Silence is Golden

I WONDER WHICH IS BETTER Meher Baba Sometimes I feel, why explain anything? Just come, sit down, you all here. Be quiet, and be in company with Baba. Sometimes I feel like explaining things. I wonder which is better. What shall we do? Shall we go on explaining things, or shall we be quiet? MUCH SILENCE, p. 109, Tom and Dorothy Hopkinson 1974 © Meher Baba Spiritual League, Ltd.

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Loving Mother Earth

So, anybody who knows me well will tell you that I really don't like dirt.

I don't like to dig in it, or play in it, or plant in it. I don't like it in my house or on *me*. I tolerate it when I'm too lazy to clean my kitchen, but it is a thorn in my side the whole time. The whole "dirt" issue extends to sand, actually, and I mostly prefer to sit very still on dry parts of the beach rather than get wet so that the sand clings too much. Technically, it's not "dirt," I know, but I have issues . . . I admit it. As a young child, I lived in a muggy Pennsylvania suburb and was a member at a community pool club. We had lovely, blue, chlorinated water to swim in every summer. At 4 years old, I visited relatives in Maine, and was horrified to see that they swam in a lake . . . that had dirt at the bottom of it. I was teased relentlessly for the tears, but, I don't care anymore. I'm allowed to have my freaky stuff, and I'm ok with it.

So, it is very interesting to me that part of my new plan for the future includes a volunteer effort at a farm.

I've already explained to the organizer of this effort that I am not a "nature girl" and that I don't hoe. I have offered to run the store, which will raise money by selling the produce and "products" from this farm . . . and which is so much more in line with my skills. There's also lots of writing to do . . . grants, ads, marketing, website development . . . so, really, I'll be busy enough.

Somehow, though, I feel that if I *don't* participate in the actual growing of things, if I stay away from the dirt altogether, I will really be missing the point of working on a farm.

I have known for a long time that some kind of "back to nature" scheme was going to be part of my future. I have had the visions of it . . . (blame the Voice if it doesn't come to pass.) I have regularly reassured myself that I will not be left in the lurch by Armageddon . . . I was expecting to find a self-sustaining agri-world for myself and my friends so that we would be able to continue eating and living comfortably during world upheaval, without having to leave New England. So, it's either part of this, or some upcoming plan that I am now in training for, I suppose. Either way, I think I am going to have to get over this dirt thing.

Homelessness and the Suburbs

Yesterday, I met a man who is planning to buy and develop a working farm in my area. His intention is to make a home, there, for at-risk young people — kids who otherwise might end up on the streets, homeless or in gangs, kids with troubles like autism and other disorders that keep them out of the mainstream. The farm gives the kids a place to work and live, the sales of produce keeps the whole thing self-sustainable, and with some grant money and other fund raising efforts, it's a win-win situation.

I am so happy to have met a philanthropist with the heart and mind of an entrepreneur — a person who can see and execute solutions to these problems, and isn't afraid to put a lot of hard work into the "unrewarding" task of helping others. My own idealism about these things makes me a good *helper* for such an endeavor, but somewhat challenged in the *leadership* role. I really wish, sometimes, I could be that person who is really good at breaking down the barriers to progress on a big scale.

What I find in my own life is an ability to chip away at the negative structures of society, in almost minute ways. I *love* sitting with a homeless or mentally ill person and simply talking about stuff. I *love* being friendly with people whom others shun. I remember being "that person" very well . . . in fact I still *am* that person in a lot of ways, even though, today, I have *some* of the outward trappings of "normal" society. When I approach someone who "looks weird" and start up a conversation with them, I always come away recognizing how many people I know who "look normal" and have absolutely nothing interesting to say.

I try to remind myself of what Baba said about results of spiritual work . . . that a *big,* splashy, spiritual effort is sometimes only an ego trap, and can do more harm than good when the intention is misdirected. My most recent "big effort" was my call for a sit-in of homeless people in front of my house. Sort of silly, overall, to invite a bunch of homeless people away from the places they feel safe, to simply be homeless at *my house* . . . and I wasn't even able to rally my friends enough to guarantee food for them for a short period of time!! Mostly because I am "too weird" to sustain an effort like that from "normal" people, I guess. lol.

So, I guess the lesson for me here is "leave it to the professionals." It was sage advice my Dad gave me in the early eighties, when I started trying to sing Bette Midler songs as practice for some of my theatrical efforts. Bette . . . you are a true professional. I *know* you are right about the The Rose . . . it indeed exists as a seedling, far beneath the winter snows. It's *your* job to sing about it, and *my* job to cry every time.

Anorexia of the Spirit

A very unpopular topic for most people is death.

We are so loathe to face it that we spend ungodly amounts of time and money fighting it — by creating an incredibly unrealistic obsession with preserving and strengthening our bodies. In America, it seems that the entire culture is devoted to human "forms" . . . making them beautiful, thin, healthy, and eternally youthful — despite the inevitable and irrevocable truth of their ultimate decay and demise.

Nevertheless, overall, we don't have a problem with the demise of other animal forms. Most of us eat meat and even, occasionally, run over squirrels that dare to cross our paths while we are driving. Many of us respond by feeling bad for a short period of time, we may say a prayer — we may even try periods of vegetarianism or fasting — but the truth is that our culture puts a far higher value on the "form" of the human animal.

Does this make any sense, overall, in a "Christian" culture? Jesus Christ made it quite clear that it was not His "form" that brought His true presence or *any* kind of salvation into the world. We sit in church, weekly, hearing about how He lives within us . . . that He was "resurrected" and lives eternally. We study constantly about how we, too, have inherited this destiny, regardless of our "works." With a slight broadening of ideas, we learn about reincarnation — a concept that was part of the canon of the Catholic church for many of the early years of Christianity and is the backbone of Eastern thought. And yet, still, we are so engrossed in the culture of "body" that we allow ourselves to hate a body that isn't *beautiful* according to some marketing ideal. Some of us even seek to starve it, exercise it, or otherwise mutilate it with cosmetic surgery, until it is "perfect" and finally deserving of love.

To me, this only serves to bring a sad and poisonous version of self-hate into existence . . . which infects our view of ourselves, distorts how we see others, and generally creates falseness and division between people who should be looking for ways to love one another. Instead, we measure our worth by how we look to the world, and judge others for "failings" that we sense in ourselves. All of this in an attempt to cheat death, somehow . . . ??? As if *hate* will bring redemption on *any* level??? This makes absolutely no sense to me.

I find solace in the works of the spiritual masters . . . who find the topic of death almost funny. Meher Baba says, in Discourses:

When a loved one dies, there is sorrow and loneliness; but this sense of loss is rooted in attachment to the form independently of the soul. It is the form that has vanished, not the soul. The soul is not dead; Taking as important the unimportant emotions, and thoughts in its true nature it has not even gone away, for it is everywhere. Nonetheless, through attachment to the body, the form was considered important. All longings, desires, were centered upon the form; and when through death the form disappears, there is a vacuum, which expresses itself through missing the departed one. If the form as such had not come to be surcharged with false importance, there would be no sorrow in missing the one who has passed away. The feeling of loneliness, the lingering memory of the beloved, the longing that he or she should still be present, the tears of bereavement, and the sighs of separation — they are all due to false valuation, the working of Maya. When an unimportant thing is regarded as important, we have one principal manifestation of the working of Maya. From the spiritual point of view it is a form of ignorance.

There is much written about finding the "unimportant" things in life important. Every philosopher has his own version of what is important and what is silly to worry about. In fact, there are coaches, personal trainers, diet gurus, cosmetic surgeons, and fashion mavens who will tell you exactly what *they* find to be important . . . and many of them would disagree with me heartily on the subject of the body. All I can say to that is . . . show me, friends, exactly *how* you intend to take this body with you after death and perhaps I will start listening a little more carefully.

With September comes new lessons—keep watching!!!

WITNESS TO GOD'S TRUE COMPASSION Eruch Jessawala God's compassion is not what our conception of it is. His Compassion is always represented by what He has to do to get us closer to Him in order to lift us out of the rut of constant reincarnations. God's compassion therefore is always directed towards getting people out of the maze of illusion and the best way to free them from illusion is paradoxically, to bestow upon them not relief from, but immersion in suffering. That God's Compassion should be so expressed seems preposterous at first sight, but that indeed is the one sure means He can and does utilize to make us turn towards Him and face Him. All the other little trinkets that are bestowed by others who possess powers resulting from their advanced status on the spiritual path, like sight to the blind or the raising of the dead to life, do not express real compassion for they only result in further tightening of the noose of illusion around the neck of the seeker of Truth. The one real remedy for getting free of entanglement in the maze of illusion is to call out to God for assistance in the firm faith that He knows best what our real need is. But when do people generally call out to God? It is when their fingers are burnt and physical suffering must be endured that they cry out to Him from deep within the heart. This must not be misunderstood to mean that one must invite and embrace suffering for suffering's sake because there is a limit anyhow to suffering and no one can suffer more than the body will endure. But when suffering falls to our lot, we must learn to accept it as an attendant condition to our unfoldment and this means that we see in it the opportunity He has given us to live in Him. It is true that the body does suffer but when we suffer in Him as indicated, somehow we do not suffer as others do. They may view our suffering on the surface, but inwardly we are living in Him and the experience is not the same that others think they are watching. Therefore, when we suffer but live in Him, we bear witness to God's true Compassion. THE ANCIENT ONE, p. 209 1985 © Naosherwan Anzar

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