The Light of His Face Is Shining Upon You
God is love, and love is God. The essence of God’s love is within all human beings. Masters are sent to wake us up to the call of love so we can return to the Father, merge into love, become love forever. Such divine love is the creative force and power of the universe and sustains all creation. It is called by many names, Shabd, Nam, Word, Logos, the audible life stream, the music of the spheres. When we are initiated by a Master into the science of the soul or Surat Shabd Yoga, this inner sound is the beginning of the soul’s return to God. Rumi tells us it is our time to bask in the Lord’s light.
O heart,
Make your wish –
The gifts are ready
The King is waiting with open arms.
The Light of His face is shining upon you.
Quoted in Rumi: In the Arms of the Beloved
“The King is waiting with open arms. The Light of His face is shining upon you.” Yet, where are we? Where is our attention? The Master is so near, but are we open and receptive to his grace and gift of love? Whether we know it or not, the Master is at the very centre of our being – he is our very being. His Shabd form permeates every pore of our very essence, our soul, from the moment we are initiated.
Through meditation, his grace slowly awakens us to his constant presence; we experience his divine love, which creates the longing and thirst to be in his presence and meet him within. Only in meditation can our connection to the Lord be realized. The saints emphatically tell us that meditation is a relationship of love between the disciple and the inner Shabd Master.
The only command is to meditate. There is no other shortcut to developing our love for the Master and attaining union with him. It is meditation before all else that leads us into divine love. Thus, the Masters tell us meditation must be our objective and priority in life – otherwise, we remain asleep. As Rumi says, “The gifts are ready.”
It’s time to do our part, play our role, do our meditation practice, with love, diligence, perseverance, and effort. Ultimately, we will fly on the wings of love and grace, but we still must take action. This path is one of action. The Masters come to rouse us from our deep slumber and cut our bonds to the illusions of this world. In Discourses on Sant Mat, Vol. I, Maharaj Sawan Singh says:
The saints and Masters cry aloud from the housetop and reveal the way to the tenth gate that leads inwards but it [the soul] pays no heed and like the worm in the filth ever remains confined to the nine gates that continually take it outwards. It is time that we put an end to this reckless wandering!
Only the Satguru, who has initiated us and abides within us in his Radiant Form, can break our chains to the mind, the senses, and the world. Through meditation, we awaken to the reality of the Master within us. Until then, we are dissipating our spiritual resources and energy in the world. Now is the time to put an end to this reckless wandering.
We must meditate. Only that prepares us to have a silent, listening, waiting, receptive heart. We must open ourselves and consciously be in his presence. The Master waits for every disciple to merge in him and be carried on the current of Shabd to our true home, Sach Khand. The mission of the saints is to take us back to the Father.
The Lord has given us this human birth so that we can merge in him. We need to give him our time and attention. That is how we activate our relationship with him. We need to be open, attentive, and receptive. Then we realize that Master’s grace is showering upon us all the time. All effort we put forth in meditation builds and strengthens our relationship of love with the Master.
The Masters tell us the most important factor in spirituality is bireh or longing. A yearning, longing heart kindles that fire of love for the Lord. This longing comes to us through the Master. It is a gift that nurtures our receptivity during our meditation. He always encourages us to be sincere, attentive, and present with him in the darkness, saying the Holy Names. This love and devotion for the Master can’t be calculated or willed. It is our effort to invoke his grace, so we try and fail and try again. There is no doubt that someday the door will open because they tell us it will open!
Open our hearts, be attentive, be receptive. The Master wants our attention. We have an opportunity, right now, to be with him. We burden ourselves with our life, our worries; we allow the mind to be negative, to desire indiscriminately. We allow ourselves to be carried away by the madness of this world. With his grace and our effort, we can be with him inside in the twinkling of an eye. We can go within in this very lifetime. We need to be ready for the pull of his grace at any moment.
The Masters tell us that God and the Master are as close as our thoughts allow him to be. The opportunity for remembrance and simran of the Beloved is here in every moment if we seize the opportunity now. So, let’s ask ourselves, what constitutes the core, the centerpiece of our lives? Are we engaged in our spiritual work – are we developing love for our Master to such a degree that our time spent with him in meditation gives us our most happiness? What more can we do to receive the gifts from our Master, absorb them – become filled with them – and then return this love back to him?
Love is emanating from our beloved Master every second! Our wish is to be with him; to love him; to meet him within; to open our heart to him. As Great Master says in Philosophy of the Masters, Vol. II, “True love is only for the sake of love itself. The only wish of a true lover is to be united with the Beloved. Love is awakened when the currents of love, which emanate from the Beloved, enter into our hearts.”
The message is clear: wake up and come to the Master on the inside, where he waits for us with open arms. Now is the time!