What is this unit, of family, meant for? Wife should do karma for husband, husband should do karma for wife; they are doing karma themselves, but fruits should be given to each other, and they both should give the fruits to their children. Do this experiment, and you’ll find, expansion, freedom in the world. Without giving the fruits of your actions, you can never be free. So learn to give the fruits of your actions to the people with whom you live. That’s one freedom.
There is another bondage, and that is created by the mind. May you engage your mind with japa, repeating the name of God, with prayer. May you meditate, make your mind one-pointed and inward; and thus attain Turiya, be happy and free.
Tell me, you go to a temple and pray according to your religion; why do you pray again and again? Because you think that your prayer was not valid, it was not heard, thus you are doing it again and again. Learning to give is the right kind of prayer. May you understand that giving is a great prayer. It gives you freedom immediately, it gives you delight, it makes others happy. You are not giving to another human being; you are giving to the Lord, who is in every human being. That’s called prayer through action, prayer through karma. So your karma will never create bondage if it becomes a prayer. That’s my point, prayer will never create bondage. May you learn to give, starting with your own family, at home. The home is a great temple, where live all the gods, learning to help each other, learning to love each other, learning to be free. That family is admirable, whose head becomes an example, faced with all the diversities, yet maintaining that unity underneath.
Now let me tell you something; if you are not on talking terms with your neighbors, how can you love your neighbors? If you do not love your neighbors, do not have cordial relationships with your neighbors, you will never understand them, they will never understand you. So is the case with yourself. If you do not learn to love yourself, appreciate and admire yourself, if you go on condemning yourself, how will you know yourself? If you go on condemning your neighbors, how will you know your neighbors? How can you say that you love your neighbors, and if you do not love your neighbors why should they love you? From where have you learned to condemn yourself? You learn because you commit mistakes. That which you think is good today, you may consider to be a mistake tomorrow. And that goes on piling up. It becomes a catalogue of mistakes and then it creates a complex. No, learn to forgive yourself too. If you don’t do that, you’ll go on condemning yourself and you’ll create a living hell for yourself. Don’t do that. A human being is the highest of all known species, one considered to be very close to the Ultimate Reality, once he or she learns to realize.
First of all from the very beginning you will have to learn a word called love. I told you just now, if you do not love yourself, if you go on condemning yourself, if you go on hating yourself, no god on earth, no angel in the heavens can help you. You will have to have one thing, and that is called grace of the Self, remember this. If you offer all your human responsibilities to God, a human being is crippled. That is not called self surrender, that is called being lazy and irresponsible. Work with the determination that you can do it, you will do it, you have to do it; then you are bound to do it.
So may you learn to understand one thing: You should make every human effort that’s possible. When human efforts are exhausted, then dawns the divine aspect, that’s called grace or descending force. On whom does He choose to shower His grace? He chooses one who has made his efforts, all human efforts with firm faith, with complete dedication, with all his mind, action and speech; such a one is graced. To such a one, dawns the descending force. There is a meeting point here, the Lord meets the human being. The Lord of life, Truth, Absolute Truth meets the human being. You are still a human being and yet you meet God. Christ met Absolute Reality, he did not become a Buddhist. Buddha became enlightened, he did not become a Christian. So don’t be afraid that you will be changed. Don’t be afraid of change; you’ll be transformed and that’s what you need.
Reprinted from Om the Eternal Witness, by Swami Rama
