Dear God,
How amazingly treacherous is the path we tread upon this earth. What an adventure; what a game. A game with nothing to lose, but eternity at stake. By Your Grace seekers do rise, by their good deeds, purification, study of the scriptures, associating with the wise, having compassion towards others and forgiveness of so-called debts.
And wise ones they become, bathed in Your Glow, radiating like lamps in the night. Many seekers come to these risen ones by Your Grace. And around the wise ones the seekers sit, and pray and bow, and Your Light gets confused with the form of the wise one, and pictures of the Holy Man or Woman becomes like wallpaper. Then every scrap of food touched by him or her the seekers pounce upon like hungry dogs and call it prasad, and every drop of spittle is collected in urns and placed on altars, forgetting You, the Formless and Form of All, and call this wise one God.
Ramana has said that the Guru and You are One; but how rare is the true Guru who, like You, is neither moved by praise or blame, gifts or curses, who rests in the Peace of the Needless. The Guru and You are One because You both dwell in the Silence of Being where not two but One exists.
So many, dear God, rise by Your Grace into the heights of Consciousness. Then by the adoration of their followers are bitten by the snakes of vices, and fall back to the world of men. The snake of lust with the cravings for the fire of passion, the fire of creation, few can escape its bite.
And so it has happened again that one of great spiritual stature, who was born into this time to lead millions back to the Awareness of You. How mischievous is the Maya, the Veiling, of Yours, that even he with the dark crown of hair and the orange robe, who has walked beside me in my dreams, guiding, protecting, laughing, seems to have been bitten by the serpent of lust and the glamour of powers.
You have sent me high at times and plunged me low, and I am beginning to remember that my/Your being neither rises nor falls. Yet I have not millions of followers or great titles about my name, so I can witness the turning of the wheel; and I can admit the wrong actions, and admit the wrong tendencies - the same tendencies I see in him.
However, to be caught in admirers’ definitions, what deceptions are needed to maintain the gilded walls.
‘Know there is One, but act as though there is two,’ Ramana warned. There is only You, and nothing in Truth affects You, the Self we all are. This I know behind my petty thoughts, my surging emotions and my decaying body. And I know that this teacher who is named the Father of Truth is none but the Self. Yet I would not send my young son, who is also the Self, to remain alone with him in a room.
Ramakrishna said that God is in everything and everything is in God, even the tiger. Still, you do not go and hug the tiger. You see God in the tiger from a distance.
The world is full of tigers and perhaps the most ferocious of the tigers are the fallen gurus. They are the ones who fall from standing in Your glow, to only intellectually talking about You. And since they are not fully established in You they pretend to be. Others, their followers who are rising in You in their awareness, are secretly seen by the fallen ones with contempt, and become held back to stay below the level of the teacher.
I know. I have seen it lurk, this spitefulness, in me. It is called jealousy. Jealousy arising from the feeling that another is loved more by You than I am. I know there is no other for You, nothing outside of You Who is All There Is, and so my knowing Self can only smile at such thoughts. However, if I was defined by a host of others and by myself as an Avatar, God, an Enlightened One, a Master, an Angel, perhaps I would not see such thoughts. And in the darkness of denial, they would stir their poisonous brew.
Dear God, maybe You have so many who are sitting in the place of Authority fall into depravity that each one of us, each individual expression of You will at last no longer look outward for the Answer. Maybe we just need to sit still, with body quiet, mind at rest, emotions calm, and listen. Listen to You whispering in the Silence:
Be still and know I am God.
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