Divine Life Church of Baltimore

HELP  WITH  OR  WITHOUT  TROUBLE

Someone came to me deeply troubled, mind confused, heart frightened, body

contorted by pain. Her heart was full of complaints, and she was feeling

overwhelmed by all her responsi-bilities—indeed, by life itself. Or so she

thought. She was angry with others in her life who did not understand her

plight, and she blamed them for her misery and for never getting it all done.

She could no longer contain her anger or suppress her accusatory finger from

pointing to another as the cause of her pain.

Do you recognize yourself in this frame of mind? Why have you waited so

long to reach out for help? Why do you think you only need help in a state of

desperation and turn to God for your salvation? For how many years have you

struggled with your pain, your anguish, your tears, your sense of helplessness,

before you decided you needed help—that in spite of your best efforts you could

not rise above anger and fear.

Conditioning has tentacles that reach to your very beginning of duality and

the belief that you are alone in this world. Therefore, whatever you do, you are

the doer, and when things turn not out the way you desired, you get caught up in

the emotional mire, in the muck and mire of mental pain.

You may turn to scriptures and you read, “God is a very present help in

trouble.” In those words, you hear that God needs to be reached through your

efforts and struggles. To your pains he’ll respond from afar while you wait in

agony, oft with a doubting heart. Even so, you are eager to cling in your

desperation to any sign of relief while you sit in the ashes of disappointment

and copiously weep.

Let us assume that in the midst of your grief, an angelic thought brings

relief. You latch on to that and may even remember to shift your attention to

God as a very present help in trouble. This now becomes a memory to draw on when

trouble again visits you. Again you turn to God. Why do you wait till you are in

trouble before you seek help?

Do you see the pattern that conditioning creates? Are you now ready to awake,

to realize you need not be in trouble to ask  for help? You need only know that love is ever at your side, eager to companion you, to assist you. Love is eager to help you unfold in the light, through

willingness to accept the loving assistance from a place of well-being and

gratitude.

Now look again at the statement, “God is a very present help in trouble.”

‘Tis true, but see what happens when you acknowledge: God is a very present help

and the love of my life, the love that responds to my joyful desire to know more

than I know, to walk with God more fully day by day. Help then is no longer

based on helplessness but on helpfulness. Do you hear, do you understand the

significance of this truth? If you do or you desire to realize this truth, then

let your intention be that sets you free from all misery:

I joyfully attune to the God of my being within, my friend, my

Beloved, my counselor, my guide, from the invisible sphere of my consciousness

to play with me, to dance with me, to lighten my path.

I intend to respond from moment to moment, remembering that

my journey of life is a divine adventure, the sharing of God’s love with

me and the expression of my appreciation of God’s total participation in

all I do.  Thus I am helped from a place of joy, not because I am helpless but because I recognize that life is a co-creative partnership between my outer and my inner self.

My mind as the instrument becomes the recipient of the light of God that

is my being.

  

I choose from moment to moment to let the light, love, and power,

the joy of the love that I Am flow through me into all I do and to all

that comes to me.

Mastering this greater understanding about receiving help frees you from

helplessness and desperation and believing that you must be in a state of

helplessness before help can come. Replace that thought with helpfulness and

sharing, and you will feel ever greater joy. You will know that your part is not

to do it all but to participate in life with the wisdom, the power, and the

grace, which is a part of your journey and transforms a burden into light, your

work into joy, and your acts into service.

Which will you choose from this day forth—to work yourself into a state of

helplessness, frustration, and desperation before you ask for the help that

allows you to live in joy, or will you choose to live in joy and allow the help

and assistance to do everything with joy and love?

  

We create troubles and difficulties and suffering to justify our need for

getting help or to pray to an unknown God, which means a God perceived to be

outside of us or a God imaged in the mind of man. When we look outside ourselves

for someone to come to our assistance, we are operating the same way in

relationship to each other and thus create co-dependency. This is the way most

humans justify their need for each other. This is the way we perpetuate the

feeling of lack and self-alienation and separateness from the help that is ever

present. Therefore, it never is not present.

  

The alternative to this kind of miscreation or malpractice is to choose to

come from a place of sharing what is—sharing one’s feelings, aspirations, self-

doubts with those who are of an understanding heart and are spiritually

qualified to share with us the wisdom we need to move beyond negative feelings.

Those spiritually qualified can help us remove self-imposed structures of fear

and superstition, lack and limitation and find the entrainment of infinite

possibilities and opportunities for joyful living, self-enlightenment, and self-

fulfillment.

      — Sri Swami Shankarananda Paramhansa

THE  SECRET

Ah, I have discovered the way to let go of attachment: by offering to you

all limited thoughts, emotions, and pain-bearing desires. And I have discovered

that you bless me with freedom and peace of mind as I learn to let go of all

attachments to praise, flattery, and accolades the world has to offer by letting

it all go to Thee, who alone art the source of my life, my love, my mind, my

senses, and my service, and of all noble, enduring qualities.

I have discovered that the more I offer unto Thee the praise bestowed on

me, the more my heart swells with the overwhelming feeling of joy and ecstasy.

The more I give away in Thy name, the more I experience Thy dynamic, breathing

presence and ever flowing grace.

How strange. When I suffered the pain of attachment I did not know that my

healing would come through renunciation by offering all attachments to Thee, by

transferring this to That, form to the Source, the One, the unmanifested, the

radiant One. And now I live by Thy grace in ever greater measure. What peace!

What freedom! What joy to live by offering all to Thee in endless acts of

thanksgiving and Self-remembrance.

I have found the secret of wondrous fulfillment through wholehearted

nonattachment at the juncture where heaviness of heart dissolves into the laughter of soul; heartache melts into peace; and sorrow disappears into stillness to be felt no more. And the pain of separation is transformed into the joy of reunion. And since I have learned to offer everything to Thee, I lack for nothing. I am complete.

      — Swami Shankarananda Paramhansaji

QUESTIONS  AND  ANSWERS

Q. What does it take to receive initiation into the spiritual life?

A.  Obviously, there has to be a qualified Guru as well as the one earnestly

seeking initiation. The requirements to be a chela, or disciple, include  a

sincere desire for liberation with the assistance of a Guru, the assistance of a

mantra, and the assistance of spiritual guidance. The disciple must have the

willingness to be teachable. The disciple should also have the desire to read

the Gita and Upanishads.

In addition to those basic requirements, the ideal disciple has the willingness:

• to be dedicated a thousandfold to total self-transformation

• to render ceaseless service without resistance

• to engage body, mind, and hands in manifesting the truth

• to be the servant of servants of God

• to study sacred teachings of humanity

• to gain self-mastery

• to grow in unconditional love

• to give up the absurd desire to be right

• to realize the manifestation of God in everything and everyone, including oneself

• to work for the mutual welfare and upliftment of all beings and all life without any selfish motive

• to practice meditation without any excuse for not doing so

• to give up all judgment

• to implement the power of unconditional love

• to be thankful and count his or her blessings each day

• to practice self-remembrance

• never to sacrifice spiritual values on the altar of worldly power

• to live in ever greater joy

• to give up the need for approval from others and to cultivate self-approval

• to be steadfast in all of the above

— Sri Swami Shankarananda Paramhansaji

Darshan Winter 2009 by Swami Shankarananda