Abiding Peace

 

"My Guru told me — ‘Trust me. I tell you; you are Divine. Take it as the absolute truth. Your joy is divine, your suffering is divine too. All comes from God. Remember it always. You are God, your will alone is done.” I did believe him and soon realized how wonderfully true and accurate were his words. I simply followed his instruction, which was to focus the mind on pure being, ‘I am’, and stay in it. I used to sit for hours together, with nothing but the ‘I am’ in my mind and soon the peace and joy and deep all-embracing love became my normal state. In it all disappeared — myself, my guru, the life I lived, the world around me. Only peace remained, and unfathomable silence.” Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj,

Incessant, unnecessary thought is the root cause of the insanity of the human race.

Living in this world, when the suffering seems unending, do not despair.

Understand that you are a victim of the tyranny of the mind.

Simplify your life as much as you can.

Become an authentic human being, grounded in your true nature.

Learn the art of stopping the mind-stream, of just being in the present in clear, awake awareness.

Explore the wonder of direct experience without the filter of conceptual thought.

At first, you will get but a brief glimpse of the truth.

This is enough – once you have tasted this, nothing else will ever satisfy you.

Have faith in the Guru, trust the teaching, let your love for  the Divine deepen and grow.

Patiently continue your practice -sravana, manana, niddhidhyasana – listening to the truth, reflecting deeply on the truth, resting in the truth……again and again and again.

Your thought-free states will grow longer and longer, you will enjoy the bliss of samadhi for extended periods of time.

You will yearn for the day when you can stay permanently in that knowing.

At last there will come a time when the still mind sinks deep in the Heart and the attention stays focused unwaveringly upon the Self shining within.

Now the world disappears, all sorrow ends: one rests blissfully in a deep, abiding peace.

The exploration of the nature of ‘I’, of the ‘I AM’, leads to the unveiling of the presence of God in ourself. This has been stated in many a spiritual tradition the world over. According to Meister Eckhart, “I AM can be spoken by no creature, but by God alone. I must become God and God must become me, so completely that we share the same ‘I’ eternally. Our truest ‘I’ is God.”