Sai Gem - 32

Grace Of God

Living in the Presence of God (Vol I/Pt I - 65)

CHAPTER 65


A child depends upon his mother, without a single question of doubt. This dependency grows to be a "need", the "need", eventually depicting a selfish attachment, and it is this relationship in which you expect all that you give, that you recognize and accept as "love". How can love such as this bring peace and bliss, when you, My dears, are in constant fear of your needs being unfulfilled, when you live in constant worry that you are not receiving the love you give, and when in every step you lack confidence and doubt the love you think you have found? Yes! You have merely developed momentary pleasure, and you have made this minute of your life your desire to re-experience this past, once again, in the future.


You think you have reached the limits of love - but love has no limits. You have equated this temporary love to God's love, but God's love does not measure with the balance of "give" and "take". His love of bliss lies in fulfilling each of your needs, and it is only your smile of gratitude that He will take. His peace lies in accepting your discontented mind and taking back with Him your web of fearful anxieties. His mission lies in giving Himself to you and in taking back with Him your mask of pride that has inhibited you to be your "self", until now. Learn, My dears, not to demand, but to accept that which is given with sincere thankfulness - even if in the gift received, lies deceit, harshness, and pain - accept all, with no resentment, and give yourselves, fully, with the same love, same understanding and with an unchanging gratitude to all who have helped you to dismiss the difference. Those who presented to you their "weakness" must also be thought of as God, for you were able to recognize and develop your strength only through their handicaps.


Your disease of the "pain of pride" can be cured, today, by convincing the mind that the downfall of pain lies in its acceptance of God in all. You must rise above the hatred that pinches your heart and constricts it to widen its arms to embrace all of God's forms. The tongue that speaks only the language of "no" must learn only the one word that must encompass its whole language - Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes to pleasure, and yes to pain, - Yes to good, and yes to bad, - Yes to acceptance and yes to rejection. It must be yes, at all times, for "yes" to all, is "yes" to Me!


God, being the perfect one, accepts and lives within you and around you, at all times, never saying "no" to His child of love. Learn to eat with the poor, sleep with the worries of the rich, play with the good, and serve the ones that are lost. Let each criticism be the change, and let each praise be your strength to persevere. Love all, for your simple need to be with Me and none other. Love all, without a single doubt, for this doubt is only your strength that is failing to love with perfection. And what is this perfection in love? It is love that "gives" in 'silence', in the secret of sacrifice, in the joyful pain of endurance, in persevering patience, and takes with it the bliss and the strength of giving even more. Yes! That is love dressed in perfection - love that is held in a heart of God!




- Divine Messages received and recorded by Mrs Seema M Dewan

The Secret

Everything that is born must die.  But you can escape death by not being born again.  When you realize that you are the limitless Atma, you are no longer subjected to the limitation of birth.  That is the secret.  How to know that?  It is the result of a long process of sharpening and purifying the emotions and the impulses.  You may do the most rigorous japa or submit yourself to the ordeal of austerities, but if you are not virtuous, all of it is sheer waste.

(Gems of Wisdom, Virtue, pg 230)

GEM 820

Culture and spirituality are not different from each other.  Ekatma Bhava (oneness of spirit) is culture.

(From : Garland of 1008 Gems, Bhagawan Shri Sathya Sai Baba's Sayings)

Triple Incarnation

Freedom

Sometimes I wonder what it is like to be free, Like a monkey swinging from tree to tree, Or like young eagles way in the skies, Calling to each other with joyful cries. Oh, to be free and without a care, Not to live in bondage or constant fear. To live each day and spread my wings, To be forever untouched by negative things.

~ Belinda Schuler-Chin ~

Q530

What qualities in a devotee ensure the advent of God's Grace?



Earn the qualifications - holiness, purity, faith, universal love; then, He will approach you on foot to console, comfort and save!  Purity of heart and control over your desires and senses, if you have these two credentials, Grace is your right.

(SSS Vol 14, pg 100)

Absolute Nature

He Loves You!

God does not give His love in dribs and drabs.  
He lavishes it on us when we come to Him in faith.  
All along, He was waiting to make us His children, 
and we were the ones who resisted.

But once we face Him as children, 
God's love lets loose in our lives.  
Nothing is too good for His obedient children.  
Praise God that He loves you that much!

- Pamela McQuade -