Podcasts about fortunately god

The world is full of good and of evil. You and I, we're called to live a life of good. A life that honours God. But what we need, are the life skills to allow us to do that. Fortunately God's already thought of that – and His Word is packed full of wisdom, full of the very life skills that we need, to live a life that glorifies Him.   Treat People as Individuals One of the things that's incredibly precious to each one of us is our own name. It's an odd thing when you think about it. I mean, a name is just a label; it's a unique identifier, but if that's all that there was to it, we could just have a number. Why don't we change your name to 7449018? ‘G'day, 7449018! How are you?' It just doesn't have the same ring about it, does it? And there's a reason for that. Our name speaks something of our uniqueness into this world, and so we become incredibly attached to our names. I love the fact that my name is Berni; B e r n I with no e on the end, because that's how my parents spelt it, and that's how it is. I often find myself telling people when they're writing down my name, ‘There's no e on the end.' Why? I mean, does it really matter? Well, actually yes, it does matter to me, just as your name matters to you Think about this: God knows you by name. Isaiah 43:1: But now, thus says the LORD; He who created you, o Jacob, He who formed you, o Israel: ‘Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, and you are Mine.' When God thinks of you, He thinks of you by name. When He looks at you, He sees you and He knows your name. When you're in trouble (in distress) and you cry out to Him, He knows your name. Jesus put it beautifully in John 10:2-3: The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice; he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. Imagine, then, how it feels for someone else when you forget their name: When you've met them once, and then you see them again, and you just don't remember their name. That person's name is one of the single-most precious things they have, just as your name is one of the single-most precious things that you have, and when we remember other people's names, it so honours them. It speaks to them of the respect that we have for them. Honestly, I sometimes struggle to remember people's names. I travel round the world and meet many, many people, so for me, it's really quite an occupational challenge, but as best I can, I try to remember their names. I enlist help from our local staff to coach me, and to remind me of people's names. God remembers us by name. That's incredible! God Himself knows your name. How does that make you feel? So imagine the power of remembering and using the names of the people you meet. What a life skill! And imagine building on that and treating each person, interacting with each person, building a relationship with each person, based on who they really are. It's tempting, you know, to treat everyone the same, as though somehow we are all the same. Let's face it: By and large, our default position is that everyone sees things the way we do; everyone experiences things the way we do. Of course in theory, we know that's not true, but in practice, that's pretty much how we behave. And when people don't see things the way we want them to, when they don't react to things the way we expect them to ... well, we respond with surprise, with annoyance and oftentimes, in anger. Just as everybody has their own unique name, so everyone has their own specific God-given gifts. They tend to see things (just as, in fact, we do) through the lens of those gifts, and through the lens of their experience: The good things they've been through, and the bad things as well. Come on. What makes us imagine for one moment that people all see things the way we do? And why is it that we're so surprised when they don't? God's Word is pretty clear on this. Romans 4:4-6: For as in one body we have many members, and not all members have the same function, so we who are many are one body in Christ, and individually we are members of one another. We have gifts that differ, according to the grace given to us. Take a look at any roomful of people: Thirty, forty, a hundred, a thousand, and what you'll notice is that other than the odd pair of identical twins, everybody looks different; different hair-colours, styles, eye-colour, complexion, the way they dress, the way they talk, and even the identical twins when you get to know them are often quite different. So imagine ... I mean just imagine ... if we started working, living, interacting with people, building relationships with people, on the basis that everyone's actually different, rather than everyone being the same; on the basis of getting to know them – their likes and their dislikes; their strengths and their weaknesses, even in just the little things. Some people don't like to be rushed, so don't rush them. Some people like to be punctual, so when you're catching up with them, be on-time. Imagine if you took the time to figure out what makes people tick: Your wife, your husband, your children, your brothers, your sisters, your work-colleagues. Imagine how differently you'd be able to interact with them if you knew just these two things about them: The one thing that annoys them most, and the one thing that they find the most pleasing. Do you think that would improve your relationships? Do you think it'd bring more peace and joy to your life? It's not rocket science. God made everyone to be different, and it's time to start treating them that way.   The Good, the Bad and the Ugly God is a God who rewards the good in us. It's a really simple fact. Like any good father, He wants to see His children live a good life. I know that's what I want for my children. Yeah, I want to see them succeed in their chosen profession, but more than that, I want them to be good people: People with good morals; honest; decent; hardworking; loving; caring for others. And like any father, when they were growing up, I tried to teach them those things. It didn't always go that well. Kids being kids, they didn't always get things right and as you well know, as teenagers, they often pushed the boundaries as teenagers do. And as an imperfect father, I didn't always get things right either, just quietly. But what was in my heart for them was to bring them up to be good people, and the best way as a parent to do that was to reward the good behaviour in them; to teach them that good behaviour, unselfish behaviour, honest and decent behaviour, has its rewards. I think that approach is pretty common to all fathers, even if (as I've said) we don't always get it right, and in fact, that's exactly the approach God takes with us. Galatians 6:9: So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest-time if we don't give up. So what God's saying to us here is, yes, sometimes the going does get tough, but hang in there. Keep on doing good because one day, at harvest-time, you're going to reap the reward that He has ready and waiting for you. God blesses and rewards the good in us. That's why Jesus said (John 12:26): Whoever serves Me, the Father will honour. In a world in which people more and more are preferring fifty shades of grey to simple black-and-white, you know, I think that's not such a bad model. It's so easy to take the good in people for granted when all along, the good in other people is really a blessing from God that could and should be rewarded in a way that encourages more good in this world. Just think for a moment how powerful-an agent of change the rewarding of good would be in your life, through your life. Think of the missional impact that the rewarding of good could have through you, as you implement God's approach – God's model of reward, and the rewards don't have to be all that big: A simple, "Thank you. I so appreciate what you did," will often suffice. So who in your life is doing good? Who could you reward today to encourage them to do more good? Because that's the model that God has ordained. Of course, not everyone is good all the time. Sometimes people are downright evil. The question is, so then what? By and large, the simplest thing to do when someone is doing something wrong, something that we know is bad, something that quite clearly is going to have terrible consequences, is ... well, just to ignore it. My wife and I were recently at a café having a quiet cup of coffee or at least, we were trying to. At the next table was a young mother on her mobile phone, chatting away. Opposite her was her one-year-old with a cup in his hand, banging it hard and loud on the table. Now back in my day, I would have taken that cup off him, and taught him that that was the wrong thing to do, even though it probably would have resulted in a tantrum. They have to learn, right? And the sooner the better because one day, that one-year-old is going to be a teenager and then, watch out! But not this mum. No, she simply ignored the child's bad behaviour and apparently oblivious to it, just kept on talking on her mobile phone. How that cup didn't smash in his hand I'll never know. This ignoring of bad behaviour thing starts quite early-on, and because dealing with bad behaviour takes energy – because it'll probably cause conflict along the way, we've all become quite adept at turning the blind eye; at ignoring it, hoping it'll go away, but that's generally not what happens. When we ignore bad behaviour, whether it's in a one-year-old at the café or in a work-colleague who's bullying someone, it almost always gets worse, so what's the answer? What do you do? How do you deal with that bad behaviour? Galatians 6:1: My friends, if anyone is detected in a transgression, you who have received the Spirit should restore such a one in the spirit of gentleness. Take care that you yourselves are not tempted. In other words, God's calling us to deal with it. God's calling us, albeit in a spirit of gentleness, to confront the bad behaviour with the aim not of exacting revenge, but of restoring the person who's doing bad; with the aim of bringing them back to good behaviour. Now that bit about doing it in the spirit of gentleness is really important. If that young mother had put the phone down and screamed at the child in frustration ... well, that probably wouldn't have been the right approach, any more than you or I responding angrily (with revenge in our hearts) to someone who's doing us wrong. Take care that you yourself are not tempted into that, but when we do it in love, when we do it with gentleness, when we point out the mistake quietly and offer a better alternative to the person who's behaving badly, something surprising happens. God shows up. God honours that, and more often than we might expect, that person who's been behaving badly is restored to good. But that doesn't always work, so then what? People behaving badly in this world is simply a fact of life. We can try and do the right thing; we can try and talk about it to them gently, quietly, privately, to restore them to good behaviour, but let's be honest: It doesn't always work. It should; we wish it did, but it doesn't always work, so then, what do you ordinarily do in that situation? Let's say you tried once or twice to help someone deal with their bad behaviour, but they haven't responded well. What happens next? Well, most of us, we just give up. ‘Well, you know, I tried, but he's a hopeless case. He's never going to change.' Sound familiar? Sure it does. We just write them off and move on, leaving the bad behaviour to fester and harm not just them, but everybody around them. I'm not so sure that's the best approach. What do you think? Have a listen to the apostle Paul's advice to his young ministry protégé, Timothy. 2 Timothy 4:1B-2: I solemnly urge you, proclaim the message. Be persistent, whether the time is favourable or unfavourable. Convince, rebuke, and encourage with the utmost patience in teaching. In a nutshell, the older, more experienced Paul is saying to young Tim here, ‘Don't give up. Keep telling people about Jesus – the good news, the fantastic news about Jesus, whether the conditions are favourable or unfavourable.' Does that mean shoving religion down someone's throat? I don't think so, but what it does mean is not giving up on them. I have a very good friend who knows that some of the things that he's doing are wrong. The lifestyle that he's chosen for himself is just wrong, plain and simple. Now I care deeply for him, and so on the odd occasion, I've shared with him the good news of Jesus and by the way, deep in his heart, I know he believes, but his lifestyle is pulling him away from the Lord. He can't have his cake and eat it too, as the saying goes. As much as I care for him though, the one thing that I will not do – the one thing that I will never do – is endorse his bad choices; tell him that it's all ok, because whether the time is favourable or not, my heart is to convince and rebuke and encourage him with as much patience as I can muster, and of course to pray for him, because there's such incredible power in prayer. James 5:16b: The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective. People are going to behave badly, but don't give up on them. Perhaps God's put you in their lives for a time such as this to be the one through whom His love, His grace, His mercy, flows into their lives. Don't give up.   Have an Open Heart Can I ask you today just to picture the face of the person who's causing you the most grief, the most pain, the most problems in your life right at the moment? Ok. Do you have their image in front of your eyes? So now let me ask you: Yesterday, how did you respond to that person, in your heart, in your mind? What thoughts have been running through your head about them? What scenarios? What responses? What reactions have been playing themselves out over and over again in your head, and in your heart? How do you feel about that person right now? I'm guessing that there are a few answers there that you're probably not all that comfortable with. Perhaps those questions have taken you to a place where you'd rather not be because when people sin against us, we harden our hearts towards them and close off our lives, so (and here's my final question for you today) how did Jesus react to exactly those same people? Matthew 9:9-10: As Jesus was walking along, He saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth, and He said to him, ‘Follow Me.' Then he got up and followed Him. And as He sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came, and with sitting with Him and His disciples. Tax collectors were the scum of the earth back in those days. They were fellow-Jews who'd colluded with Roman authorities to exhort exorbitant tolls from people who passed by their tax collection booth on the road. So not only did they collude with the enemy who occupied and oppressed their land, they lined their own pockets at the very same time. No wonder they were hated and despised! But Jesus, instead of shunning them, invited one of them to become one of His disciples and then ... Then He went and had dinner with a bunch of these sinners, with the very same people who were hated and shunned by good, God-fearing Jews. Read on, and you discover He copped quite a bit of criticism for that, but His take on it was that it was exactly the people like them that He'd come to this earth to save, and let me be blunt here: If you believe in Jesus, if you claim to follow Him, it's exactly for people like these that God has put you on this earth: To share the love of Christ with them so that perhaps, some of them will be saved. So back to that one person I had you picturing a moment ago: Your most difficult person, your tax collector if you will. It's that person to whom Jesus has sent you. Be open. Be engaging. Show them the love that Christ has shown you, and the easiest way to get started in doing that is to look for the good in them. When someone's treating you badly, and you want to write them off because they're just too much trouble, and they're more than you can cope with right now, I want to encourage you to do something radical. Are you ready? Try looking for the good in them because let me tell you, no matter how badly someone's behaving, deep-down, there's always some good in them. That's exactly what Jesus did when He went to dine with the sinners and the tax collectors at Matthew's house. Matthew 9:11-13: When the Pharisees saw this, they said to His disciples, ‘Why does your teacher eat with the tax collectors and the sinners?' But when Jesus heard this, He said, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what it means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice, for I have come to call not the righteous, but the sinners.' Where others saw only sin, Jesus saw something worth redeeming. Jesus knew that if only these sinners, these social rejects, could experience the love of God first-hand, then the good in them would come to the surface. So often, the people who behave badly do so because they've never experienced unconditional love in their lives. No one's ever stepped into their lives looking for the good in them, and helped them to rediscover that good that they thought had been lost for ever. I'm here with you today because when I was one of those bad people, some of those who call themselves Christians stepped into my life, as Jesus did in the lives of these tax collectors and sinners, and they believed somewhere deep-down inside me, hidden though it may have been to their sight, that there was some good in me worth redeeming. All too often, we approach people like those tax collectors and those sinners with the attitude of, ‘Well, what's in it for me? How will they treat me? What will I experience? Will they hurt me again? What will other people say about me?' It's always with this me, me, me thing. Have you noticed? And yet Jesus had no thought whatsoever about what was in it for Him. The religious leaders, the religious powerbrokers of the day, the ultra-conservative, legalistic, rule-based Pharisees, they criticised Him. ‘Why does He mix with all those undesirables?' "Because I came to heal the sick," said Jesus. "Because I came for them; because these sinners are made in the very image of God, and I'm here to show them mercy." We can go to church; we can sing the songs; we can hear the sermons; we can pat ourselves on the back, but let me tell you, unless and until we look for the good in the sinner, we're just kidding ourselves.

Podcast: rwh.podbean.com Website: www.runwithhorses.net Youtube: https://youtube.com/@rwhpodcast Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RWHpodcast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rwh_podcast Twitter: https://twitter.com/RWH_podcast   It seems to me that the discussion of entitlements and rights is very much wrapped up in the discussion of pride and humility. Our pride causes us to believe that we deserve something because of who we are. Humility helps us to give up our rights for the sake of someone else. All of us have an ongoing struggle in our hearts between pride and humility.   It also seems to me that it's wrapped up in the idea of loss. We are afraid that we will lose something if we don't get what we believe we deserve. If we aren't treated as we think we deserve we will lose honor or respect. If we aren't taking care of as we believe we deserve we may not have the comfort or safety that we desire. The problem is, God never promised us comfort, or safety, or honor, or recognition for anything that we can do or have done.   What is your heart answer when you think about the question, "What do you really want?" For most of us and probably all of us the answer is not God. What we want is focused on our creature comforts, our human desires , and mostly on this life, here and now.   We want to have a comfortable house, a nice car, a tasty meal and a lifestyle that we feel we deserve. It seems a far cry from following Jesus, who said that the Son of Man has no place to lay his head, and asks us to deny ourself, take up our cross, and follow him. I'm not sure where we get the idea of safety, comfort and all of these material goods as part of that package. Maybe it was in the fine print?   Why is there such a disconnect between what the Bible teaches and what we say we believe and how we think and live? I think it's the whispering of the serpent in the garden in our ear, telling us that we deserve more. The idea of sacrifice and service to others requires too much. Too much effort, too much sacrifice. We shouldn't have to give up our rights, our comforts, our safety, just because Jesus ask us to follow him.   Spiritual warfare is for others, sacrifice is for others, service is for others. Certainly we understand that the cause of Christ is important, that the world needs to hear the message of the gospel, but that's something that someone else is responsible for, not me.   Because thinking of others is so foreign to us, we can only only see what we want. Our hearts desires control us and drive us. Life is about us. And is life is about us, obviously we deserve a certain kind of treatment.   We feel that we deserve certain things just because we exist, but that's not true. What we deserve is to be eternally separated from God. Fortunately God has reached out and given us so much that we don't deserve. Everything we have is a gift from him. If we understand that we can live a life of Thanksgiving. Humility takes the place of pride, service and sacrifice seem reasonable in light of all we have received. We will have the ability to joyfully approach each day.   To fully follow Jesus means to give up our rights (not hard since we don't have any), accept his gifts, and join Him on a journey of Faith. You have to give up the right to your time. It is important to understand that you have been given time and energy and a certain degree of health and now you are a steward of all you have received. You were an ignorant steward without Christ, but in Christ, you know what a gift you have. A weight of responsibility is lifted, you no longer have to "succeed", whatever that means. You only have to follow Jesus and use His resources to accomplish His purposes. He will succeed.   You have to give up the right to your relationships. Your relationships are given to you by God although we don't often think if them that way. Your ability to have a relationship is given to you by God. It is part of being made in the image of God. God is relational. He communicates. He desires fellowship.   You don't have the right to have enough, whatever that means. Instead of relying on enough, whether that's time, health or money, we learn to trust God to supply our needs. We don't have a right to have our needs met. But we often have the joy of having our needs met by an awesome God. Along the way He fulfills needs that we didn't know we had. Needs for worship. Needs to know our Creator.   We live in a society that doesn't value humility or self-sacrifice. But we serve a God who not only values it but modeled it for us in the life of Jesus. While most people search for significance and temporary fame in this life. Jesus leads to a path of eternal significance and true value that doesn't fade like the newest Youtube sensation. Youtube fame may be measured in the approval of millions of people. Real value is found in the approval of ONE. It is found following a path that few take. A path of humility and service. A path of sacrifice.   But on this path we meet others who travel with us. Family, united by a bond stronger than DNA, national pride, or culture. We are united by blood. The blood that was shed to remove the barrier of sin and give us access to our heavenly Father. We are united in a family that will be together for eternity. Each member loved and appreciated.   We live is a world that values rights. But I relinquish my rights and claim a promise. The promise of Jesus to never leave me nor forsake me. The promise that His completed work on the cross is sufficient. The promise that His resurrection will be my resurrection one day. The promise that He who started a good work in me will complete it.   I have chosen the ancient path. I want to live with my focus on the footprints of Jesus, leading me home. And I accept the challenge to deny myself, give up whatever rights I have and follow Him. Will you go with me?   Thanks for joining me today. You can always write to norman@runwithhorses.net with questions or comments or suggestions for future topics. All past shows are available at www.runwithhorses.net or rwh.podbean.com and on most platforms where you listen to podcasts. Keep your eyes on Jesus and never stop running!

According to the Declaration of Independence everyone has an inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness. So how come happiness is so elusive in today's world? And why are we often still unhappy even if we can achieve the success in life that's supposed to make us happy? Does anyone know for sure what happiness is and how to get it and keep it? Fortunately God has a plan for happiness that is very attainable but it requires us to consider a different path than the one we are used to pursuing. Watch as Pastor John teaches on Psalm 1 in part 2 of God's Summer Playlist called: A Song for the Happy. - NEXT STEPS  Looking to take your next step?  We want to help! Text the word NEXT to 909-281-7797 or visit sunrisechurch.org/nextsteps. - GIVE TO SUNRISE CHURCH Imagine what God can do through our giving. You can give today at sunrisechurch.org/give. - FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SunriseChurchCA Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sunrisechurchca Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/SunriseChurch

S Second chances  Work and home In the area of work, I've shared with you all how I spent this past year in receiving correction at work and how I received a second chance. Fortunately God worked through me to humble myself, receive the correction, make improvements, and I've ended up a better worker and better at what I do than before, and that has been validated by the same people who were earlier being critical of me.  At the same time I've been appreciating my job more than ever before. Here are some random thoughts I have on this topic. It's easy to look back on past events and have a good perspective on this issue of receiving correction and having second chances, it's harder when you're in the middle of it, but that is when your attitude matters the most since it impacts the choices you make in response. How to respond: gratitude and make the most of it  Pay it forward by giving others second chances.  This reminds me of what we have called the parable of the unforgiving servant which is found in the 18th chapter of Matthew.  Peter asks Jesus, or Yeshua, how often he should forgive his brother who sins against him, up to 7 times?  Yeshua replies that he should forgive seventy times seven, which I've heard taught means an unlimited number of times, though I recently heard an alternate explanation of the significance of the seventy times seven, but I'll leave that for another discussion.  Yeshua then goes on to tell a parable about the Kingdom of heaven where a king wants to settle accounts with his servants.  After one servant who owed a huge amount begs for mercy the king forgives his debt.  The king later finds out that the same servant was unmerciful to someone who owed him a relatively small amount and the king then delivered the servant to the torturers until his large debt was paid. As believers and followers of Yeshua, we know that his sacrifice on the cross and resurrection paid for the infinitely great debt of our sin, and that among other responses ours should be gratitude and to show great mercy to those in our lives, regardless of their sin toward us, owe us a relatively minor debt. Regardless what specific second chances you've received in your life, if you're a believer in Yeshua, you have received the ultimate forgiveness of debt and as such we should show the greatest possible mercy to others in our lives. While it's easy to focus on a particular, significant event in our lives, I believe this concept of second chances is more appropriately thought about as a journey than a one-time event. While we are alive, we will always have challenges, we'll always have sin in our lives that we need to confess and repent of, we'll always need forgiveness and we'll always need to forgive others. Learn from it - don't forget!!!  This is different than dwelling on the past, but rather in a positive way take the lessons from the past mistakes and apply them to your current and future choices. Avoiding second chances is better.  Recently, when I was talking to another brother about something in my life I had said sorry for and it wasn't the first time.  He asked me how many times I had said sorry, and I replied more than I could count.  While it's good to be genuinely sorry and to say so, it's much better to avoid the need to say you're sorry and thus avoiding the need to get a second chance, or in reality we're talking here not about second but third, fourth, and fifth chances.  If you're into golf, you might like this analogy.  A mulligan is different than a handicap, it's not a pass it's another chance and requires effort, more effort or a better effort than what was made the first time.  Even if at your work or in your personal you're forgiven, or given a pass (kind of like being given a handicap or an automatic reduction in your golf score), you should treat it as if it's a mulligan and needs to be corrected either to prevent it from happening again or out of sense of integrity, love, or justice (whichever applies). This may sound a bit like the difference between law and grace.  I don't believe grace has been properly defined and understood in the church but I'll save that for another discussion since I'm still working through that theological concept, but I believe John 14:15 applies well here "If you love me keep my commandments".  If if we're saved and forgiven for our sins, out of our love for our Savior we should treat it like a mulligan not a handicap, and choose to obey and correct what we've done wrong, and do things His way as He has told us is His preference. Just watched a movie on Amazon Prime called The Vow and here's a spoiler alert.  A couple gets married and is very happy.  The wife gets in an accident and as a result loses all her memory of the period of time during which her husband and her met, fell in love, and married.  The husband struggles with the loss of his wife's love for her and tries his best to recreate her love for him.  In her mind, she is not the same person she was when they first met and they ultimately divorce.  Over time, though, she comes to love him and they end up together though in a different way and a different love than they had before. THis makes me think that when we're given a second chance at work or at home, the correct response may not be just to recreate what we think worked in the past, but we may need to assess what is true about our current reality and what changes do we need to make in our way of thinking and our actions to meet the need that is present.  It may be that our poor choices created a different dynamic that requires us to get out of our comfort zone and change and adapt.  I know that may sound a bit abstract but I'm praying this thought I had may be what you need and that God speaks to you in how you need to apply it to your situation. This whole idea of getting a second chance makes me think of the larger concept of free will vs. God's sovereignty.  I heard a great message from Pastor Julio Calderon from the Mikdash Congregation this past Shabbat on that topic and here are some of his thoughts on this issue, paraphrased by me: "As with Joseph in prison, the best of us will come from difficult situations, God does not enjoy taking us into bad situations, but we sometimes make bad decisions which He does not approve of (e.g. the brothers decision to throw Joseph in a hole and them sell him as a slave), but Yah will use these bad decisions for good.  If not He is not sovereign. This frustrates Satan. "Story of woman praying for food and witch giving bread and saying it was from Satan, woman thanking the LORD that even the evil one obeys Him".  Big question: how much free will do we have? How do we believe both in divine intervention and free will? No perfect answer but imperfect answers are that only God knows how they mesh together, and that God only sometimes intervenes to accomplish his purposes, both are common explanations and both are imperfect. In the end God always wins, and if He wins, we win Goliath made David great, he made the best that was in David come out  The movie of our life is not over yet but it has a happy ending. Perhaps the most relevant scripture for this is one we probably are all familiar with, Romans 8:28-29"28 And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. 29 For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren"                                       L   From Patrick Morley video 4 in man in the mirror  dealt with the issue of purpose which all of us men struggle with at some level He asked "If who I am is what I do, what will I be when I don't do what I do?" Who am I? A disciple in Christ  Why do I exist? To abide, love and serve John 8:31 "Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed" John 13:34-35 "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. 35 By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” John 15:5-"“I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing"    A  For this is commendable, if because of conscience toward God one endures grief, suffering wrongfully. 20 For what credit is it if, when you are beaten for your faults, you take it patiently? But when you do good and suffer, if you take it patiently, this is commendable before God. 1 Peter 2:19-20 https://www.patreon.com/christianmenatwork https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/christianmenatwork H Dad jokes from Country Living website:   "How does a taco say grace?" "Lettuce pray."

The peace we experience guards our hearts and minds. Unfortunately experiencing peace these days is a difficult endeavor. Most of us experience more conflict, chaos, and stress than we we experience peace. Fortunately God lays out a path for us to experience more peace in our lives. It is directly connected to how we think, because what we think always plays out in what we do. So to experience more peace we have to start with what we think about. (Talk by Joshua Ott)

The peace we experience guards our hearts and minds. Unfortunately experiencing peace these days is a difficult endeavor. Most of us experience more conflict, chaos, and stress than we we experience peace. Fortunately God lays out a path for us to experience more peace in our lives. It is directly connected to how we think, because what we think always plays out in what we do. So to experience more peace we have to start with what we think about.

The peace we experience guards our hearts and minds. Unfortunately experiencing peace these days is a difficult endeavor. Most of us experience more conflict, chaos, and stress than we we experience peace. Fortunately God lays out a path for us to experience more peace in our lives. It is directly connected to how we think, because what we think always plays out in what we do. So to experience more peace we have to start with what we think about.

Week 3 of "The DNA of our Faith." Sin always brings double trouble! …the legal problem before a Just and Holy God and the health problem of a sin infected soul. Fortunately God provided a double cure for our double trouble. Grace. God's Salvation (Grace) has 2 distinct and important elements. Key Verse: Various

Ever had something that someone did that rubbed you the wrong way to the point that you may have thought; that person is my enemy? When in reality there may have been a force behind it, a dark spiritual effort wanting to take advantage of you. the Bible tells us that the real battle in our lives is against spiritual forces. Fortunately God has provision for us so that the victory will be ours and not the enemy of our souls. Let's take the time to consider this real threat. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/dl-700/support

This week Pastor Andrew talked about something we have all had to develop over the past year or two - Endurance! Fortunately God is in the business of walking beside us and even carrying us when we start to weaken. Listen and learn how to improve your endurance and rely more on our Father God.   Proverbs 24:10 If you faint in the day of adversity, Your strength is small.

Romans 8:1 There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. 3 For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, FREEDOM FROM THE CONDEMNATION OF SIN or The statement of the believer's condition Available to those in Christ, made possible by the law of the Spirit of life (1-2) Ro 8:1 There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.          "Therefore" introduces a conclusion based on everything that Paul wrote from chapter 3 on, not just chapter 7, specifically 7:6. He reaffirmed justification as the indispensable basis for sanctification. A Christian must believe that he or she has permanent acceptance with God before that one will grow much in grace and godliness Romans 3:20 shows the 'therefore' of condemnation; but Romans 8:1 gives the 'therefore' of no condemnation Notice who he is speaking to; those in Christ Jesus.  Paul uses the term in Christ about 160 times No condemnation is different from freedom from judgment (2 Cor. 5:10). No condemnation (Gr. katakrima, penal servitude) means that God will never condemn us to an eternity separate from Himself for our sins. The reason is that the believer is in Christ Jesus. The Savior has suffered the consequences of our sins as our substitute. He will experience no condemnation, and we, as those He represents, will not either. Note the absolute force of this great promise. We are eternally secure! The Law condemns; but the believer has a new relationship to the Law, and therefore he cannot be condemned. (The words “who walk not … etc.” do not belong here according to the best manuscripts. There are no conditions for us to meet.) The basis for this wonderful assurance is the phrase “in Christ Jesus.” In Adam, we were condemned. In Christ, there is no condemnation![1] The verse does not say “no mistakes” or “no failures,” or even “no sins.” Christians do fail and make mistakes, and they do sin. Abraham lied about his wife; David committed adultery; Peter tried to kill a man with his sword. To be sure, they suffered consequences because of their sins, but they did not suffer condemnation.[1] Ro 8:2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. The Law cannot claim you (v. 2). You have been made free from the law of sin and death. You now have life in the Spirit. You have moved into a whole new sphere of life in Christ. “The law of sin and death” is what Paul described in Romans 7:7–25. “The law of the Spirit of life” is described in Romans 8. The Law no longer has any jurisdiction over you: you are dead to the Law (Rom. 7:4) and free from the Law (Rom. 8:2).[1] Joh 5:21 "For as the Father raises the dead and gives life to them, even so the Son gives life to whom He will. 22 "For the Father judges no one, but has committed all judgment to the Son, 23 "that all should honor the Son just as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him. 24 "Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life.                 "The Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death."  There will never be, in the life of any believer, any condemnation for sin, in a final sense.  There will be chastening, as the Lord, in this life, chastens you to make you more holy practically.  But there will never be any future life condemnation, never.  Why? Because you have been united with Jesus Christ, who paid the penalty for your sin.  And we're right back to this incredible reality that the reason there's no condemnation to us is because of the great New Testament doctrine of substitution, the great doctrine of substitution. Ga 5:1 Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage. John 8:36 "Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed. "The subject here is no longer Christ's work for us, but the Spirit's work within us. Without the Spirit within as a law of life, there would be nothing but condemnation: for the new creature has no power within himself apart from the blessed Spirit,—as against a life of perpetual bondage to the flesh,—'the end of which things is death' (6.21)." An accomplishment not attained by the Law, but by the death of Christ (3-4) Ro 8:3 For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, The Law cannot condemn you (v. 3). Why? Because Christ has already suffered that condemnation for you on the cross. The Law could not save; it can only condemn. But God sent His Son to save us and do what the Law could not do. Jesus did not come as an angel; He came as a man. He did not come “in sinful flesh,” for that would have made Him a sinner. He came in the likeness of sinful flesh, as a man. He bore our sins in His body on the cross.[1] The Mosaic Law cannot set us free from sin and death (v. 2; cf. ch. 7) because its only appeal is to the basic nature of man. It urges us intellectually to obey God, but it does not provide sufficient power for obedience. Fortunately God sent His own Son, out of the depths of His love, to deal effectively with sin. The Law could not deal with sin. Consequently God sent His own Son to do so. That is the point of the verse. The 'law of double jeopardy' states that a man cannot be tried twice for the same crime. Since Jesus Christ paid the penalty for your sins, and since you are 'in Christ,' God will not condemn you." The law of double jeopardy" is a universally recognized principle of justice.                Ro 8:4 that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. The Law cannot control you (v. 4). The believer lives a righteous life, not in the power of the Law, but in the power of the Holy Spirit. The Law does not have the power to produce holiness; it can only reveal and condemn sin. But the indwelling Holy Spirit enables you to walk in obedience to God's will. The righteousness that God demands in His Law is fulfilled in you through the Spirit's power. In the Holy Spirit, you have life and liberty (Rom. 8:2) and “joy” (Rom. 8:4).[1] Here the purpose of the Incarnation appears in the context of the struggle of chapter 7. God fulfills the Law's requirements in us by His Spirit who indwells and empowers us. However this is not automatic because He indwells us. He fulfills them if and as we walk by the Spirit rather than walking according to the flesh. Walking by the Spirit means walking in submission to and dependence on the Spirit (cf. Gal. 5:16). Walking according to the flesh means behaving as the flesh dictates and allowing our sinful nature to govern our lives. "The    law's    requirement  will     be    fulfilled    by    the determination of the direction, the set, of our lives by the Spirit, by our being enabled again and again to decide for the Spirit and against the flesh, to turn our backs more and more upon our own insatiable egotism and to turn our faces more and more toward the freedom which the Spirit of God has given us."                The legalist tries to obey God in his own strength and fails to measure up to the righteousness that God demands. The Spirit-led Christian, as he yields to the Lord, experiences the sanctifying work of the Spirit in his life. “For it is God that worketh in you, both to will and to do of His good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13). It is this fact that leads to the second freedom we enjoy as Christians.[1] To run and work the law commands, Yet gives me neither feet nor hands; But better news the gospel brings: It bids me fly, and gives me wings."                The importance of these verses [1-4] lies in the fact that they provide a summary of chapters 5 to 8, and indicate in brief but sufficient form the secrets of Christian holiness." 2CO 5:17 Ephesians 2:10 Titus 2:14, it's...it's said as clearly as it could be said that, "God has purified for Himself a people for His own possession, who are defined as zealous for good works."  Ga 5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law. Jeremiah chapter 31, where it says, in verse 33, "This is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days."  Talking about the future and salvation of Israel.  "I will put my law within them, and on their heart, I will write it, and I will be their God, and they shall be My people."  In other words, something is going to change on the inside.  And then in the next verse, He says, "I will forgive their iniquity and their sin I will remember no more."  That, of course, is the legal aspect of it.  The transformation aspect is Him planting His law in our hearts.                The prophet Ezekiel also directed our attention, similarly, to this new covenant transformation in chapter 36, verse 26.  "I will give you a new heart; put a new spirit within you.  I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh (or a tender heart).  I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances."  The statement of Scripture is that where you have a real conversion, where you have a genuine salvation, you have a changed life, very clearly.                God never divides people by culture.  He never really divides them by race or education or sex or material possessions or achievements.  God recognizes there are differences among people in the world.  But the only differences that matter are the differences between those who are of the flesh and those who are of the Spirit.                 These two classifications of people then become the theme from verse 4b all the way down to verse 11.  This next section is a discussion of the very clear distinction between a believer and a non-believer, which is the work of the Holy Spirit. Mark 8:36 "For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? John 14:6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. Have you trusted Him as your Savior? He can Save you if You ask Him based on His death, burial, and resurrection for your sins. Believe in Him for forgiveness of your sins today. “And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”  -John 8:32 Our mission is to spread the gospel and to go to the least of these with the life-changing message of Jesus Christ; We reach out to those the World has forgotten.  hisloveministries.podbean.com #HLMSocial hisloveministries.net https://www.instagram.com/hisloveministries1/?hl=en Don't go for all the gusto you can get, go for all the God (Jesus Christ) you can get. The gusto will get you, Jesus can save you. https://www.facebook.com/His-Love-Ministries-246606668725869/?tn-str=k*F The world is trying to solve earthly problems that can only be solved with heavenly solutions  

Occasionally as a parent, I wish I had an expert for fields that seem beyond my reach. We often joke how parenting doesn't come with a manual, we learn so much as we go and implement the truth we know into our kids. Fortunately God has gifted so many of us with different talents and they are meant to be shared. My new friend Sarah Collins is doing just that, she is taking her expertise in Occupational Therapy and sharing it with other parents. Access to Occupational Therapy is limited for homeschool students, so for Sarah to make herself available in this capacity is fantastic. I encourage you to find her on Facebook and Instagram; I promise you will pick up some great tips to implement at home. Facebook: Homeschool Therapy Ideas Instagram: HomeschoolOT Sarah mentioned some other places that we should be checking out: Sped Homeschoolers on Instagram and Facebook The National Homeschool Education Research Institute Mealtimemaven on Instagram Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend and give this podcast a review on Apple Podcasts. Have a blessed school year!

[audio mp3="https://agradio.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/KPRZ_Abounding-Grace-Radio_07.23.21-The-unstoppable-plan-of-God-John-12.1-19-part-1-Friday.mp3"][/audio] We are real good at trying to thwart God and his plans. Fortunately God is so much better at thwarting our feeble attempts at rebellion.

As the saying goes, "to err is human." Fortunately God does not write you off for every mistake you make.

Going through times of trouble are just a part of life. That doesn’t make them easy though. Fortunately God never leaves us without hope. . .

Going through times of trouble are just a part of life. That doesn't make them easy though. Fortunately God never leaves us without hope. . .

The book of Judges ends with "In those days there was no king in Israel and men did what was right in their own eyes" (Judges 21:25). What was "right in their own eyes" was far from right. Fortunately God had a plan for a more peaceable kingdom and worked through Hannah to show it to us (1 Samuel 1:1-20 & 2:1-10).

Pujya Sir K.C.Narayana ( KCN ) Messages  (Meditation, Raja Yoga, Training, Spirituality, PAM - Pranahuti Aided Meditation, Divinity, Divine Service & Research, Babuji Disciple)   Pujya Sri Ramchandraji's Disciple & Founder of  “Institute of Sri RamChandra Consciousness”    Details:   Messages delivered by Pujya Sir K.C.Narayana ( KCN ), Hyderabad, India.  Dedicated his life for the Spiritual service of Pujya Sri Ramchandraji's Pranahuti Aided Meditation, Research, Meditation Trainings, Audio Messages, Books & SatSangh   Meditation Info Contact: www.sriramchandra.in  Biography: kcnarayana.org Episode Notes:   EFFICACY OF RAJAYOGA    Dear friends, Happy to meet you all. Happy also to note your concern for progress in the spiritual aspect of our life. There is the mundane aspect, which is overwhelmingly becoming important for us, so much so we tend to neglect the spiritual side. It is necessary that we should proceed on both the fronts equally well. Nobody flies with one wing, no bird can do that nor can we totally succeed with only materialistic approach. So, I should congratulate you for this much of viveka that you have got, namely that there is another side of our life, namely the spiritual aspect of our life. People tend to use yoga even today in many places for material benefit only. They will ask me whether it gives you breath control, blood pressure control, sugar control or many other diseases with which we suffer. These questions are better presented to doctors rather than to a spiritual person, though it has been a habit for some reason or the other, people tend to ask such questions. They belong to the physiological plane and better attended to by the doctors who know more about it. Incidentally many things can happen, when you control the mind, the body also gets some amount of control. Yoga also has been confused with lot of exercises, physical exercises. They do good, they are supposedly doing good to so many people about which I am personally not aware of, nor had I at any point of time any inclination to practice any one of them. So I will be the least competent person to talk about that, though at the schools, I was taught certain exercises and a good sports man myself and there the matter ends. I never took it to be a way of controlling diseases. This is enough as an introduction about other aspects of yoga. We are talking today about the efficacy of Rajayoga. By now you have been introduced to the subject of Rajayoga as a means of utilizing the thought force in us for union with the Ultimate. Ultimate here means the cosmos, the entire life force, the entire energy. Some people prefer to call it Divinity, some people prefer to call it God, I don't mind any definition you give for it but there is a force above, we are not independent, we are interdependent - this is one fundamental truth that we have to learn in life. No person, however big he may be and however small he may be, can claim to be independent. We are dependent upon others, we are dependent upon the environment, and we are dependent upon the society. There are various relationships and the matrix is really very very complicated so if any person says that he is independent, we don't agree to it. The life force is there in all and in each one of us whether it is a plant or an animal or a friend or a foe, it doesn't matter much, the same life force is there. There is a fundamental unity amongst all of us. Saints called it God; some other people may call it by some other name, it does not matter much. God has neither a form nor a name, so call Him by whatever way you like. It is what He is. He is just what He is. THAT. That is That. That's all. Om Tat Sat. That's all. There is nothing more. All other things are our relationships which we feel, as we feel to so many people so many relationships, again go on changing our relationships with them, again re-changing them. Attitudes do change towards every person. A person who was a friend yesterday becomes all of a sudden somebody neutral tomorrow and day after tomorrow perhaps enimical to your interests. These things do happen, relationships vary, but the essence is always there. The essence of communication that is there between you and me is irrevocable. We always move in the same wavelength of Divinity, there is one thing, superficially there are differences. Rajayoga aims at arriving at that thought, which is there at the base. This thought which is there which is not coloured with anything else. It is we who colour the thought, the thought by itself has no colour. Consciousness is always pure and simple, it is not tainted, it is not vitiated, it is in no way affected by anyone of our relations or emotions. So what happens during our meditations is, we try to meditate on the Divine light without luminosity, as the method is. Divine light without luminosity is an impossible idea. We can understand light with some luminosity. We can think about some intensity of the light, we can think of so many things, color of the light, we can see the smallness of it or the bigness of it but light by itself without luminosity if we can think of, you would have reached the highest stage of consciousness but it is an impossibility. Mind is not capable of comprehending that idea. The very purpose of this system of yoga is to make you understand that Ultimate is something that you will never know. It is beyond your mind, your mind cannot reach that. That is what the Vedas have said 'Na tatra vak gacchati na mano na vijno na vijanimo'- you cannot go there,you cannot reach that. It is far beyond. Whatever you think it is something other than that. NETI NETI. Whatever you say it is not that. Something beyond, something beyond. So this beyond-ness of the Divinity is what we are trying to have access to, because you have that in your heart. The mysterious thing is, that which is far far beyond our comprehension, is so near to us in our heart. It is beyond our comprehension but it is easily comprehendible by our feeling. You can feel it but you can never know it. If you try to know through logic, you will never know. Nahi nahi rakshati dukrun karane. No vyakarana can help you, no grammar can help you, no logic can help you, you have to understand only through your feeling. God's language is feeling, God's language is in silence, not in words. So long as it's a word it is already distorted. Whether it is our Vedas or whether it is our Bible, it does not matter much, they are distorted. The original thing is the feeling, the feeling you have. That is why the call of God is Nistraygunyo Bhavarjuna; Vedha trigunya vishayaaha nistraigunyo bhavarjuna. You have got to go beyond, the point is God is beyond the Vedas - the word. The essence is something that defies any structure. Any structure you try to give for God is something that is limiting God and chaining God in bondage. That which is free can never be bound, God by definition is free, energy by definition is free. We can bind it in the form of electricity, in the form of magnetism, in the form of light, in any form that we like, but energy as such is something far beyond this. So this is the feeling that we have got to have. So when you start meditation in this system, the first thing that happens to you is that you become aware of the vibrations of the Ultimate Consciousness. When you have your sitting, some of you will feel vibrations, some of you will feel calmness, some of you as usual feel enormous noise outside and inside. Noise outside you cannot help it because it is there in the road. Noise inside, it is your complication. You have got so many feelings, you have got so many attitudes, you have got so many thoughts, you have got so many responsibilities. All of them will come to you one after the other. You try to sit down in calmness you will find all these things coming together. You engage yourself in some task, all of them seem to disappear almost because you are task oriented. Since you are task oriented, your mind is only on that. When you try to empty yourself and then sit somewhere, all the thoughts will come to you, bombard you and that is the nature of vacuum, please note it. Vacuum is such when you try to have vacuum in some place, all the air around you tries to enter that. You must be knowing the famous experiment of trying to heat up a tin and then as it throws out the hot air goes out, put a cork and then the shape of the tin is lost for the only reason air wants to enter, it has no chance of entering into it and then the can becomes totally twisted and wrinkled totally out of shape. Similar is our mind when we try to keep your mind calm, what happens is all thoughts will come to you. It is not thoughts which come to you, they are thoughts which are there in you which are trying to go out, which want expression, which want attention. So many things which you forcibily put down and were attending to certain other things, they kept quiet. When you are calm, all of them will come to you and then they want precedence to be established 'Now I will try to come, no no I am more important'. So many thoughts, some exams may be there, some promotions may be there, some responsibilities of going to the shop may be there, may be you have got to get certain things for your children, may be you have to attend to your parents, may be you have got something connected with your house, so many things. Everything with which you are connected comes there at that time, you really get confused and then prefer it is much better to have one word by which I can go on reciting, that seems to be much more easier because then your mind is given an attention, an object - you have got some toy to play with. It can be Om Namahsivaya or Namo Narayanaya, it does not matter much. Or O' Ram or hey Ram, whatever you choose. Your mind is going to a word and then it is definitely absorbed in that because it is given a toy. In the other case of meditation where you are asked not to think of anything and think about a Divine light which you cannot think of and then you get confused, because the mind gets filled up with all thoughts, it just rushes in. Now we say to you at that time, try to be as indifferent to it as possible, don't give attention to it, treat them as uninvited guests. Easily spoken, easily said, it is very difficult when actually you practice. I won't say it is too easy, I won't say it is too complex but first you have to learn this, learn to ignore, learn to ignore many things because you know that is not what you are seeking for. For that you have to learn two attitudes -one is you have got to be attentive and secondly you have got to be alert. Alert to the moments of silence that comes to you, attentive to the moments of silence that comes to you. It is just like a person who waits in a bus stand for a particular friend. He is to pass by that place and so many people go in the road, so many cars go, so many buses go, so many taxis go, and you are not going to attend to any one of them. You are waiting only for your friend and your mind is only for him. It is attentive towards him and it is alert for his presence. You just don't bother about anybody else. Similarly here, when you are in meditation please develop this attitude. If you develop this attitude you will be in a better position to meditate for long. Now I am asked to talk about the efficacy of this system. The efficacy of this system is, first two things have to be taken into consideration. One is your own effort and other is the help of the Master in your meditation. I can say with enormous confidence and practical knowledge about it, that this is the only system where we give the assistance of the Master throughout your progress. This does not start with a course and end with giving a mantra after some time nor by prescribing a method at a particular time but it is a continuous life long association that we seek with you, because you are seeking life long association with the Divine and the Divine must help you throughout. We ensure that you feel the presence of the Divine till the end. This is felt by the Pranahuti, which is an experience that you will go through and you will know the nearness of God. Everybody has told that God is in the heart, everybody has told that there is no exception to this but to make you feel that calmness even momentarily was something that was not there in the earlier periods. Here, because of the influx of Pranahuti, you do feel that and it is for you to feel and practice. So that aspect of it is to be taken into consideration while we discuss the efficacy of Rajayoga in this system. If you take your heart into consideration, this is where most of our feelings are. Thoughts of course may be even at the buddhi level but at the manasic level all our feelings are there. Manas is at heart, buddhi is connected with the intellect. Actually we have got the intellect - the buddhi, manas - I think I will try and keep this feeling aspect, ahankar - ego feeling, ego I would replace it by 'I', I feeling, and chitta ­because there is no equivalent word in English for this so far as I know. These are all the four components of our mind. This buddhi is connected with our school subject such as (A+B)2- all such knowledge you can put it straight into that because there is no consequence, there is no feeling connected with it. It is something, some mathematics, 1234 - whatever it is you know that, you don't know that. People perhaps now a days recognize people only with this capacity ignoring other three. The self-respect aspect of it, this has come here actually self (ego). Then the manas is predominant feelings of yours that you have. This is what is guiding us. It is only for satisfying the parents' interest that we go for some course. My father wants me to become an engineer therefore I become an engineer. My father wants me to go to a doctor so I go to a doctor. Why do you do this? My wife wants me to do this. Why do you do this? My husband would like that. Most of our actions are governed by these. If you see these, our feelings are directed towards the lower portion. Lower portion means actually physiological drives of food, water, shelter. Our thoughts, our feelings are invariably connected with all these things, either one of these things. If you just can check up your present state of mind, your thoughts will be connected only with this. For getting food you do a job, you have to do. Everything is connected with these four. As on date majority of us are governed by these and perhaps will ever be governed by it. There is no way out of these things because so long as life is there, principle of life is that of urges, there is no chance of getting out of these things. Animals are condemned once and all for that position. There is no way by which they can change their cycles. When it becomes hungry, it just finds its prey. It has to go and finds its food there is no alternative for it. When it is thirsty, it will go to the nearest possible source of water. When it is on season, it is on heat, it will definitely find its mate. There is no way out of these things. There is no chance for an animal to come out of it. Human beings are the only persons, only animals where we are given an option to control them. We know how to control hunger. You feel hungry but then you wait for the dinner, you wait for the lunch. Your mother says it takes some more time for your food please wait. We wait, we don't grab it. If you then note whether that is so in your case and if you are very honest about it, I am sure there must have been occasions when you must have pinched at something out of the kitchen - may be a fruit, may be something else, something edible stuff, if nothing else the pulses going straight into your mouth - the animal has not left us, please note this. It is that state of mind which you are trying to control, it is that impulsive state, impulsive nature. Animals are propelled, impelled, compelled - there is no alternative they have to behave like that. We need not behave like that, God has given us that much of liberty, that much of freedom, but we do not exercise that. Culture, education, social development, all these things you can see are the parameters by which we judge whether a person is advanced or not advanced. We apply these meters, what is his behavior? A tribal fellow how he behaves? A cannibal, how he behaves? A socially developed person, how he behaves? i.e. man has been persistently making efforts to control these urges and then arrived at certain ways of living, which he calls cultured ways. Don't behave like that they say, you are animal don't try to be like that. While that is so, in majority of the cases people have followed, now present day civilization seems to be moving in another direction of trying to have as much as what we want to satisfy these urges. I don't want to go into value systems because that is not the topic. The topic is how are we going to control these things? However much we try, there are occasions when you fall for these and of course these you just can't help it. Water is something that you will be forced to take and perhaps there is no difficulty in taking it and this one also, kama and krodha, you know you become slaves to it. That is why extraordinary attention has been given to it in tradition and they say you must know how to control these. Consequential feeling that you get is, when you are asking for some drive satisfaction, you find others also are striving towards the same thing and there is a conflict and it leads to rage, anger, confrontation. When more than one person tries for the same object then naturally confrontation and that is what we generally express as krodh. One is the kam, another is krodh So these two things are the essential factors we have got to control and they seem to be inbuilt in our animal nature. All my previous discussion is only to point out that we seem to be conditioned by these two things almost. Animals are conditioned we know that, we also seem to be having no option over this. Other systems of yoga have tried to totally abolish these things by whatever means it is ­suppression, oppression, by way of privation or deprivation, you can use any method by which they try to see that you get away from the family, go away to forest, go and stay in some mountains, get far off from the man, don't get into the situations, try to be away as far away as possible but this system is meant for a grihastha, for a man living here, a family life and these two things are the most important drives that you have got to attend to and you will not be in a position to suppress it, you are not supposed to also. So we always ask here try to learn moderation. Let the impulsiveness go and let some sanity be there. The institutions of marriage were established only for this. Social solutions like the institutions of justice were maintained only for this, so that we won't come out. What are the individual solutions for this? To conform to the social institutions. You know better what our reaction to social institutions is today. We are trying to question every one of them. We don't want to stand by the judgment of some judge who says you are at fault, even when he says that it has been established this fellow has murdered Rajiv Gandhi, he would like still an appeal to the President. Nobody is prepared to accept it. Principles of justice is being questioned. I am not going to the minor details. I am talking about a major details of only one incident, you can add hundreds. Our individual positions are such that in our own house, for no reason we fight with our brother, for no reason we fight with our sisters, for the sake of some object, for the sake of something which you think you deserve more than he or she, all our fights are coming from this. Principles of education unfortunately are founded on this. We have got somebody who is first in the class and then somebody who is last in the class. Whoever has given us that right to distinguish them I do not know but that is what education is. Every one of us learn at our own pace. Incidentally that is the reason why we have got a school, which says that is the school for slow learners. We would like everybody to be treated on par. The grace of God is equal on all and there is no question of superiority or inferiority. The problem is connected with basic instincts. How best can I over take the other man in killing him is what we are trying to justify by saying 'yes he is the first man, he is the last man'. That is the reason why you have got the word in the marketing today 'he had a kill today'. What is that word? What disgraceful words we are using to say that we are cultured. So these two things are the fundamental points. On this there is no solution in the tradition as to how to do it. They told so many things. They said be in good company, be in good thoughts, trying to be with only good people, try to do only good things, try to learn some moral stories, try to live according to those expectations. All these things we have heard but then man has been more intelligent than those words which express some sanity. We have found every way by which we can deceive everyone one of the Panchatantras. All our Ithihasas have lost their value, all our Puranas have lost their value, nobody wants to follow anyone of them. We have become intelligent, our buddhi has gone far beyond. Agreed, there is no doubt about it but what is the solution, still the problem is there. The problem is sought to be solved by the principle of moderation and for that we have got to lift this mind which goes to the lower mind, the thought force which flows down generally goes steep, some effort has to be made to go up. Tradition has made so many efforts of education and other things. In this system through Pranahuti, the first effort that is made is the flow of consciousness to the lower mind is sought to be diverted to the upper portion. This is the work of the Master which he does, which he does, you can be rest assured but you are given two things to do. You are asked to meditate on points A and B about which more details will be given by our brothers. They are two points located in the chest. There are two points A and B on which you are asked to meditate and if you meditate on these things as prescribed, it is our experience that our impulsive tendencies come down. This is the positive assurance that we give in the system namely that if you meditate on these two as prescribed with the help of the Pranahuti that is already done, in this system you get the advantage of control over the impulsive tendencies of your basal stuff, the drives. Once you control the drives or once you can put it under some reasonable control and get rid of the impulsive tendencies, you know you have won three-fourths the war, the war of control over ourselves because that is what exactly is our problem. If you look to yourself and see what type of thoughts that come, to you they are invariably connected to those four as I have already said but it is also true that you have thoughts of aspiration. Fortunately God has given us a mind which aspires, aspiration is a word that is applicable only to the human level. No animal can aspire for anything, it has no capacity to think. Even in certain forms of thinking that is there in some animals like chimpanzee or a dog, they don't aspire for anything. We aspire, what is the first aspiration we have got? First aspiration we have got is sharing. This as an instinct is already available in the case of lions and similar prides. They don't eat the food alone, they share. There are animals which share food, there are animals which will not share food. Sharing is not a principle that we accepted as aspiration just like that, there are animals at the lower level but instinctively they will feel it. I am not talking about the mother's love which is common, mother's instinct is entirely different but this instinct of trying to share food with others is what we have learned from some animals. That is the reason lion is a king of animals, there are many more powerful animals than the lion which can kill the lion also but this is the reason. Here the first principle is sharing and this we have developed as an aspiration and what is it driving at? It drives at trying to view what you think you should have, the physiological drive of hunger is sought to be moderated. You first give your children then you take, then you give elders then you take. You don't take directly. A civilized society is one where the food is shared first with children then with elders then with oneself. So the principle of sharing which we have learned from animal instinctual level, we got it as an aspiration and we said in this land when somebody comes to you, you treat that person as an athithi and give him food first and then only you take later. A value which we seem to have almost forgotten today for whatever reason it may be, that is what it is. Even relatives are not welcomed and thanks to certain amount of westernization, do not go to a house without information and we say if anybody comes to you without information treat him as a God. You can see the difference in value points of the two societies. One society does not want a person to come without intimation. Another society says if anybody comes to you without intimation treat him as a God. This is another important thing that you should be very very careful in meditation. In meditation what happens is you get certain thoughts totally uninvited, you have got all sorts of thoughts coming to you and all of a sudden some thought comes to you. That thought is God and Godly but we are the first persons to miss it, we always miss the athithi, uninvited guest is God always. It is from the adhyathmika point of view, our people have brought in the tradition to the mundane level day to day life they brought in the concept of athithi because the athithi comes to you more in meditation than elsewhere. There are more sparks of the Divine during meditation than you can think of or you can dream of because God loves us so much that he is always yawning towards you. He would like to enter into you and the moment you create a vacuum He is prepared to fill it but then we are so attentive to the other things like our going to the market which takes precedence over our attentiveness to this. That is the reason why we say please be attentive and alert, athithi can be recognized only when you are attentive. There are umpteen number of stories of people when God has personally visited them and this man has said 'no no I have got something else to do' and he forgot, he never attended to them and it happened to be the wives of some saints. A lady received a guest, the God Himself who comes, she does not recognize Him as such because he came uninvited uninformed, he came and then it was left to the saint to recognize later and poor man he said 'you are more lucky than me you have seen the God and I have not'. The stories go, these are all common knowledge you should be knowing. My point is the sharing as a principle develops. Unless this sharing develops, you will not be in a position to develop tolerance. This is another great virtue of this country which we are maintaining and we shall forever maintain, because this is consequent to that and this comes to you only when you learn to share and not behave impulsively towards certain things. This becomes natural once impulsive nature is reduced. A brother of mine was asking, some of us are prepared to share, some of us are not sir why is it so. I said yes, control has not come. Impulsive nature makes you hold it, you don't want to share, and you would like to save it. Impulsive nature alone is the principle for saving, you would like to have it tomorrow. Saving is a very very obnoxious idea in spirituality that is why Prophet Mohammed said please do not bother about the next day, God is there, He will give. He was wise, and that's why I think he also said don't try to lend money, he said give it if you got money, give it, don't lend. Lending was not permitted by him because who are you to lend. Whose is it? It is His. It belongs to the cosmos, nothing belongs to you. Everything belongs to the universe, nobody has got a right to say this is mine, because your existence itself is transient. Now, that we will come to later and naturally along with it comes service. So these two principles of spirituality will develop the moment you try to be attentive to the upper portion of your self, the aspiration portion of your self. This is the first thing that comes to you in this system. Now when you sit in meditation thinking that there is Divine light in the heart, as I told you, you will get lot of thoughts, but then, when you learn to be attentive only to the Divine light and nothing else, everything else fades out into nothingness. They don't have any impelling nature to attract your attention. That leads us to understand what exactly I am, who am I. This who am I question is one of the toughest questions to answer. If any one of you can help me with the definition of what you are as you understand, I will be very happy. You can at best tell me your name, you can give your physical description, your status - financial, official, relationships as wife, husband, son, father, so on and so forth. Kindly exclude these adjectives for yourself and then tell me what you are. You are none of these things, right? I have at least three names, one name is Narayana, but the other two names are also given to me. Most of us among Hindus we get more than one name. Physical descriptions - I am not the same physical body from childhood. You can't give that, your weights vary, complexion varies. If you see all these things, can you think of yourself other than these? And all these things are transient, all these things are temporary. You are a son one day you are a father today, grandfather day after. What are you? What are you? In relation to somebody you are somebody. What are you? This is the first and the foremost question that a man faces in spiritual life. Who am I? And if by God's Grace you have already got into the principle of sharing and service then you will know that I am a person to share, that I am a person to serve. Other than these two things there is nothing else that is permanent with you. These two things are permanent with you from your childhood. You are somebody to share and you are somebody to serve. Who that somebody is, you can call yourself by Narayan or Adinarayan, or you can call purushotham, you can call Govinda, it does not matter much by what name you call yourself but your essential nature is one of sharing and serving and that leads us to a metaphysical concept about which I will not be in a position to talk much. God in essence and God in manifestation. God in essence talked briefly earlier saying that there is no way of knowing Him, He is beyond all understanding. What is God in essence? We said we don't know, Divine light without luminosity we said we just don't know. Na Tatra Vak Gacchati Na Mano Na Vijno Na Vijanimo. This is what He is. God in manifestation it is you and me, it is this stream, it is this mountain, it is this river - we are the manifestation and we are Gods in expression. And what did God do first? He did first Purushamedha as we call it. The Purushasuktha of the Vedas is the most important one, the first one that is stated namely, God has sacrificed Himself to come into manifestation. It is God who sacrificed Himself to come into manifestation. He ceases to be His essence and He wanted to be His manifestation and we are all He and the principle here is He wanted to share, He wanted to serve. Sacrifice is another aspiration we have got. We have got to sacrifice. Mother sacrifices, instinctively you know that mother sacrifices lot of her interests for the sake of the children. Imitating the mother the father also sacrifices, he learns the value from her. It is the mother who tells, you have got to attend to the child more, it is time to educate, it is time to give him food, it is time that you should go and do something for him. It is the mother who teaches the principles of sacrifice, which is reason why the Vedas always used the word Mathrudevo Bhava, please note it. For no other reason we use that word. This is the reason why she gets a precedence over the father. She participates in the Divine function of sacrifice first, and then she teaches that lesson to the husband. Now, here God in essence, God in manifestation having the principles of sharing, serving and the third principle we have got, sacrifice. If we learn these three things in life we have learnt almost everything of spirituality. If we can behave like this it's enough but then what stands in the way? What stands in the way of our doing it? Why is it we are not prepared to part with money, a few rupees that we have earned today with others? It is because we have not learned to serve, we have not learned to sacrifice, we have not learned to share. We think it is ours. The possessiveness is one of the things that we have learned unnecessarily and that is the nature of a tiger and not a lion. Lion kills its prey and then throws it off and then goes after eating it while the tigers save it for the next day. Please note this fear of not getting food tomorrow is there more with the tigers than with the lions. I am comparing both the wild animals, there are few more satvic animals which I can bring into the picture but then I want you to understand even the noble animals are those which share, the ignoble animals are those which try to save it and then after all it may die then it goes waste. These values we have forgotten but they are spiritual values, they are not social values, they are entirely different. Social values, I have told you already marriage institutions, they are different, spiritual values are different. So now what stands in your way is your self and once you know there is no such thing like self and you are only a relationship, a bundle of relationships, you will not try to own anything. The sat-asat viveka automatically dawns on you. This is the nature of the first knot. There are 13 knots in our system as depicted by SriRamchandraji Maharaj. The nature of the First knot is trying to distinguish between what is sat and what is asat, what is permanent what is not permanent. I try to come to this point through a non vedantic method, because vedantic methods are there to teach this but I don't believe in that because for practical people we want to know what exactly the problem is. Everybody knows we are not going to live tomorrow, thereby we don't grant ourselves non-existence, we don't. Once you know your relationship, sit in meditation and then see what you are then you know there is only one friend for you and that is God. He is with you, the only friend. All other friendships, all other relationships are transient. He is the one with whom we are born, He is the one who will continue to be there even after our death, because energy doesn't go anywhere. There is only change in the form of energy but then nothing happens, the energy itself is there, you are going to continue. In what levels you will continue is a separate issue, but then we continue, because matter can never be destroyed, energy cannot be got rid off. You are energy, so you will continue to be there. So those people, present day, present morality which is governed by the thought that after our death nothing is going to be there and doesn't matter much whether I exploit the other person or kill him or do whatever I want with him; is wrong, because he is going to continue. You cannot help it; it is in the nature of energy to continue. Matter can never be destroyed, energy can never be destroyed, it is there, it is bound to be there, it will have its own effects. What it will be? On that there can be various ways of looking at things but it will be there is a fact; to this extent you cannot deny scientific approach. So what I am trying to say is, this person, this energy which has been there with me will continue to be there with me forever and this is the governing principle of sharing. If I don't develop the sharing principle I am not going to be in tune with it and why I am not able to share is because of my selfishness, self-centeredness, thinking that I am more real than the essence, the essence is more real than me. Once this satasat viveka comes, the first knot dawns and then your yatra starts. You start moving further; you start moving further as to what exactly it is. All right I am not permanent, there is something that is going to be permanent, what exactly it is. Then you start tending to develop, once this sat-asat viveka comes then certain amount of detachment starts, till the time no detachment is possible. Detachment for us really means attachment to the Divine, you tend to know more and more the sat and you tend to know less and less this asat i.e. detachment. Detachment with the asat and attachment to the sat is the basic way of movement in spiritual life. We move towards what is true, what is permanent, what is impermanent we try to give as little importance as possible. In the language of SriRamchandraji Maharaj we do not develop undue attachment, due attachment is what we develop. Treat everything on its merits, not with any extra relationships. Relationships are what make your self as I told you. Because of those relationships, you have got this undue attachment. You forget your relationships and treat yourself as the one who is connected only with God and nobody else, the truth alone will stay and then you have due attachment. Many abhyasis have been asking me, Sir, please tell us what is due attachment and what is undue attachment. Any attachment that you have got with reference to any relationship that you have got is only undue attachment. The only due attachment that we have can have is with reference to sat, the truth, the principle of Divinity in us. This is a condition and no amount of my explaining this system will make you understand what it is. So this leads us to the first knot, first is sat-asat viveka and then you also understand that you have got to have only due attachment. You know the transience of your self and various colors, various expansions are felt, in all these things you will find again certain things, you feel that you seem to be nearing it with that condition of sat-asat viveka, nearing it, you seem to know that there is something like sat and asat, nearness. This is the word in sanskrit we generally use the word samipyatha. We seem to be moving towards that feeling, it is not as though we have established there. We seem to know yes there seems to be something like this. Then we enter into that, we enter into that state, you are more established here. You definitely know that this is permanent, that is not permanent. Then that comes under salokyatha, then we live in that world, start moving. We become similar to that, that condition itself is yourself, you feel that you are that, nobody is attached to you, you are attached only to the Divine, you are entirely one. Then you have got the laya, mergence. In every feeling you have got these four states; If you are attentive to your sadhana, you will find in every state that is going to be this and later. You will be feeling nearness to it, you will be feeling and then you will be feeling you are entering into that; you start feeling the breeze of that, you start experiencing that, that is perhaps while you are that's the world. If you want to put the grossest of analogy; if you are getting into an A/C room, as you enter it, you know you are getting into a cool place, when you settle there, you really become cool, as you enter it you feel it the nearness to it - this is salokyatha and then you have got the sarupyatha where you become similar to that, your nature itself becomes that and then the mergence. This mergence is a mergence not to be lost here forever, but to move on, we should move on to the next condition. Each laya takes us to the next stage and that is the one of the toughest problems we have got here and that is why so many people who are viraktas, who have become sanyasis, who have gone to forests, who have taken to so many avadoot conditions are stuck up in laya. Laya is really interesting, you feel one with it, you don't like to leave it. Laya is the condition that we would like to hold but layas are at different levels. Different levels of laya and each one would like to hold on forever there. You are comfortable there but then here in this system through Pranahuti you are pushed out. This is one of the experience of majority of abhyasis who will say, Sir, yesterday I had a most absorbing condition, today I am again disturbed. Yes, you are bound to be disturbed, you are not allowed to have laya there. If you have got laya that means you got stuck up. If you get feeling of mergence and stay permanently in that state that means you got stuck up. Journey is infinite, the yatra shall go on, it is ananth, therefore Master pushes you out of that state. So after the first two states of viveka and vairagya, the next thing is as I have told you, the problem of self gets solved. You now know it doesn't exist, you also know that none of it is yours then what happens next is you start knowing your interdependency, with which I started the talk. Interdependence with Divine, the essence cannot exist without the manifestation and manifestation cannot exist without the essence, is the knowledge that you get. You are Divine, because you are a part of manifestation and once this awareness develops inside, that is, swa­swaroopa gnana develops, the amount of purity that you would like to have will get established more and more, not that you did not earlier. You should have purity earlier, but then here you will not allow yourself to become impure under any circumstances, because you are afraid that you are making God impure. Your impurity is His impurity, your defect is His defect, your lapse is His lapse. Therefore there cannot be any such things with us. Perfection becomes our way, whether it is in office or in house whether it is in the street or in your prayer, perfection is yours. You feel the interdependency with the Divine. That is the reason why many people got stuck up when they went to the second knot because it is purity, simple purity and when you maintain it according to the tradition, this gives a reflection of the 5th knot. 5th knot itself is the reflection of something else above, so what happens is Aham Brahmasmi feeling becomes more and more predominant. This thought becomes very very predominant here. You feel that you are the Brahman, you are, but then you are not because that stage is far off. Because of the reflected thing, the purity here is such, the reflection also is such, the absolute reflection if you can maintain that. The swa-swaroopa gnana which means the interdependence with the Divine becomes established in your heart and you become more and more responsible to the manifestation than what you were earlier, because of detachment, because of the principle of knowing what is self and what is not self was there involved in the first knot, you were not all that careful about many minor details. You used to neglect certain things. You used to say that these things are bound to happen like this, now you will not allow such things, purity will not allow such things, it will tell you everything is to be perfect. That is why people who are established, even like Ramana Maharshi and others were able to say that everything is good. First he left the house, took the renunciation very early in life and then finally said when somebody asked is it necessary to renounce he said not necessary. He had to come to this conclusion because he knows that his condition compelled him to say something against what he himself practiced. What I am trying to tell you is the nature is such, the nature of the knot is such. Secondly the self comes to know that though the eternal or the energy in itself is dependent upon it for expression, still it is secondary in nature and that is primary in nature. Energy is primary in nature than the places where it is expressed. The fan where the electricity is getting expressed is inferior in status to the very nature of electricity itself, it is very obvious. Similarly, we as individuals are fans, we are giving the breeze to others, we are capable of giving this because of that electricity. Electricity by itself cannot give breeze to anybody in this world, it cannot. Energy by itself cannot give anything, only when it is expressed it can give and it is expressed like this and this has no business to say that I will give breeze only selectively and that is what we do when we say when we are expressing the Divine and when we say 'we, our people and other things' we want to give breeze only to those people and nobody else and that is the extraordinary selfishness of this fan. It somehow develops an identity, somehow, maya, it is ignorance. Once you know that you are dependent upon That, interdependency develops into a feeling of dependency, from our point of view. God naturally feels dependent about us, otherwise He will not ask us to assemble here and talk. It is He who is talking amongst ourselves, He is asking us to know what he is trying to do because He cannot do anything, but dependency from our part is learnt only when we come to the second knot and this leads us to the straight path or rather a steep path towards devotion. Without knowing your dependency there can be no devotion. Your lowliness must be understood before you can think of getting devoted to somebody. I am devoted to my father, I am devoted to my wife, there is enormous difference between these two words. One is definitely far superior, another is only an equal, equal coparcener actually. I don't know why English got into that dirty position of saying that I am devoted to wife. You are devoted to parents, you are dependent upon the wife. So the dependency can give you two concepts whether devotion or coparcenership. can be equal to God or I am dependent upon God, these are the two feelings that you get. When you use the word Aham Brahmasmi, it is the coparcenership that we are talking about, I am equal to Him. My wife, dependent upon me. I am dependent upon him, he is dependent upon me. She is dependent upon me, I am dependent upon her. In devotion I am dependent only on Him, He is not dependent upon me, I am not even aware of that. To move into the realm of bhakthi, you must understand that you are low, lowliness of your being must be understood. Without knowing your lowliness, you will never be devoted. We would like to have barter with Him, equal. I pay this, you pay me, I will do this, you do that. Whole of Mimamsa suffers from this. Mimamsa, which is nothing but Vedas, yagnas, yagas, suffer from this. I do this, I offer this you better give me this. I do this aswamedha, you better give this, I will give this purushamedha, you give this, barter, business, that is the level at which Vedas ended. That is the reason why Krishna said Nistraigunyo Bhavaarjuna because these things are connected with a barter level, God is compelled to obey what you pray for, He has to grant. That's what the tradition says, I am not here to question it, I am only questioning the attitude towards God. So long as you have got that attitude, it is only an equal position. In equal positions, you will end up only with Aham Brahmasmi. Aham Brahmasmi is a state of mind where you would like to say I am equal to God. You are, none of us is less than that. It is God in expression alone who is here. There is nothing here which is not Divine, there is nothing here which is less than Divine. Yet, this divinity that is in expression that is in manifestation is dependent upon that divinity which is there above, far above, which is the essence. When I say above, I do not mean that you have to go to spatial level, above means something far beyond, far beyond. I am not looking at the sky, far beyond us. So once this dependency is understood then only your devotion starts. This devotion starts here first, first is I would like to have some wishes granted. You feel the dependency for granting of certain wishes. I would like somebody to get promoted therefore I pray for that, he is my son or he is my grandson doesn't matter much who he is or even for ourselves. I have undertaken this business, I would like to have profit of this, so I pray, pray to God. So dependency can be confused with a barter. Majority of our stotras, what our religion has given us are only prayers seeking some relief or the other from the Divine saying that we are dependent upon you. "O God you have got to grant me". As against it, you would have noted already, our prayer says, "we are yet but slaves of wishes putting bar to our advancement; thou art the only God and power to bring us up to that stage". We would like to go beyond the stage of wishes, we would not like to be confined to wishes. We know that our wishes are due to our relationships, we know that our wishes are due to our own actions, we know that, we come to know that and that is the reason why from knot 2 to knot 3 it is a steep position. Second knot to third knot you have to understand these things. You will understand that whatever you are going through, you are going through because of your own action because whatever you deserve that alone you get. You will not get more than what you deserve, you will not get less than what you deserve. God as a samavarthi comes to be understood. God as an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent being, everybody knows, there have been talks about it. God as justice, samavarthi, the person who gives balance, maintains the balance of this existence has to be understood to understand devotion. Till that time our prayers are only petitions asking for petty things. Real prayer is one which is like the one we have given namely Master has given that - we are yet but slaves of wishes putting bar to our advancement. We are not asking God here to satisfy those wishes. We are only saying that you are the goal of human life, we would like to come to that stage. We want oneness with God, laya, to be in tune with the energy, to be in tune with nature, that's what we are asking for. We are not asking for anything less than that. We are not asking for some petty things because those things are due to our own. The fifth commandment 'Be Truthful. Take miseries as Divine blessings for your own good and be thankful to God'. You read this commandment, the interpretation given by SriRamchandraji Maharaj, you will then understand your true nature is to be dependent upon the Divine and then whatever He gives you, you accept it and whatever He gives is according to our own actions. It is not an arbitrary God who gives us 'you take this, you are my man I give you more, he is not my man therefore I am going to deprive him'. God is not like that, God is justice; there is no partiality in the kingdom of God. No person is going to be treated with lenience simply because he says SriRamchandraji Maharaj is his Master. It will not happen, it shall not happen, if it happens that is not the truth. It is our sentiment, which makes us feel now and then because we are dependent upon him, several things that happen to us are good. It is our sentiment, it is not reality, it's not the truth. We will get what we should get, we will not get what we are not supposed to get. Karmaphala is total and this system totally believes in the unquestionable principle of karma, theory of karma as properly understood. It is not the karma, that it is God has given me this punishment. That karma is not what we are talking about, that karma is prerogative of other religions. In this land we believe that God will give what is just. If you have done something you will get accordingly, praptham, whatever we have done, equally we get. So this principle has to be understood, that will be understood only when you know that God is a samavarthi. So our petition-mongering mind is accustomed to asking all sorts of things from our bosses for nothing, the same thing will not apply here though we will try to apply it here. That we try to apply is a fact, every one of us tries to apply this. It's a pit fall in sadhana, we will ask for some relief. We will have some problem, some physical problem, you would like to go and then say 'Narayana you say that you are a person who have been practicing this, why is it you have got so many ailments?', because I must have deserved. When this question was put to Lalaji Maharaj, founder of our system, when he was suffering from enormous pain in stomach and his own disciple was working on him massaging him and he shed tears seeing the suffering of the Master and Lalaji Maharaj said 'if I want to I can get rid of it now but I will not because God knows what is best'. That is the state of dependency, that is the state of devotion, that we are supposed to maintain always. This is the one of the highest states that we will be moving towards. So bhakthi is not to be understood with praises and flattery. Flattery neither does good for the flatterer nor the flattered, it doesn't help anybody but we think so and we are happy with flattery because it is so musical to sing those lines. Several saints have sung, I have nothing against anyone of them, I like them also. Their songs are very popular today and it is the song that is popular and not the devotion, please note it. What is more popular is what is appealing to your ears, the music is more important to us, the raga, the tala, those are much more important than the content, leave alone the God. Thought content which refers to God is the third factor. What is engrossing us is this. 'He sang very well sir, a beautiful bhakthi song', but it is not bhakthi song, it's a song, it is a good song, put it that way it is fine. So this devotion comes very very difficult unless you know this principle you will never be devoted. Next state to which we move on in our state of mind is total dependency on Divine. Somebody accuses you in the street for nothing, you do not know how to react to it; he accuses you for no fault of yours. What will you do? We will say something in return or you will say this is will of God. Would you say that it is what you deserve therefore you got it? See the difference in what I am asking. I may just ignore this. Put it the other way, you are going in the street somebody in the bus spits on you; as usual in Hyderabad now a days still old city that problem is there, you got to be more attentive to the fellow in the bus than yourself. What is your reaction? Would you take it to be something that God has given you? I will give a small story of a person who has lived up to that expectation. A great saint Ramanuja was there, he had a disciple who is far more intelligent than Ramanuja, who is much more well versed in scriptures than Ramanuja. Fact, agreed facts, there are no differences, both of them went to present saraswathi peetam which is there in Pakistan and then they permitted him to see one of the commentaries on Veda Vyasa's SriBhashyam. They gave and allowed him to see Vedanta sutras and then the commentary given by dravidas there and the king said 'I will not give a copy of this to you, you cannot obtain a copy, you have to go, you can read once no second time', that is the condition and Ramanuja was not ekasanthagrahi, his disciple was. So he said 'I will make good your defect so I will read this let us go'. So he was dependent upon his disciple to tell what is there in that commentary so that he can write his commentary. The concept of interdependency that we are taking about just now was the matter of issue. Is the self, dependent or independent, the issue is whether the self is dependent or independent. If you say it is independent it borders on Advaitha. If you say it is dependent it borders on Dvaitha. It is mutually interdependent is the philosophy of Ramanuja. The interpretation had to be given. He made it appear, Ramanuja interpreted, according to the anecdote, made it appear as if the self is independent and his disciple refused to write because he was under instructions earlier saying that if what I say is not in tune with my philosophy, you need not write. So he simply obeyed his Master, he said I will not write, and Ramanuja got wild and then kicked him, literally kicked him with the foot and this fellow fell and Ramanuja walked away and after about some time he comes back to find this gentleman still lying down and his disciples come and other disciples come and tell 'we told this fellow to get up saying that you are dependent upon him for the entire information, about the subject and you are more dependent upon him than anybody else and you kicked him out and we told him we will follow him rather than you' and he said 'who am I to say anything about it, my master knows what is best for me' and when Ramanuja says 'why you did not get up' he said 'you have thrown me down and it is for you to lift me up who am I to get up where is my existence'. This is the narration given in tradition you may accept it or you may disown it, but what I am trying to tell is the psychological aspect of it. What is the state of mind? come what may, the decision of the Divine is final, I will not make any effort absolutely saying that I have nothing to do with anything else, it is He who does everything. This is the state of surrender about which every alternative person talks now a days. State of surrender is one of the toughest we can ever think of, because that is the state of total negation of yourself. Now coming back to our subject of meditation what is the state of mind there. This is philosophy, fine, I have explained the philosophical aspect of it. What is the state of mind? thoughts are bound to be there, thoughts of sat-asat viveka were there; thoughts of vairagya were there, thoughts of interdependency were there, thoughts of devotion were there. Now what is the type of thought here? What is the type of thought you are going to have? A state of mind when there will be no thoughts. A surrendered person has no thoughts. How is it possible? Is it not contradictory to my system of Sri Ramchandraji, who says that thoughts are bound to be there till the end? He says that thoughts are bound to be there till the end and I say that this is no thought condition, the reason for that is you must understand what is the nature of thought. When any idea, any concept, is not in tune with the Divine, it gets thrown out, that is the origin of thoughts, origin is when it is not in tune with Divine. When a thought is not in tune with Divine, you become aware of that. It can be disturbing, it can be enjoying but then you become aware of that. When the thought is something that is totally in tune with the Divine then you become totally unaware of the existence of the thought, not that the thought is not there, thought is there but you are not aware of its existence. The existence is the essence itself and when it is in tune with the essence then it merges into it and this is an experience that you will be having on first day onwards. You will be writing as no thought, it is not no thought that you have got, the thought that is there with you becomes in tune with the Divinity and therefore you are not aware of its existence. Non-awareness of the thought is entirely different from non-existence of thoughts; please appreciate the difference between non-awareness and non-existence. Thoughts do exist but then it becomes in tune with the Divine and therefore you are not aware of it and such moments are moments of silence. When you are meditating you will find that there are moments, some seconds, fractions of seconds or minutes while your mind goes almost blank which we generally tend to call absorbency. Absorbed, the thought got absorbed into the essence. The thought is there but it got absorbed that is why we use the word absorbency, we don't use the word concentration. So this thought, our thought which was devotion, when it matures, what happens is that God alone or the essence alone becomes most predominant and then you become one with it and when you become one with it that is the state of saranagati or state of surrender. That is how it is experienced in meditation, in action it has to be shown and that is possible only through manana. All these conditions, you must note you will not have it permanently and you will have it only during meditation unless you remember the nature of those thoughts during the other times during the day. That is the reason why people who have got high states of consciousness during meditation tend to lapse to the lowest levels perceivable and this lapse is unpardonable. What is granted you should own, you cannot squander. What is given to you during mediation is what is granted to you and we squander it and without any compunction and that is the worst part of it. As I told you, if you are established in second knot in purity, and through devotion you move on to the higher plane and always be dependent upon Him, you cannot help remembering constantly the Divine and when you remember the Divine constantly, purity you cannot avoid. Purity in body and mind and in every action of course. Purity and Divinity go together, they are alternative words. The questions of people who say that 'I sit and do prayer without taking a bath' or when 'I come without cleaning my feet I would like to sit', all these ideas will not work because they are all sloth, they all are matter, they are laziness, which will not be permitted, which is not permissible. If you remember the Divine constantly, you cannot have sleep, people who complain to me of sleep are people who are not aware of Divinity I would say, because how can you sleep before God, you cannot but then this great country has given us the notion that in sleep God is going to be with you because He is the essence. It is He, You are He; therefore He is there in your place. In one of the Upanishads they say what happens to you during sleep and then God as a watchman guards us. Who keeps you going?, who keeps you going during night when you are asleep? not you, not your wife, not your children, not your parents, who is keeping you? He is the one watchman who is there. If you note that, would you come to the level of a Banasura try to have a watchman of a Siva? You will not, you will not sleep. These are the conditions that you develop as you move on to the stages of surrender. So from surrender you move on to the plane of ether where balance is there. Equality is maintained, you are balanced. The whole approach of Rajayoga sadhana is towards this balance. A balanced approach we can come only when we know that everything that happens to us happens because of our actions, we are protected by the Divine day in and day out, we are aware of it and we live according to that and these are all made possible by the constant pushes. Instead of getting lost, you require a push and then that push is given through Pranahuti by the Master, because surrender is another place where laya is capable of keeping you in state of surrender always, you will not go towards equality. Surrender by itself cannot be considered as the final state because we have to move towards equality, balance, samatva, then only you can say that you are representing the Divine, you are a manifestation of the Divine, the samavarthi. You have to become a samavarthi, balance in our approach, these are the two wings with which you are going to fly. These are two wings you have got, one is materialism, one is spirituality, both the wings you are going to go together, each according to our capacity, each according to our karma but according to our destiny, namely to satisfy the Divine crying for human transformation. Such is the human transformation that is possible in this system. These are all the positions of the Pind desh here (ref. Path of Grace). This system talks about points which are above. Upto this even in tradition we have got. This is Atma sarira, then this is brahma sarira and beyond that nobody talks. In this system we talk about the conditions of sahasrar and beyond also. The sahasrar is reflected here ( top of the head). There are 5 points in between; there are 3 more behind which takes us to central region. Regions which are behind the sahasrara were not mentioned in tradition earlier. Nobody has mentioned it. The details with which the transition happens during this Pind desh was mentioned by Jnanadev in his own way in his commentary on the Gita. Jnanadev has written Jnaneswari, a very very popular book in the Maharastrian life. Jnaneswari mentions that. One or two saints of south have mentioned certain points up to sahasrara, the paths are a bit different but the conditions are same. Why they have chosen that I have no idea because I learn them only through literature, I have not practiced any one of them. This one I hav

Pujya Sir K.C.Narayana ( KCN ) Messages  (Meditation, Raja Yoga, Training, Spirituality, PAM - Pranahuti Aided Meditation, Divinity, Divine Service & Research, Babuji Disciple)   Pujya Sri Ramchandraji's Disciple & Founder of  “Institute of Sri RamChandra Consciousness”    Details:   Messages delivered by Pujya Sir K.C.Narayana ( KCN ), Hyderabad, India.  Dedicated his life for the Spiritual service of Pujya Sri Ramchandraji's Pranahuti Aided Meditation, Research, Meditation Trainings, Audio Messages, Books & SatSangh   Meditation Info Contact: www.sriramchandra.in  Biography: kcnarayana.org Episode Notes:   EFFICACY OF RAJAYOGA    Dear friends, Happy to meet you all. Happy also to note your concern for progress in the spiritual aspect of our life. There is the mundane aspect, which is overwhelmingly becoming important for us, so much so we tend to neglect the spiritual side. It is necessary that we should proceed on both the fronts equally well. Nobody flies with one wing, no bird can do that nor can we totally succeed with only materialistic approach. So, I should congratulate you for this much of viveka that you have got, namely that there is another side of our life, namely the spiritual aspect of our life. People tend to use yoga even today in many places for material benefit only. They will ask me whether it gives you breath control, blood pressure control, sugar control or many other diseases with which we suffer. These questions are better presented to doctors rather than to a spiritual person, though it has been a habit for some reason or the other, people tend to ask such questions. They belong to the physiological plane and better attended to by the doctors who know more about it. Incidentally many things can happen, when you control the mind, the body also gets some amount of control. Yoga also has been confused with lot of exercises, physical exercises. They do good, they are supposedly doing good to so many people about which I am personally not aware of, nor had I at any point of time any inclination to practice any one of them. So I will be the least competent person to talk about that, though at the schools, I was taught certain exercises and a good sports man myself and there the matter ends. I never took it to be a way of controlling diseases. This is enough as an introduction about other aspects of yoga. We are talking today about the efficacy of Rajayoga. By now you have been introduced to the subject of Rajayoga as a means of utilizing the thought force in us for union with the Ultimate. Ultimate here means the cosmos, the entire life force, the entire energy. Some people prefer to call it Divinity, some people prefer to call it God, I don't mind any definition you give for it but there is a force above, we are not independent, we are interdependent - this is one fundamental truth that we have to learn in life. No person, however big he may be and however small he may be, can claim to be independent. We are dependent upon others, we are dependent upon the environment, and we are dependent upon the society. There are various relationships and the matrix is really very very complicated so if any person says that he is independent, we don't agree to it. The life force is there in all and in each one of us whether it is a plant or an animal or a friend or a foe, it doesn't matter much, the same life force is there. There is a fundamental unity amongst all of us. Saints called it God; some other people may call it by some other name, it does not matter much. God has neither a form nor a name, so call Him by whatever way you like. It is what He is. He is just what He is. THAT. That is That. That's all. Om Tat Sat. That's all. There is nothing more. All other things are our relationships which we feel, as we feel to so many people so many relationships, again go on changing our relationships with them, again re-changing them. Attitudes do change towards every person. A person who was a friend yesterday becomes all of a sudden somebody neutral tomorrow and day after tomorrow perhaps enimical to your interests. These things do happen, relationships vary, but the essence is always there. The essence of communication that is there between you and me is irrevocable. We always move in the same wavelength of Divinity, there is one thing, superficially there are differences. Rajayoga aims at arriving at that thought, which is there at the base. This thought which is there which is not coloured with anything else. It is we who colour the thought, the thought by itself has no colour. Consciousness is always pure and simple, it is not tainted, it is not vitiated, it is in no way affected by anyone of our relations or emotions. So what happens during our meditations is, we try to meditate on the Divine light without luminosity, as the method is. Divine light without luminosity is an impossible idea. We can understand light with some luminosity. We can think about some intensity of the light, we can think of so many things, color of the light, we can see the smallness of it or the bigness of it but light by itself without luminosity if we can think of, you would have reached the highest stage of consciousness but it is an impossibility. Mind is not capable of comprehending that idea. The very purpose of this system of yoga is to make you understand that Ultimate is something that you will never know. It is beyond your mind, your mind cannot reach that. That is what the Vedas have said 'Na tatra vak gacchati na mano na vijno na vijanimo'- you cannot go there,you cannot reach that. It is far beyond. Whatever you think it is something other than that. NETI NETI. Whatever you say it is not that. Something beyond, something beyond. So this beyond-ness of the Divinity is what we are trying to have access to, because you have that in your heart. The mysterious thing is, that which is far far beyond our comprehension, is so near to us in our heart. It is beyond our comprehension but it is easily comprehendible by our feeling. You can feel it but you can never know it. If you try to know through logic, you will never know. Nahi nahi rakshati dukrun karane. No vyakarana can help you, no grammar can help you, no logic can help you, you have to understand only through your feeling. God's language is feeling, God's language is in silence, not in words. So long as it's a word it is already distorted. Whether it is our Vedas or whether it is our Bible, it does not matter much, they are distorted. The original thing is the feeling, the feeling you have. That is why the call of God is Nistraygunyo Bhavarjuna; Vedha trigunya vishayaaha nistraigunyo bhavarjuna. You have got to go beyond, the point is God is beyond the Vedas - the word. The essence is something that defies any structure. Any structure you try to give for God is something that is limiting God and chaining God in bondage. That which is free can never be bound, God by definition is free, energy by definition is free. We can bind it in the form of electricity, in the form of magnetism, in the form of light, in any form that we like, but energy as such is something far beyond this. So this is the feeling that we have got to have. So when you start meditation in this system, the first thing that happens to you is that you become aware of the vibrations of the Ultimate Consciousness. When you have your sitting, some of you will feel vibrations, some of you will feel calmness, some of you as usual feel enormous noise outside and inside. Noise outside you cannot help it because it is there in the road. Noise inside, it is your complication. You have got so many feelings, you have got so many attitudes, you have got so many thoughts, you have got so many responsibilities. All of them will come to you one after the other. You try to sit down in calmness you will find all these things coming together. You engage yourself in some task, all of them seem to disappear almost because you are task oriented. Since you are task oriented, your mind is only on that. When you try to empty yourself and then sit somewhere, all the thoughts will come to you, bombard you and that is the nature of vacuum, please note it. Vacuum is such when you try to have vacuum in some place, all the air around you tries to enter that. You must be knowing the famous experiment of trying to heat up a tin and then as it throws out the hot air goes out, put a cork and then the shape of the tin is lost for the only reason air wants to enter, it has no chance of entering into it and then the can becomes totally twisted and wrinkled totally out of shape. Similar is our mind when we try to keep your mind calm, what happens is all thoughts will come to you. It is not thoughts which come to you, they are thoughts which are there in you which are trying to go out, which want expression, which want attention. So many things which you forcibily put down and were attending to certain other things, they kept quiet. When you are calm, all of them will come to you and then they want precedence to be established 'Now I will try to come, no no I am more important'. So many thoughts, some exams may be there, some promotions may be there, some responsibilities of going to the shop may be there, may be you have got to get certain things for your children, may be you have to attend to your parents, may be you have got something connected with your house, so many things. Everything with which you are connected comes there at that time, you really get confused and then prefer it is much better to have one word by which I can go on reciting, that seems to be much more easier because then your mind is given an attention, an object - you have got some toy to play with. It can be Om Namahsivaya or Namo Narayanaya, it does not matter much. Or O' Ram or hey Ram, whatever you choose. Your mind is going to a word and then it is definitely absorbed in that because it is given a toy. In the other case of meditation where you are asked not to think of anything and think about a Divine light which you cannot think of and then you get confused, because the mind gets filled up with all thoughts, it just rushes in. Now we say to you at that time, try to be as indifferent to it as possible, don't give attention to it, treat them as uninvited guests. Easily spoken, easily said, it is very difficult when actually you practice. I won't say it is too easy, I won't say it is too complex but first you have to learn this, learn to ignore, learn to ignore many things because you know that is not what you are seeking for. For that you have to learn two attitudes -one is you have got to be attentive and secondly you have got to be alert. Alert to the moments of silence that comes to you, attentive to the moments of silence that comes to you. It is just like a person who waits in a bus stand for a particular friend. He is to pass by that place and so many people go in the road, so many cars go, so many buses go, so many taxis go, and you are not going to attend to any one of them. You are waiting only for your friend and your mind is only for him. It is attentive towards him and it is alert for his presence. You just don't bother about anybody else. Similarly here, when you are in meditation please develop this attitude. If you develop this attitude you will be in a better position to meditate for long. Now I am asked to talk about the efficacy of this system. The efficacy of this system is, first two things have to be taken into consideration. One is your own effort and other is the help of the Master in your meditation. I can say with enormous confidence and practical knowledge about it, that this is the only system where we give the assistance of the Master throughout your progress. This does not start with a course and end with giving a mantra after some time nor by prescribing a method at a particular time but it is a continuous life long association that we seek with you, because you are seeking life long association with the Divine and the Divine must help you throughout. We ensure that you feel the presence of the Divine till the end. This is felt by the Pranahuti, which is an experience that you will go through and you will know the nearness of God. Everybody has told that God is in the heart, everybody has told that there is no exception to this but to make you feel that calmness even momentarily was something that was not there in the earlier periods. Here, because of the influx of Pranahuti, you do feel that and it is for you to feel and practice. So that aspect of it is to be taken into consideration while we discuss the efficacy of Rajayoga in this system. If you take your heart into consideration, this is where most of our feelings are. Thoughts of course may be even at the buddhi level but at the manasic level all our feelings are there. Manas is at heart, buddhi is connected with the intellect. Actually we have got the intellect - the buddhi, manas - I think I will try and keep this feeling aspect, ahankar - ego feeling, ego I would replace it by 'I', I feeling, and chitta ­because there is no equivalent word in English for this so far as I know. These are all the four components of our mind. This buddhi is connected with our school subject such as (A+B)2- all such knowledge you can put it straight into that because there is no consequence, there is no feeling connected with it. It is something, some mathematics, 1234 - whatever it is you know that, you don't know that. People perhaps now a days recognize people only with this capacity ignoring other three. The self-respect aspect of it, this has come here actually self (ego). Then the manas is predominant feelings of yours that you have. This is what is guiding us. It is only for satisfying the parents' interest that we go for some course. My father wants me to become an engineer therefore I become an engineer. My father wants me to go to a doctor so I go to a doctor. Why do you do this? My wife wants me to do this. Why do you do this? My husband would like that. Most of our actions are governed by these. If you see these, our feelings are directed towards the lower portion. Lower portion means actually physiological drives of food, water, shelter. Our thoughts, our feelings are invariably connected with all these things, either one of these things. If you just can check up your present state of mind, your thoughts will be connected only with this. For getting food you do a job, you have to do. Everything is connected with these four. As on date majority of us are governed by these and perhaps will ever be governed by it. There is no way out of these things because so long as life is there, principle of life is that of urges, there is no chance of getting out of these things. Animals are condemned once and all for that position. There is no way by which they can change their cycles. When it becomes hungry, it just finds its prey. It has to go and finds its food there is no alternative for it. When it is thirsty, it will go to the nearest possible source of water. When it is on season, it is on heat, it will definitely find its mate. There is no way out of these things. There is no chance for an animal to come out of it. Human beings are the only persons, only animals where we are given an option to control them. We know how to control hunger. You feel hungry but then you wait for the dinner, you wait for the lunch. Your mother says it takes some more time for your food please wait. We wait, we don't grab it. If you then note whether that is so in your case and if you are very honest about it, I am sure there must have been occasions when you must have pinched at something out of the kitchen - may be a fruit, may be something else, something edible stuff, if nothing else the pulses going straight into your mouth - the animal has not left us, please note this. It is that state of mind which you are trying to control, it is that impulsive state, impulsive nature. Animals are propelled, impelled, compelled - there is no alternative they have to behave like that. We need not behave like that, God has given us that much of liberty, that much of freedom, but we do not exercise that. Culture, education, social development, all these things you can see are the parameters by which we judge whether a person is advanced or not advanced. We apply these meters, what is his behavior? A tribal fellow how he behaves? A cannibal, how he behaves? A socially developed person, how he behaves? i.e. man has been persistently making efforts to control these urges and then arrived at certain ways of living, which he calls cultured ways. Don't behave like that they say, you are animal don't try to be like that. While that is so, in majority of the cases people have followed, now present day civilization seems to be moving in another direction of trying to have as much as what we want to satisfy these urges. I don't want to go into value systems because that is not the topic. The topic is how are we going to control these things? However much we try, there are occasions when you fall for these and of course these you just can't help it. Water is something that you will be forced to take and perhaps there is no difficulty in taking it and this one also, kama and krodha, you know you become slaves to it. That is why extraordinary attention has been given to it in tradition and they say you must know how to control these. Consequential feeling that you get is, when you are asking for some drive satisfaction, you find others also are striving towards the same thing and there is a conflict and it leads to rage, anger, confrontation. When more than one person tries for the same object then naturally confrontation and that is what we generally express as krodh. One is the kam, another is krodh So these two things are the essential factors we have got to control and they seem to be inbuilt in our animal nature. All my previous discussion is only to point out that we seem to be conditioned by these two things almost. Animals are conditioned we know that, we also seem to be having no option over this. Other systems of yoga have tried to totally abolish these things by whatever means it is ­suppression, oppression, by way of privation or deprivation, you can use any method by which they try to see that you get away from the family, go away to forest, go and stay in some mountains, get far off from the man, don't get into the situations, try to be away as far away as possible but this system is meant for a grihastha, for a man living here, a family life and these two things are the most important drives that you have got to attend to and you will not be in a position to suppress it, you are not supposed to also. So we always ask here try to learn moderation. Let the impulsiveness go and let some sanity be there. The institutions of marriage were established only for this. Social solutions like the institutions of justice were maintained only for this, so that we won't come out. What are the individual solutions for this? To conform to the social institutions. You know better what our reaction to social institutions is today. We are trying to question every one of them. We don't want to stand by the judgment of some judge who says you are at fault, even when he says that it has been established this fellow has murdered Rajiv Gandhi, he would like still an appeal to the President. Nobody is prepared to accept it. Principles of justice is being questioned. I am not going to the minor details. I am talking about a major details of only one incident, you can add hundreds. Our individual positions are such that in our own house, for no reason we fight with our brother, for no reason we fight with our sisters, for the sake of some object, for the sake of something which you think you deserve more than he or she, all our fights are coming from this. Principles of education unfortunately are founded on this. We have got somebody who is first in the class and then somebody who is last in the class. Whoever has given us that right to distinguish them I do not know but that is what education is. Every one of us learn at our own pace. Incidentally that is the reason why we have got a school, which says that is the school for slow learners. We would like everybody to be treated on par. The grace of God is equal on all and there is no question of superiority or inferiority. The problem is connected with basic instincts. How best can I over take the other man in killing him is what we are trying to justify by saying 'yes he is the first man, he is the last man'. That is the reason why you have got the word in the marketing today 'he had a kill today'. What is that word? What disgraceful words we are using to say that we are cultured. So these two things are the fundamental points. On this there is no solution in the tradition as to how to do it. They told so many things. They said be in good company, be in good thoughts, trying to be with only good people, try to do only good things, try to learn some moral stories, try to live according to those expectations. All these things we have heard but then man has been more intelligent than those words which express some sanity. We have found every way by which we can deceive everyone one of the Panchatantras. All our Ithihasas have lost their value, all our Puranas have lost their value, nobody wants to follow anyone of them. We have become intelligent, our buddhi has gone far beyond. Agreed, there is no doubt about it but what is the solution, still the problem is there. The problem is sought to be solved by the principle of moderation and for that we have got to lift this mind which goes to the lower mind, the thought force which flows down generally goes steep, some effort has to be made to go up. Tradition has made so many efforts of education and other things. In this system through Pranahuti, the first effort that is made is the flow of consciousness to the lower mind is sought to be diverted to the upper portion. This is the work of the Master which he does, which he does, you can be rest assured but you are given two things to do. You are asked to meditate on points A and B about which more details will be given by our brothers. They are two points located in the chest. There are two points A and B on which you are asked to meditate and if you meditate on these things as prescribed, it is our experience that our impulsive tendencies come down. This is the positive assurance that we give in the system namely that if you meditate on these two as prescribed with the help of the Pranahuti that is already done, in this system you get the advantage of control over the impulsive tendencies of your basal stuff, the drives. Once you control the drives or once you can put it under some reasonable control and get rid of the impulsive tendencies, you know you have won three-fourths the war, the war of control over ourselves because that is what exactly is our problem. If you look to yourself and see what type of thoughts that come, to you they are invariably connected to those four as I have already said but it is also true that you have thoughts of aspiration. Fortunately God has given us a mind which aspires, aspiration is a word that is applicable only to the human level. No animal can aspire for anything, it has no capacity to think. Even in certain forms of thinking that is there in some animals like chimpanzee or a dog, they don't aspire for anything. We aspire, what is the first aspiration we have got? First aspiration we have got is sharing. This as an instinct is already available in the case of lions and similar prides. They don't eat the food alone, they share. There are animals which share food, there are animals which will not share food. Sharing is not a principle that we accepted as aspiration just like that, there are animals at the lower level but instinctively they will feel it. I am not talking about the mother's love which is common, mother's instinct is entirely different but this instinct of trying to share food with others is what we have learned from some animals. That is the reason lion is a king of animals, there are many more powerful animals than the lion which can kill the lion also but this is the reason. Here the first principle is sharing and this we have developed as an aspiration and what is it driving at? It drives at trying to view what you think you should have, the physiological drive of hunger is sought to be moderated. You first give your children then you take, then you give elders then you take. You don't take directly. A civilized society is one where the food is shared first with children then with elders then with oneself. So the principle of sharing which we have learned from animal instinctual level, we got it as an aspiration and we said in this land when somebody comes to you, you treat that person as an athithi and give him food first and then only you take later. A value which we seem to have almost forgotten today for whatever reason it may be, that is what it is. Even relatives are not welcomed and thanks to certain amount of westernization, do not go to a house without information and we say if anybody comes to you without information treat him as a God. You can see the difference in value points of the two societies. One society does not want a person to come without intimation. Another society says if anybody comes to you without intimation treat him as a God. This is another important thing that you should be very very careful in meditation. In meditation what happens is you get certain thoughts totally uninvited, you have got all sorts of thoughts coming to you and all of a sudden some thought comes to you. That thought is God and Godly but we are the first persons to miss it, we always miss the athithi, uninvited guest is God always. It is from the adhyathmika point of view, our people have brought in the tradition to the mundane level day to day life they brought in the concept of athithi because the athithi comes to you more in meditation than elsewhere. There are more sparks of the Divine during meditation than you can think of or you can dream of because God loves us so much that he is always yawning towards you. He would like to enter into you and the moment you create a vacuum He is prepared to fill it but then we are so attentive to the other things like our going to the market which takes precedence over our attentiveness to this. That is the reason why we say please be attentive and alert, athithi can be recognized only when you are attentive. There are umpteen number of stories of people when God has personally visited them and this man has said 'no no I have got something else to do' and he forgot, he never attended to them and it happened to be the wives of some saints. A lady received a guest, the God Himself who comes, she does not recognize Him as such because he came uninvited uninformed, he came and then it was left to the saint to recognize later and poor man he said 'you are more lucky than me you have seen the God and I have not'. The stories go, these are all common knowledge you should be knowing. My point is the sharing as a principle develops. Unless this sharing develops, you will not be in a position to develop tolerance. This is another great virtue of this country which we are maintaining and we shall forever maintain, because this is consequent to that and this comes to you only when you learn to share and not behave impulsively towards certain things. This becomes natural once impulsive nature is reduced. A brother of mine was asking, some of us are prepared to share, some of us are not sir why is it so. I said yes, control has not come. Impulsive nature makes you hold it, you don't want to share, and you would like to save it. Impulsive nature alone is the principle for saving, you would like to have it tomorrow. Saving is a very very obnoxious idea in spirituality that is why Prophet Mohammed said please do not bother about the next day, God is there, He will give. He was wise, and that's why I think he also said don't try to lend money, he said give it if you got money, give it, don't lend. Lending was not permitted by him because who are you to lend. Whose is it? It is His. It belongs to the cosmos, nothing belongs to you. Everything belongs to the universe, nobody has got a right to say this is mine, because your existence itself is transient. Now, that we will come to later and naturally along with it comes service. So these two principles of spirituality will develop the moment you try to be attentive to the upper portion of your self, the aspiration portion of your self. This is the first thing that comes to you in this system. Now when you sit in meditation thinking that there is Divine light in the heart, as I told you, you will get lot of thoughts, but then, when you learn to be attentive only to the Divine light and nothing else, everything else fades out into nothingness. They don't have any impelling nature to attract your attention. That leads us to understand what exactly I am, who am I. This who am I question is one of the toughest questions to answer. If any one of you can help me with the definition of what you are as you understand, I will be very happy. You can at best tell me your name, you can give your physical description, your status - financial, official, relationships as wife, husband, son, father, so on and so forth. Kindly exclude these adjectives for yourself and then tell me what you are. You are none of these things, right? I have at least three names, one name is Narayana, but the other two names are also given to me. Most of us among Hindus we get more than one name. Physical descriptions - I am not the same physical body from childhood. You can't give that, your weights vary, complexion varies. If you see all these things, can you think of yourself other than these? And all these things are transient, all these things are temporary. You are a son one day you are a father today, grandfather day after. What are you? What are you? In relation to somebody you are somebody. What are you? This is the first and the foremost question that a man faces in spiritual life. Who am I? And if by God's Grace you have already got into the principle of sharing and service then you will know that I am a person to share, that I am a person to serve. Other than these two things there is nothing else that is permanent with you. These two things are permanent with you from your childhood. You are somebody to share and you are somebody to serve. Who that somebody is, you can call yourself by Narayan or Adinarayan, or you can call purushotham, you can call Govinda, it does not matter much by what name you call yourself but your essential nature is one of sharing and serving and that leads us to a metaphysical concept about which I will not be in a position to talk much. God in essence and God in manifestation. God in essence talked briefly earlier saying that there is no way of knowing Him, He is beyond all understanding. What is God in essence? We said we don't know, Divine light without luminosity we said we just don't know. Na Tatra Vak Gacchati Na Mano Na Vijno Na Vijanimo. This is what He is. God in manifestation it is you and me, it is this stream, it is this mountain, it is this river - we are the manifestation and we are Gods in expression. And what did God do first? He did first Purushamedha as we call it. The Purushasuktha of the Vedas is the most important one, the first one that is stated namely, God has sacrificed Himself to come into manifestation. It is God who sacrificed Himself to come into manifestation. He ceases to be His essence and He wanted to be His manifestation and we are all He and the principle here is He wanted to share, He wanted to serve. Sacrifice is another aspiration we have got. We have got to sacrifice. Mother sacrifices, instinctively you know that mother sacrifices lot of her interests for the sake of the children. Imitating the mother the father also sacrifices, he learns the value from her. It is the mother who tells, you have got to attend to the child more, it is time to educate, it is time to give him food, it is time that you should go and do something for him. It is the mother who teaches the principles of sacrifice, which is reason why the Vedas always used the word Mathrudevo Bhava, please note it. For no other reason we use that word. This is the reason why she gets a precedence over the father. She participates in the Divine function of sacrifice first, and then she teaches that lesson to the husband. Now, here God in essence, God in manifestation having the principles of sharing, serving and the third principle we have got, sacrifice. If we learn these three things in life we have learnt almost everything of spirituality. If we can behave like this it's enough but then what stands in the way? What stands in the way of our doing it? Why is it we are not prepared to part with money, a few rupees that we have earned today with others? It is because we have not learned to serve, we have not learned to sacrifice, we have not learned to share. We think it is ours. The possessiveness is one of the things that we have learned unnecessarily and that is the nature of a tiger and not a lion. Lion kills its prey and then throws it off and then goes after eating it while the tigers save it for the next day. Please note this fear of not getting food tomorrow is there more with the tigers than with the lions. I am comparing both the wild animals, there are few more satvic animals which I can bring into the picture but then I want you to understand even the noble animals are those which share, the ignoble animals are those which try to save it and then after all it may die then it goes waste. These values we have forgotten but they are spiritual values, they are not social values, they are entirely different. Social values, I have told you already marriage institutions, they are different, spiritual values are different. So now what stands in your way is your self and once you know there is no such thing like self and you are only a relationship, a bundle of relationships, you will not try to own anything. The sat-asat viveka automatically dawns on you. This is the nature of the first knot. There are 13 knots in our system as depicted by SriRamchandraji Maharaj. The nature of the First knot is trying to distinguish between what is sat and what is asat, what is permanent what is not permanent. I try to come to this point through a non vedantic method, because vedantic methods are there to teach this but I don't believe in that because for practical people we want to know what exactly the problem is. Everybody knows we are not going to live tomorrow, thereby we don't grant ourselves non-existence, we don't. Once you know your relationship, sit in meditation and then see what you are then you know there is only one friend for you and that is God. He is with you, the only friend. All other friendships, all other relationships are transient. He is the one with whom we are born, He is the one who will continue to be there even after our death, because energy doesn't go anywhere. There is only change in the form of energy but then nothing happens, the energy itself is there, you are going to continue. In what levels you will continue is a separate issue, but then we continue, because matter can never be destroyed, energy cannot be got rid off. You are energy, so you will continue to be there. So those people, present day, present morality which is governed by the thought that after our death nothing is going to be there and doesn't matter much whether I exploit the other person or kill him or do whatever I want with him; is wrong, because he is going to continue. You cannot help it; it is in the nature of energy to continue. Matter can never be destroyed, energy can never be destroyed, it is there, it is bound to be there, it will have its own effects. What it will be? On that there can be various ways of looking at things but it will be there is a fact; to this extent you cannot deny scientific approach. So what I am trying to say is, this person, this energy which has been there with me will continue to be there with me forever and this is the governing principle of sharing. If I don't develop the sharing principle I am not going to be in tune with it and why I am not able to share is because of my selfishness, self-centeredness, thinking that I am more real than the essence, the essence is more real than me. Once this satasat viveka comes, the first knot dawns and then your yatra starts. You start moving further; you start moving further as to what exactly it is. All right I am not permanent, there is something that is going to be permanent, what exactly it is. Then you start tending to develop, once this sat-asat viveka comes then certain amount of detachment starts, till the time no detachment is possible. Detachment for us really means attachment to the Divine, you tend to know more and more the sat and you tend to know less and less this asat i.e. detachment. Detachment with the asat and attachment to the sat is the basic way of movement in spiritual life. We move towards what is true, what is permanent, what is impermanent we try to give as little importance as possible. In the language of SriRamchandraji Maharaj we do not develop undue attachment, due attachment is what we develop. Treat everything on its merits, not with any extra relationships. Relationships are what make your self as I told you. Because of those relationships, you have got this undue attachment. You forget your relationships and treat yourself as the one who is connected only with God and nobody else, the truth alone will stay and then you have due attachment. Many abhyasis have been asking me, Sir, please tell us what is due attachment and what is undue attachment. Any attachment that you have got with reference to any relationship that you have got is only undue attachment. The only due attachment that we have can have is with reference to sat, the truth, the principle of Divinity in us. This is a condition and no amount of my explaining this system will make you understand what it is. So this leads us to the first knot, first is sat-asat viveka and then you also understand that you have got to have only due attachment. You know the transience of your self and various colors, various expansions are felt, in all these things you will find again certain things, you feel that you seem to be nearing it with that condition of sat-asat viveka, nearing it, you seem to know that there is something like sat and asat, nearness. This is the word in sanskrit we generally use the word samipyatha. We seem to be moving towards that feeling, it is not as though we have established there. We seem to know yes there seems to be something like this. Then we enter into that, we enter into that state, you are more established here. You definitely know that this is permanent, that is not permanent. Then that comes under salokyatha, then we live in that world, start moving. We become similar to that, that condition itself is yourself, you feel that you are that, nobody is attached to you, you are attached only to the Divine, you are entirely one. Then you have got the laya, mergence. In every feeling you have got these four states; If you are attentive to your sadhana, you will find in every state that is going to be this and later. You will be feeling nearness to it, you will be feeling and then you will be feeling you are entering into that; you start feeling the breeze of that, you start experiencing that, that is perhaps while you are that's the world. If you want to put the grossest of analogy; if you are getting into an A/C room, as you enter it, you know you are getting into a cool place, when you settle there, you really become cool, as you enter it you feel it the nearness to it - this is salokyatha and then you have got the sarupyatha where you become similar to that, your nature itself becomes that and then the mergence. This mergence is a mergence not to be lost here forever, but to move on, we should move on to the next condition. Each laya takes us to the next stage and that is the one of the toughest problems we have got here and that is why so many people who are viraktas, who have become sanyasis, who have gone to forests, who have taken to so many avadoot conditions are stuck up in laya. Laya is really interesting, you feel one with it, you don't like to leave it. Laya is the condition that we would like to hold but layas are at different levels. Different levels of laya and each one would like to hold on forever there. You are comfortable there but then here in this system through Pranahuti you are pushed out. This is one of the experience of majority of abhyasis who will say, Sir, yesterday I had a most absorbing condition, today I am again disturbed. Yes, you are bound to be disturbed, you are not allowed to have laya there. If you have got laya that means you got stuck up. If you get feeling of mergence and stay permanently in that state that means you got stuck up. Journey is infinite, the yatra shall go on, it is ananth, therefore Master pushes you out of that state. So after the first two states of viveka and vairagya, the next thing is as I have told you, the problem of self gets solved. You now know it doesn't exist, you also know that none of it is yours then what happens next is you start knowing your interdependency, with which I started the talk. Interdependence with Divine, the essence cannot exist without the manifestation and manifestation cannot exist without the essence, is the knowledge that you get. You are Divine, because you are a part of manifestation and once this awareness develops inside, that is, swa­swaroopa gnana develops, the amount of purity that you would like to have will get established more and more, not that you did not earlier. You should have purity earlier, but then here you will not allow yourself to become impure under any circumstances, because you are afraid that you are making God impure. Your impurity is His impurity, your defect is His defect, your lapse is His lapse. Therefore there cannot be any such things with us. Perfection becomes our way, whether it is in office or in house whether it is in the street or in your prayer, perfection is yours. You feel the interdependency with the Divine. That is the reason why many people got stuck up when they went to the second knot because it is purity, simple purity and when you maintain it according to the tradition, this gives a reflection of the 5th knot. 5th knot itself is the reflection of something else above, so what happens is Aham Brahmasmi feeling becomes more and more predominant. This thought becomes very very predominant here. You feel that you are the Brahman, you are, but then you are not because that stage is far off. Because of the reflected thing, the purity here is such, the reflection also is such, the absolute reflection if you can maintain that. The swa-swaroopa gnana which means the interdependence with the Divine becomes established in your heart and you become more and more responsible to the manifestation than what you were earlier, because of detachment, because of the principle of knowing what is self and what is not self was there involved in the first knot, you were not all that careful about many minor details. You used to neglect certain things. You used to say that these things are bound to happen like this, now you will not allow such things, purity will not allow such things, it will tell you everything is to be perfect. That is why people who are established, even like Ramana Maharshi and others were able to say that everything is good. First he left the house, took the renunciation very early in life and then finally said when somebody asked is it necessary to renounce he said not necessary. He had to come to this conclusion because he knows that his condition compelled him to say something against what he himself practiced. What I am trying to tell you is the nature is such, the nature of the knot is such. Secondly the self comes to know that though the eternal or the energy in itself is dependent upon it for expression, still it is secondary in nature and that is primary in nature. Energy is primary in nature than the places where it is expressed. The fan where the electricity is getting expressed is inferior in status to the very nature of electricity itself, it is very obvious. Similarly, we as individuals are fans, we are giving the breeze to others, we are capable of giving this because of that electricity. Electricity by itself cannot give breeze to anybody in this world, it cannot. Energy by itself cannot give anything, only when it is expressed it can give and it is expressed like this and this has no business to say that I will give breeze only selectively and that is what we do when we say when we are expressing the Divine and when we say 'we, our people and other things' we want to give breeze only to those people and nobody else and that is the extraordinary selfishness of this fan. It somehow develops an identity, somehow, maya, it is ignorance. Once you know that you are dependent upon That, interdependency develops into a feeling of dependency, from our point of view. God naturally feels dependent about us, otherwise He will not ask us to assemble here and talk. It is He who is talking amongst ourselves, He is asking us to know what he is trying to do because He cannot do anything, but dependency from our part is learnt only when we come to the second knot and this leads us to the straight path or rather a steep path towards devotion. Without knowing your dependency there can be no devotion. Your lowliness must be understood before you can think of getting devoted to somebody. I am devoted to my father, I am devoted to my wife, there is enormous difference between these two words. One is definitely far superior, another is only an equal, equal coparcener actually. I don't know why English got into that dirty position of saying that I am devoted to wife. You are devoted to parents, you are dependent upon the wife. So the dependency can give you two concepts whether devotion or coparcenership. can be equal to God or I am dependent upon God, these are the two feelings that you get. When you use the word Aham Brahmasmi, it is the coparcenership that we are talking about, I am equal to Him. My wife, dependent upon me. I am dependent upon him, he is dependent upon me. She is dependent upon me, I am dependent upon her. In devotion I am dependent only on Him, He is not dependent upon me, I am not even aware of that. To move into the realm of bhakthi, you must understand that you are low, lowliness of your being must be understood. Without knowing your lowliness, you will never be devoted. We would like to have barter with Him, equal. I pay this, you pay me, I will do this, you do that. Whole of Mimamsa suffers from this. Mimamsa, which is nothing but Vedas, yagnas, yagas, suffer from this. I do this, I offer this you better give me this. I do this aswamedha, you better give this, I will give this purushamedha, you give this, barter, business, that is the level at which Vedas ended. That is the reason why Krishna said Nistraigunyo Bhavaarjuna because these things are connected with a barter level, God is compelled to obey what you pray for, He has to grant. That's what the tradition says, I am not here to question it, I am only questioning the attitude towards God. So long as you have got that attitude, it is only an equal position. In equal positions, you will end up only with Aham Brahmasmi. Aham Brahmasmi is a state of mind where you would like to say I am equal to God. You are, none of us is less than that. It is God in expression alone who is here. There is nothing here which is not Divine, there is nothing here which is less than Divine. Yet, this divinity that is in expression that is in manifestation is dependent upon that divinity which is there above, far above, which is the essence. When I say above, I do not mean that you have to go to spatial level, above means something far beyond, far beyond. I am not looking at the sky, far beyond us. So once this dependency is understood then only your devotion starts. This devotion starts here first, first is I would like to have some wishes granted. You feel the dependency for granting of certain wishes. I would like somebody to get promoted therefore I pray for that, he is my son or he is my grandson doesn't matter much who he is or even for ourselves. I have undertaken this business, I would like to have profit of this, so I pray, pray to God. So dependency can be confused with a barter. Majority of our stotras, what our religion has given us are only prayers seeking some relief or the other from the Divine saying that we are dependent upon you. "O God you have got to grant me". As against it, you would have noted already, our prayer says, "we are yet but slaves of wishes putting bar to our advancement; thou art the only God and power to bring us up to that stage". We would like to go beyond the stage of wishes, we would not like to be confined to wishes. We know that our wishes are due to our relationships, we know that our wishes are due to our own actions, we know that, we come to know that and that is the reason why from knot 2 to knot 3 it is a steep position. Second knot to third knot you have to understand these things. You will understand that whatever you are going through, you are going through because of your own action because whatever you deserve that alone you get. You will not get more than what you deserve, you will not get less than what you deserve. God as a samavarthi comes to be understood. God as an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent being, everybody knows, there have been talks about it. God as justice, samavarthi, the person who gives balance, maintains the balance of this existence has to be understood to understand devotion. Till that time our prayers are only petitions asking for petty things. Real prayer is one which is like the one we have given namely Master has given that - we are yet but slaves of wishes putting bar to our advancement. We are not asking God here to satisfy those wishes. We are only saying that you are the goal of human life, we would like to come to that stage. We want oneness with God, laya, to be in tune with the energy, to be in tune with nature, that's what we are asking for. We are not asking for anything less than that. We are not asking for some petty things because those things are due to our own. The fifth commandment 'Be Truthful. Take miseries as Divine blessings for your own good and be thankful to God'. You read this commandment, the interpretation given by SriRamchandraji Maharaj, you will then understand your true nature is to be dependent upon the Divine and then whatever He gives you, you accept it and whatever He gives is according to our own actions. It is not an arbitrary God who gives us 'you take this, you are my man I give you more, he is not my man therefore I am going to deprive him'. God is not like that, God is justice; there is no partiality in the kingdom of God. No person is going to be treated with lenience simply because he says SriRamchandraji Maharaj is his Master. It will not happen, it shall not happen, if it happens that is not the truth. It is our sentiment, which makes us feel now and then because we are dependent upon him, several things that happen to us are good. It is our sentiment, it is not reality, it's not the truth. We will get what we should get, we will not get what we are not supposed to get. Karmaphala is total and this system totally believes in the unquestionable principle of karma, theory of karma as properly understood. It is not the karma, that it is God has given me this punishment. That karma is not what we are talking about, that karma is prerogative of other religions. In this land we believe that God will give what is just. If you have done something you will get accordingly, praptham, whatever we have done, equally we get. So this principle has to be understood, that will be understood only when you know that God is a samavarthi. So our petition-mongering mind is accustomed to asking all sorts of things from our bosses for nothing, the same thing will not apply here though we will try to apply it here. That we try to apply is a fact, every one of us tries to apply this. It's a pit fall in sadhana, we will ask for some relief. We will have some problem, some physical problem, you would like to go and then say 'Narayana you say that you are a person who have been practicing this, why is it you have got so many ailments?', because I must have deserved. When this question was put to Lalaji Maharaj, founder of our system, when he was suffering from enormous pain in stomach and his own disciple was working on him massaging him and he shed tears seeing the suffering of the Master and Lalaji Maharaj said 'if I want to I can get rid of it now but I will not because God knows what is best'. That is the state of dependency, that is the state of devotion, that we are supposed to maintain always. This is the one of the highest states that we will be moving towards. So bhakthi is not to be understood with praises and flattery. Flattery neither does good for the flatterer nor the flattered, it doesn't help anybody but we think so and we are happy with flattery because it is so musical to sing those lines. Several saints have sung, I have nothing against anyone of them, I like them also. Their songs are very popular today and it is the song that is popular and not the devotion, please note it. What is more popular is what is appealing to your ears, the music is more important to us, the raga, the tala, those are much more important than the content, leave alone the God. Thought content which refers to God is the third factor. What is engrossing us is this. 'He sang very well sir, a beautiful bhakthi song', but it is not bhakthi song, it's a song, it is a good song, put it that way it is fine. So this devotion comes very very difficult unless you know this principle you will never be devoted. Next state to which we move on in our state of mind is total dependency on Divine. Somebody accuses you in the street for nothing, you do not know how to react to it; he accuses you for no fault of yours. What will you do? We will say something in return or you will say this is will of God. Would you say that it is what you deserve therefore you got it? See the difference in what I am asking. I may just ignore this. Put it the other way, you are going in the street somebody in the bus spits on you; as usual in Hyderabad now a days still old city that problem is there, you got to be more attentive to the fellow in the bus than yourself. What is your reaction? Would you take it to be something that God has given you? I will give a small story of a person who has lived up to that expectation. A great saint Ramanuja was there, he had a disciple who is far more intelligent than Ramanuja, who is much more well versed in scriptures than Ramanuja. Fact, agreed facts, there are no differences, both of them went to present saraswathi peetam which is there in Pakistan and then they permitted him to see one of the commentaries on Veda Vyasa's SriBhashyam. They gave and allowed him to see Vedanta sutras and then the commentary given by dravidas there and the king said 'I will not give a copy of this to you, you cannot obtain a copy, you have to go, you can read once no second time', that is the condition and Ramanuja was not ekasanthagrahi, his disciple was. So he said 'I will make good your defect so I will read this let us go'. So he was dependent upon his disciple to tell what is there in that commentary so that he can write his commentary. The concept of interdependency that we are taking about just now was the matter of issue. Is the self, dependent or independent, the issue is whether the self is dependent or independent. If you say it is independent it borders on Advaitha. If you say it is dependent it borders on Dvaitha. It is mutually interdependent is the philosophy of Ramanuja. The interpretation had to be given. He made it appear, Ramanuja interpreted, according to the anecdote, made it appear as if the self is independent and his disciple refused to write because he was under instructions earlier saying that if what I say is not in tune with my philosophy, you need not write. So he simply obeyed his Master, he said I will not write, and Ramanuja got wild and then kicked him, literally kicked him with the foot and this fellow fell and Ramanuja walked away and after about some time he comes back to find this gentleman still lying down and his disciples come and other disciples come and tell 'we told this fellow to get up saying that you are dependent upon him for the entire information, about the subject and you are more dependent upon him than anybody else and you kicked him out and we told him we will follow him rather than you' and he said 'who am I to say anything about it, my master knows what is best for me' and when Ramanuja says 'why you did not get up' he said 'you have thrown me down and it is for you to lift me up who am I to get up where is my existence'. This is the narration given in tradition you may accept it or you may disown it, but what I am trying to tell is the psychological aspect of it. What is the state of mind? come what may, the decision of the Divine is final, I will not make any effort absolutely saying that I have nothing to do with anything else, it is He who does everything. This is the state of surrender about which every alternative person talks now a days. State of surrender is one of the toughest we can ever think of, because that is the state of total negation of yourself. Now coming back to our subject of meditation what is the state of mind there. This is philosophy, fine, I have explained the philosophical aspect of it. What is the state of mind? thoughts are bound to be there, thoughts of sat-asat viveka were there; thoughts of vairagya were there, thoughts of interdependency were there, thoughts of devotion were there. Now what is the type of thought here? What is the type of thought you are going to have? A state of mind when there will be no thoughts. A surrendered person has no thoughts. How is it possible? Is it not contradictory to my system of Sri Ramchandraji, who says that thoughts are bound to be there till the end? He says that thoughts are bound to be there till the end and I say that this is no thought condition, the reason for that is you must understand what is the nature of thought. When any idea, any concept, is not in tune with the Divine, it gets thrown out, that is the origin of thoughts, origin is when it is not in tune with Divine. When a thought is not in tune with Divine, you become aware of that. It can be disturbing, it can be enjoying but then you become aware of that. When the thought is something that is totally in tune with the Divine then you become totally unaware of the existence of the thought, not that the thought is not there, thought is there but you are not aware of its existence. The existence is the essence itself and when it is in tune with the essence then it merges into it and this is an experience that you will be having on first day onwards. You will be writing as no thought, it is not no thought that you have got, the thought that is there with you becomes in tune with the Divinity and therefore you are not aware of its existence. Non-awareness of the thought is entirely different from non-existence of thoughts; please appreciate the difference between non-awareness and non-existence. Thoughts do exist but then it becomes in tune with the Divine and therefore you are not aware of it and such moments are moments of silence. When you are meditating you will find that there are moments, some seconds, fractions of seconds or minutes while your mind goes almost blank which we generally tend to call absorbency. Absorbed, the thought got absorbed into the essence. The thought is there but it got absorbed that is why we use the word absorbency, we don't use the word concentration. So this thought, our thought which was devotion, when it matures, what happens is that God alone or the essence alone becomes most predominant and then you become one with it and when you become one with it that is the state of saranagati or state of surrender. That is how it is experienced in meditation, in action it has to be shown and that is possible only through manana. All these conditions, you must note you will not have it permanently and you will have it only during meditation unless you remember the nature of those thoughts during the other times during the day. That is the reason why people who have got high states of consciousness during meditation tend to lapse to the lowest levels perceivable and this lapse is unpardonable. What is granted you should own, you cannot squander. What is given to you during mediation is what is granted to you and we squander it and without any compunction and that is the worst part of it. As I told you, if you are established in second knot in purity, and through devotion you move on to the higher plane and always be dependent upon Him, you cannot help remembering constantly the Divine and when you remember the Divine constantly, purity you cannot avoid. Purity in body and mind and in every action of course. Purity and Divinity go together, they are alternative words. The questions of people who say that 'I sit and do prayer without taking a bath' or when 'I come without cleaning my feet I would like to sit', all these ideas will not work because they are all sloth, they all are matter, they are laziness, which will not be permitted, which is not permissible. If you remember the Divine constantly, you cannot have sleep, people who complain to me of sleep are people who are not aware of Divinity I would say, because how can you sleep before God, you cannot but then this great country has given us the notion that in sleep God is going to be with you because He is the essence. It is He, You are He; therefore He is there in your place. In one of the Upanishads they say what happens to you during sleep and then God as a watchman guards us. Who keeps you going?, who keeps you going during night when you are asleep? not you, not your wife, not your children, not your parents, who is keeping you? He is the one watchman who is there. If you note that, would you come to the level of a Banasura try to have a watchman of a Siva? You will not, you will not sleep. These are the conditions that you develop as you move on to the stages of surrender. So from surrender you move on to the plane of ether where balance is there. Equality is maintained, you are balanced. The whole approach of Rajayoga sadhana is towards this balance. A balanced approach we can come only when we know that everything that happens to us happens because of our actions, we are protected by the Divine day in and day out, we are aware of it and we live according to that and these are all made possible by the constant pushes. Instead of getting lost, you require a push and then that push is given through Pranahuti by the Master, because surrender is another place where laya is capable of keeping you in state of surrender always, you will not go towards equality. Surrender by itself cannot be considered as the final state because we have to move towards equality, balance, samatva, then only you can say that you are representing the Divine, you are a manifestation of the Divine, the samavarthi. You have to become a samavarthi, balance in our approach, these are the two wings with which you are going to fly. These are two wings you have got, one is materialism, one is spirituality, both the wings you are going to go together, each according to our capacity, each according to our karma but according to our destiny, namely to satisfy the Divine crying for human transformation. Such is the human transformation that is possible in this system. These are all the positions of the Pind desh here (ref. Path of Grace). This system talks about points which are above. Upto this even in tradition we have got. This is Atma sarira, then this is brahma sarira and beyond that nobody talks. In this system we talk about the conditions of sahasrar and beyond also. The sahasrar is reflected here ( top of the head). There are 5 points in between; there are 3 more behind which takes us to central region. Regions which are behind the sahasrara were not mentioned in tradition earlier. Nobody has mentioned it. The details with which the transition happens during this Pind desh was mentioned by Jnanadev in his own way in his commentary on the Gita. Jnanadev has written Jnaneswari, a very very popular book in the Maharastrian life. Jnaneswari mentions that. One or two saints of south have mentioned certain points up to sahasrara, the paths are a bit different but the conditions are same. Why they have chosen that I have no idea because I learn them only through literature, I have not practiced any one of them. This one I hav

This Bible 2 Self Connection was very significant in my faith walk with Jesus. When I was a young adult, I had a married couple telling me how all my religious beliefs were wrong, but they took Bible verses from the Bible out of context in order to prove how wrong I was. I almost fell for this hook, line, and sinker, but listen to what made the difference. Share the link to Video Answers About God, Jesus, Creation, Disaster, Etc. via You Tube at https://VideoAnswersAboutGod.blogspot.com/ Please share this podcast and this video resource link with those who might benefit. Thanks! Debbie

Today, more than ever, we to walk in the light and have a solid faith. Fortunately God has given us a recipe for success.

Psalm 116:12 What shall I render to the LORD For all His benefits toward me? The word translated “render” means to repay or give back. “What can I can give back to God for everything He has done for me?” And what the Psalmist is saying is, “I can’t think of thing one that would be equal to what He has done for me.” Fortunately God doesn’t expect us to return in equal. So motivated by all God’s benefits toward him, the Psalmist says, “OK, this is what I will do:” Psalm 116:13-14 I shall lift up the cup of salvation And call upon the name of the LORD. I shall pay my vows to the LORD, Oh may it be in the presence of all His people.While I was giving this message on a Sunday Morning, I gave the people in the congregation the opportunity to share what God had done for them—to testify in the presence of God’s people and to vocally express His benefits toward them.  Before you listen to the message, take some time to recount what God has done for you.

When I do something terrible to my wife, I can't just relate to her as if nothing has happened. I need to follow a process to restore my relationship with her. The same is true with God, who we have offended terribly by our destructive rebellion against his good creation. The difference is that God is perfect and all-powerful. Fortunately God loves us, and he's made it easy for us to approach him--but we still need to do it his way. Listen and find out how. The sermon finishes with this Bible Project video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_OlRWGLdnw

How can we please God? How can we know if we are doing enough in our Christian lives? Fortunately God doesn’t play games with us and doesn’t leave us guessing as to what he wants us to do. We’ll talk about that today in our lesson. We've been looking a lot at the history of what has happened to Israel and though that is important, what is even more important is how we apply the lessons we learn from history. The book of Micah gives us specific advice on how to do that. In particular, we'll drill down deeply into understanding and applying Micah 6:8 a verse many are familiar with that tells us that God wants us to: "Live justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God." For copies of the show notes and much more, go to www.Bible805.com. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/yvon-prehn8/support

Horton the elephant was faithful 100%. There are a lot of stories in scripture of faithful men and women of God but none is 100%. Fortunately God is not depending on us in order for him to be faithful. Our God always 100% faithful to what he says. Check out week 1 in Summer of Seuss. For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so through him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God. 2 Corinthians 1:20

Josh visits from New Life (Albany Park) and offers some encouragement on how we are to achieve God's grand plan - hint it's not from our own strength. Fortunately God provides us with a helper - The Holy Spirit, so we don't need to be dependant on ourselves

There's something more important in life than finding employment, or a home, or even being cured of cancer. What if God really is there and we're simply trying our best to ignore the evidence? Maybe we're telling ourselves that God stuff is inconvenient right now. Fortunately God is loving and patient and will wait for a little while, but he isn't our butler, and time is running out.

Sometimes it is time for new! Fortunately God is into New! This new year, decide to experience the new that God has for you.

What does God's Word have to say about what we should look for in men who lead our churches- Fortunately God has given us the answer right here in Titus 1-5-9.

Click here to link directly to the audio file.**********I hope this isn't coming off as beating a dead horse, but I want to spend one more day on being a safe person. We have taken the past three days to talk about what a safe person is to look like. We have seen that it takes a willingness to dwell with another, show grace to that person and be able to give the entire truth to those we are honored to be part of offering counsel to. It is when we fail in any or all of these areas that we become unsafe and I believe ineffective at having impact in this world.Today I wanted to spend some time going over a couple situations where I have seen my safety go away quickly. Please don't take today's talk as gospel when it comes to being safe in another person's life. These examples are nothing more than experiences I have be a part of where the results I think God had in mind fell short because I was quick to act in what I now see as being unsafe ways. Let's take a look at a couple situations and see what we can learn.Did you know that prayer can actually be unsafe! I know you prayer warriors out there are ready to burn me at the stake for such a heretical statement as that. Hang with me a second and let me explain what I mean.Prayer is a powerful weapon we have been given. But just like weapon, we have to know when it is time to bring out the big guns. Have you ever heard the expression - "Don't take a gun to a knife fight?" Just like any tool, weapons of war were meant for certain circumstances. Using the wrong tool at the wrong time can actually cause more damage than good.Prayer can be used incorrectly when we simply jump to prayer rather than letting God do what He wants to do in that person's life. We should be praying all the time. Even when a person is explaining their situation to us, prayer should be happening in as unobtrusive and non-conscious way as possible. It can be very damaging to offer up prayer before prayer is meant to be the weapon of choice. Here's such an example.Let's say you are new to a Bible study group. Let's go on to say you are known as a real prayer warrior. Maybe in this particular study group someone is there who has been dealing with a really serious issue in their lives. That issue might have been something that has plagued them for years and years. Maybe for the first time tonight, they feel the courage to open up and discuss what has been going on.This is a crucial moment for the person opening up their heart. They are actually testing the waters. They want to know if they are going to be loved and accepted in their current state or if religion is going to rule the day. Jumping right to prayer short changes this precious moment. You are already praying, or you should be. Do we really need to stop this highly relational time of bonding to get into some standardized posture of prayer?Like I said before, you should already be praying in the spirit. What is God saying? What questions are coming to mind? What is the story of this person's soul that has lead them to this point this particular evening? This is what God wants to happen. It rarely does when we convert this time to a conventional prayer experience. There will be plenty of time to pray. Now's the time to listen. Listen to God. Listen to your brother or sister sharing their heart. Listen and learn. The safety you establish now will make it so much easier to go down some pretty difficult roads later in this person's life.I have ruined many moments by going to prayer too quickly. I have basically told total strangers that I don't have time for them by taking their situation to God before I took time to get to know what is really going on in their lives. Plus, my words in prayer can sound so condemning."Please help this person" - sounds like they are helpless and without power when coming from someone they don't know is safe. "Please heal their condition" - sounds like there is something wrong with them in ways that create a them and us kind of atmosphere. "Please show them your love" - sounds like the person doesn't know the love of God - that they are somehow on the outside of our little club when these words come from an unsafe place. Satan loves to take our prayers and use them to shame and condemn those we pray for. He can't do so when we have earned the right to be safe with the person we are praying for. That happens as we take time to know them and their situation and show them how much God loves them just where they are at.If praying for someone can be an unsafe strategy, hang on to your hats because my next example will blow your mint. Sharing Jesus before it is time is one of the most unsafe things we can ever do. That's right we even have to be extremely aware of our words when we are in a position where we might be tempted to share who Jesus is in our lives.I was at a Church event one evening. The teacher had just finished one of the best talks on the love of God I had ever heard. Up comes a young woman friend of a friend of mine. My friend was someone I have known a quite a while. He struggles with drug addiction, so did his lady friend. I noticed this young woman was undone by the message given that night. She talked to the speaker and sobbed over what she had heard. As she pulled herself together, my friend brought her over and introduced her to me.I felt like God was wanting me to ask about what it was that so touched her about that evening's message. She said that she had never thought that anyone could lover her in her current condition. She shared with me her struggles with drugs. She told me how sad she was that her earthly father had died before she was able to kick her habit and live a normal life. The thought that anyone could love her in her mess was more than she could comprehend. Here's where trouble began.Standing there, I thought to myself, what a perfect opportunity to bring Jesus into the conversation. Before I asked God is that was the right thing to do, I turned our talk to Jesus. It was like someone turned off a light switch in her eyes. She simply went dead. One moment she was alive in the love of God - the next was like the lights were off and no one was home. One mention of the name of Jesus and, boom, it was all over.I don't remember what she was saying from that point on. I was too busy praying in the spirit. I was asking God what just happened? I felt Him respond with the question, "Did I say that you were to mention Jesus right now?" Of course He didn't. I didn't give Him the chance to guide me. I just seemed like the logical thing to do to mention Jesus at a Church event about God's great love for us. When it comes to conventional wisdom, God's just isn't. He isn't conventional at all, and His wisdom isn't the same as ours.Fortunately God gave me a means to get back on course. He showed me how to turn the conversation back to the father's love in a way that switched the lights back on in this young woman's soul. Her eyes came alive again. I never saw this woman again. Imagine if I we had parted company with the lights turned off in her life? I became an unsafe person by making Jesus the point when God's love was all this woman needed at that moment.I'm in no way saying that you aren't to pray or that you should not mention the name of Jesus. What I am saying is that you need God to be in control of every moment that you are in contact with another person. That's what makes you safe. If He isn't guiding you, you will be unsafe. It is when we are unsafe towards one another that damage occurs. When we are being safe people, things happen. The power of our identities come out in ways that make impact something we can experience time and time again.I hope these last few days have helped to point out the importance of being safe when it comes to our interactions with one another. It doesn't matter if you are taking with a believer or a non-believer, being a safe person is what endears you to another. Being safe is what opens up another person to you. Being safe makes you a valuable asset to another human being. Being safe takes practice. Being safe starts with the desire to make a difference. Let God work through you today in ways that turn your counsel into the power packed thing is was destined to be.

Today's episode is a different, and special one. You listeners are in for a treat - it's one where there is no Jihae. So that means no hyena, high pitched laughs. Life got in the way of the podcast, but fortunately, Chris is always up for a new challenge, so he took the reins as the host of this episode, and interviewed our good friend Marc Gagnon. Marc is a great friend of ours, and he is an awesome husband, and awesome dad to two incredible girls. His youngest daughter was adopted out of foster care when she was 2 years old. This interview is insightful, and honest, and we hope you learn a lot from this episode. Things to note: Marc mentioned that they adopted through RISE. This is a fantastic agency to consider whether you are going to foster or adopt. Marc is also a soccer coach, and you can find him at East Valley Soccer Academy, on Instagram. He does private lessons, as well as coaching whatever teams his girls are on. Marc and his wife, Karah, are both successful bankers. I love all the different varieties of family dynamics on this podcast. You do not have to be a stay-at-home parent in order to foster or adopt.   The (Good) Word of the Day: Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall, he lifts his voice, the earth melts. The Lord Almighty is with us, the God of Jason is our fortress. Psalm 46:6-7 That's a good Word people! So apt for the kind of day that we had at the Watson household. Fortunately God is in control of absolutely everything. He is our fortress, and He is with us! Thanks for tuning in friends! Until next time - Bye!

The tomb is empty. It's one of the briefest and most confusing statements of joy ever spoken. They went to mourn and their confusion went from the smallest spark of hope into a roaring fire of joy. With Christ our visits to the places of deepest mourning bring us encounters with new life. Like Spring, it keeps bursting forth from the dead to remind us that God is still working. We are invited not just to observe the resurrection, but participate. What else is yearning for new life? What other tombs need to be discovered as empty? What hope needs renewal? As a child Easter was saying "thank you" for a gift I didn't ask for. It wasn't that I wasn't grateful, it was just that I didn't understand. God made me, but I was born steeped in sin and that meant an eternity spent in Hell. Fortunately God thought that was a bad idea, so he sent his son to die and now I don't have to go to Hell. It felt like a massive drama where my mortal soul was at stake, but I was ultimately an observer. My role was to find the tomb empty and celebrate the life of Jesus or spend all the days after my death being tortured by the Devil. What if the empty tomb is an invitation to partner in the act of resurrection? What if it isn't as much about observation as it is about participation? What else is God inviting us to see brought back to life? What part of our relationships, dreams and even our very selves are being called to partner with Jesus in coming back to life? 

Dream big.Many times we think dreams mean something, or are stories for the future. Fortunately God is not someone to cause confusion.Joseph was placed in a bad situation by his brothers because of his dream. Although Jacobs dream scared his family, everything happened for a reason. God's plan for Joseph still worked even though man tried to interrupt. If we have dreams in life, no matter how big they are, if they are benefiting the kingdom of the Lord, with His help He will allow us to accomplish these dreams. But it's up to us take that first step, and dream.

Shavuot: Our personal growth is essential but insufficient and in the end it is not about us anyways. Without God we can not accomplish anything. in order to give of His love to others we must first receive, otherwise we have nothing to give. We also need encouragement as we trudge on. Fortunately God knows; he is always ready to help.

Each day that we live there are things that seep in that are toxic to our souls. Scientists tell us that our physical bodies also encounter toxins daily. Fortunately God made us in a way that our bodies can cleanse itself of many of these things. Spiritually, these things creep in slowly: Attitudes, ideas, thoughts and philosophies that are counter to the things that we have been taught. These things that creep in over time are more dangerous than the big things that come against us. No one backslides suddenly. The temperature of the soul turns cold slowly and incrementally over time. Just as we monitor our physical bodies for exposure to things that are bad, we must also guard our soul against such attacks. In order to do this, we have to recognize what it is that is attacking us. We cannot change what we do not identify. Too often we live in a state of denial. We can see things in other’s lives, but are myopic about things that are present in our own lives. If we are going to detox, we have to find where the toxins are coming from in our own lives. We know something is wrong. We may even be have a clue about the source, but too often we deny it’s existence. Because of this, many people resign themselves to a level of struggle in an area of our lives. It could be anger, lust, discontent, but we explain it away as just the way we are. In reality those things are what is polluting our spiritual self. All of us have some area of life in which we struggle, but we often refuse to admit it. The word detox does not appear in the bible, but words like cleanse, purge, and wash appear often. The first toxin that affects us is sin. None of us are free from the temptation of sin. The culture in which we live, is trying desperately to define away sin. Our culture had evolved to the point where we no longer define what God called sin as sin. Over time, we have been conditioned to accept the sin of the world as normal. Compromising our live to conform with the standards of the world is not a wise thing to do. We have somehow categorized sin to minimize it’s effect on our life. God has not changed the categories. The only remedy for sin is repentance. Every one of us need to take a look around our homes, our families and our lives and see what has seeped in. The number one culprit to a spiritual cleansing is self deception. Pride is what keeps us from admitting that which we know to be true. Pride in itself is not bad, but it can take turn that takes. When these things creep in over time, we learn to live with it. We see the problem through a distorted lens. We adjust the way we see things to compensate

What qualities should a woman look for in a potential husband, and a man look for in a potential wife? “Just follow your heart” makes for a great line in a Disney movie or a Grammy Awards acceptance speech, but in real life it usually ends in disaster. Fortunately God has not left us in the dark. Rather than blindly following our heart into relational pain, He gives his people certain qualities to look for in a potential husband or wife, as well as cultivate in themselves in light of the gospel. Don't follow your heart, follow Jesus with all your heart.

If we are all good at heart, why is it taking so long for the world to evolve to a better place? The truth is the human heart is selfish, self-centered, and self-seeking. This was not God's original plan for us, but a result of Adam and Eve's trust in themselves rather than God and their temptation by Satan. If our hearts are truly focused only on ourselves, what hope do we have? Fortunately God had another plan. Through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit we are given a new heart. One which seeks to overcome the three "selfs" we are born with.

We continue our Ten Commandments series by considering the third Commandment - honoring God's name. Is this just about cussing, or maybe carelessness in our speech, or does it go even further? We "profane" God's name by claiming to be part of his family, but then living a completely different life. Fortunately God has given another name, by which we can be saved - the name of Jesus.

We are all human. And we all have our own stuff. We have each sinned, and were brought up in dysfunctional families. Who we are is a combination of our past and our present. We each have a story. The good news is that we are not alone. We all have strengths and weaknesses. We all share a common woundedness. Today's episode is my story over the past year and a half, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Fortunately God is a wonderful Redeemer, or as I heard recently, the Great Composter.To live by grace means to acknowledge my whole life story, the light side and the dark. In admitting my shadow side I learn who I am and what God's grace means. -Brennan Manning

Our relationships need refining. Friendships, marriage, family - all of the above need help. Fortunately God, who is at work making us his witnesses, is also at work refining our relationships. Tune in to Acts 5:1-12 with us to see how.

Adolescence can often be a trying time.  Friends come and go.  Cliques are formed, including some and excluding others.  Establishing intimate friendships that last is often difficult. Fortunately God has created in us an ability to communicate wtih him in all circumstances.  We can laugh with him, we can lament with him.  We can rely on him 24/7! Join Mark Lanier as he recounts these types of personal memories and also explores the intimacy David shares with God.  May the lesson of David's intimacy with God encourage others to find the abiding and reliable relationship that God wishes to have with all his creations.

Spiritual Deafness & Blindness is: Self-Inflicted, Sinful, and Spiritual Imprisonment. Fortunately God is eager to pour Grace upon is, because that is who He is, in spite of who we are.

Spiritual Deafness & Blindness is: Self-Inflicted, Sinful, and Spiritual Imprisonment. Fortunately God is eager to pour Grace upon is, because that is who He is, in spite of who we are.