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What is the Driver of Life? Fate, Karma, or God’s Will? · Inspiration and Transformation

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Welcome to inspiration and transformation from the banks of the Gunga with Sadvi Bagwati Saraswati
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and American Sanyasi living at the parmarth Nikitan Ashram in Rishikesh, India. Sadvi
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is President of the Divine Shakti Foundation, a charitable organization bringing education, vocational
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training, upliftment and empowerment programs to women and children. Sadvi is also Secretary
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General of the Global Interfaith Wash Alliance and director of the world famous International Yoga
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Festival. Joined the musings of an American Sanyasi as Sadvi shares the wisdom and
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teachings of her Guru, His Holiness Pujiaswami Chinnant Saraswatiji. Welcome everyone to inspiration
0:53
and transformation from the holy banks of the Sacred Gunga River in the land of
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Rishakesh, India. Yes, we all have a fate, we all have
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a destiny, but our destiny is created. How when a lot of us
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think of, oh, it must just be my fate or it must be
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my destiny, It's as though somehow my destiny was written in some very random
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way thousands millions of years ago. Somewhere in the sky and totally disconnected from
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me and this life, in this body. It's just there's there's my fate,
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and it's there's nothing I can do to escape it. But that's not
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that's not where our fate comes from. Our fate comes from our karma,
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so our karma. The word karma actually means action. When we think of
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karma, we usually use the word karma to mean the fruits of our karma,
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so we would say bad karma, good karma. But that's more of
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a Western colloquialism. The word karma actually means action. Now, whether you
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are studying physics, Newton's laws, or you're studying spiritual laws. Either way,
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actions have reactions. Actions have consequences. Actions have repercussions. Plant a
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peach seed, you will get a peach tree. Spill water on my sorry,
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it will get wet. Actions have consequences. Share love you get love,
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not always from the other person, because of course their whole karmic package
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is involved. But if you share love, you feel love inside you,
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even if the other person can't necessarily respond appropriately. But if I'm creating love
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and sharing love, I'm feeling love. So everything I do is going to
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have a a consequence, a reaction, a repercussion. There will be what
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we call fruits of the karma. Now, if you add up the fruits
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of all of my past karmas, past lives, this life, all the
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ones that have not already born fruit, because some of them are immediate,
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what it would call cream on Karma's immediate. It's not something I need to
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carry into a next life. I spill water on my sorry it's wet,
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then it'll dry. End of story. But a lot of what we do
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bears fruit later in this life. Some of it bears fruit in next life.
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We don't always have the results of an action immediately. Your fate is
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the sum of all of the fruits of all of the actions you've done that
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have not yet already borne their fruit and finished. So your destiny is created
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by your actions. I always say the pre of something that is predetermined right
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we say it must be predestined, predetermined. The pre is right here,
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right now. My action here and now is the pre of that which is
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predestined for me next week, next month, next year. I am If
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you could turn destiny into a verb, you would say I am destinying myself
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right now, right, I'm creating my destiny through my actions right now.
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So that's karma and fate or destiny, and then God's will God, as
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far as my experience, as far as the wisdom that I have received from
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enlightened masters, from scripture, God's will is one thing and one thing only
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that we should realize God, that we should realize self, whether you say
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self realization or God realization. That is what God wants. God is not
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sitting there having a will about whether you're going to get a particular raise,
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or you're going to get a promotion, or you're going to get into a
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specific university. I mean, it's from a spiritual perspective. It's very helpful
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psychological perspective as well. It's very helpful to be able to simply say it
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must be God's will. It's a perspective I fully support because what it does
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is it keeps you really calm, really peaceful. It keeps you accepting the
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universe. Then we're not fighting the universe. Oh, this project didn't succeed,
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Okay, it must be God's will. It's a beautiful way to live.
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But it also involves this idea of God as much more of a micromanager
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than I actually think God really is that which happens happens due to wide varieties
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of intersecting factors, our past karma's, our karmic journey, other people's karmas,
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their karmic journey, because we're all intersecting together. You get a raise,
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while someone gave you that raise, it's not your individual karma in a
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vacuum. Someone had to decide you deserved that more than the other guy.
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The other guy has a karma, a karmic thread, a karmic journey.
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All of them are interweaving together to create a situation that is both a result
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of past karmas, not rewards and punishments, as I always emphasized, just
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simply a result. But that is also the most conducive situation for you to
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do the one thing which is God's will, which is to realize God.
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And so when you realize that everything that happens is happening for a divine reason.
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And that's why I love people who say and I even say it,
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I try to say it, try to remember to say it, It's all
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God's will, even though if you actually pinned me to it, I would
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say, ah, I think probably God isn't wasting his time, you know,
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deciding that I'm not going to make it to the dinner because there's too
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much traffic. Like chances chances are God was really not so personally involved in
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my traffic jam. But but what it means is it's all in the will
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of the divine unfolding. When we say God's will, it sort of personifies
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God, like God has a vested interest in I should make it to the
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dinner, I shouldn't make it to the dinner. But if we realize it's
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all just part of this divine unfolding that of course God, the divine,
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the capital P planner, whatever we say has put into motion, but it's
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happening along with laws of nature. Karma is one of those laws of nature.
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There's a lot of other laws of nature and all of our unfolding.
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It's like, my favorite example of this is gravity. Gravity's a law of
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nature. If I walked to the top of a building and I step off
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it and it's a tall building, regardless of how high it is, I'm
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going to fall. It's a tall building. I'm gonna splat on the ground.
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Now, was that my fate or destiny was it written thousands and thousands
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of years ago that I was going to die by falling off a building.
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I don't know, not in my mind. In my mind, that's a
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result of karma. I've done an action, which is I walked off a
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building. Maybe I did an action before that. Maybe I got really drunk,
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or I took a lot of drugs that led me to believe that I
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could fly, or that led me to think that building was just right there
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off the ground, and hence I stepped off it. But when I did
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that, it brought me right into an intersection with a law of nature,
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and that law of nature is gravity. Now you say, is it was
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it my destiny to die? Well, it became my destiny to die when
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I did the karma of stepping off the building, or when I did the
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collective karmas of getting drunk, taking drugs, going to the top of the
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building, believing what my drug induced mind told me about the height of the
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building. Those sequential karmas created a fate that when they intersected with gravity,
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a law that was put into place with creation, I was going to die.
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Now do you say, was it God's will that she should die?
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Well? No, God just put this law of gravity into place? Was
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it God's will that I should go against everything I had learned about maintaining presence
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of mind, maintaining consciousness and mindfulness and awareness. Now, God just put
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this thing called a law of gravity into place when nature was created. So
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we intersect our actions with the laws that have been put into place by the
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divine creator. And if we are in alignment with God's one will, which
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is we should realize God, which means, of course, as we do
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that that we experience love in ourselves as ourselves, that we share love,
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that we experience light in ourselves as ourselves, And therefore we share light,
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that we realize and recognize the abundance of ourselves, and therefore we share of
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ourselves with others. That's God's will. That which happens in our life,
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depending on how aligned we are with God's will, is going to be an
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intersection of my karma, the laws of nature, and God's will. But
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hopefully we allow God's will in our alignment with it, to be that which
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guides my karma my action, so that I'm acting in accordance with my higher
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goal, which is self realization, God realization. And then you find that
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your life becomes something where you're always just saying, Oh, it's God's grace,
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it's God's grace, it's God's will, it's God's grace, because that's
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what's unfolding for you, rather than constantly going, Oh, my God,
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I guess this is my bad fate, my bad fate, my bad fate.
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Align the karma and then what you'll see is whatever the destiny of the
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moment may be, you're going to be able to use it as a way
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to further your deepening awareness. And then God's will becomes your will, and
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then it's all just as Pujaswami you would say, by God's grace. You're
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Brought to you by Rain and this station. Welcome back to inspiration and transformation.
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I'm so glad to have you all back here with me now. The
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title of of my book is Hollywood to the Himalias. And I've had so
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many people say, really, you're from Hollywood. Yes, literally, And
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it's a world where everyone wants to be an actor and actress. And what
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makes one person get a role another person not. It's an absolute enigma.
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There's no equation. I mean, there's some similarities. You've got to be
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nice looking, you have to be at least mildly talented, you have to
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be driven, But beyond that, there's no set of skills. I mean,
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I know people who are incredibly skilled. They've taken lots and lots and
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lots of acting classes, programs. They're great singers, they're great dancers.
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Never got a job, and then out of the blue, some somebody who
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you know isn't nearly as objectively talented becomes a star. There's no equation.
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And this isn't true only in places like Hollywood. This is true around the
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world. Now. There's some professions that do tend to be much more rooted
18:29
in your actual competency than in who you know, things like technology, things
18:36
like science. I mean, you've got to be able to actually do the
18:40
work, doesn't matter who you know. If you're hired from some big tech
18:47
company and you can't actually code, they're not going to keep you for very
18:52
long. But along with having the competency, having connections is also a great
19:03
benefit. There's lots of people who are super competent. Lots and lots of
19:10
people graduate with software engineering degrees every year. They don't all get great jobs.
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So as a teacher, what I would say is help your children,
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your students use everything that they have. Help them understand that number one,
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they have to work hard, they have to have the skills because even if
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they know someone. If it turns out that they are incompetent, nobody's going
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to hire them or keep them hired. So they've got to have the skills.
19:48
But if it turns out that their family knows people, or their neighbor
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is somebody, or there's why not. You know a lot of times I'll
19:57
hear people say, well, I don't want to use a connection to get
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this, I only want to do it on merit. And to me,
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even if there is a connection, if there's not merit, they're not going
20:17
to hire you. You're not going to actually succeed on connection alone. You
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have to have the ability to do whatever it is that you've been put in
20:26
the role to do in order to succeed. But if it turns out that
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you happen to know the right people, or you could meet the right people,
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or you could make a connection, you could network, why not yet
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another skill? If going to a conference and spending time meeting people in the
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field that you're interested in networking, why not? So I would as an
20:57
educator, I would help them do both. Help them understand that no mommies
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or daddy's friends are not going to actually be able to make them succeed throughout
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their life. They may be able to open a door. They may get
21:14
them an interview, or otherwise they wouldn't get them an interview. They may
21:18
get them a low level starting position, or otherwise they wouldn't get that,
21:25
but they're not going to carry them to a position of success. And in
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the same way, to deny meeting people who could help you also doesn't make
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any sense. That's also a skill, that's also a tool. So encourage
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them to do both. You know, being the type of person who people
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want to work with is in and of itself a skill. You could call
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it, right, I mean, nobody puts it on their resume. But
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if through networking, let's say I'm Let's say I'm an employer and I've got
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a job opening, and there's a hundred resumes on my desk, all of
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which look good. Like every person who has submitted a resume has got the
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skills, because otherwise the people who gave me the resumes have cleared away all
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the people who don't have the skills, the ones now on my desk,
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or people with the skills. But then I find myself at a conference and
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over a cup of tea, I'm talking to someone who, it turns out,
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also has the skills. And I'm really enjoying the conversation. And this
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person really strikes me as someone who is enthusiastic, sincere, They're funny,
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they make me laugh. Turns out we have a lot in common. Why
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am I going to go back and my time going through a hundred resumes.
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I'm going to hire this person on the spot. So help them understand that
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both are skills, the skills they get in a classroom and skills of how
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to how to get along. You know, it's the it's the drama of
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this world of Maya. You know, we all we all have to play
23:32
our role. And so if a piece of your role is to have a
23:38
certain profession or to go in a certain way, play that role, play
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it fully. Nothing wrong with that, and that's why, you know,
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as an educator you could also help them. A lot of kids get really
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nervous. They don't know how to talk to adults. They're told and taught
23:56
from childhood that children are meant to be seen, not heard. You know,
24:02
shut up until I speak to you. So you put them in a
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job interview. When they freeze, they mumble A great skill to give them
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run mock interviews, run mock communications, interview each of them in front of
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the class. Get them developing communication skills as well, because that'll really really
24:30
help them in life. This is OTRFM, part of the IOM Radio network.
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Times co creating a more conscious lifestyle. Do you have time to read that
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I grew up loving circuses and other traveling animal shows, but it never
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occurred to me what life might be like for the animals. Training wild animals
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patronize animal acts. Please contact People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals seven six
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two two p e t A. Welcome back. This is Sadvi Bagavati Saraswati
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with inspiration and transformation. Thank you as the best mantra. Most of us
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think that the order should be first I get what I want. Then when
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I get what I want, I'll be happy. Then when I'm happy,
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I will be grateful. I mean, that seems like a logical order.
26:44
Here's what I want. Until I get it, I'm not happy. Then
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I get it, I am happy, and in that happiness I express my
26:56
gratitude to whoever gave it to me, to God, to the universe,
27:03
whatever. But actually, actually it turns out that it's not that happiness leads
27:19
to gratitude. It's actually that gratitude leads to happiness, and it's not the
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getting what we want leads to happiness. We know that, we know that.
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I mean, how many how many times in life? Right, there's
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that great story of the the villager who what are the happy at account?
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Forget the first part of the story, but join me in the middle of
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the story where he gets this horse out of the blue, this beautiful horse
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shows up. Something very bad had happened to him before then, and people
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had said, oh, my god, you know you've lost so much,
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and you poor thing. And he said, we'll see, we'll see.
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Then he gets this horse, and everybody says, oh, wow, you're
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so blessed. You've got this beautiful, beautiful horse. And he says,
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we'll see. And one day his son is riding the horse. The sun
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falls off and breaks his leg, and everybody says, my gods, your
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beloved son, your one and only son, broke his leg. My god,
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you poor thing. And he says, we'll see. In a little
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while. Later, the government of the city that he's from comes through,
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pulling all of the young men to fight a war that has started with the
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people in the neighboring city. But his son is laid up with his leg
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in a cast, and so his son doesn't get taken off to fight in
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the war, and everybody says, wow, Wow, what a blessing your
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son got saved. Of course, he says, we'll see right. So
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we all know the situation of getting what we think we wanted, only to
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discover that actually it wasn't nearly the blessing that we thought. Sometimes not getting
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what you want and realizing in retrospect, oh, thank God, like not
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getting it was such a blessing. Right. We've all had that happen.
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You prayed you wanted something, you didn't get it, and you realize later,
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my God, if I had gotten that, where I would have been.
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So we know that getting what we want is not the way to become
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happy. But we also know that gratitude, at its deepest level is not
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that which stems from actually getting something that makes me happy. Gratitude stems from
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an awareness within ourselves of how blessed we are, regardless of what we have,
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of how deeply blessed we are. If your eyes open this morning and
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you actually can see out of them, if you've got legs that enable you
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to stand on them and walk into your bathroom from your bed, if you
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can turn on a tap and actually have water come out of it, clean
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water that you can use to drink, to cook with. If you've got
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food in a cupboard, on a table, in a fridge, or money
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in a purse to be able to buy the food from a market. If
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you've got someone in your bed when you wake up, or in your house
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or in your life anywhere, who you love and who loves you, not
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necessarily romantic. Anyone who you love who loves you. If you've got all
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of those things, you are more fortunate than almost anyone on this planet.
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And if on top of that, you can worship God however you want,
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without some government, some group, some people preventing you or oppressing you,
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or killing you. If you can love other people whomever you would like in
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whatever way you would like, without being thrown in jail or oppressed or oppressed.
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If you've got all of these things, consider yourself in the top up
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tiny, tiny, tiny percentage of fortunate people, so we don't have to
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actually look very far to find things to be grateful for. Gratitude arises from
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an experience inside my cup runneth over my God, I am so blessed,
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And it can be little things. I mean for me on a personal level.
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Every single time I walk into the Ashram. There's a view. When
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you walk into the Ashram from the banks of Gunga, We've got this arch
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right in the center of the Ashram, this beautiful color, colorful arch with
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a little pointy thing at the top. And when you walk in in the
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daytime, in the light, just behind that arch, what you see are
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all of the green mountains. And when you walk in in the evening most
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of the year, what you see behind that arch is the moon. And
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whenever I walk in the Asham day or evening, I look at that view
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and I think, my God, I can't believe I get to live here.
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I can't believe that I get to call this place my home. And
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it never gets old. It's been twenty six years and every time I see
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that. So you don't have to look very far. But what all of
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our not just spirituality, but if you look today at science, if you
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look at psychology, if you look at the studies that are being done,
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the research that is being done, what it's all showing us is that gratitude
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produces happiness, not vice versa. First you become grateful, then you will
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be happy, and then something very interesting happens. Then you start getting what
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you want. It's really interesting. We become magnets of that which we want.
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There is a power ingratitude that somehow makes the energy of the universe stand
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up and take notice and support that. You know, if you've got someone
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in your life who just from the depths of their heart is so grateful day
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in and day out for your presence in their life, whatever you do,
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you're going to have an instinct to keep like doing things for them, right.
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I mean, if it's if it's sincere just effusive gratitude for who you
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are, whatever you do, Oh my god, thank you so much for
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that smile. That smile just made my day. Well, you're gonna want
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to keep smiling at them, not so that they keep saying thank you,
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but because we all really, at the end of the day, we all
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want to be seen, we want to be appreciated. We want our lives
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to make a difference. And if there's someone who minute after minute, day
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after day, just keeps appreciating you and telling you how much how much your
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life matters to them, you're gonna want to keep living near them. And
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I think in the same way the universe there's just an energy around. Okay,
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this person notices this person is connected, because think about it. I
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don't know if any of you have ever done this experiment. I sure have
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where you go out and you just decide you are going to smile at everybody
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that day, and you're going to try to make as many people smile as
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you can. If you've never done the experiment, I really recommend it.
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It's a beautiful I mean, how you feel at the end of the day
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is so beautiful. But what you notice as you do it is when someone
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smiles back, it brings a whole new level of inner joy. When nobody
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smiles at you, you have to keep generating the joy from inside yourself.
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You keep closing your eyes, you keep meditating. Again, you go within
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and you find within the source of joy that enables you to just keep smiling
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at people, even when they ignore you or look at like you're crazy.
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But when someone actually smiles back at you, it's a fuel, it's a
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catalyst to make you keep smiling. You're so much more ready to smile at
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the next person. And I think that the universe is kind of the same
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way that, like when we are in alignment with it when we notice its
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gifts, we notice its grace, and we are grateful for it. There's
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an energy, and so to get what you want first you become grateful sincerely,
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not as a means to an end, because guess what, the universe
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is pretty smart. It's actually inside your head as well, so you can't
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you can't outsmart the energy of the universe because it hears your thoughts. So
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sincere gratitude for how your cup runneth over, and from that gratitude joy blossoms.
39:36
And in that joy, one of two things happens. Either you get
39:40
the thing that you thought you wanted and it just moves into your already joyous
39:47
space, or you don't get it but you realize that, as it turns
39:55
out, you didn't actually need it to be happy, and so you end
40:00
up wanting what you have rather than trying to have what you want. And
40:09
that's really the key to happiness is not how do I get what I want?
40:15
But how do I want what I have? So thank you is the
40:22
best mantra. This is OTRFM, part of the Iom Radio network. Ome
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two A welcome back. This is Sadvi Bagavati Saraswathi with inspiration and transformation.
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God is going to manifest in different ways for each of us, based on
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our own characteristics, our own personalities, our own needs. What matters most
42:30
to God is simply that we connect. And so based on how we think,
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based on our karma, based on our characteristics, we're going to experience
42:45
God in different ways. Having a warm and fuzzy, expansive feeling in the
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heart is beautiful and yeah, I feel that as well. But as many
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people as there are who connect with God, I think there's that many different
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experiences of what God is like. It's like if you imagine in your family,
43:20
say you've got three siblings and mother and father, and some uncles and
43:28
some aunts and some grandparents. You know, call it a relatively standard family,
43:34
and you ask everyone in the family to describe mom. So you ask
43:43
your dad to describe mom. Then you ask your brother or sister to describe
43:46
mom. Then you ask your grandparents to describe Mom. Everybody's going to describe
43:53
her in different ways based on their relationship with her. So to your grandparents
44:00
parents, she's their daughter and they're going to have a completely different perspective on
44:07
her, and therefore notice and recognize and appreciate different qualities of her than you
44:15
and your siblings. For whom she's your mom, your father, her husband,
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is going to have a completely different perspective on her. So if you
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say kat is thinking about Mom, make you feel well, everybody's going to
44:35
feel differently. And that's only in one family, five or six or eight
44:40
family members. Now you think God, Who's infinite, Who could be?
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Who could be appearing to you in a temple, in a church, in
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a good dwa, in a mosque. God could be appearing to you in
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the fu warm of Krishna or Ron or Shiva, Doordiga or Christ, or
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in the word through a Guru grand sab through all of the different ways that
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all of the different religions connect with God, some with form, some without
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form, some with a spoken name, some without a spoken name, and
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of course remember all of our indigenous traditions as well, for whom the divine
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manifests a spirit, a spirit that they feel and experience and worship through the
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elements. But God is infinite. So God is all of those and in
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the same way that your your mom isn't gonna care or have preference about who
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connects with her. How think about it in another way, Think about it
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as a mother, but with four or five kids, different ages, and
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one kid older one says mom, loo on a little bit, a little
46:29
bit younger says mommy. I went a little bit younger says ma or mama,
46:38
and the infant goes, Mama. Does she care? Does she does
46:51
she love one over the other? For the infant, she's a breast.
46:57
Right, If you could somehow get into that infant head and say, what's
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your experience of mother? It would be abreast. But as we as we
47:10
grow, obviously our experience of mother changes. It's no longer just abreast.
47:17
Becomes a lap, then it becomes arms, then it becomes an actual being,
47:24
the one who cares for us. Then there's all kinds of relationship issues,
47:34
and that's that's one human being. Now you think about God infinite,
47:43
with infinite number of relationships, with infinite numbers of beings. Because I'm not
47:50
convinced that humans are the only ones able to connect with God. Couldn't guarantee
47:57
that other species can, but I also couldn't get guarantee that they can't.
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So we have to assume at least the possibility that there's even more than the
48:07
However, many billions of humans have lived on Earth ways of connecting with God,
48:19
but God, God doesn't seem to have a preference. However, we
48:24
connect with God, you know, Bugwan Krishna says, and the geta however
48:30
the devote he worships me. I appear to the devotee in that form.
48:38
So whether we're talking about a form of how we actually experience God or whether
48:45
we're talking about how we feel God in and our beings. Yeah, I
48:54
think feeling God in our heart is beautiful. That love of God, that
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presence of God's love, it's beautiful. As we emphasize buck the yoke and
49:13
devotion, it's all about feeling God's love. What are there other ways to
49:22
experience God? Of course, there's a lot of people for whom God isn't
49:30
a being who actually loves us and who we love, So it's not such
49:34
a heart connection. But it's just a presence, an omni presence, an
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infinite presence, This idea that there is nothing but God, and so there's
49:47
an experience of just infinite spaciousness without even necessarily a quality that one would identify
49:58
in the heart as love, and God is all of that. God is
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infinite spaciousness, peace, expansion, love, truth, the Mother, the
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Father, the Friend. As we chant in our mantras, you are everything.
50:24
So however you connect to the Divine, it's beautiful and it's correct.
50:35
Rama Krishna Paraman's one of the greatest mystics, ears, sages, beings ever,
50:45
did a personal experiment where he literally wanted to see whether he could mean
50:52
for him. He experienced God as the Mother Goddess as College. But then
51:00
he thought, well, she's infinite, can I experience her through all these
51:08
other traditions, And so he actually went out and he spent quite a bit
51:14
of time worshiping God as a Christian, worshiping God as a Muslim worshiping God.
51:23
I forget all of the different religions he did, but he chose several
51:28
different religions and really went into their practices, their name, their language,
51:36
like how they worship, and at the end of all of them, he
51:42
was in the same place one with his Divine Mother. And it was a
51:51
beautiful experience for us through him, to realize that for one who's so deeply
51:59
connected to a particular aspect, a particular form, you could say of the
52:06
divine Kalima that he was equally able to access her through worshiping Jesus Christ.
52:14
And then it didn't matter which way he went in, but he got to
52:19
the exact same place every time. So, however you experience God, don't
52:28
worry. It's all exactly right, it's all exactly perfect. The only thing
52:35
that we always should try is can I experience God more more in terms of
52:44
frequency, because most of us tend to experience God when we're really trying in
52:50
our meditation, in our prayers. Maybe if we're very fortunate, it happens
52:55
spontaneously. There's just moments of our day and suddenly were overcome with the presence
53:02
of God. But there tend to be a lot of hours of our day
53:08
where we are overcome with things other than God. And so I think the
53:15
only prayer, rather than to experience God in some different way, would be
53:23
to experience God more frequently. May I experience God through whatever I'm doing,
53:31
cooking food, doing the dishes, sweeping the floor, designing a website,
53:36
driving a car, going grocery, shopping, filing papers, singing a song,
53:43
writing a book, reading a book, balancing accounts, whatever I'm doing,
53:52
can I experience God through that? As God is infinite, my experience
54:04
of God may not be infinite, but at least it's something that covers and
54:12
infuses as many of my daily moments and activities as possible. This brings to
54:23
a close this hour of inspiration and transformation. Thank you so much for joining
54:34
me. I'm so glad to be together with you all each week, and
54:38
I look forward to being together again next Thursday, same time on Home Time's
54:46
radio m M. But they don't because the okay, don't be when O
55:59
back, don't be, I can't be became me. We can men play,
56:34
we can beat the beacon, be to the beaker. I think can
57:04
return to buy their ing