Daily Offerings from Alokda

The Mother’s Presence is often first felt as a warmth and sweetness in our heart, also as a growing Peace in all our members spreading from the heart.

Later it changes into Joy, the Joy of loving Her and Serving Her, the joy of simply belonging to Her, the Joy of surrender to Her, the joy of knowing a little of what She chooses to reveal of Her infinite Mystery, the joy of Her countless wonders disclosing before our eyes, the joy of simply reading and writing about Her and many more things that surpass our thought and feelings.

I am sure She grants all sincere prayers, and for each one of us a time is marked when Her Presence will draw near and close and intimate until She makes us one with Her Being and one with Her Substance.

Personally I have found it much easier to be in contact with Her through Service offered at Her Feet, reading Savitri and Prayers and Meditations, loving Her in my heart.

When you feel an aspiration for closeness, and a flower of Love to Her has blossomed in your heart, it is itself a sign that She is close, very close, even when our outer consciousness does not necessarily feel Her.

Alok Pandey

It has been said in spiritual traditions that success is often a harder test to pass than failure. Truly, if we compare the effect that the two have upon us, we can see why it is so.

Success can make one dizzy, haughty and even arrogant. Men drunk with success often forget the great Power working from behind that has pushed them to victory. They begin to believe and sometimes even delude themselves that they are someone special and extraordinary. Very soon their confidence passes into an overconfidence that loses contact with earthly realities. Flying upon the wings of vanity they presume, like Daedalus & Sampati, that they can touch the sun with their beaks. Success is indeed a heady wine that one enjoys in the beginning but ends up by being swallowed by it.

Failure has another effect, if one can endure and bear and go through it. While success hypnotizes you and gets you stuck to one option, failure dehypnotizes and unstucks us. It forces you to humility and makes you aware of the realistic limits, so that you may work steadily and patiently to exceed them. Success creates the illusion of power and control except in exceptional cases and even there one can easily fall into trap of confusing a limited and ignorant power for a genuine and supreme one. Failure strips us of all shows and shams, those facades and images that men hang on their outsides to deceive themselves and the world. It teaches us how to distinguish the real from the artificial, the genuine from the imitation by robbing of the sheen and shine and the glitter and glamour that falsehood uses sometimes as a cover and a cloak to hide its ugliness. Failure bares us all, so that we can confront us in our utter nakedness and walk, even if slowly, in the light of truth. Indeed failure has a much greater potential than success to bring us closer to truth… and open new doors for us.

Indeed when all outer doors close upon us one by one, we have this one rare chance to open the inner door and find ‘the One’ who never fails us; ‘the One’ who is the source of all security, satisfaction, strength; ‘the One’ whose touch upon our lives brings such a peace and joy that no outer success can ever bring. Success often depletes us by expending our energies over perishable goods and toys that break and by crowding our life with flowers that are scentless. Failure increases us by teaching perseverance and endurance and helping us discover our own inner strength. It allows us the possibility of new perspectives, and invites us to fresh goals, different aims; alternate life-views that are more complete an enduring. Indeed, he is most unlucky who has never known failure for such a one has never known God and His Grace. And fortunate is he who has weathered the storms of failure that toss against his boat. He has seen through the mask of night and when the storm and the dust settles he is ready to receive wider horizons & the light of wisdom. Success creates a zone of artificial light within the dark night. Failure ventures into the heart of night and pucks out of its folds of secrecy the jewels that hide within the darkness’ caves. Indeed, blessed is misfortune for through it one can see the face of God.

This does not mean that we should seek for failure. We should seek neither for failure nor for success for they are two sides of the same coin. As we have seen every success carries in itself the seed of failure and every failure hides within its crust the fruit of success. Yet we should seek neither but simply do the deed that God has put into our hearts, to fulfill the purpose for which we are born, to be in tune with the ‘Will’ that moves the world. And this indeed is true success, the sign of a life well-lived, a life worthy of man. To go ahead and do what we must and are meant for without caring for success and failure, victory or defeat, the jeers and cheers of the crowd, the praise and insults heaped by demons or the gods. Better it is to fail and fall fulfilling one’s true calling rather than succeed while following what may come natural to another but is alien to our own deepest self.

The Mother has written the following: “Our Path To walk on the path you must have a dauntless intrepidity, you must never turn back upon yourself with this mean, petty, weak, ugly movement that fear is.

An indomitable courage, a perfect sincerity, a total self-giving to the extent that you do not calculate or bargain, you do not give with the idea of receiving, you do not offer yourself with the intention of being protected, you do not have a faith that needs proofs, – this is indispensable for advancing on the path, – this alone can shelter you against all dangers.”

In the above message vis a vis our need for protection She is not saying that we cannot ask Her protection when in difficulty or danger. All that She is saying is that we do not take to the Path in the spirit of bargaining or calculation for then it would mean that the sadhaka was motivated by purely outer and worldly gains rather than seeking the Divine for the sake of the Divine.

Secondly, She is asking us to keep fear as far away from us as we can since it shuts us in a very narrow hole, a weakness that closes us to the Divine working. On the other hand if we walk with courage and faith we are actually truly safe since we thus create the best conditions for the Divine Grace to act and protect us. Fear, on the other hand invites the danger. She is in fact giving us the perfect recipe for safety. She is not telling us not to call Her when we are in distress. Whom else will the child call but his mumma? But this call should be full of trust. Besides, the reason for our undertaking the journey of yoga should not be out of calculation about what we will get out of it. That puts the cart before the horse. When we give ourselves to the Divine with the complete trust of a child as Dhruva and Prahlad did, the Divine takes full care and protects us from every danger. But if the seeking is done with this or other ulterior motives then it comes in the way of the full workings of the Grace.

The self giving should be an act of love and done freely without any other motive except the joy of self giving. We can equally say that a giving which is accompanied with a hidden agenda of personal gain is really not a giving but a calculated move which cannot deceive the Divine who knows the truth behind our seeking.