A STEADY AND DIRECTED LIFE

 
One of the oddities of today is that many people, because of the chaos in the world, seem to think that the best thing about having a Master is that this will bring them peace. Well, it does and it doesn't. It takes a long time before it does.

The lives of disciples are generally full of storm and stress. And, when there is a Master like Baba in the world, and you give yourself to Him, I can assure you, one suffers plenty of storm and stress. Why? Because it is to create swift growth.

He could only be here just so long. We have a lot of diseases that have to be cut out, a lot of foolish ideas that have to be changed, a lot of fixed ideas that have to be made more malleable — heaven knows what, tempers, lusts, greeds, all kinds of faults. And, in order for us to be, as it were, cleaned up, we have to go through a whole series of what might be called alternates.

Really, sometimes they come so swiftly that you do not know what has happened to you. And that is the best of it. Baba worked sometimes through humiliating a person, sometimes through just making them so damned tired, so weary, so fatigued, that they would simply give up and say, "Alright, do what You want to." In this way He could pulverize the ego so beautifully that you were not apt to be bothered with it again.

But, all through this you begin to feel a steady and directed life, one that is not changing so much, except on the surface. Suddenly where formerly there were panic and fear and distress and uncertainty and confusion, inside there starts to be a sort of solid core.