Life is always uncertain. Today it's one way, tomorrow another. And you never know what will happen next. Sometimes good things happen. Sometimes difficult events, difficult situations happen. Whether they be in health or in some aspect in your life, some loss of loved ones or some difficulty with your work, whatever the difficult things come up, they often come up suddenly and unexpectedly. And life has a mixture of these challenges and difficulties, both personally and collectively with sweet and loving times and experiences. So how to weather these ups and downs, these favourable and unfavourable experiences in life and maintain your relationship to the infinite Brahma? Maintain your relationship to the sadguru, to the inner self.
When things are going really well it's easy to become so excited and engaged in the good things in your life, you forget your meditation; you forget to remember the Divine. And then when it goes badly, you're so busy crying and feeling sorry for yourself and dealing with your pain or difficulty, you forget that the Divine dwells in all things and in all experiences.
So it seems the problem in both circumstances is forgetting. Ceasing to remember your true nature. Ceasing to remember the love that is infinite. Ceasing to remember the qualities and characteristics of the Divine being and your unity with that whole.
So the solution is, throughout ordinary days and times in your life, when it’s neither extremely happy or extremely unhappy, to take the time to cultivate knowledge of the Great, to cultivate knowledge of the infinite Self - to remember throughout the day the Divine. Not just in your times of meditation but throughout the day. To take your Gurumantra, to take that remembrance of that infinite one throughout the day. If you take this practice seriously, to stay in a state of remembrance, then it allows you to maintain when your mind is overwhelmed by joy or tragedy. It is such a habit of mind that you are sustained during those times.
For as you cultivate the habit of proximity to the Divine in the recognition that the Divine is in all things and in all beings, you cultivate a relationship to that knowledge that you yourself are in all things and all beings, because you are one with the Divine.
You cannot separate yourself from the Divine. You are alive in every living being, in the joys and tragedies of life, in all that is. For you are part of the Divine eternal Self in which this entire manifest universe abide. When you develop the habit of the three remembrances, it becomes more and more natural. It takes time to cultivate this habit but as you develop the habit of remembrance, it becomes like a second nature. Though you see yourself as the ego, as the body/mind individual, you also see yourself in the infinite ocean of eternal being in which all existence abides. That remembrance becomes a knowledge that you have. It goes from a practice of remembering, to a knowledge for you are remembering something that is real, that is true.
And when you become established you become established in knowing that truth. Emotions go all over. Some days you feel loving. Some days you feel irritable. Some days you are very happy. Some days you are sad. Some days you might be angry. Emotions go all over. So, the momentary experience of emotion can vary a great deal. But, if you have developed this knowledge, this firm knowledge of your immortal nature of the Divine being who is always presence, you have that knowledge to feel that presence. Then even when you are overwhelmed by one emotion or another, or by pain or suffering in some way, still that knowledge abides. It's a steady awakening in the turmoil of this physical existence. It becomes a rudder in your life.
The point of Brahmasadhana is not just that you have a nice meditation and a peaceful time and then you go about your daily life. No, the point is that you develop a remembrance that you carry out from your meditation into your existence. That is a realization when you realize a truth and it becomes a steady knowledge that you have. Not an idea that you believe but something you know. You know it. In the fiber of your being you know it to be true. And you become established in that knowledge until it ceases to waver and it's steady.
So even when the mind goes off in various emotional states, that knowledge abides, that understanding abides, doesn't waver. It guides you. That presence is there with you. You know it. You feel it. And even when you can't feel it, you know it.
And knowing is different than belief. There are many ideas we believe in. There are many concepts that we adopt and we accept and become our beliefs. But there are somethings that we know, that are not beliefs because we know them through direct experience. When you experience the God Self all around you, within you, and you experience your fundamental unity with that God Self, and that experience is deep enough and strong enough that it stays in the mind, then you take the practice of continual remembrance until one day you really remember.
Somehow it becomes a knowledge that you have, an understanding that you have that is solid - a truth that you know. That is an awakening. That is a lifting of the veil. And as you are established in truth, that truth carries forward through thick and thin. The mind may be covered by this emotion or that emotion for a time, but always that truth is there. Always you return to it.
Then, over time it becomes even more solid, more subtle, more your experience, and the division between yourself and that God Self begins to diminish until that Divinity is your life, your blood, your breath, the life of your life. This is the journey, the journey of the soul towards the infinite, the awakening of truth in the minds filled with ignorance, the clearing of the beliefs and bondage.
So cultivate this knowledge, this practical knowledge of the God Self everywhere, all around you in every cell and molecule and atom of your being and in all beings around you. Then you are never alone, for that infinite God, that Divinity is always with you, is everywhere, and the division between you and that fades away. Alright? Do you understand this idea, this path of truth? Namaskar.