GIVING AND RECEIVING

 
This year we must be especially aware of the sacrificial offering Baba has made of Himself. We must really keep in tune with Him as much as possible, because He has always asked us to live in the NOW.

Every year at this time I talk about giving and receiving. Giving cannot be a trade. If it does not contain love, a gift is worthless. Baba made a point of this when at one time He sent Dr. Donkin over to this country to collect money to help feed the poor. It was the first time Westerners were allowed to share in His work.

Baba so often refused money from some people and accepted it from people who had very little, even as He did as Jesus when He received a widow's mite.

We are told that merchants and commercials have taken the Christ out of Christmas. We even send cards saying "The Season's Greetings." That was apparently created so that Jews, Muslims and Christians could regard the day as a holiday without acknowledging each others' religions. And yet the Avatar has always told us we are One.

It is important to learn giving and receiving as an art, and I shall be very disappointed if any Sufi fails in this.

On one hand I find a great many young people seem to think that because they are now acknowledging Baba as the Christ and they claim to love Him, that therefore He should take away all of their problems. I even hear the expression "Why is Baba doing this to me?" or "I have prayed and prayed but nothing happens." Well, this is trading in love, and Baba has always said that love cannot be a trade.

You should love without expecting rewards, no matter whether it be with other human beings or with God Himself. You must learn to accept your life as you have created it and conditioned it by some six or seven million lifetimes preceding this. God will seldom, if ever, interfere with your karma. If He did, you would fail to learn not to keep repeating mistakes.

We need to screen our motivation when it comes to giving, and we must also remember that giving can be done without fancy packages.

We can give to Baba by trying to please Him, by helping His humanity, by giving time to the work at our Centre, and, despite the rush of our days, giving consideration. Sometimes it is difficult to even remember or take time out to call a sick friend, or go to see them or send a note, and yet these are among the best gifts of all.

Many of your generation have gotten a confused impression of what selfless service means. I remember one girl who is a most talented artist and who thought she had to forsake her calling and become a nurse in order to help people. It was difficult at first to get her to see that carrying bedpans and helping sick people was not her calling, because God had given her certain talents and potential which she must use.

Quite a number of young people have come to my notice who threw up intellectual jobs in order to work with their hands. This can be very right in some cases, but wrong in others, depending upon motivation.

Some people have the idea that writing checks is not selfless service. However, the money represented by these checks had to be worked for, and that all goes into the gift. I remember great arguments which ensued in the early days of the Rockefeller Foundation. Many people felt that giving huge sums of money for hospitals and research did not mean much. However, if it depended on people by local contributions to build such vast buildings and enterprises for the sick, it would never get done, and so there is a great purpose for money, as well as for other commodities, as long as it is used to help people.

The most pernicious antagonist to Christmas giving and receiving is one of the seven deadly sins — pride. Some people take pride in giving, which is wrong, but pride also must not enter into receiving. It is particularly deadly here. Learn to be good receivers.

You should never tell others not to give you a present because you cannot give one in return, or because you feel under obligation. We must be big enough and generous enough to let others balance their karma and not restrict them from a chance at heart expansion. You know we do not need mind expansion to get to God — we need only heart expansion.

I might interject here my solution of what to say to children when they begin to feel there is no Santa Claus because their playmates have told them so. One might explain to a child that Santa Claus is a spirit who is represented by this familiar symbol. Also, that it is only when children are small that parents and friends can give them Christmas presents without it seeming a sort of duty, and without expectation of thanks. Parents love to make their children happy, and all enjoy the magic of the Spirit of Christmas as exemplified by Santa Claus. It can be a good example to a child of giving without expecting either a present back or a reward of some sort.

JOY

This is traditionally a season of JOY — in antiquity God had the implication of great joy, but the later stern sense of duty, militant dedication and solemnity in religion have caused most people to lose the Joy.

We believe God wants us to be happy, but we seem to find no way to be happy! If we are, we almost feel conscience stricken.

Sufis know that God wants to experience His own nature through His Creation, and wants to know Himself in man — to release all good, beauty, truth, love and joy through mankind. When we co-ordinate our lives with the Divine Plan, we discover joy.

What is happiness? — prosperity, good luck, things? To many doesn't it mean: "If I have what I want, do as I please, influence other people the way I want, I will be happy."?

Status and all such symbols of happiness come from outside, and this sort of joy requires also that we have colossal forgetfulness — so that we can forget our past, mistakes, what people did to us and for us etc. But we can't.

Real happiness is a state of well-being that comes from inside — the Sufi knows he has to establish it, to set up the experience of happiness so that it is LIVING. You can TALK about it till doomsday and still be miserable! Counting your blessings does not excite people — they are too busy fighting everyday miseries.

When I was young there was a better sense of happiness among young people — there were miseries, but educational methods, politics, etc., were not so pressureful. We made our fun — it was simple and relaxed and not costly. This was exemplified by Huckleberry Finn. Too many of today's young people come from broken homes, are insecure, or went through economic depression. They have nothing to hook the happiness concept onto! Family has not always been a lovable thing. Pleasures are all artificial — from outside. They have fear, but little faith.

Instead of feeling that things are right, young people think everything is basically wrong and become critical, dissatisfied and rebellious. Out of this comes a subtle form of self-excuse, to be poor citizens. How can you be at peace and joyous in an upside down world, threatened with nuclear fission? But —

The Sufi's world of a thousand years ago did not make people deliriously happy, either. You can have just as much fear crossing the plains on horse or camel with arrows darting at you as in a jet with atomic weapons trying to cut you down. They were just as desperate over their rulers' perversion, despotic orthodoxy, and general selfishness. (Ramadan) Most spiritual life is brought out by having to meet emergencies.

Our way out is to re-establish a natural way of life instead of conforming to an artificial one. It takes hundreds of thousands of years to produce a human being with full consciousness — he should not just have herd instinct. We are the sons of Heaven with more insight than other creatures. This insight must be developed through simplification of values, which will relieve the mind and emotions from stress. Complication destroys peace of mind. The Sufi develops discrimination in values — he realizes that happiness is not the result of what others do FOR HIM but the dynamic expression of his own dynamic divinity, and love, and that he stays true to God.

God is true to us. He comes again and again to set us an example of joyous living, despite the inevitable crucifixion. Only the direct experience of the presence of God, such as Brother Lawrence spoke of, can change our outer life, for the world is what it is.

Baba's love transmutes and transforms us. We have only to be quiet, to be simple, to focus on Him in the midst of external chaos — to be less aware of ourselves and more of Him. There really is Joy and beauty everywhere, and peace and security if we remember we are never alone, that the universe and we forever belong to God, who is love, beauty and joy.