M
EHER
S
PIRITUAL
C
ENTER
a place of pilgrimage for all time
|
|
There is nothing that love cannot achieve and there is nothing that love cannot sacrifice. There is nothing which is beyond me and there is nothing without me. Yet, I am and can always be captured with love.
Pure love is matchless in majesty, it has no parallel in power and there is no darkness it cannot dispel. It is the undying flame that has set all life aglow.
Meher Baba
Lord Meher, Online, p. 2591
|
|
|
Dear Meher Center Family and Friends,
Loving greetings to you all during this most unusual and difficult time throughout the world. Meher Baba once said that “God is everywhere and does everything.” Since, as Baba explains, His only job is to take each of us from where we are to where
He Is
(Infinite consciousness) we can trust there is a deeper purpose behind this crisis that is affecting all of humanity, and is offering each soul the possibility of moving forward in this journey home to Beloved God. One could say
that
is the silver lining of this devastating pandemic. We have only to look at the news each day to see countless, inspiring examples of selfless service, sacrifice, and love – those divine qualities that cleanse the heart, propelling one forward toward the source of Love and Truth.
Now into our third week of being closed to visitors, life at Meher Center is extra quiet and serene. Various spring blossoms are in full colorful display, filling the air with an abundance of both sweet fragrances and pestering pollen. A light dusting of this green snowy nuisance can be seen everywhere, along with the odd person sneezing in the distance. (More than six feet away, of course.) During the day and at night, there are only a few staff on duty for security and ongoing maintenance.
It is, of course, impossible for anyone to plan anything right now. As many of you know, we have had to cancel or postpone our spring events. The inaugural Spring Cleaning Sahavas was cancelled, the annual weekend retreat for Evening and Overnight Caretakers and Gatekeepers was postponed, the Artist in Residence week with the multi-talented Alan Wagner is postponed to a later date, and the presentation about the Blue Bus Tours by special speaker and author Susan McKendree will also have to be rescheduled. Finally, we do anticipate needing to cancel the 30
th
Youth Sahavas, scheduled for late June. We will be communicating about that as soon as we are certain, and about any possibility of postponement to later in the Summer.
One final note: we will be sending out weekly offerings during this period while the Center is closed. One major newsletter a month, and three shorter communications. Please go to the news section of our website for any updates: https://www.mehercenter.org/news/.
We hope it is the Beloved’s Wish that we can reopen the Center before long so that old timers and newcomers can enjoy the timeless beauty and atmosphere of His home in the West.
In the meantime, may you remain healthy and happy in remembrance of the One Who is fully in charge.
In Meher Baba’s love and service,
Buz Connor
For Meher Center board and staff
|
|
The Real Flowers
By Jamie Keehan
|
|
On an early spring afternoon at the Center, while doing my rounds checking each quiet, unoccupied cabin, I stopped my golf cart in front of the Guest House. As I entered the wooden gates, I was greeted by pink flowers overflowing from the bushes all around me, each petal alive in the breeze and sunlight. I opened the door and walked into the house where Baba’s women Mandali had stayed, stopping in the bathroom to wash my hands next to the tub where Baba Himself had bathed.
Then, in that mirror, right next to Baba’s bathtub, I started to cry.
I walked tearfully through the living room where I always half-expect Baba to sit chatting with the women on the sunlit daybed, and out to the porch. Baba’s swing drifted quietly left and right on the breeze that wafted up from the lake, tumbling the leaves in a perpetual dance. I couldn’t imagine this waste of beauty, with no guests here to enjoy the unearthly vibrancy of the flowers that will wilt before they return, each precious square inch of dappled sunshine, every gust of breeze over the quiet lake that seems to proclaim in its shimmer that all is well, that God’s so close you can almost touch Him.
The only thing I could hold on to, in that moment, was that Baba would enjoy it, that He would have to enjoy it even if none of His lovers could.
And in that moment, I felt an answer. That that’s not the kind of beauty Baba enjoys.
I remember a story that Sheela Fenster wrote in her book about her childhood with Baba,
Growing Up with God
. During a program in 1962, as she watched everyone else bring Baba flowers, the most lush and beautiful offerings of the season, she grumbled to her mother that they hadn’t brought Him anything.
Baba called Sheela and her mother into the hall right after the program. With no preamble, He started talking to Sheela, through Eruch, about the people bringing Him flowers. “You shouldn’t worry about flowers, garlands, or this and that. I don’t need all those things. Let other people bring them. I don’t need flowers from you; your flowers are in your heart… People bring flowers because the flowers smell fragrant. Flowers make you happy; they are nice to look at… [but these people] forget about me, they forget that they have to increase their love for me internally. It doesn’t require flowers.”*
God has made millions of blossoms dripping with beauty, millions of springs, millions of vistas on a perfect day, millions of moments of birdsong in the new warmth. And they are precious, as the Center is precious, because they can make us feel His presence at the core of that beauty, bursting at the seams of these temporal forms. But what Baba really wants is infinitely more real and infinitely more precious than anything we can see. Yes, sometimes, we might be on the porch of the Guest House at the very tip of spring, seeing God shimmer in the breeze over a quiet lake. Sometimes, it’s easier than others. But all the time, wherever we are, we have the unequaled, unimaginable privilege of trying to give Baba what He really wants— the only thing that lasts, the only thing that matters, our love.
*
Growing Up with God
, pg. 239
|
|
The Power of His Name
By Preeti Hay
|
|
As Baba lovers we are blessed to have His merciful instruction of involving Him in anything we do. We can turn our day to day life into sadhana with Meher Baba. It is through this very act that we get closer to Him and are led by His voice within us. But what do we do when the cacophonous screeching of our minds prevents us from hearing Him? What do we do when we stumble, again and again as seekers at our own inabilities at remembrance? In my own life I have found when I am so distraught, all I can do is take His name. Taking Baba's name is the simplest and one of the most powerful tools in the box of remembrance.
Meher Baba said that there is more power in His name than even His self, which is why Baba Himself repeated His own name. In His early life, Baba had asked his disciples to take the name of God, according to their personal religions, and later on He said, “Take my name.” One of Baba's Mandali, Kaikobad, took His name 100,000 times a day in silence and was rewarded with divine visions.
All world religions and many spiritual traditions give supreme importance to the Lord's name. In this advent, Meher Baba bestows on His name the spiritual significance and power He has made manifest through His presence. Some spiritual and religious faiths require special initiations in order to take on God's name as a Mantra, to be repeated for a set number of hours at certain times of day. In the Hindu tradition it is believed that God's name is the divine potion that His lovers can eternally draw from. “Ram's name is yours for the looting, loot all you can, before time and body pass away,” wrote Kabir.
The question arises, should one take His name internally or say it out loud. Baba has explained, “In the presence of any wild animal or other creature (such as a snake) you should loudly cry out my name so loud that the sound of my name falls on the creature's ears which will make it as meek as a lamb! But before inanimate objects, during any serious mishap or accident– such as a car crash or train wreck– you will be saved by remembering me with full faith from the bottom of your heart.”
In a talk in Mandali Hall, Meherwan Jessawala reminded us that in the beginning His name might be mechanically said, but eventually it will become a habit. Like a mosquito net, it protects us from the thoughts of our lower self. It purifies our hearts and souls, it lightens the burden of our sanskaras and it moves us closer to Him. Through this purity, the happenings around us will be less likely to affect us as we strive to be in the world but not of it. Meherwan also recounts that in the months before dropping His body, Baba placed a lot of importance on taking His name. “Time will come when the world situation will become so stifling that the only remaining recourse will be Baba's name,” says Meherwan.
May His name be a prayer, a praise, a sigh, an urge, a song, an utterance of hope and despair. Always accessible and ever continuing to nurture us like a rushing spring tide, or a hidden oasis within any external circumstance. Freeing the mind of worry and connecting our hearts directly with the source.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
