Guru Soul

When our plan does not match reality we can be overcome with dukkha. 

Sometimes changing the frame through which we look at our reality is a very skilful exercise.

Not expecting or wanting things to be exactly as we want them to be – this can be the beginning of true prajna, panna or wisdom.

Inspired by Cherie Carter-Scott.

1. You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it will be yours for the entire period this time around.

2. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called LIFE. Each day of this school, you will have the opportunity to learn lessons. You may like the lessons or think them irrelevant and stupid.

3. There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial and error and experimentation. The failed experiments are as much a part of the process as are the experiments that ultimately work.

4.  A lesson is repeated until it’s learned. A lesson will present itself to you in various forms, until you have learned. When you have mastered the lesson, then you can go on to the next lesson.

5. Learning lessons does not end. But the teachers will change. There is no part of life that does not contain lessons. If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned.

6. “There” is no better place than “Here”. When your “There” has become “Here”, you will simply obtain another “There” that will again look better than “Here”.

7. Others are simply a mirror of yourself. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects something you love or hate about yourself.

8. What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and the resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.

9. Your answers lie inside of you. The answers to all of life’s questions lie inside of you. All you need do is look, listen and trust.

10. Very often in life you will be given a choice to act out of love and faith or out of fear and resentment. The choice is yours, as are the consequences of your choice.

11. If you don’t have it, you don’t need it.

12. Sooner or later you will forget all these rules and suffer.

The Sufi saint, Shams-e Tabrizi tells the following story about himself:

I have been considered a misfit since my childhood days. No one seemed to understand me. My own father once said to me, “You are not crazy enough to put in a madhouse, and not withdrawn enough to be put in a monastery. What shall I do with you?”

I replied, “A duck’s egg was put under a hen. When the egg hatched, the duckling walked with the hen to the edge of a pool and went straight into the water. The poor hen stayed anxiously clucking on land. Now, dear father, I have walked into the Ocean and find in it my home. Am I to blame if you choose to stay on shore?” 

Each time the Guru sat for worship with his students the ashram cat would come in to distract them, so he ordered them to tie it when the ashram was at prayer.

After the guru died the cat continued to be tied at worship time. And when the cat expired, another cat was brought into the ashram to make sure that the guru’s orders were faithfully observed at worship time.

Centuries passed and learned treatises were written by the guru’s scholarly disciples on the liturgical significance of tying up a cat while worship is being performed.

The Sufi Bayazid says this about himself – “ I was a revolutionary when I was young and my prayer to God was: Lord give me the energy to change the world.”

“As I approached middle age and realized that half my life was gone without my changing a soul, I changed my prayer to: Lord, give me the grace to change all those who come in contact with me. Just my family and friends, and I shall be content.”

“Now that I am an old man and my days are numbered, my prayer is: Lord, give me the grace to change myself”.

“If I had prayed for this right from the start I would not have wasted my life”.