What does it mean to be a true Servant of God?

What does it mean to be a true servant of God: Am I faithful to His Reality. And each of those words, you can make a full Satsang out of them. But, to put it simply, am I presently taking Him to be just an idea or is He a living Presence here, right now. Am I relying on my intuiHve insight of His Reality presently here, or have I suppressed it to some distant corner of my mind and say [gesturing in some direcHon], „Oh, God is here“. Is God really here, just like I am si^ng in front of you, your neighbor is si^ng next to you, all the ones on Zoom are there? Do you give them more reality than God's Presence which is your very Being? This is a very important quesHon. What are you taking to be more real? If God's Reality is more real, then you tell me something, anything – I can't really get upset, I can't really get shaken, because God is with me, it's not a concept which gets then blurred out when some new concept comes, because He is actually with me. He is actually with you as a real, actual Being, as an actuality. Not as a force of nature, not as a scienHfic principle. That's why we have to be careful of the words Awareness and Consciousness, because someHmes you feel like, Oh, like electricity is powering this light, and magneHsm is making the computer funcHon, these forces are there, just like that there is an Awareness and there's a Consciousness, no? We are talking about an actuality, an actual Being which is more powerful than anything ever. So, literally, your very Being is God. Not noHonally. It's not just a feel good idea that „God is everywhere, God will take care of it“. Nice ideas, but really, who are you talking about? The most inHmate, it is you your Self, your very Presence. But as long as the remnant of the Me is there, for even the remnant of the ego it is the most inHmate relaHonship possible. The most inHmate relaHonship possible. And if you have this relaHonship, nothing really can affect you or hurt you in life. You will never go anchoring to the world with a begging bowl, asking for things, wanHng things, grasping things because you have God in your Heart. And what should our a^tude be towards this God? It has to be that which is of faith and servitude. So, the first element of servitude is faith. How do you know God is here in your Heart? How do you know this is not just lip service and big talk? The insight is there, intuiHvely you know. But, faith is what? Suppose, reason will come. Reason will come, like our families, and they will say, „Be reasonable, don't overdo it. You see, like this God doesn't come like that to anyone. You have to do the [inaudible] for thousands of years, then God will come. Be reasonable. It doesn't come like that, you're fooling yourself“. Reason will come, or other people's minds will come. But do value your own insight, even at the cost of looking stupid to others and to your mind. Your mind will say, you're throwing away your life. „You're sHll young, get a grip. I'm not saying, don't do it. I'm just saying, do it in balance“. It will come with all this prodding and pleading. But if you rely on your faith, and it is not a blind faith, it is a completely open eyed faith, because you are not relying on just a concept, you are relying on your own intuiHve insight. So, either your intuiHon is lying to you and deluding you, or you can trust it with your life. But there will be always Hmes where it will seem like it is a risk. There will always be Hmes where it will seem like it is a risk and life gives you so-called opprtuniHes, but you feel that it will require you to be in disservice to God in your Heart. It may seem like a risk, that „Is this stuff really real? Are we all just deluding ourselves?“ As Judas was complaining [referring to a song from the musical „Jesus Christ Superstar“]: [inaudible], that was his complaint, „Too much heaven on their mind“. So, to be faithful especially when life comes and shakes you and tempts you, not to lose sight of the fact that God is with you. What else do you want? God is really with you. But you can't just conceptually say „God is with me, God is with me“, because that will not withstand life, like a conceptual spirituality does not withstand life. It gets shaken out. Life comes and slaps you, your girlfriend comes and fights with you, or your partner comes and fights with you, or you lose your money, something happens – gone. Where is God right now? „He can wait, I have to fix my things“. But that is the difference between like a noHonal, conceptual idea of God versus a true living with God, a true living in the light of Presence. So we need to deepen in our faith like I was saying mulHple [Hmes], I said ten but maybe a thousand Hmes, because I`ve seen that we get shaken too easily. We forget about God really fast. „What did this one tell me?“ - Whoom! Then no God, nothing , this [gesturing to a ficHonal object] becomes important.

Very good, very good. I can taste that it is true. But no maZer where you are, it can sHll deepen by a mulHple, a huge mulHple. Because that deepening is endless. So, to rely on your intuiHve insight come what may, to risk and bet your life that your faith is true, is the first – and it's not in order of reference or anything – but the first one we've discussed in terms of the qualiHes of servitude. And even this will take care of all the other things. Actually, any of them will take care of all the other things, including insight and love. That's why it's so beauHful. So, if you just have a deep, deep faith and remain in God's Presence, love will come, insight will come, everything will come. Humility will come, graHtude will come, everything. So, this is faith. Then humility. I've spoken a lot about this (so I won't speak so much about this), which is that, if you fill the lane with yourself, there is no room for God. If you fill your inner space with Me, Me, Me and even God is for Me, then forget about it. Empty yourselves, you're nothing. What you take yourself to be is, even according to scienHsts, it's a 99.9 percent space, the space between these molecules is so much that you're mostly space. So, if you take yourself to be the body, even then you are nothing. And in the magnitude of Hme and space also this body-mind is nothing, it's nobody. It's nothing at all. So, don't live as if you are somebody, that you are something special. There is nothing like this. So know, that you're completely unimportant. And the minute you start to become something, the minute you start to take yourself to be something, then it is not that God will not nudge you, pokes will come. Don't get into any sort of denial, like conceptual Advaita denial. Faith, humility, obedience. What is obedience? To follow God's will. Which means, what are we not following? You're not following self-will, you're not following living on our own terms, so to speak. Now what happens, what happens to us on a day-to-day basis? We are very quick to determine what is right. And the minute that we determine what is right or what is beZer, the mind is constantly proposing to us „This is right, this is beZer, this is wrong“. Then you will be tempted to follow that self will because once you determine that „I am right, another is wrong“ or „The other is right and I am wrong“, did you wait for God to tell you? Did you wait for God's Presence to move you? Then, where is the obedience? So, obedience has to become moment to moment. The following of God's will has to become moment to moment. You cannot just say, okay now, „Today Ananta told me to do this. I did that, I'm so obedient“. And I hardly tell anyone to do anything anyway. That is not obedience. You must be fully surrendered to a God directed life, a God dictated life, moment to moment. And you don't have the excuse that I have not found God. Those who've not been in Satsang may say, how to follow God's will, I haven't found Him. We are so privileged, so honored that we can even make a statement like this, that God's Presence is palpable, it is tangible for us. So, are we saying that that Presence, that Beingness cannot run this life? That I have to make it run this life on my own terms? [Silence] In India we say that we must all follow our Dharma. But most have a deep misunderstanding about what the Dharma is. There is no higher Dharma than following God, than to follow His will. That is our highest Dharma. Can you keep everything aside and follow God's will? It may aZack your sensibiliHes, like the Arjuna conundrum. What happened with Arjuna? God Himself was his best friend and Guru. And He also agreed to be his charioteer on the baZle because probably He realized that all this stuff will happen [chuckles]. So, when they made the trade between the army and Him, all Krishna's Leela, „So I'm gonna be his charioteer and be available to him“. And how is the conversaHon going in the Gita? Is Arjuna being obedient? Everything, our morality, our sensibiliHes, our sensiHvity, everything is coming in the way. Everything which is blocking, where God Himself is telling him, his master himself, his best friend and confident himself is telling him that I want you to fight. Then, what is your business to sit and think? It's exactly – not exactly but very similar – to the Abraham story. It is no longer our business to sit and evaluate, based on any worldly paradigms of things when God's Presence is clear and His guidance is apparent. You may have a valid point, you may say that my mind oeen tricks me, so how can I be certain that this guidance is coming from God, or is it coming from my mind? That's a very valid quesHon to have. But the first part of following God's will is to be empty of self-will. If you filled yourself first with so much „I want, I need, I want my life to go this way, I should have this much money, I should have this relaHonship“, all of that stuff, then where is the room for God's will? Then you are just looking for a Jeanie, a magic Jeanie to rub the lamp and do some mantra and say, God please, this is my will, please you be my servant and you help me acquire this. This is the modern version of spirituality, that God will assist me if I just do some magic tricks. So, we must get out of that nonsense, let go of selfishness and self will and make space, be empty. When you're empty, haven't you seen that God moves you? Whose life has become staHc and vegetaHve in being empty? Whose life has become vegetaHve? When you try to be open and empty, you just say [spreading his arms, gesturing a plant]. No [laughs]. At least my experience here is that it becomes even more like full-on, it just like moves with a beauHful light. But it's important first to follow God's will, emptying yourself of self-will, emptying yourself of individual will. Usually you will find that once you get used to that, then God's voice will become apparent to you, then you can say „I woke up today and God told me I should do this“. You don't have to rush into that because it's true that the mind can trick you. And if it is rushing, then most likely it is the mind anyway. God is not in a rush. So, I have given you the tools also how to know it is coming from the Satguru Presence within, or God's Presence within. If it is accompanied by uncondiHonal love, or the Presence is palpable, or the Reality of yourself as pure Awareness is clearly apparent to you, then you can trust it as if it is coming from God. But also I give you the guarantee that if truly from your Heart your intenHon is to follow God's will, and you end up ge^ng tricked by the mind, God will make Grace even out of that. So, you don't have to fear the mind so much. Is your intenHon truly to follow God and to keep your plans for your life aside and to keep your plan for the day aside? You're very sHcky about these things, you see. We say, we're fully surrendered to God, but if God just changes a liZle bit of your calendar, you're just „Oh, my day is all messed up. How can I live like this? Such difficulty, I had planned all my meeHngs“. When the rubber hits the road, that's when it counts. All the lip service, arm chair spirituality is not worth anything. So, are you willing to surrender your whole life to God's will, or do you think that somewhere you know beZer? That is pride. Obedience may sound like a simple word, but it requires full faith, humility, trust. So, we have discussed three elements of servitude. The fourth one I feel is very beauHful is to just to have a prayerful a^tude. When life squeezes you, or even without, rely on God, pray to God instead of trust in your own strenght. Don't be scared to be weak and go to God, don't think „Oh, but if all seven billion of us pray to him, then he'll have too much to handle, I will take care of this myself“. Many Hmes our pride puts all these ideas that we are actually taking care of God. God is available to us in every moment of our life much more than we'll ever realize. Time doesn't work for God like it seems to work for you. God is not racing against the clock every day saying 24 hours ge^ng over. It's not like that movie you know, God Almighty where all the emails are there, and He's just si^ng and replying. It's not like that. No, infinite Hme. He's got infinite Hme for each of us. Are we using it, or are we relying on ourselves? So, if some guidance has come and we are not clear if it is from You God, pray on it: Please help me Father. Help me, guide me as to what to do. And of course you are free to use whatever expression of God you resonate with the most. Here I use Father because I refer to God as Father and Guruji [Sri Mooji] as Father. So, it's a mulH purpose term. But, whatever you feel resonates closest to you, you can use that. I was saying that these are the elements of servitude, and I more actually said, Father, what about graHtude? And I felt like, that's very beauHful actually. Because just to be grateful, for He's given us so much, every heartbeat, every breath. We have so many complaints, why didn't you do this for me, how could you do this to me. But, He is giving you a breath. What made you enHtled to it? Nothing can make us enHtled in front of God. Nothing can give us rights in front of God. So we must never forget His grace and His mercy. And the beauty of all these things is that you don't have to plan your day, saying 9 to 11 I'll be faithful, 11 to 12 I'll be humble. It just becomes an inner a^tude and all of them are interrelated. And you see how much deeper your insight is. You may feel that what we started with, the nature of Reality as pure Awareness, it's called Brahma Gyan, it's supposed to be the rarest, available only to the rarest of the rare. But you are noHcing that what is needed is not some accomplishment or spiritual progress. What is needed is innocence and openness. If we are innocent and our cup is not full, then children who are coming for the first few Hmes [to Satsang] have had this insight. So, what you know is that the mind's temptaHons won't seem as strong if you are anchored in love for God and if you are anchored in servitude. So, insight, which is to know yourself, love, which is such an accessible, beauHful way to meet God, and servitude, which is the best way to keep the spiritual ego in check. Come what may, don't let your mind normalize God. Don't let it regularize it. You're talking about God! The mind wants to make you higher than God. It wants to make you at least like peers, you know. There is some sweetness like that if it comes from innocence. You may say God is my best friend, like that it's okay. But really, there is no comparison possible. So you must be lee more awestruck than, you know, pally-pally. And that then becomes reverence. Reverence is like a deep love and trust, mixed with some awe. Almost bordering on like a fear, but not a fear-fear, just bordering on that. Because, if there is a huge Hger in front of you, and you know that it is actually harmless and he loves you, but just being in front of that huge Hger, there will be some awe always. That's very healthy actually. Because it prevents a sort of „Yeah, man...“ [gestures indifference], a kind of casual sort of. So we never forget the honor and privilege it is to have this Holiness of His Presence within us. And that is the danger of just using words like Beingness and Awareness. „Oh yeah, there is a Beingness, but I have gone beyond that to Awareness, you know“. It can become so. So you must be careful of what are we saying. We're talking about Consciousness, God Himself. „No, no, I'm very Nirguna“. Be careful of the mind's posiHon making, because it doesn't know what it's talking about: That, in the light of whom Ram and Krishna and Jesus have lived in this world, That, in the light of which a zillion universes can come and go in a blink of an eye. Stay deep in your intuiHve meeHng with That instead of allowing your mind to regularize it, normalize it. And then every day you will feel like I'm even more of a beginner than I was yesterday. Every day you feel like „I'm talking about God? I've just got a grasp of His toenail, not even that.“ The enormity of the discovery of God's Light within yourself must never become like a normal thing, „But, I moved on to Awareness, you know“ [chuckles]. Yes, it's natural, in your spiritual so-called journey you will have Hmes where you will marinate in the Absolute, there will be Hmes where you'll enjoy loving the Presence of Being. All that is fine, but don't become mental about any of this, especially with an idea of being something great or special.