The future of the planet depends on it.

Interestingly, universal love is not called sisterly love, but brotherly love. Why? Because as souls we have no gender, but as souls we enter into matter, into a body, to play out our part in the drama of life. Because we “enter in” we are called brothers. We souls are brothers and we are a family. We have bodily parents but the whole world has one universal, spiritual parent, whom many of us have forgotten. God comes, at this time to bring unity and peace to the entire world family of souls.

[Special guest writer Carol Biberstein makes her living as an artist, art teacher and Farmers’ Market Bread Lady in Brampton, Ontario, Canada. She has been a student of Raja Yoga meditation for 6 ½ years, has changed a lot from the inside outward, and expects to transform completely. She writes about deep spiritual matters to inspire others to transform their lives. All thanks goes to the Creator, the one who inspires the re-creation of the world!]

You get a lot of flack from your friends and relatives who see your freedom as taking you away from them. They fight tooth, claw and nail to keep you in you co-dependent relationships with them. With them kicking up such a fuss you have to struggle with the voice inside your head which says, “am I really doing the right thing?” On both sides there is a lot of F.E.A.R. Do you know what FEAR stands for? False emotions appearing real. In other words attachment.

Even though you claiming your freedom and your right to think for yourself is logically a good thing, your friends and relatives will say all kinds of things to prevent you from doing this. You have to be very stable with every mud ball that they throw at you and just give love and good wishes in return, knowing that they are under the influence of attachment, addiction and F.E.A.R. and that things will eventually change.

Eventually their mud balls will get fewer and farther between and finally they won’t be throwing any more mud balls. This means that the attachment is wearing off. As you remain stable and serve them with love while maintaining detachment, your relationship will gradually become much more honest and clean. Now you can really talk about things with respect for one another with no need to force the other one to be a copy of youself.

The breaking of all addictions is the same, it’s always the struggle between the head, (logic and reason) and the heart, (feelings which are actually fear based, but appear to you at the time as very very real).

Attachment always causes sorrow in the end, even if it seems to create coziness and a sense of belonging at first. It is a very insidious vice. It masquerades as love. To get oneself out of attachment one has to use the head and truth and not the heart.

The heart will always pull you back into attachment. The proof of attachment is to ask yourself, how much happiness do you have? If you are not truly happy then you aren’t truly free either.

The opening scene of the Gita shows Krishna, (playing the role of God) and Arjuna, (a brave warrior) sitting in the chariot with two armies on either side having a conversation. Krishna is urging Arjuna to fight, but he is getting cold feet and saying, but how can I? I see my relatives, my teachers, my friends, everyone. How can I kill them? Krishna says, come on Arjuna, they’re already dead.

This scene is talking about the breaking of attachment.

[Special guest writer Carol Biberstein makes her living as an artist, art teacher and Farmers’ Market Bread Lady in Brampton, Ontario, Canada. She has been a student of Raja Yoga meditation for 6 ½ years, has changed a lot from the inside outward, and expects to transform completely. She writes about deep spiritual matters to inspire others to transform their lives. All thanks goes to the Creator, the one who inspires the re-creation of the world!]

It is also called, (in Christianity) “You reap what you sow” and is expressed in the saying, “What goes around, comes around.” Human beings have mixed up the law of karma with God, but truthfully God is separate from the law of karma.

The law of karma takes every thought, word and action of a soul into account. If someone performs a good action, (let’s say ladling out soup in a soup kitchen), but their thoughts are different than their action, (they are doing it because they feel that they have to and they really don’t care very much about what they are doing), all of that is taken into account by the law of karma.

There is no escaping karmic return for action. Even those on the receiving end of the soup are receiving their own karmic return and they won’t feel that well after eating that soup. Another soul who receives their bowl of soup from one who is doing this as a labour of true love from the heart is also much more nourished by that soup and that is their good karma.

If this is the case then I do have to be totally content with everything that happens to me knowing that I created it through my own thoughts, words or actions, even if I don’t understand how at the moment. The return of your own karma is always for your own benefit.

It’s a lesson to be learned. You just have to figure out what the lesson is. If you do figure out the lesson and you transform your own thoughts, words and actions that created the situation, then you move up to the next class. Good for you!!

Now you won’t get that type of karmic return anymore or if something similar happens again it won’t feel like something bad. It won’t phase you anymore. There is always something else that will come as an obstacle, however obstacles only come to make you stronger. It’s all good.

If my own karmic return is always good for me then it only stands to reason that everyone else’s karmic return is also good for them. Each one is a soul, my brother soul, and each one creates their own karma. Karma can stretch over lifetimes.

This is why bad things often happen to good people. You have no idea what you or what anyone else has been up to in their past births. You can get an inkling about yourself through your meditation, but you don’t know about other people’s karma.

Oftentimes a soul flip flops from birth to birth, living a lifetime with lots of sinning and then deciding to reform themselves at the end of that life and in the next birth leading a very reformed life. Or visa versa. That is why you get people who in this birth smoke cigars and drink a bottle of whiskey every day and live to be 100.

How do they do it? They have a stock of good karma from the previous birth. Good karma means having a healthy body, a healthy mind and plenty of wealth. Wrong action, or sin, is anything which goes against spiritual principles. Spiritual principles are about how you think about yourself and others.

Every word and action starts as a thought in the mind. Really you do create your world through your thoughts every day. And collectively we seven billion souls on the planet now have created the world we live in through our thoughts.

You may wonder how it is that some people who lie, cheat and steal are wealthy if wealth is a sign of good karma. Don’t worry about anybody else. Eventually everyone gets their karmic return. The only one you have to be concerned about is your own self.

You may wonder about luck. How is it that some people win a lottery. Truthfully, there is no such thing as luck. They win the lottery because they were very generous in a past birth. What goes around comes around. It’s all accurate.

The law of karma is very deep and complex. If you gave 100 kittens 100 balls of wool and set them loose in a room to run around and play and then you came back a few hours later to find the tangled mess of wool that they had created, that is what the tangled web of karma looks like that we souls have created in this world. All our karmas are interconnected.

Can you pray to God to take away your karmic return? No. God can’t do that. It would go against the law of karma and God can’t go against the law of karma. In fact God is outside the law of karma and God can’t even create karma or receive the return of karma.

Does this mean that God is not all powerful, the Almighty Authority? No. God is all powerful. But God’s role is Purifier of the entire world, and the entire universe. It takes a lot of power to do that. But God doesn’t get involved in our pettiness. Everything that we souls do is pettiness. One brother soul goes to God complaining about another brother soul. Do you really think that God is going to help one and not the other and not the rest of the souls who don’t pray? Do you really think that God gets involved in wars?

When I was a kid I used to wonder, if one person is praying for a nice day for their picnic tomorrow and a farmer is praying for rain for his crops, and the two desires conflict, then what does God do? The truth about this is that God is detached but very loving like a good parent.

He doesn’t get involved. The physical comparison to God would be the sun. The sun radiates warmth and light on the earth regardless of who is there. The sun doesn’t pick and choose who to shine on. If you don’t feel the sun it’s because you’ve gone inside the house. Equally if you don’t feel God, it’s because wrong karma is creating a barrier, (a shadow) between you and God.

What you can do is to understand who God is and how he operates. He is a soul, completely pure, completely peaceful, completely benevolent, completely blissful, completely powerful, completely loving and fully detached.

He is the Truth. Connect your mind to Him. He’s a tiny point of radiant spiritual light. Speak to Him with a lot of love. Give Him your burdens.

Even if you are going through your karmic accounts, God will give you the strength to pass through them easily. Loving remembrance of Him, acceptance of your karma, and humility to learn the lesson and transform the self is like the lubricant that allows you to pass through your accounts with ease.

I hope that this gives you some idea about karma. Karma is very deep, there is a lot to it and it’s not always easy to understand, especially when you are the one on the receiving end of something that seems bad.

Just be a detached observer, and use the opportunity to learn and grow. Don’t allow other people’s karma to pull you down into depression. The best way that you can help others is to be stable and strong yourself and give every soul the gift of your own peace and happiness.

[Special guest writer Carol Biberstein makes her living as an artist, art teacher and Farmers’ Market Bread Lady in Brampton, Ontario, Canada. She has been a student of Raja Yoga meditation for 6 ½ years, has changed a lot from the inside outward, and expects to transform completely. She writes about deep spiritual matters to inspire others to transform their lives. All thanks goes to the Creator, the one who inspires the re-creation of the world!]

Roots, hidden,
Reach deep down below the snow
Secretly, quietly
Drawing sustenance
Maintaining stability, groundedness

Slender, graceful branches
Reach upwards

“Take me as I am! This is who I am!”
is the tree’s mantra

Trees have unending faith
That everything that happens is for benefit

Even when storms come and branches break,
A tree is undaunted
Trees wear their scars with pride

Trees grow silently, imperceptibly
But, even fences can’t stop them

Trees accept their location
They never walk away from other trees
Some grow in clusters
And some grow alone,
But all are content with their placement

Trees, like silent observers,
Witness all seasons,
Winter, summer
Day, night,
Heat, cold
A tree accepts all

Trees are experienced,
Never affected by surprises
Becoming more beautiful with age,
Never bitter

Trees understand how to live in the present,
They never hold on to the past,
Although their internal rings
Contain the merged memories
Of many lives

The lovely tree, so powerful,
Yet beautiful,
Graceful yet strong,
Knows when it is time to let go
Of its seed
To allow a new sapling to emerge

Growing,
Ever silent,
Ever strong

[Special guest writer Carol Biberstein makes her living as an artist, art teacher and Farmers’ Market Bread Lady in Brampton, Ontario, Canada. She has been a student of Raja Yoga meditation for 6 ½ years, has changed a lot from the inside outward, and expects to transform completely. She writes about deep spiritual matters to inspire others to transform their lives. All thanks goes to the Creator, the one who inspires the re-creation of the world!]

In my life, I feel most disheartened when I feel limited. But limitation is a false perception. I and every soul in existence have inner resources that are infinite, for souls are infinite. I’m infinite, you are infinite; we only have to realize it.

This morning I received an email about a man without any limbs. And though he doesn’t have limbs, the love and positive energy that come through him are so uplifting, that his severe physical limitations are secondary to the unlimitedness of his human spirit.

I have for over three decades now put an emphasis on how quickly I reach my spiritual goal. And yet I am still here, tied to the world, even though I long to be free of it.

I remember hearing a story told by Eruch Jessawala on one of my trips to India, that is also reprinted in his book, That’s How it Was, as part of a story he told he called Ask for Love. Here is what he said:

“But even if we can’t honestly long for love, we can long to long for love, That much is always open to us If our prayers for love are insincere and mechanical, we can at least pray to become more sincere when we pray. If we cannot run towards the Lord, at least we can walk, and if we cannot walk, we can crawl. And even if we cannot crawl, we can pray for the ability, someday, to be able to crawl. And we may find, to our surprise, that even crawling is not necessary, because the Lord Himself has come to us and is carrying us on His back.”

And so today when I came across the story of a man who radiates such love even though he can’t even crawl, I was reminded of Eruch’s story, and I wanted to share it with you.

Here is the video of Nick Vujicic:

First of all it means a complete change of consciousness. The idea that I own anything at all is an illusion. How can a tiny point of energy own anything.

I don’t even own my own body. Nothing is mine. Everything belongs to God and I am just entrusted to look after whatever is near me.

In many languages there is no word for ownership, but everyone is entrusted to take care of certain things. I have to take good care of my body, feed it with healthy food, keep it washed and exercised, but it doesn’t belong to me.

Neither do my children or my spouse belong to me. I have to care for them, but remove all feeling that they are mine. I have to look after the space I’m living in and keep it clean and look after the car that I drive and keep it in good running condition, but it’s not mine.

Everything is God’s and I am a trustee for God. Then if something goes away for any reason, it’s no big deal. I didn’t own it in the first place.

If the wealth that I have belongs to God, then shouldn’t I be using it in God’s service and for the benefit of all and not for personal reasons of greed? And if I use it wrongly, then won’t there be karmic consequence?

The whole world has been using money wrongly, using it for personal greed. All of the advertising on T.V. is promoting this. It’s a very impure world that we live it and to get yourself away from the influence of it you just have to purposely stop watching T.V., stop reading magazines, stop listening to the radio, move yourself away to whatever extent you need to to break yourself from the influence of it.

Everyone is addicted. To change this you have to run in the total opposite direction.

But, it is possible.

[Special guest writer Carol Biberstein makes her living as an artist, art teacher and Farmers’ Market Bread Lady in Brampton, Ontario, Canada. She has been a student of Raja Yoga meditation for 6 ½ years, has changed a lot from the inside outward, and expects to transform completely. She writes about deep spiritual matters to inspire others to transform their lives. All thanks goes to the Creator, the one who inspires the re-creation of the world!]

I can really see that it must be hard for rich people watching their savings dwindle away in this recession. It’s much easier for the poor because they don’t have anything to lose.

It’s very healthy for everyone to see all the physical supports fall away. The pain is just the breaking of attachment to money. It’s always hard at first but once you get over it, it’s very liberating.

It’s actually exciting having only very little money, so long at you are only externally poor and not internally poor. So long as your self respect is intact, it’s a challenging adventure to lose everything.

It shows you what it’s like being poor and gives you a lot more respect for those who’ve always been poor. It teaches you courage and makes you turn to God for support when all other supports have gone. I really think that a person needs to lose everything in order to find God. And to find God is really, to find everything.

In the Shrimad Bhagwad Gita it says God speaks, “when the world reaches its darkest state of complete irreligiousness then I come.” So, how do you see this world around you? Have we reached enough moral decay for God to come? Or do we need a little bit more greed and decadence? Do we need a little more war? How about a little more body consciousness?

When God comes and all the supports of the facilities go, it’s like a big party. God is here!! Wow, what more do you want?? What is the big deal in letting go of everything? It all has to go anyway.

But, we also have to support people who have a hard time making this transition. It’s a big transition, but it’s a great transition! They just don’t understand. Souls will experience a lot of sorrow, but if they understood it, then they wouldn’t.

This time is truly the most wonderful time and this drama is truly the most wonderful drama and God is the greatest!!

[Special guest writer Carol Biberstein makes her living as an artist, art teacher and Farmers’ Market Bread Lady in Brampton, Ontario, Canada. She has been a student of Raja Yoga meditation for 6 ½ years, has changed a lot from the inside outward, and expects to transform completely. She writes about deep spiritual matters to inspire others to transform their lives. All thanks goes to the Creator, the one who inspires the re-creation of the world!]