When you come to Satsang or a spiritual meeting, you think of it as you are coming to learn something, realize something, find something. But interestingly enough (no matter how true that is or is not) you are bringing love, because you are coming with the attitude that something bigger is possible, something bigger is going on, something meaningful is possible. And automatically, through that attitude, without intending it, you come as love.
Think about it: When we go to work, when we go home, when we go to Ralph’s, when we go to the gym, when we go wherever people go, typically we are not going as love. We are not bringing love, because we are not entering from the standpoint that something meaningful, something Divine, something larger is why we are going there. And I guarantee you that anything you get when you go to a spiritual meeting is not because of the guy sitting in the chair or the woman sitting in the chair—it is because you come in love. If you go to Ralph’s in love, you will get satsang in Ralph’s.
And this is a secret key, that satsang is not going to a particular place, or being with a particular person (although it is) because certain energies, certain situations, are more conducive. But if it remains that, then it’s a tiny, paltry thing. If it doesn’t go out into your life to where you are carrying satsang, if you do not develop the ability through your satsang experience, your darshan experience, to experience it in wider circles, to experience it in you, to experience it with other people, to experience it where you do not expect it, then it has not gone far enough yet. Because where it needs to go, where it ultimately should go, where everyone wants it to go, but where your effort is needed, your awareness is needed, is your life has to become satsang.
The meaning of spiritual meetings is that whatever you feel and experience as a catalyst from the meeting, needs to be happening outside these meetings. It needs to be your presence that makes the difference. It needs to be your attitude that transforms ordinary experiences into spiritual events.
You can realize, you can experience, you can plug in, through anyone or anything. The question is not: “Who is available to help you or give you that experience?”. The question is, “How available are you?” Then love can happen, awareness can happen, divinity can happen anywhere, anytime, in any company, not just with other lovers of satsang. So that’s the goal. It’s a required target.
So see if you can feel how you come to a spiritual meeting, a spiritual event, a teacher, a teaching, with love, with a certain openness, with a certain intention, with a certain trust. What if you went everywhere like that? What if you searched for the Divine everywhere you went? What if you started to see a spiritual gathering whenever you saw a group anywhere? What if whenever two or more people are in your vision you started to see it as satsang, to see it as a kind of a communion—for one and only one reason: because it is.
So you have to develop the eyes to see the love that is already going on, the satsang that is already here.
The Ultimate requires you to develop the vision to be able to see it. There is no way around it—there is no skipping that. And if it feels like that is an arduous task, if it feels like that’s taking on a lot, that’s because it is—until you get further. But somewhere along the line it becomes a joyful process—not hard work. Once the vision starts to open up, once the understanding starts to come, it starts absolutely to be a joyful condition, even if it’s challenging.
You have to strengthen your vision, change your vision so that you can see beyond the ordinary, beyond what is happening on the surface, and see how people are bringing things to the table you never imagined. And when that starts to happen, when you start to see it in more places and in more people, then you don’t have to worry about “How am I going to deal with my negative thoughts?” Then you don’t have to figure out “How can I be a more loving person?” Then you don’t have to contend with various problems about, “How am I going to find what I need to find?” Because now you have changed. Now you have developed the eyes to see what has always been there, that wasn’t seen.
And when you see that for yourself for real, it absolutely changes you, because you see it was not what you thought. What’s going on out there is not what you thought was going on. Then you don’t have to make yourself more positive, because seeing that makes everything more positive. Seeing that, you worry less, because you see there’s more love out there than you were aware of—there’s more Divine communion happening in everyday life than you ever knew.
It is about your ability to see beyond the surface. And if you develop the ability a little bit, just a tiny bit more, it starts to increase by itself. And then you see that anywhere you go, no matter who is there, no matter what the experience, no matter what your interpretation, satsang is happening. Then you see that even if you don’t feel it, your life is satsang. Then you see that all life is satsang: communion with Truth.