I love you all very much. I appreciate your sincerity, open-heartedness, well-intendedness. It sets you apart from the majority. The majority are not well-intended, they're compliant. The majority are not open-hearted, they’re guarded.
We’re not the majority, you’re not the majority. There are many small minorities all over the world, but the majority, the dominant forces that move things around, have their own motives. Your motive, if you're listening to me, is very clear. As far as I'm concerned, your motive is the Truth, the Divine, that which actually matters—not seems to matter. Your motive is hoping and seeking the real, instead of being stuck with the illusory.
So unless you die by the end of today, you've been given another day. If you hadn't have woken up today, yesterday had been your last day, and sometime in the night you left us, you’d have no more complaints. All your problems would be solved. All your burdens would be ended and all your difficulties would be resolved. You'd also never see the face again of anyone you like. You'd also never enjoy a piece of music you're particularly fond of. You'd never again ponder something in the human way.
So it’s a mixed bag, but today you got one more day. If you wake up tomorrow, you'll have that day. Every day you wake up, assuming it's not the last day, you have one more day. And that's about as far as you should count on, and even that's iffy. Because one day you’ll wake up, you'll count on that day, and that day will not continue. You’ll leave that day. You’ll pass away, and the day will not be a twenty-four-hour one for you. And that's the day that every day should be anticipating, because that's the day that is the culmination.
Whatever you have brought together in yourself, whatever you have made good in yourself, is what passes on. You pass away, but that passes on, that continues, for whatever length of time it continues. I can't tell you how long that is. I suspect it's not the same for everyone, just like no life is exactly the same as every other life—some lives last forty years, some lives last a hundred years. Why would death be uniform, if nothing in life is uniform? But there are some basics that are, at least apparently, the parameters, and you should assume that the same is true in life as in death.
So today, at least, you have another day. It's not a rash assumption to assume that you'll make it till your head hits the pillow. So every day you have the choice of how that day gets used. Does it get lost, used up, in trivial matters of this tiny lifespan, or is it devoted to what goes with you beyond the limited life, as it crosses with you—when the body's gone, when the world is gone, when the friends are gone, when the difficulties are gone. When going to the movies is forgotten.
So you have a proportion to weigh every day. Every day you have a scale, and it's your choice. It's totally up to you. Nobody can force you one way or the other. It's totally up to you, because it's more an inner thing than an outer thing. How much of the minutes of that day, how much of the seconds of that day, are devoted to what relates to and what’s comprised of the eternal and the infinite, versus how much is the limited, the temporal? How much is time and space and earth and doing and coming and going—the trivial, what doesn't last, what doesn't go with you? What makes no difference once you’re dead?
It only seems to make a difference while you’re in this human life, but this human life isn't dependent on you. It was going on before you came here, it’ll be going on after you leave here. You're not the arbiter. You're not the author. You're not even the producer or the director. In fact, you're not even a script reader or an extra. You practically have no responsibility other than for yourself and to make yourself the most, so that what goes with you is something, not nothing. Not the minimum—the best you can do, the optimum. You have two basic jobs, to grow yourself so that you go as something bigger and better, and that continues, becomes the base for whatever happens beyond that. And the second job is to return to when you were born, that you were born innocent, you were born unconditioned and un-brainwashed, pure, open to everything, available to life’s gifts, whatever life brings, its gifts and its burdens. You weren't censoring or selecting or choosing, you were wide open.
So the task of the spiritual seeker is to get back to that innocent condition, that innocent way of participating—as life, in life—because that is still your capability. You didn't lose it. It just got shoved over and all this other training took its place: that you have to tie your tie this way, you have to comb your hair before you go out, you have to make sure you know where your wallet is. And all these things that don't matter in the scope of the eternal infinite, but that seem to matter, that you've been trained to believe matter. So you have to untrain yourself and see with clear eyes: These things don't matter. You can remember your wallet, you can comb your hair, you can do all those things without a whole lot of effort or attention or life energy being devoted to it. You can take care of all of it, but with much less fuss and muss and worry and concern. You can give up the devotion to image and what other people will think, because it doesn't matter what they think. In the scope of eternal, it doesn't even matter what you think, let alone what they think. So why care? You're caring about something that is going to be whatever it is. All of that’s ego. How do I come off? What do people think of me? How do I look? Am I pretty enough? Am I handsome enough? Do I sound good? Will people think well of me? Do I have a job that when people ask me, What's your job? I'll be proud to say, or am I a little bit ashamed?
All these things are mind preoccupations that seem like they have a place in life, but their place is so minuscule, it's better to just relegate it to one percent and keep ninety-nine percent for what goes with you—keep ninety-nine percent for God.
If you keep it for God, that means it's for you. If your focus is too much on the exterior, too much on the material, and too much on keeping up with the Joneses, that's not for you.
That's for the world. That's for everybody else. That's for your idea of what everybody else cares about when they look at you. But they're doing the same thing. So they're not thinking about you. It's you that thinks they're thinking about you. And they think you're thinking about them. And you see the problem.
So you're wasting your precious life energy, which is given to you for the spiritual journey so that you’ll climb higher, so you’ll go forward as more, and die as a bigger, better person. A bigger heart and a stronger soul.
I used to say ten percent: ten percent for the world, ninety percent for you. I'm going to revise that to one percent, because time is running out. And you don't really need more than one percent. So you can comb your hair just as well and take just as long, without giving it your heart and soul, without giving it your attention to the point of forgetting that eternity is going on and eternity will continue when your hair is gone. When your hair is either ashes or underground, and the worms are eating your hair, with their little bibs and little knife and fork.
So if you don't train yourself to remember death, remember the eternal, remember that there's something bigger going on, you’ll stay caught in what you've been taught—that the definition, the measure of you, is how much money do you make, how much are you held in esteem, how much power or prestige do you have. Are you seen as somebody? Do you sound intelligent? What do people think of you? Do you have a position in the world? Are you rich? Are you famous? Are you contributing? Are you doing something important? All of which instantly disappears the moment you actually die, that all of you dies. When your heart stops beating, all of you isn't dead—but at some point all of you is dead, and you're completely done with this lifetime.
And either this lifetime added to your essence, to your being—call it your soul, whatever you want, but it’s being, the consciousness that continues. Have you added to it and made it better? Have you made it bigger-hearted and wiser, or have you been able to see more clear and understand more deeply? Or have you frittered away your time with what they trained you to do, like a trained monkey, to make money and go up the corporate ladder, or write really good poems. You know, it can be noble work, but it's still of this world, it's still gone the moment you’re truly gone. It still will be possible to evaluate it, that either it added to your soul or it didn't. If it didn't, it's trivial, and not worth more time and attention than it's actually worth. And if It's not trivial, it's profound, it's eternal. It has something to do with the ultimate and supreme and the divine. And the majority of your time and attention and blood and sweat and tears and everything else is rightly invested in that, and poorly invested when that same investment went into the world, where it just gets swallowed up. And then when you leave, it stays, and you get nothing. But what you build inside you goes with you.
So you make yourself more loving, what goes with you is a greater lovingness. And if you make yourself very rich with money, what goes with you is a poverty of lovingness. Because you used your time and energy for money instead of love, which is the capacity for love.
You have to really, really understand the measure of life.
The measure of life is, how are you investing? Are you investing in the worldly life or are you investing in a life that continues? Are you investing in the permanent life or the temporary life? Are you investing wisely or ignorantly? And your investment is your destiny.
So if your destiny is to improve, if you want your destiny to improve, you have to look at where you're investing and how you're investing. So either you're growing— Either you're a “show-er” or a grower, let's put it that way. And if you're a grower, that goes with you: Whatever you grew in you goes with you. If you're a shower, when you die, and afterwards, you’ll have nothing to show for it. That's the problem with being a shower. You’re concerned with how things look, you’re concerned with the world. You're concerned with what the society wants you to be concerned with, instead of the intelligence God gave you so that you can discern what makes a wiser investment.
If you're listening to me, you already know this, but it has to be clarified again and again. And we all have to be reminded again and again, until that's simply how you're automatically apportioning your time and attention. Until it's established that you are investing wisely, not foolishly. And you’ve always got the influence of the worldly around you, and the majority investing foolishly. So even when you're investing wisely, in the back of your mind you might be wondering, Am I being foolish because I seem to be doing differently than most people? How could it be that all those millions, that the majority is wrong, and I'm right? And you have to know that you're right. You have to know that the minority is often correct and the majority is often wildly off the mark.
So invest in yourself, not in the world. Invest in God, your God account, not your bank account. There’s nothing wrong with having a nice bank account, but it doesn't go with you. Your God account goes with you.
11-July-2020 Satsang with Swami Premodaya