A devotee said, “Pujya Guruji, do you know something? Right now, I’m not really feeling bad at all.” I said with compassion, “Very good. Now, I want you to do a simple thing. Call the Ashram tomorrow at this time and let me know how you feel.”
So she went back home and called the next evening. When Roopaji received the phone, she was feeling almost normal. Each day, I would tell her to call again the next evening to let me know how she felt. This went on for two weeks. At the end of two weeks she forgot that she was supposed to feel sad. She would be in a state of constant awareness because she had to report how she felt to me each evening. Her mind was always thinking of her Guru and her preoccupation with sorrow dropped away. There was no space in her mind for self-pity any more. This is how one should meet adversity - with a mind that is always focused on Divinity. Then sorrow loses its sting.”
Rohini began, “Pujya Guruji, when a problem bothers …” Nimishananda Guruji cut short her sentence, “What is a problem? As we discussed just now, it’s purely subjective. If you feel that something is a problem, it means that your ego is creating one.
“If you look at a small ant as it is, it seems insignificant. However, if you project a slide taken of an ant, onto a 35 feet wide wall, the picture is greatly magnified by the lens. The ant looks gigantic. Here the actual ant is the situation confronting you, the lens is the ego and the magnified image on the wall is the “problem”. The ego is distorting and magnifying the situation into a “problem” in your mind.”