About my Father's Business

Young Jesus, beginning His Father's work

I was heartened this week to see an article about Pope Leo’s visit to Spain, where he was received by an impressive 1.2 million people in Madrid on Sunday - the largest crowd he has yet encountered. 

In his message to the Spanish people, he encouraged them to “be brought out of our selfishness and indifference, of a comfortable, private faith…and to welcome His presence which transforms us and makes us builders of a new world.” 

“God is a real presence, and we too are called to be present in the realities and challenges of society, not shying away, but personally committing ourselves to the building of the common good.” 

A powerful, Catholic message - at least by the dictionary definition of the word Catholic, meaning universal, or pertaining to the whole. 

This sentiment is similar to an excerpt in the final chapter in the Autobiography, whereby Yogananda wrote, “Beyond all doubt it is pleasing to the Lord when His earth-children struggle to attain a world free from poverty, disease and soul-ignorance…. The ills attributed to an anthropomorphic abstraction called “society” may be laid more realistically at the door of Everyman. Utopia must spring in the private bosom before it can flower in civic virtue.” 

In these expressions of both the Master, and the Pope, we recognize the catholic or universal thread which unites all people as brothers and sisters - not as separate realities, but as part of the one great reality. The idea that we are each called to do our own work to realize this Oneness, and to bring it into our actual life each day. Yogananda called this building “the living church of Christ.” Not a building, or a sect, or a church. But our own Life itself as our worship of, service to, and living relationship with, God. 

This concept is something that has animated, and given Purpose to my own life, where it before had none. First, it brought me back to the bosom of our mother in Nature as the timeless reality of Creation itself, no matter the confusion of any age. Then, it introduced itself as God the eternal spirit, as the essence of all Nature and every living thing. And then, that beatific, living intelligence, opened my own heart and mind to the potential and dharma of living in harmony with the wholeness of life, as my very own relationship to God - something I deeply aspire to remember and uphold to this day.

We can easily wonder, is this even possible? In a western world which is defined by material realities, paying bills or getting wealthy, finding a mate, or many mates, and in quint-essence, “getting mine?” And in an Eastern culture which quickly out-competes even the most ambitious material advancements of the west? In a shared world where technology, greed and indifference seem destined to thwart all conscious connection to Spirit and Spirit’s Creation?

In today’s quote (June 13th)  from Yogacharya David, in his Infinite calendar, he states: “The world offers much in technology, conveniences, entertainment, and distractions. From a spiritual standpoint, all of this is worthless and an obstruction. To make true spiritual progress, the world needs to be set aside.” 

For all of us who have taken up the Path sincerely - and even desperately - to realize His presence fully, there is an essential step which is the integration of our spiritual ideas and beliefs, with the forms and ultimately the fruits, which manifest from how we live our life. That what we worship, may be of the Spirit in life, not the ways of maya (delusion) in this world. This is stated in John, 4:23,24:

 But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him.

24 God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.

The absence of this integration of worship, in spirit, and in truth, is the absence of integrity in our own Path. To believe in something is easy; to become it, is where the work begins. 

For all of us, this means waking up to our very own life, as God.

And God, the universal and loving intelligence inherent within all things, as Life itself. 

Now, if we are living on a pedestal of what we think we know or have figured out, we may not like what that means. Or, if we feel we have caught some bad breaks along the way, and wonder ‘why has God done this to me?’, we also may not be open to this kind of relationship with life. 

And yet, for all of us in the ultimate sense of achieving our own Self-Realization, there is a singular need to face our own life - our choices, our relationships, our victories and our defeats; how we spend our time each day and in the passing moments, as our actual classroom of learning. This is why Christ’s second commandment states to Love Thy neighbor as Thyself - for there is no separating the idea of our own love for God, from our living and breathing relationship to our life in this world. 

Perhaps then, it is worth considering. What is my relationship to life? How would God use my own life, as a means for manifesting His vision for this world? In this quest, the real garden with God begins to grow and take shape.

Just as the young boy Jesus asked his parents, “Did you not know I must be about my Father’s business?” So too are we all called in this way. Let us be about His business, and get to work.