Relax, fer crying out loud

"So smart–ass you know all the answers, do you? Instead of your ego driving throu the day, why not coast and enjoy it? Every day is as rich or as poor as you make it, so why complain about pressure? Listen more and talk less – Love more and complain less – Be more and become less.
"You can’t concentrate? Just rebalance yourself on the top of each hour with a half a minute of reflection or affirmation. Taking less than 10% of your time it will repay dividends of more than 90%. Fix your consciousness on that world beyond the murky smoke of confusion. Breathe in the pure air of inner knowledge, revel in the freedom and sunlight noone can take away from you. Allow its loving and restorative power to permeate your spiritual body, and so trickle throu to your physical frame.
"You have limitless freedom. Don’t use it to your own hurt. Grow towards the light, not away from it. Every experience given to speed your growth can retard it if you take it the wrong way: that is the duality of the physical universe. What you perceive as ‘good and evil’ are just part of the ebb and flow of duality. If you have the wisdom you can harness their 'tidal' power. Choose neither the right nor left hand path, but rather seek to follow a middle way where you’re conscious of both.
"Breathe and grow – Live and scintillate – Love and be warmed by the unlimited energies of love."

You are the most important being ever

You are the greatest gift you can give yourself. To allow yourself to be for a few moments is no hardship. You are the seed within the fruit. When you fall to earth you’re surrounded by everything you need for growth.
"Look inside, and accept yourself for what you are at this moment in time – good, bad, silly, wise, low, high, lonely or fulfilled. You are the greatest gift the world has ever known. You aren’t part of God, you are God. You’ve come here for a special purpose. Don’t let that purpose slip away. Without you the totality of God can never be realised. Your purpose is to know yourself, to accept yourself as you truly are and be purged of anger.
"As anger about imagined shortcomings recedes and you realise you are as you needed to be to integrate within yourself the very qualities you currently despise, so a vast new dimension of possibilities opens like a hole in the night sky throu which you may see to another universe of sunlight.
"Love is the power that fuels this, not ego–love based on need or greed, but open–heart love that simply allows. So allow yourself to love yourself. Be here and you’ll be there."

Acceptance sets your self free

"Mastery is not available to everyone, but everyone can achieve Buddhahood on their path. To become Master is an arduous and disciplined journey – few are born with the stamina to attain it. Accepting fully what /whom /where you invest your care releases you from the need for such hardship. In the eye of heaven all are of equal value. Leadership confers no special merit. It is merely the form of service appropriate to those with certain qualities.
"Liberation comes to all who learn to love their situation and cease to strive for change. It doesn’t mean that in the ultimate scale of values change may not be desirable, but that they’re willing to allow the Universe to work throu them rather than to seek control of the elemental forces – which are, in any case, beyond their reach."

Spring in all its glory

"Look! The apple tree buds, green growth engulfs the barren sticks of winter. Your heavenly parent promises only good to those who will accept hir times and seasons. Only you question hir ways. All other created matter simply takes its cue from the great bass of heaven: it lives, it grows, it breeds, it 1dies. It knows no more than is required of it. In plentiful times it thrives, in lean times it withers.
"When you have finished your striving, built your empire, controlled your environment, what’ve you got that you didn’t already have? Have you got peace? No, because you’re worried about other people eroding your achievement. Have you improved your health? No, probably the reverse. Have you acquired love? Not by those means. Will your achievements postpone for one day your inevitable departure from the physical realm?
"So accept the passage of time and the revolving seasons and be content with what you have, knowing that true riches spring from the inner heart, just as does the energy which drives the buds thru solid branches."

Don’t hide your sparkle in a duffel bag of fears

"Don’t erect any shelter for your psyche. It's a great deal more robust and far older than everything you seek to protect it with. A diamond looks fragile but is tougher than anything it comes into contact with. Don’t hide your sparkle in a duffel bag of fears.
"Admit honestly how you feel about things, don’t deny your inner truth: it's your most precious asset. Don’t think, feel. If you spend time in your head your body will need to reassert itself. Thinking may accomplish things or it may not – but feeling is honesty about being. That is your goal – not satisfying others or winning their admiration.
"If you seek to 'liberate' others because 'you know what's good for them' you're more likely to entangle them in your own hang-ups: liberate yourself and you set a generation free."

Allow ...

"Remember why you work – to express love in action. Allow it to take its course, don’t try to direct it. Love has far more energy than you, so surrender to the flow. Your singular efforts can’t accomplish anything, the forces of inertia are too great. Pay attention to balancing your own consciousness and let the mighty roller-coaster of love carry you where it will. Be open to receiving and giving in equal measure. If you enfold your activities in a commitment to prayer and inner awareness, you won’t impose conditions on what you will or won't experience."

Accessing innergy

"There is no limit to what can be known. Therefore if you seek to acquire mere Knowledge your task is never-ending. But in the spiritual life theoretical knowledge is irrelevant – you’re shown what you need to know when, and not before, you need to know it. This means everything is grounded in emotional awareness.
"It is only when the emotional and the intellectual are evenly balanced that you gain access to inner realms. Until that point you simply can’t perceive what you later realise was staring you in the face all the time.
"You can create collective relationships on any level. It is simply what happens whenever two or more minds meet and focus on a task. Even on the most carnal plane any team acquires group insights that can open inner doors, but since their focus isn’t of any lasting significance, the mental-physical relationship achieved may actually blind them to the higher qualities of their achievement. Yet teamwork is a gift which is always available for you.
"Use your powers wisely. Any source of energy can be used positively or negatively. And you’re always free to make your choice. The greater your natural talents, the more you’ll be aware of the right and left hand paths.
"Choose the path that leads you to onward inward, the one where you sense growth lies. Don’t concern yourself with the labels others give it. For you it is the Royal Road. Remember, nobody is ever shown more than a step at a time. All, from least to greatest, are on the same pilgrimage yet none is on an identical path. So accept guidance only when it conforms to your inner awareness.
"Only those who have surrendered their own desire (life-force energy) can offer guidance to others, yet it is desire which energises all."

Can't concentrate in meditation?

"Even if you can’t concentrate, be willing to spend time with me. Just 'sitting' is still valid, fully accepting your feelings of non–concentration. If you can’t contact your Me-self it's likely that desire or enthusiasm is in some way providing a barrier.
"Let go whatever you’re seeking or desire, and allow the epitome of the present moment to reign.
"Are you feeling pain? lust? ambition? worry? anger? fear? struggle? – Then feel it to the uttermost. Don’t reign it in. Allow the emotion to engulf you. Acknowledge your feelings, accept their validity. Revel in them, no matter disagreeable. Don’t fear pollution by them, you’ve been given them for a purpose, accept that part of yourself which is generating the feelings.
"When you have ‘enjoyed’ them to the extent that you’re no longer resisting what your subconscious is showing you, allow the garment of your emotions to become separate from you. Fold it carefully and reverently on the sacred altar of your heart. Look at it and love it. It was a part of you struggling for attention. Now it has received the attention it needed, sanctify it by placing in full view where your gaze will always fall on it until it withers away and you no longer need to be reminded of what you have discarded.
"Then let the love of Sai Baba enfold you in a new garment which fits so comfortably that no further striving is necessary. From henceforth let the world know you in this attire."

The way to the stars

"Stillness is your greatest gift to the world. ‘Being’, ‘being centred’, and 'receiving rather than giving’ may all seem selfish. But if you haven’t established who you are, and satisfied your self that you have a right to exist, what’ve you got which is really yours to give?
"Time spent on your self is never wasted. It requires only that you don’t compromise or accept half truths. Pursue truth to its lair, trust your nose to follow its scent no matter how unpromising the path appears. Don’t hesitate to crawl under thorn bushes or follow it off the edge of sheer cliffs, thru swollen torrents, across illimitable seas, up improbable city streets, into snake-infested swamps. Don’t be tempted to linger in lush and beautiful meadows, nor to bypass impenetrable mountain terrain. Remember, you can only take ‘one step at a time’, so don’t look too far ahead, expect nothing – the scent you’re following may not be going where your eye falls...
"... for you’re on a journey to your heart, and your heart itself dictates every twist in the route. Therefore follow the inner–directed path, not the outer visible one: because at your heart I AM, and therefore you can only come to me throu your self – tho I am not your heart, nor is your heart me.
"When you’ve reached your own heart, you’ll know that you always knew me, and that I AM your Not–I, just as you exist in me yet are Not–Me. You are all separate living organisms, if you like, who exist within the cosmic culture of which I am myself but a molecular part. Amid rush and bustle it’s easy to miss what is plainly visible in stillness.
"Therefore don’t seek to ‘understand’ intellectually by linear sequence, accept and wait for the picture to emerge holistically, in separate parts, like a jigsaw. Don’t give, receive ; for in receiving you are in fact giving the greatest of all gifts – your undivided attention: and that is a gift without price, valued by all who receive it. Including all the powers of heaven, who desire acknowledgement just as you and every other being does.
"If you will open yourself to receive, you make it possible for us to give what we long to bestow: and by enabling us to share your joy and delight you give that increase of pleasure we too desire. So don’t compromise. Don’t worry if other people think you dodgy or unreliable. Pursue the scent which is in your nostrils and which, when you trace it to its source, will explode in your brain and scatter your consciousness like starlight all over the Universe.

Keep your vision high

"Don’t get bogged down sorting out things you don’t need to worry about. Leave that to those whose energy functions on that level. Stick to the grand design. Keep your ego out of it, and let your energies remain high. Accept that there are areas where you need help, and things you can’t do. Learn to detach yourself from events."

Natural growth is vigorous but unhurried

"If you want to receive something, be as precise as possible about what you desire but as open as possible to the direction from which it may come. Be quite certain about what you desire but be prepared to recognise if something arrive in its place. Those who think prayer isn’t answered are those who aren’t ready to recognise the answer they’re given. For the inexperienced to acquire power disproportionate to their mor(t)al capacity soon would be like giving a racing car to a beginner. Let love rule. The pace of natural growth is vigorous but unhurried. For maximum beauty and practicality frequent pruning is necessary. Grow. Imaginatively project your growth, but be sensitive to the hand of the gardener."

Motive generates Ability

"If you yearn to know what is beyond you, you must learn to empty yourself. Knowledge-awareness crowds close up to you obscuring your view of the farther distance. It‘s in the ability to detach yourself from what most immediately presses on you that the skill comes to see and hear afar.
"Don’t worry if you can’t do it now. The motive, in the long run, generates the ability. There are different abilities applicable to different stages. You can’t just skip over the intermediate building blocks of awareness needed to construct a sturdy wall. Give thanks that you’re not a person with an imperfectly sealed connection to the ultra–conscious world. If so you could never be off duty. Metaphysically that’s where mental imbalance can enter the system. Ungrounded awareness creates distortion of emotional perspectives. Of course your ability to receive varies – so does your digestion, your luck, your concentration, your imagination. "Accept it. Perfection is limitation. To be always at your best would imply you’d gone as far as you could go. As your abilities extend so your goals expand exponentially. The Universe is limitless, you merely perceive what you’re able to take in. This self–governing vision is our means of regulating the measure of irradiation each individual receives. If you have the will to press on you’ll be strengthened to receive ever greater exposure.
"Don’t measure yourself against other people. If you’d been meant to be them youd've been given their gifts. As it is, you’ve got your own, and it behoves you to explore and develop your own personal range of abilities. So, as ever, the message comes back to Being not Doing. Just Be. And enjoy the glorious liberty of not having to strive for attention, success, love, transcendence. Accept that you already have it. If you want more, learn to be content with what you have."

What reality does your life express?

"Try to let your consciousness be governed by remaining aware of my voice. If you need want to go faster than your inner pace there‘s something amiss – likewise if you hang back. If you allow your contact with your Self to become dulled, no matter how alluring the alternative, you’ll end in the wilderness. The invisible path that leads to full Self–realisation can only be followed by intuition – it’s like an unseen geo–magnetic force which is always present, but can easily be overpowered by humanly constructed energies.
"Cast aside duty, family ties, professional obligations, just ask yourSelf ‘what element of this situation I face really comes alive for me?’ Or try this, imagine the issues surrounding you as objects or images; then focus on them with mentally half–closed eyes. Which image remains brightest? ‘Ahha,’ you may say, ‘that’s not a fair test, I knew which was going to be brightest because I couldn’t let it go.’ Okay, that’s still your answer.

"You express your level of reality by the images your mind produces. Are they about brick walls? Are they about people bugging you? Are they about money worries? Or are they about the Godhead within yourself? Are they about the power Sai Baba gives if you ask?
"If all the images that come up are around your problems then that is your reality, and those problems will stick with to you until you concentrate your reality on something more worthwhile and magnetize it. As you focus on calm flowing energy, not on striving, you and that quality approach each other – so you’re automatically moved away from the problems you’ve struggled with. Eventually, with perseverance, it surrounds you and you have entered into its reality.
"Did you know what you were going to write about before you started? No. No more do you know the inner path throu your life – which I see clearly. Only great stillness will allow you to follow it."

Welcome difficulties

"Welcome difficulties, they give you an opportunity to develop your responses and motivate you to discover the riches that are yours for the (b)asking."

Be still & know that I AM

"Hearing my voice requires extending the range of your inner ear so that you can hear higher frequencies. To maintain your hearing in peak condition you need to restrict your exposure to unnecessary ‘noise’. Sounds designed to fill the void in your life are particularly distracting.
"If you find you can’t hear my voice, then stop, go back to basics. Ask your self, what do I enjoy most? Where do I feel the energy? And follow that. Time spent sorting yourself out is never wasted. Everything that crosses your path is designed to draw you towards the source of your self – the zone where the personal and the universal merge in an ultra–conscious awareness.
"How your outer persona appears to the world is immaterial beside the inner need to grow and acknowledge that you are acknowledged. Outwardly you might be a priest, an actor, a farmer, a dosser, an engineer, a parent. All the label does is describe your starting point and some of the obstacles you may encounter, but it isn’t your path or your inner reality. Your sense of inner direction may, probably will, suggest that your growth could be enhanced by altering aspects of your outer life – and not always in a direction the natural mind might suppose. But the nature of those changes, and whether they bring material riches or poverty, is governed by your soul’s perception of what would best aid its growth.
"Suicide expresses a desire to cease incarnating, but is a karmic choice of such magnitude that unfortunately it guarantees further incarnation to resolve its implications. Humans divorce morality from knowledge, and store the latter in amoral memory systems. In the spirit world that is impossible, because knowledge exists only as a non–physical memory system within the personalities who comprise it. Such knowledge could no more be divorced from the moral awareness of its use, since it doesn’t ‘exist’ non–personally, than your healthy mind would allow you to perform an action which damaged your body. Of course the dark forces do have their own discarnate spirits but these exist within a circumscribed area as part of the scavenging mechanism of the universe. In their place, like enzymes in the digestive system, they’re necessary and appropriate, but if released from that restricted function can poison the whole body."

Let go. Be.

"If you have unwanted thoughts give them to me. My energies are too high for them to harm. Actively surrender such thoughts and allow my peace to enfold you. If you find certain thoughts clinging to you, ask what their function is. Are they not serving to reinforce your ideas of your selfhood, your separateness, your specialness even? Ultimately what they’re doing is to allow you to convince yourself that they’re /you’re ‘serving’ God. But how can that be?
"God requires no service but love and honour. Anything more than this is karma /sin. So no matter how ‘busy’ or ‘responsible’ or ‘committed’ you are just leave it out. Just be. Leave doing to doers. Your greatest gift is your self. And who are you – if you only define yourself by your deeds?
"Let go. Be."

The Mind alone cannot understand spiritual phenomena

"You’ll always have a problem if you’re using your mind to generate an explanation of spiritual phenomena. Accept that you can’t explain everything to everybody. Part of what they hear must engage with their own spiritual expectations, thereby drawing them into the area of heightened awareness. The inner voice is a perfectly natural phenomenon. If you seek to describe an everyday experience then do it from the viewpoint of everyday experience. Draw people into it. Why are you afraid of this? If you offer people‘s minds an escape route they’ll take it and trickle back to earth instead of being led on onward to a new or deeper understanding. You’ve got to have the courage to follow, and be seen to follow, the spiritual path. Otherwise you’ll never realise your own destiny as an enlightener, but remain stuck half–in half–out of the quagmire of a conventional identity. Strike now, and strike out on behalf of your whole inner person. Don’t be hide-bound by your external persona. Let your inner wholeness represent you to the world."

Just accept that I, Sathya Sai, know

"How wise of you to seek time with me. We of the inner world desire to communicate just as you do. The challenge of communicating on the restricted frequencies you can understand exercises us just as it does you. But the effort is a challenge and the result stimulating. If you really want to draw down gifts and abundance you’ll have to become a great deal stiller. You’re excited at the moment and enjoying the buzz you get, but the ideal is to internalise that as a source of energy and recover your calmness.
"No, I’m not going to make promises about dates. You just follow the path a step at a time, and have the joy of watching it unfold like a new dawn each day – instead of being tortured by the anticipation of your conscious mind! Just accept that I, Sathya Sai, know."

By this time I had secured funding for my CataList magazine from a publisher & we were looking at launch dates.

We work with what we're given

"So now you have discovered some of my followers. Were you expecting something more?
"Even in spirit we work with what we're given – & we're given what we have to work with. There is no single divine standard: each individual and each element is held within its appropriate balance of probabilities. Humanity judges by constantly refering everything back to a norm or stereotype – so that most of you never come to see things as they are. This process is exemplified in your exam systems – which couldn’t be a more irrelevant measurement … and for what? You might as well judge a jug on how much water had been poured into it!
"Now you know who I am within you you will find it much easier to contact me when you need guidance. "

Being quite certain of your inner truth is the greatest gift you can give the world

"Being quite certain of your own inner truth is the greatest gift you can give the world. Testifying to exactly where /who you are is your response to the divine within you. For it requires no embellishment, no relational insight. It is of itself alone.
"Because it is, and doesn’t need to communicate, it communicates. Be as a flower: which grows wherever it is and, when it needs to, attracts those who can pollinate it. When it has flowered it folds itself away to return again when it is bidden. Be what you are – do what you have to – need nothing."