The Courage To Change

It's up to the individual to stand on his own two feet, take his life in his own hands, his karmas in his own hands, to bear his karma cheerfully and work with it. Nobody else can do that for you. Gurus and swamis can point the way and give certain sadhanas, but they cannot do it for you. They won't do it for you. If they did do it for you, it wouldn't do you any good!

People who are cynical are expressing their anger and contempt with snide remarks. They may seem to be joking, but their sharp feelings come across anyway, which stimulates that lower chakra until one day their cynicism will turn into really good anger. Then they build up new karmas they never had before, which they will live with until they are faced with those karmas.

Some devotees take pride in saying, "I've been with Gurudeva for forty-five years." "I've been with Gurudeva for thirty years." But if you ask them, "Do you still get angry?" "Yes," they say. "What have you realized?" "Well, that I shouldn't get angry." "Do you still get angry?" "Uh-huh, yes, sometimes." Those people haven't been with Gurudeva at all! They've just been hanging around. Because the results of everything we have been teaching have not taken hold. Results have to manifest in the lives of each of you. Otherwise, you're just bodies, sitting there listening to me talk, living your own private life, living a double standard. Just bodies. So, there can be a lack of sincerity. I want my shishyas to do a job, do it right, and be on to the next one, not this insincerity of playing with me, playing with my mind. I don't like that.

You can't work at correcting something. You either do it or you don't do it. You don't work at not falling off a cliff, a big precipice that drops off a hundred feet. You just don't step forward; that's what you don't do! When you come to the point where you hear about the Self, and you get interested in the Self, you're at a point where you can break the cycle of certain karmas through sadhana. You're either going to do it or you're going to think, "Oh, that's kind of silly, you know. It's really nice to listen to Gurudeva, but to actually take these teachings seriously and make changes in my life, well...ho hum. That kind of attitude, that kind of ho-hum, lazy attitude, also results in making new karmas, because others look at you as an example and take up your example. It's living a double life that I am talking about. It depends on the strength of the person's soul whether he actually makes some definite changes in his character or not.