We need something to remember. Those Divine Eyes are what I want to remember.
Her Lotus Feet, that is the other form of Her I find so Beautiful and Divine. I must remember to remember those Beautiful Divine Feet when I forget to remember Her.
There is this visual image of ‘offering’ that is coming to me as I write this. This is what offering should feel like, or to be more precise, this is what it should ‘look’ like to the inner eye: bringing my palms together in the form of a bowl and filling it up with all that I am doing, all that I am feeling and thinking, all that is going on inside me — the chatter, the noise, the effort to silence all this noise and chatter, the struggle between dispersion and concentration, the conflict between impatience and quiet perseverance, the agony of restlessness and the ecstasy of calm quietude, the oppressive pain of too many petty concerns and the libratory joy of transcending the pettiness and meanness, all this and more and everything else — and in a gesture of pouring them all out of the bowl and offering all that are in there at the Lotus Feet of the Mother. This concrete visual of offering is an act that must be performed whenever one can remember: scooping with my hands everything going on inside, everything going on outside and then turning my hands downwards in a gesture of releasing everything, let go of it all, don’t keep anything to yourself, Offer it all.
Tera tujh ko arpan, kya laage mera.
(To You is offered all that is Yours, it costs me nothing).
As one tries to “remember and offer” all that one is doing, all that one is, all that one is feeling, all that one is thinking, one is also trying to develop a sense of constant vigilance at one’s inner and outer movements. This is perhaps what the Mother may have meant when she reminds us:
You must become more and more conscious. You must observe how the thing happens, by what road the danger approaches, and stand in the way before it can take hold of you. If you want to cure yourself of a defect or a difficulty, there is but one method: to be perfectly vigilant, to have a very alert and vigilant consciousness. (CWM 4, 1972, p. 180)
It also becomes a persistent, calm sort of prayer to the Divine that the Divine may grant us the constant vigilance, persistent will and sincerity to remember the Divine and to remember to offer all of ourselves to the Divine.
Those much advanced on the path remind me that if we can “remember and offer” even once every hour, it suggests a tremendous inner progress. Very true, indeed! So remembering and offering every moment is a goal much, much farther away. Why it is that one can’t remember and offer even once every hour or even once every few hours? One gets absorbed in one’s outer activities, one gets ‘sucked in’ by the energy of the work one is engaged in, the emotions one is experiencing, the thoughts that are floating around in one’s mind, the sensations one is feeling. As a result of this total possession by all these non-stop continuous externalities, there is hardly any moment left to remember. And as possessed beings we walk around assuming that we are being ‘productive’ or we are ‘actively engaged’ or we are ‘not sitting idle’. How comforting ignorance can be!
But here is a cue, a little ray of hope for beginners on the path — it is the ‘one’ who ‘gets’ absorbed or sucked in. That means that the ‘one’ who is getting absorbed is actually separate from the activities, emotions, thoughts, sensations which do the absorbing; that ‘one’ is not one’s emotions, actions, feelings or thoughts. But because of ignorance one aligns oneself with these outer movements of activities, thoughts, emotions, etc., and forgets that the part that is the ‘one’ can be separated, is in fact separate
