My Lord Loves a Pure Heart – Excerpt 6

Being absorbed in Truth like the man buying the newspaper sometimes feels like a Herculean task at which I fail. Yet when I put my best foot forward with full focus on Gurumayi’s teachings, the way is lit for this powerful inward choice to succeed.  
 
When I can shift and feel myself as a soul filled with God’s love and God’s will rather than as a personality tied to an unstable body, and when I can then focus on another person in the same way, my fear and anger dramas lose their power. It’s as if they evaporate in the caldron of grace and lightness emerges. 
 
The passage of time, along with contemplating my successes and failures, has taught me to not give up, to keep going. I trust that Gurumayi is holding my hand and there is light at the end of the tunnel. Together, I know we will succeed.
 

A question often present in my thoughts, especially when negativity and judgment arise, is, “What would Gurumayi do? How would Gurumayi respond?” Then I ask for grace, and do my best to act from the highest, as my Guru would.  
 
At some point, that final exhale will come. In that moment, I would like to know that I have left behind a series of kind acts, good intentions, generosity, and gentleness to the planet, and that I have done my best to support my Guru’s mission. I would like Gurumayi to always be able to say of me, “She is on my team, and that’s where she’s staying!”
 

Before I started walking the Siddha Yoga path, when someone did something negative to me, I would close my heart to them. I wouldn’t even allow them to apologize, and even if they did, I would put up a wall to not allow that person to enter my heart.

Then I was fortunate enough to be able to visit Gurumayi’s Ashram to offer seva there. And I soon learned that everything we do on the Siddha Yoga path is done from the heart.
 
From that time on, I always give people an opportunity to enter my heart, and then another, and then a thousand more. If it doesn’t happen in this moment, it will be in another, or another, or another still later. That is how I have decided to live in my “faith in the Lord who dwells within me.”
 

If I am to fulfill my divine destiny, the prayer of my heart—which is to walk as a person of peace in this world—it is imperative that I imbibe Gurumayi's teachings contained within this excerpt. I pray to truly realize that no one else’s behavior dictates my own, for that will spell the end of grudges, retaliations, paybacks—all those cases I have prosecuted, defended, and judged in the “internal court of wrongs.” 
 
The last paragraph in this excerpt set my heart a-beating. What are the lies referred to in the Biblical quotation? Perhaps it is the great deception that anything other than divine love will do. 
 

When I read this excerpt, I realized that the man buying the newspaper must have worked on himself so that he could keep the newspaper seller’s bad mood from disturbing his own inner peace. 

I then lovingly hugged myself inside and encouraged myself to try to stay in a good state the next time I am in such a situation. If I succeed, that’ll be great; if I don’t succeed every time, that’ll be great too, because I will have tried!
 
I have learned to be loving and patient with myself in all the years I have been a Siddha Yoga student. Gurumayi always gives me her grace when I want to master something. For me, sadhana is like learning to play a musical instrument. The more I practice, the better and more beautiful the playing becomes.
 

Reading this passage brought my attention back to two core teachings of the Siddha Yoga path: “See God in each other” and “God dwells within you as you.” I recalled how Gurumayi and Baba always welcome others with love and respect.
 
So when I greet people in my day-to-day life, I hold the awareness that I am greeting them not to gain anything or to make them happy but to follow my Guru’s teaching. However, when people do not respond in the same way, I feel contracted. In such a situation, reminding myself that I am following the Guru’s teaching encourages me to continue practicing this teaching. At the same time I make an effort to ensure that I acknowledge others as I receive their greetings. Practicing respect and humility in this way keeps me from being deceitful.
 

As I read and reread Gurumayi’s words, I began to see my tendency to avoid people with whom I have difficulty. My inner monologue says, “They should not be this way.” I now see that I am creating a duality between myself and my fellow human beings, and that leads to pain and resentment.
 

In contemplating this passage, I saw that for me deceit means concealing or hiding what is real, natural, and spontaneous, and accepting what is fake, artificial, and unreal.
 
Often, while having my meal in the office kitchen among others, my mind begins its play: “How would other people judge me or my food?” “Is my style different from theirs?” This swiftly pushes me away from being in the present moment. I then switch from my natural way of eating and begin chewing fast, or hide in the corner where no one can see me. Instead of having the awareness “I’m the Self” or seeing the same Self in others, I act fake and deceive.
 
Observing how Gurumayi performs her actions with complete awareness, respect, and love inspires me to connect to the Truth. Just the title My Lord Loves A Pure Heart has the power to remind me that deceit has no place in God's house.
 

Gurumayi’s words set me free. No matter what I read of her words, when I read them, or what they are about—her words inspire me, and then I make more effort to live more closely according to her teachings. I am so grateful to Gurumayi ji for giving me a fresh, clean slate every day.