I have finally sold my son’s truck which I have been trying to sell for over a year. This is great, but I’m now having to learn how to live without a car. Yesterday I spent the whole day biking around. It ended up to be surprisingly exhausting, especially riding my bike at night through the downtown in a cold rain with a load of groceries.

But I’m enjoying the immediacy it adds to my daily life.  Driving isolates us from things. This morning I walked the 20 minutes to downtown and am now sitting here in a Starbucks watching people walk by. This evening I will walk to do Kundulini Yoga with Sonia (my daughter) and will walk the 20 minutes home with her afterwards. I look forward to it. Life is a wonder we take for granted.

The Trickiest Part of the Spiritual Journey
On another note,  last night I met with Judith and Robert (her new roommate) at her house. This is the place the Freeschool was located and is now becoming something different, a spiritual center perhaps. Both Judith and Robert are very developed souls, each in their own way. I revealed the Vedic principles behind the creation to them. This never happens unless the soul is ready to receive. It is the “listening” that creates the opening for the revelation. It let me know that they both stand on the verge of the last phase of their spiritual development. This is where devotion, or spiritual love, takes us beyond ego, beyond ourselves. It is the trickiest part of the spiritual journey since the ego has now become subtle and the remaining issues are deeply imbedded and most of them have to do with our past relationship with love in its various forms.

These deeply embedded karmas are created with our relationships with intimate others. These are the karmas associated with parents, family, friends and lovers, husbands, wives, children in this life and past lives. These are issues of trust, betrayal, abandonment, jealousy, envy, loss, grief, etc. The memories, the patterns of reacting, the attitudes we have developed to survive these are last domains of the ego. These are what resist or prevent the success of this last stage of the spiritual journey.

The ego will make the object of our love the enemy once the embedded karmic structures are activated. The ego seeks to protect itself and survive so it will seek to neutralize or destroy the source of love, be it a friend or a lover, or the guru. It is the nature of things, its no one’s fault. This happens for both parties so inevitably one or the other falls out of love with the other. This is why most relationships don’t last, at least not without conscious effort.

Love is the most primal force of existence and devotion is its highest expression. Devotion is selfless love for something greater than us. Devotion is the force that makes us Divine, it brings the ultimate fulfillment. But first we have to cross the turbulent ocean of the most deeply embedded karmic structures hidden in us. It is these karmas that form the ego and prevent the final merger. Only a living master can expose the hidden karmas that our ego hides behind and only their force can burn them.

This is why surrender to the Guru cannot be passive. It has to be intelligent and vigorous. It has to endure the process of transformation that destroys these embedded karmas. It is this vigorous, intelligent will that consciously surrenders, even when the ego tells us it is a bad idea. The ego will find a million faults in the teacher and use these as excuses,  rationalizations and justifications why not to continue. If the ego succeeds in undermining the guru it effectively blocks the flow of love and force that makes the transformation possible. This is why only the most advanced souls are ready for this last phase of the spiritual journey.

Love is the same, be it devotion or human love. But human love is temporary and fleeting, it comes and goes, while spiritual love comes and grows. This is why the guru’s love never stops…it is a force that flows through them from the ancient divinity that we all emerged from and in whom the guru is merged. Even the personality of the guru has little say in this process. The guru is like a mother’s love for her child. The guru cannot help but love:  to forgive and tolerate even the most outlandish actions of their devotees. The love that flows through the guru is not deterred, no matter how “bad” the devotee is. The guru is a channel for this ocean of love, acceptance and patience. It is this endless flow of love from the guru that lifts us out of our ego and dissolves the karmic structures that keep us separate from the ocean of love we all swim in.

So whenever new people come to me I see the possibility but I know how difficult the journey is. I too went through it. I have seen people close to me fall because their ego made the guru the enemy. I have been made the enemy by those who have come to me. Only a few endure. So even when all the factors are in one’s favor: the consciousness is fully developed, one is awakened to the inner being, one has the capacity for devotion and sufficient discriminating intelligence and have the great gift of a true living guru in their life who recognizes them, even then the outcome is uncertain.

This is why reaching the goal of the spiritual path is so rare in this world.

Sat Shree