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!

The Topic: No Villain Is Required

Dear folks of Baba,

When I went off to college in 1962, although coming from a free-thinking, fun-loving and non-religious family, I nevertheless naively bought into the world as being the “reality" as it is described in the excellent article below. I think probably all of us did. This was before Baba entered my life in January, 1968. It was soon after that I found myself going to Darwin and Jeanne Shaw’s meetings in Schenectady, N.Y. Darwin would speak of the myriad ways of the world as a “mayavic trap”, and at the time I felt, although he radiated such a rarified love, that he was a bit too detached from the world—ha! He didn’t seem to see some of its valuable and creative possibilities—haha!

My parents encouraged my siblings and me to strive to leave the world a better place. Now decades later, I find my orientation toward the world has changed 180 degrees. What I had struggled with for years and found most difficult to resolve is this: How do I express the love within me in this world without getting bound up in it? Ultimately, I have had to give up even "my own loving agenda" in regard to the world and actually liberate Baba’s Love in me from my agenda—who would have imagined that! I had to quietly step out of the game and let Baba and His Love do its own thing. Here are Baba’s magnificent words about our purpose in the world:

To penetrate into the essence of all being and significance, and to release the fragrance of that inner attainment for the guidance and benefit of others, by expressing, in the world of forms, truth, love, purity and beauty—this is the sole game which has any intrinsic and absolute worth. All other happenings, incidents and attainments can, in themselves, have no lasting importance.

To me, this has meant to not live in the world on its terms, but on Love’s terms—Baba’s Love has its own agenda. How is this done? This is taking me a lifetime to fathom. The article below describes succinctly how difficult it is to disentangle from the clutches of the world. It is not only colorfully written, but in my view, reveals a very profound insight into the subtlety of Maya, the principle of ignorance. It bears studying. I should say that it isn’t written knowingly from Baba’s point of view.

In His love, Jeff

A link to the PDF of Effort and Grace: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xrR75eksY-tErdKZm9aOBs3omuhioasb/view?usp=sharing

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