What is Your Calling!

"What is your calling in this life?"

08/14/89 Satsang (Discourse) by

Maitreya


 

Question: How would you suggest someone go about delving into themselves to discover the answers to their visions or to the revelation that they're receiving?

Maitreya: You can, for instance, look at the Scriptures in the Christian church or in Islam or in Hinduism. Some people receive this urge or this calling to become a preacher, to become a Brother, or a Father, or a Guru, etc. They are being called and they know they have to put that call in the frame of that great religion. When they do that they become good preachers. They become great Gurus or spiritual teachers, and they not only prosper themselves but they make that religion prosper with them and spread it all over.

Then you will see other people who have the calling but don't relate themselves to any religion or any other group. When it happens like that, we see that a lot of good ideas come in but there's no focus in these ideas which really bring about that power of the Spirit behind them, because they don't have any central focus to focus on. Usually these ideas become a kind of fashion. However, after awhile, six months, two years, three years, etc, that idea fizzles away and people are not that much interested in that fashionable idea any longer, or they are not as powerful or widespread as they used to be.

But religions of the world, like everything else, become stalled, become rigid. There always has to be a revolutionary idea to cleanse that situation to the original one. Just like Christianity reached a point when Saint Francis of Assisi suddenly came, and he preached the simplicity and the original idea of Christianity. So it becomes a purifying force behind that religion or idea.

But we will see in every culture or every part of the earth there is a unifying glue, like Christians. Although there are a vast amount of different ideas in Christendom, the very word Christianity glues so many people together. Or we have Hinduism, although in Hinduism you probably have more ideas or approaches to God than any other religion, but in India, a great percentage of that population call themselves Hindu. And that makes a glue that connects these people together.

So it doesn't matter where we go, we'll see we need a thread to unify these groups, or peoples, or different ideas under a greater umbrella. But that greater umbrella is no longer enough. They each cover a small part of the earth. We need a greater glue, something even these gluing forces can relate themselves to, as a greater truth.

And in that essence when you have a calling, so your calling also has to be related to the greater truth. For example, you are called only to distribute a special kind of book or a spiritual magazine, etc, and then you limit yourself to that doing. So you are not receiving the highest calling for which you've been called. Or if you separate yourself because you feel that your calling is different than where you are at right now and go to the smaller calling, still you wouldn't utilize all your potential.

So in a sense, when a Moslem receives a calling he feels he has to follow Muhammad's word. If a Christian receives a calling, he or she feels they have to follow Christ's words, Esa's words. And when a Hindu has a calling, he/she receives this calling to teach the Hindu religion and probably become a Guru, etc.

But now we have a greater Truth on earth. And this greater Truth covers all of these religions and ideas that have been coming to humanity for the last twelve thousand years. So to me it doesn't matter what your calling is, if you go for anything less than spreading the Eternal Divine Path, The Greatest Sign and unification of the religions and the whole of humanity, you are not following your full potential.

If you had a calling to do God's Will, the first step is to realize that It is the Highest. If you haven't realized this is the Highest, then you have a problem. You have to go through some other steps if you are not yet ready to answer your calling. You have to take that first step, that this is the Highest. Why is it the Highest?

First of all, the teaching makes sense. The teaching unifies all the religions of the world. The teaching is fulfilling the prophecies of the coming of the unifying teaching to humanity. Second, the person who brought it on earth fulfills the prophecies on earth as to the coming of this new teaching. And if you want to bring the Kingdom Of Heaven On Earth, the way of doing it has been given.

Now after all these things have been told, you have seen it, you have accepted it, and you have had an experience and still you are resisting it, then it is really your problem. It is not the Message's problem. It is not the Mission's problem. An individual problem can be many, many things.

It's just like Christ came and said, "Come, it's the time of the marriage of the Lamb." And they said, "No, I want to go to my field." The other ones said, "No, I have to pay my mortgage on my house. I don't have time to come, my daughter is getting married. My son is getting married. My grandson is being born. I don't have time. I don't have money." You can bring many excuses. "I don't feel what I want here. It's not providing for me." You can make up infinite reasons not to accept the Message.

So it is not really the Mission's problem in this case, but is the individual's discernment to make the final decision and plunge in whole-heartedly. As God said, If you're not plunging in whole-heartedly, what's going to happen to you? You're going to be "spued out of My mouth." It's very clear, God doesn't want lukewarms. If you are lukewarm then you haven't made the final decision. If you make the final decision, then everything else is going to work out fine.

Mind is going to give you millions of reasons not to do what you're supposed to do. And probably 99.99% of those reasons are just our own creation. They are very reasonable. I'm not saying they are not reasonable. If you talk about them, and you think about them, and you bring them up, they are very reasonable. Sometimes they even sound good. But that's not good, because really if you are here and you are a part of this community, you don't have to worry about anything. The only thing you have to be worried about is to engage yourself with the community and become one. We will work everything out together.

Then if it is your problem, it is our problem. If it is our problem, it is your problem. We are One. There is no separation. "Oh, oh that is my problem." No, no you don't have any problem, your problem is the community's problem, because you are a part of the community and we have to create, make and bring this community to the place where we don't have any worries because we are One, and we know we are always going to be taken care of if we stay as One. If I can't have a job, someone else can have a job. If I can't go to buy the groceries, someone else is going to go to do it. If I can't build this part of the house, someone else is going to build it... So the concern is always how to get this community off the ground and going.

If our concern is high enough and connected to the highest possible in the Mission, which is The Greatest Sign, which is the Kingdom Of Heaven On Earth, which is the unification of all the religions and oneness of humanity, then all the other problems will seem so small. They will be gone. They're not there any longer. Then we can dance together and do it together very well, and not be concerned that, "Oh, I did that much, someone else did little." Or, "What I did is so little, someone else is doing more than me, so probably he or she receives more attention or more love and I'm not going to receive any so I'd better do something about it." This is the human mind thinking. It is all a matter of attitude.

You have to do your best in what you can do. If you are doing all you can, no matter how little it is, you're accepted. But it's more important that your heart be l00% here, not half here and half not.

That is the essence of not really going for the call. God says, "If you are lukewarm, I will spue you out of my mouth." And He says, "Be zealous therefore." Why? Because He knows, if you're zealous for God, as Christ said, "Do the Kingdom," the rest will be added to you.

But the mind of the human comes in and says, "No, no, I have to be this, I have to have this many resources, I have to have this education, job, etc, and then I might be accepted." That is not the question at all. The question is your heart, is your heart really here or is it a calculative heart, do you have a calculative mind? A calculative mind will not stay long in the Communities of Light because in the Communities of Light we're not trying to be calculative, we're trying to be One in the Body, be whatever we can, be what we have been created to be.

Of course, we understand it is hard for the human mind not to be calculative. We don't expect everyone who walks into the Mission right away to be l00% for the Mission and not have that calculative mind that we have been brought up with, especially the western mind. The western mind is so logical. It always has been calculating all their lives. "How much money comes in and where does it go? How much is the interest rate? If I put my money here how much interest am I going to receive? If I work that many years I'm going to be retired, etc." This kind of thinking is there all the time. Probably that individual mind will merge into the community and the community mind will become a collective calculative mind for the betterment of humanity. See, even being calculative can be of three kinds.

It can become a very good community with a good mind behind it, with every mind working to make a community with better resources, better environment, a better place to live, to become a shining light in the community around it. Also maybe in a lot of people's mind it's very calculative, but really it's from the Spirit.

Good Spirit is a Light, it's a sun. So no matter where you put him or her, you can't hide the sun. You can put it under the cloud for awhile but the cloud is going to be lifted and the sun is going to shine sooner or later. Anyway it doesn't matter where you put it. The sun doesn't have any choice. You can't say, sun don't shine. It is its nature, it will shine.

So the question on how to really find your calling is to plunge into your calling whole-heartedly, 100%. Then you won't have any reservation which would cause you to become depressed. If you were withholding, then you have two masters: One is your calling, one is your calculative mind. Which one are you going to follow? They don't go together. If you are going to follow two masters you are going to be torn apart, like a bunch of horses pulling the carriage in two different directions. What do you do? You have to tie the feet of the horses so the carriage stays alright, then your Soul doesn't become torn apart.

When we find someone who is in that situation we have to pray for him or her. If he or she plunges into the Mission whole-heartedly, or their Mission, then they are our brothers. If they don't, then we have to leave them to God and say, God thank-you for having this brother with us, or this sister with us for awhile, I release him to You and You do to them what pleases You. So even, if in the highest realization that the person is not whole-heartedly with us, still we have to keep our Compassion and Love for him, and pray for him that Thy Will be done.

Question: A few nights ago I was doing a lot of talking and fussing during the night. I was having these dreams. I used to have them a lot and only had them twice since I've been here at the Mission. But these dreams are of running from something.

In this dream I had a realization that I was running from God. In talking about this it came out that part of what it is, is that I'm afraid of my True Identity, which is being Divine, because that brings with it, for me, a lot of, well I'm thinking of the siddhis, the powers that can come along with it. I've always felt that I didn't want to have those powers unless I knew that I could use them in the right way. And, of course, I was told something that was true which was, If you ideate that it's God doing it through you then you don't have to worry about yourself misusing them. But still I haven't come to the point where I'm completely comfortable with that.

Maitreya: Well, only ideating that God is doing it through you, is not enough. Not only is God doing it through you, you are doing it for the Communities of Light, to bring the Kingdom Of Heaven On Earth.

You can ideate that God is doing through me, just like that killer in New York. When they caught him and they said, "Why did you do that?" He said, "God told me to do that."

That is following God from ignorance or passion. And that is why God sends His Prophets and He sends The Plan. So if it is according to The Plan, and according to the teachings of God in the Scriptures, then it is from God and He is doing it through you. Then you don't have to worry about it because it is going to be good. It's done for God, and it's according to God's Plan and according to God's Word. Whatever is done for God is good.

Actually God sent Scriptures to us as a yardstick so we can always measure our actions, thoughts, and manner to see, are they according to God? Are we respectful to other people? Are we doing this according to what He commanded us to do? If we don't have these yardsticks, we don't have any measurement, we don't have anything to measure our actions against.

Those powers (siddhis) also are not bad. It might be possible that you have had some of those powers in some other times and they were misused so that is why you are afraid of them now. You have learned your lesson in previous lifetimes that those powers are no good because when you gained them you didn't know how to control them, and you misused the power. So instead of using them in a right way to help the universe and not create any karma, it's possible that karma has been created by the misusing of those powers. That's why you received the realization that you don't want them anymore.

A lot of people want them and when they receive them they misuse them. They hurt not only themselves, but a lot of other people also. But eventually it's just like a boomerang. It's just like you're sending something to the universe, and it's going to come right back and hit you. You never can get away with it in the universe because anything you do, physically, mentally and spiritually which is not from God or good, is eventually going to hurt you. You can't hurt anyone. You might think you are hurting other people but actually you hurt yourself.

So it is very possible that now you know you can have those powers but you are resisting them because you have learned your lessons. But if the concentration and the purity is toward the creation of the Kingdom Of Heaven On Earth, and to do the Will of God and follow the Word of God, what are you afraid of? You shouldn't be afraid at all because you are doing it for God and then no matter how much power you have, it is going to be directed to God's work. Of course, if still you misuse your power and try to dominate people, or try to take over the situations and try to destroy things that are good, you're going to create karma, it doesn't matter how powerful you think you are.

That's why it is not recommended to pray for powers or try to receive those powers, but if you are doing God's Will and on the way to God and doing His Will you receive these powers then it's OK. You didn't pray for them. You didn't really ask to have those powers, then misuse them. You won't misuse them because you are doing God's work.

We have to use everything God gives us to do His Will or His Work and surrender the results to Him. Then these powers are not something that are bad. So concentrating on God, that He is the Doer and we are not, still can be three kinds, it can be from ignorance, passion or knowledge. And concentrating that God is doing it through us is from knowledge. When we are always measuring our actions, our thoughts and our behavior toward that, we are the channels to do God's Work.

Audience: Thank you for that answer.

Question: I was just going to ask a question about surrendering, about what surrendering really means. You know they talk in India about surrendering to the Master, surrendering to the Guru.

Maitreya: This probably has come from the teachings of the old, come from the Rishis and Munies, and the people who are the great old realized Souls. In our teaching surrendering and submission is done to God, Spirit, Universe. The Guru was supposed to be a person who represented that Spirit. If you completely become a pure channel for God, every word you say is the Word of God.

We can see that in many cultures they have a similar thing as a Guru. For instance, in Islam they call their leaders Ayatollah. The very name Ayatollah means "The Word of God." Or they have in the Jewish religion the Rabbi or Master. The Master is the same thing as a Guru. Then you have Father and Son and Brother in Christianity. Father is the person who is supposed to be in touch with God. Everything that Father says is almost the Word of God. In the higher level there is the Pope. At least it used to be like that, maybe it's not anymore, but it used to be these people who were completely in touch with God. So their words were taken to heart and were accepted and followed, and almost to the letter.

And the reason for it was, not the person himself was the being you surrendered to or were submissive to, but the Spirit behind the person, that we recognized as the truth. And if it's the Truth behind it so the Word is of the Truth from Spirit, from God and if you recognize such a Spirit then you surrender and submit to it.

As long as you haven't recognized that Spirit in that person you should not, you will not do that because still you don't know if the person is saying the Truth. But if such a worthy person is found, then his Word is the Word of the Spirit and surrendering to those Words is just like surrendering to the Spirit, because there are a lot of people who have a hard time to be one with the Spirit. Being one with their Spirit is not an easy task. A lot of people say they are but you can, with a discerning eye or Spirit, see in them that's not the truth.

It is said, The Master is like a mirror and you see yourself in him and he reflects you back. A lot of people are claiming to be like that but you don't see anything through them to see yourself.

So it is, claiming and being are two completely different things. Whatever is claimed, don't just take it at face value but have a discerning Spirit. Test the Spirit.

After you realize and accept that person's Spirit as the Truth, then you surrender and submit to It, unless it was proven to you otherwise, unless it was proven that the words he or she said were not from God. Still you can withdraw your submission and surrendering anytime, and still be discerning to find the Truth and Spirit of God. When you find It, then surrender and submit to It, because that is going to help your meditation, your progress. Many people meditate but they meditate in their own ego. But when the Word of God comes through a realized person, that hits the Soul, it awakens the Soul, it accelerates the Soul, it makes you realize the Soul much faster.

So that is why the importance of a spiritual teacher cannot be over-emphasized. And you need this kind of a spiritual teacher so that humanity can be guided more and more toward God and the Spirit. But if you know God 100% all the time, then again surrender and submit to Him and then you are a teacher yourself. And even if you are a teacher yourself, still come and help the Mission to create the Kingdom Of Heaven On Earth.

Sal-Om!