His Gift

Your mother is coming to visit on Sunday. She gave you a coffee set last Christmas and, knowing how observant she is, you will be at pains to ensure that she sees you use it when she arrives, demonstrating to her that you appreciate her gift.

The Masters love their disciples inestimably more than our mothers love us (although our mothers would certainly dispute that), so do we equally concern ourselves to show the Master how much we appreciate the precious gift of salvation that he has given us?

His gift is the rarest, most worthwhile and priceless gift we will ever be given because it is not of this world but is bestowed on us by the grace of a higher supreme power.

The gift takes many forms and all these are part of the simple overall blessing of intimate contact with the Shabd, the sound current, through our meditation. This brings about the release of the soul from its perpetual and forced association with mind and the physical body. We come to understand that the Master is working for us unceasingly and that through meditation we can realize his presence within us. His gift directly addresses the pain of the soul which has realized that it is living in a temporary, illusory world. It wants to escape to somewhere better but it is lost in the darkness. The gift of the Master releases the soul, gives it light and salvation and allows it to return to its source, which we are told, is a state of eternal bliss and peace and will be the permanent solution to its discomfort and pain.

When your mother comes you are going to dust off the coffee set and get it out for her to see. You want her to know that she has given you a very useful and beautiful gift. She would not be happy to think that, in fact, it has been sitting on a shelf, unnoticed and unused, since the last time she came. Do we also put the Master’s gift away in a dusty corner of our minds, unnoticed, when we are not in his physical presence?

When he comes into our midst, we all turn out in the thousands to be in his presence, wanting to give him the impression that we really appreciate and use the precious gift he has given us; thanking him for it with all our hearts. But are we so thankful when he is not here? Do we remember his gift every day and follow his instructions for meditation faithfully, or is it then forgotten and put on a shelf until his next physical visit? We wouldn’t tell our mother that we didn’t ever use her gift, it would hurt her feelings. Yet many of us don’t mind telling our Satguru that we find it impossible to use what he has given us; that we cannot do meditation and that we don’t even try to appreciate its worth. How can we say this in the same breath as telling him that we are so thankful and that we love him?

He wants us to use our simran and bhajan every day; not to let them get dusty and forgotten, and he wants us to be honest with him, and with ourselves, by doing our meditation and growing nearer to him every single day. Like our mother, it would make him so happy to see us enjoying the gift he has given.

Keeping some Sant Mat book in one’s daily study is a very good habit. This practice maintains one’s earnestness and zeal for meditation and increases one’s love.
_{Maharaj Charan Singh, Quest for Light}