March 9-10, Malke. Opportunities can be created if one has pure intentions, particularly when it comes to selfless service. Soon after the Shivaratri camp, Sadhwi Ji felt a need to wash the blankets just out of her concern and caring nature. Her army was ready as always so they took up this overwhelming task of washing 500+ odd blankets in one day. Let me be more specific, they took just 5 hours to wash them all. Then drying them was another outlandish task which they took up very courageously. Carrying so many blankets soaked with water all the way to the top floor of various buildings was not an easy thing yet they did it in hardly anytime. Later Sadhwi Ji was explaining this all to Maharaj Ji and expressing her feelings of not being able to devote enough time for spiritual practice to which Maharaj Ji answered clearly:
“At the cost of such services if you do chanting or any other kriya, it wouldn’t help you grow much in your spirit. Selfless service help your spirit to expand and prepares base for the descent of the divine. So worry not as long you serve Him in any form.” At this the memory also goes out to the lives of saints like Milarepa, Guru Angad Deva, Guru Amar Das, Swami Dyalu Puri and also the Upanishadic characters like Aaruni, Udalaka – each one of them cultivated the purest essence of spirituality within them climbing on the twin-ladder of sewa and simran (service and meditation), but they took their first steps primarily by sublimating their mental tendencies in the fire of service. Maharaj Ji often says that service and simran are like the two wings of the sadhaka-bird – both are to be utilized in soaring into the vast sky of the spirit. Service implies those acts through which the mind can be purified of its base tendencies – the gist of which to work in the spirit of service to the Divine without worrying or desiring name-fame, loss-victory etc. (in short Nishkama Karma). Concentration and meditation then become the means of drawing such a lightened mind to be drawn into the sushumna and thence starts the journey magnificent – the path of fire and light.