Manifestations of Divine Love
Chapter 3 - Rejoice Without Conflict
Day 14
When you are in love, nothing is a burden to you. When nothing is a burden, how can anything take away the freedom from you? You lose freedom when something is a burden to you. So love in turn brings that freedom.
When a rule is imposed on you by someone else, then it is restricting to you. But when you have taken a rule on yourself, on your own, it is not any restriction, it is not suffocating to you.
Like when you take on the rule of driving on the right side of the road, then that is it. Discipline (rules) bring more freedom to us although, on the surface, it appears to restrict freedom. But if you go a little deeper, you will see that your own rules, your own disciplines bring you freedom.
Though you are beyond all discipline, yet it is good to have your own discipline. Though it doesn’t matter to you what you do, when you rise, what you eat etc., it is better to have a certain discipline because that gives you such freedom.
Our body is bound by discipline, it is bound by some clock. Whether you want it or not, whether you like it or not, your system gets tired at some time, wants to sleep at some time, a definite time, is hungry at a definite time, it goes for nature calls at a definite time.
Your body is in certain discipline as long as we are in this body, on this planet, with people around us. We need to honour the rules, honour the discipline, honour whatever rules, in whichever place. Here, (Lake Tahoe, Montreal), driving on the right-hand side is the rule.
If you go to India or England, it is left-side driving and you have to honour that rule there . Honouring the rules, the Shastras, the scriptures brings you enormous freedom and freedom sustains love, love in turn brings you enormous freedom, the true freedom.
Nothing can take away the freedom that love brings you-not the mind. There is a subtle difference. Be in the world like anybody else, like acommon, ordinary person. Be one with everyone in the world, in society.
Different rishis, different traditions spoke about this Divine love and its characteristics. But they are all different-different perceptions. The Truth is the same but they saw different characteristics.
Parashara, one of the pioneers of the Vedic tradition, said, “A deep interest in Pooja is a sign of Divine love.” What does Pooja mean? It is not just a ritual. ‘Poo’ means fullness, ‘Ja’ means that which is born out of fullness.
When you are so full and you are so grateful, what you do from that state of mind, of existence, is Pooja. And how is Pooja done? Not just using limited mind, but using the entire universe, all the five elements and the soul, the mind and the being and offering of the totality is puja.
An intense interest in puja is one of the characteristics of devotion, of Bhakti. A sense that comes up in you that you want to offer every little bit of what you are or what you have. “I have been given this universe, now I offer the universe back. I have been given this body and every particle of this body, Iam offering back to you. You gave me this world and I offer this back to you. And I am yours.”
This intense feeling of offering, merging, giving everything to the divine every bit of it is called Pooja. An intense interest or liking for Pooja is one of the signs, one of the characteristics of such a deep devotion, a total offering, not saving something for oneself, becoming the offering itself, is pooja.
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