by Tara Singh
Awakening the Heart of Service
One has to make contact with who one really is. Whatever we really are would have to be intrinsic. It is not something learned, it is who you are.
Goodness is something that you and I are. It is impersonal and absolute; all of us have it. Yet we have not really made contact with it. Goodness may not conform another. Goodness may have no conditions.
Can you see the good in the other person, irrespective of what they do? It would be a wholly different relationship when I no longer acknowledge your reactions – when I am rooted in my own goodness.
How do I become rooted in my goodness? I see the good in you. And my goodness may awaken the goodness in you. Then my non-reaction introduces you to who you are. For instance, Jesus says if someone slaps you on one cheek, turn the other also. The person who turns the other cheek has done one of the most noble, powerful things upon the planet.
Such a person no longer reacts. He just sees that you have become a victim of your anger, your vested interests, your assumptions. But he is not affected by them. Then you have a better chance of knowing the power of that goodness.
You may say, “Well, I am greedy, I am selfish, I am reactive.” But that is your opinion. Your opinion is not basic. Goodness is basic. So is gratefulness basic. Gratefulness is the adoration of creation; it has touched upon the Divine Intelligence of compassion – that everything is sustained by life.
The rivers flow and they flow timelessly. The snow falls, the seasons change, and my circulation continues. There is another order of the universe. There is another rhythm in life which is not personalized. And in this non-personalized life, there is goodness.
When a child is born, there is an involuntary tenderness in the mother, and the milk appears in the breast to feed the child. That is a different action, an action of goodness that sustains life.
But we are spending more money on armament to destroy one another. Self-destruction is at work. What we need is some contact with the sanity of goodness. It does not need a cause. It does not need to organize. You and I are responsible for our own goodness. You say, “Well, I will get cheated.” I wonder.
Whether you are a typist, a lawyer, or a bus driver, you can still be good and kind. Kindness is never wrong. So the question is, what prevents us from being our true selves?
Fear. And insecurity. Our whole culture is based on insecurity from the outset. I think I may not have shelter or enough food to survive. Someone else owns the house; someone else owns the land. Possessiveness and insecurity have become one. Possessiveness is the expression of insecurity. And now it can not give.
Goodness and gratefulness and love know only giving. The water knows only to give, the tree knows only to give. Everything that is created gives. So there is the world of creation that is eternal, impersonal. There is nothing you can do about it. The sun is going to rise, your heart is going to beat. You are not in control. It is outside our reach, but it sustains life.
As long as I am related with the manmade world, I am insecure. But what if I were related with creation? I think it would take insecurity away. What would it be like never to be insecure? To recognize that there are other forces at work? Now I am totally oblivious of them. I think it is just the Congress that works, or the mayor, or the police. These are our projections and inventions.
Year after year a tree bears fruit, and it does not care who takes it, whether it is a robber or a saint. It just knows to give.
I think goodness knows to give. And goodness brings about some transformation in its own way.
I was in New York. I had just come from India. I had quite a lot of money and I had a nation behind me. But there are exchange laws and it became very difficult to convert money.
Now I was left without a penny. I did not have any skills nor did I want to get a job, even if there was one. You are in a state that does not compromise. It is not that you are lazy. You have something to give to mankind.
It is a test. It is your own direct experience. Do you know we do not have any direct experience in our life? We live by emotions and sensations and thoughts of fear, tomorrow and yesterday. That is not living. What about being in the present? The resources of the present are tremendous. But for a few days, nothing happened. I did not eat.
To make contact with the Present first would be the only sanity. And yet we put that in the second place and get busy with brain activity and the illusions of yesterday and tomorrow.
We get distracted. And therefore we cannot know love, nor goodness, nor anything. Whatever we do know would be emotional, self-centered, related not to reality, but to our memories, and the memories of the race.
You have to discipline yourself to make contact with the present. I said, “I will not compromise. The present has resources. I want to make contact with them.” That was my experiment.
And it was amazing. I am still alive. Strange things happen.
When you do not compromise, you have order in your life; no insecurity touches you. So my needs were met. I began to see other forces at work, and they brought me to adoration. When you will not compromise, you are connected with the Source of life itself. It provides.
Some time later, I met Mr. J. Krishnamurti. I asked him, “Does life take care?” He said, “Yes, if you absolutely let go.” What do you let go? Your fear and your thought. What is your thought? It represents insecurity, greed, selfishness – “Look at me, self-improved.” The misery of it. The falseness.
When you do not compromise, you have order in your life; no insecurity touches you…. When you will not compromise, you are connected with the Source of life itself. It provides.
A Course in Miracles questions everything. And the answer is the miracle, a moment of insight. It brings you to questioning, to undoing the past and the fear of the future. It introduces you to the vitality of the present.
A Course in Miracles gives one the discipline that is most practical. It says bring to remembrance that you are divine. Bring to remembrance that “nothing real can be threatened.”* Bring to remembrance that “nothing unreal exists.”*
In reality there is no fear. Fear is of tomorrow; it is never in the present.
The Course awakens awareness. When you make contact with the timeless reality of yourself, there is a miracle: you are clear. In clarity there is goodness. In goodness there is certainty. And your only expression is of gratefulness that life is kind.
You step out of the world of time into the world of eternity, the universal order. It cannot be organized. I can awaken myself; you can awaken yourself. Any person can awaken – male, female, rich, poor, children, anyone.
So something is emerging out of A Course in Miracles: the action of the Joseph Plan for those who are in need. It starts with goodness, with giving rather than wanting.
The Course offers the peace of God, a state of stillness. The power of stillness is the discovery of the present and the discovery of goodness. When you have something of yourself to give, then you are extending your true nature. And “Love ye one another”** becomes true.
*ACIM, Text, Introduction
**John 13:34