Picture: 3rd Super Moon this year setting over Saratoga Straights-self evident to all who have clear skies and are awake to see it.
There are certain universal truths that, whether they are practiced or not, those with at least a modicum of intelligence and reasonably good hearts accept as true. Wisdom is usually simply put, but reaches to the heart of the matter. Its breach of practice causes untold mischief in the world that leads to unnecessary suffering. One such truth is the Golden Rule: Treat others as you wish to be treated. Perhaps there is no greater guide to good behavior than this. Imagine a world in which this rule is observed by one and all!
Then there is Swami Ramdas’ creed of universal love and service. Putting into place this maxim brings hearts and minds together in marching toward the fulfillment of what mankind is really intended to be. Universal love and service is not a difficult idea to understand, only its practice requires self-mastery—your little self that leads you to anger, greed and fear needs to be replaced with pure perception of seeing that the world is God.
Jesus quoted ancient texts when he said that the greatest law is to love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, mind and strength, and the second law, which is like the first, to love thy neighbor as thy self. Oh goodness, putting this into practice solves every human and spiritual problem of humanity and leads all to the kingdom of heaven.
Babaji said that humility is pleasing to the Lord above all other qualities. Lahiri Mahasaya said to solve your problems through meditation; exchange unprofitable religious speculation for actual God-contact. Sri Yukteswarji said to forget the past, the vanished lives of all men are dark with many shames. Human conduct is ever unreliable until anchored in the Divine. Everything in the future will improve if you are making a spiritual effort now. Master poetically summarized his life of devotion and realization in the words, God, God, God. And Mother encapsulated all spiritual practice with the teaching, keep your mind on God.
We really do know what we should do. As followers of this path we have been given the highest, most powerful principles and techniques for spiritual evolution, for ourselves as well as for the world at large. It is up to each one of us to fulfill the vision that Jesus, Babaji and all the Masters have for us. We may not be able to force the world to be how we would like it, but we can change ourselves, and therefore be agents of change for others.
Let us put the universal truths we do know to work; not delay even a moment. Meditation is a keystone, for it is in turning the mind inward that we touch the hem of God, and through that proximity we are purified and these universal truths then spontaneously live themselves through us. Thus, we find confirmed through our own experience, those truths we have sensed for so long are directly revealed by the Author of all life—and are freshly born in us.