One lady had been to only two or three Sahaja Yoga programs, but she had been meditating and footsoaking and giving her eight-year-old son footsoaks for two weeks. Her son has always had poor behaviour at the Steiner School he attends, and she is in regular communication with his teacher.
The teacher spoke to her recently and said, “I can’t believe the change in your son. What are you doing to bring about such an enormous change?” From being an unruly, disruptive influence in the class he had become a positive influence, even saying to his classmates, “You don’t always want to do things, but sometimes you need to do it, anyway”.
She told the teacher that the only change was that her son was footsoaking, and that she herself was meditating and footsoaking. The teacher was very impressed and asked her to bring some Sahaja Yoga literature along so that she could find out more for herself and for her students.
Footsoaks can also be very positive for the elderly. Some time ago my mother (aged 87) went downhill in her mental capacity. She was so worried about forgetting what to do and who was coming and so on, that she spent most of her time standing in front of the calendar trying to work out what day it was and what she should be doing.
Footsoaking was only part of the changes we put in place for my Mum, but I am convinced that the biggest factor in getting Mum back to “Living in the Present” was the footsoaks. Mum is not a Sahaja Yogi and she doesn’t meditate, but she recognises the benefit of footsoaking. If several days have gone by without our doing a footsoak, she reminds me. It is an amazing and simple tool to get us back in the present, to suck out the negativity that builds up from everyday life and to keep us in balance.
Maxine Whitnell
Lost in the bliss of devotion,
Cool perpetual rain falls through the roof over my brain,
Beneath which are placed buckets, made of Love.
These shall later be used to soften the dry earth for planting.
Clive Bates, 2004
The following is a beautiful talk by Baba Mama, Shri Mataji’s beloved brother who brought the creative arts, especially music, to the forefront in the Sahaj family. He encouraged and inspired Sahaja Yogis to greater and greater creative heights. One can say he was the embodiment of music in Sahaja Yoga.
You believe that God is omnipresent, omnipotent and all-pervading. In fact, you believe that He is in every atom. As natural corollary of this belief you must also know that God knows what you want or what your need is. If the first proposition is true, then second proposition has to be true. It would follow, therefore, that those who know that God is omnipotent and all-pervading are bound to accept that God is all-knowledgeable and therefore is aware of all your problems.
In spite of this fact, we always go to God with certain expectations. Expectations can be of various types, but are basically self-centred or are pertaining to people or relations you are attached to, and then you pray to God that He should grant you a particular relief, or a job promotion, or some benefit to you or your near ones, etc. When you go with this frame of mind, then most of the time you are disappointed. Hypothetically speaking, if your expectations are symbolized in A and what you get is, let us say, B; then A minus B is your disappointment. And then you have to attribute this disappointment to someone. The pessimists will attribute it to their bad luck and will always curse themselves for not being worthy of God’s favour. The optimists will straight away blame God Himself, and they say that this God is not good and that we should shift to some other God. In this way you keep on shifting from God to God, but disappointment is always there. This may even make you anti-God and an atheist, ultimately. Now take a case where you do not go to God with any expectations. Therefore, the expectations are zero, and let us say that you get B as the reward. Therefore, B minus zero is B which is always surplus.
You should also distinguish between your expectations and desires and pure desires. Pure desire is always for the benefit of the other, and therefore you are entitled to carry pure desires to the Divinity. I once remember, I was travelling with Shri Mataji from Sydney to Canberra, and it was very hot and the air conditioning of the car was thoroughly inadequate. Shri Mataji was sweating and I was fanning Her with a newspaper, but I somehow felt that the heat was oppressive and that the weather should give some respite to Her. Reading my mind, She asked me a question as to what I was thinking, to which I told Her frankly that I was unable to see Her suffer because of heat. So She told me that I should make a pure desire and the weather would change. So I closed my eyes and made a pure desire that the weather should change. Within five minutes, dark clouds gathered from nowhere and it started raining, and the intensity of heat was thus reduced, and Shri Mataji said, “See, if you make a pure desire, then it will always be fulfilled.”
Coming back to expectations, I may mention here that once you are connected to your Divinity through your Self-realization, you should feel assured that you have been admitted into the Kingdom of God, that you are His subject and therefore He is duty-bound to look after you, irrespective of what you expect of Him.
Baba Mama, 1999
Following on from the Sahaja Yoga programs at the recent Winter Magic Festival, a free, seven-week Sahaja Yoga course will be held in Katoomba. The course will be held on Sundays at 2.00 pm at the Katoomba Public School in Merriwa St, Katoomba.
Enquiries: Meredith 0415 973783 or Katya 4757 3719