Yesterday was an interesting day. The morning at work began fine, outwardly, but my heart and mind were not in the right place. This showed up in a lack of kindness to some of my co-workers.

In the afternoon, this lack of harmony, as if reflecting itself in the world around me, began to express itself: we found out that a key component of the Clarity Magazine site had broken.

While I was trying to fix this, I accidentally took down our network-wide backup, which supports perhaps 60 people or more and is one of the most important things that our IT department works on. (Peter’s classic comment: “Well, I was looking for something to do!”)

Later, another bug came up, this time on Ananda.org. Fixing it was like something between talking to a blank wall and banging my head on my desk.

Okay, all that sounds… unfortunate. Parts of it I found funny at the time, and other parts I didn’t. Poetically, I imagined above my head, floating just under the ceiling, a light grey cloud.

After spending over an hour on this last problem, continually making small changes, testing, tweaking, and checking, it went away.

In the website troubleshooting world, you want to know why something was fixed, and I frantically tried different things, attempting to backtrack. It wasn’t possible. It was all okay, and the bug was gone, I just clearly had no control over it.

Okay. Finally, it was time to breathe — something I should have been doing more of all along!

In that moment of relaxation (the calm after the storm), I decided that my Guru and God had fixed the problem. I imagined God looking at me and saying, “You do not decide the outcome of what you do; I haven’t given humanity that choice.”

A nice idea, I reflected. We don’t choose the result of our actions.

This is surely true in finance — can we prevent an unexpected disease, fire, or relative needing money? — in relationships, where people can and do act whatever way they wish; and even in ourselves. It’s common for people (including myself) to have difficulty controlling even their emotions.

All we can really control, the famous Indian saint, Anandamoyee Ma said, is whether we think of God or not. (!!) And Swami Kriyananda, who has quoted this often, has also pointed out that when we think of God, everything goes well, and when we don’t, things fall apart.

Yesterday was humbling. But, well, Lord, You are the Doer. Maybe the best we can hope for, when tests come, is to be awake and ready enough to change. So the question is…

Are we ready to change?

18 Comments

  1. Beautiful message. Thanks for sharing. It is very timely.

  2. WOOOWWWWW I’ve liked a lot, FULLY HONEST. i think that’s what helps more to the brothers and sisters of the path to find God.
    thank youuuu!

  3. thanks for sharing your weathering of a storm—they do blow in from time to time—–much love to you!

  4. complete agreement with swamiji thru my own life experiences!! good things happen when i think of god and him only.

    your last blog on 3 month of med brought me back to this addiction!!

  5. I am so happy to hear you explain the missing
    component to your dilemma with the project. I think we have many opportunities to let God work. I once heard in my spiritual journey this saying, God works when only God works, in other words get our ego and desire out of the way first and then continue to problem solve with his guidance. Remember God is omniscience and he knows everything even how to fix computers, let us continue to remember to be open channels for God and Guru to flow through us.
    Bless you for taking the time to share this experience with all of us.
    Joy
    Rudrani

  6. Thanks for sharing your day with us. Sounds very much, although different circumstances, like my day a couple of days ago. I needed to hear this message right now. Blessings, Nancy

  7. You appear as Arjuna in this article!!!! Holding the sword of truth, come things big or small, your will pierces the veil…and there you are once again, standing sturdy, standing tall.

    …and – on a less “flowery” note ~:o), I hear you, my friend!!!! Joy to you. God Be Bless Ju, (read with Indian accent)!

  8. Thanks for this reminder, Nabha. One day our small local area network went down and I could not figure out what the problem was. I had given up, and said so to one of the ministers on staff – a person who is devotionally, rather than technically, inclined. She said, “Let’s AUM it.” So we blessed the file server by chanting waves of AUM and sending light. Everything on the network returned to normal immediately, and I never knew what had caused the problem. God definitely knows how to fix computers! As you said, Nabha, we just have to remember to think of him.

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