Guest: Yes, we've kept tabs on each other for the past ten years.

Maitreya: You knew her when she had Meditation Unlimited in Florida? So you learned how to meditate unlimitedly [all laughing].

What can I do for you? Do you have any question or anything you want to know? Anything you think you'd like to ask me?

Guest: No, I think I came here just to be around other brothers and sisters, to pray together, and that was really it.

Maitreya: You have a lot of them here. Hopefully they're going to grow in number and there are going to be more brothers and sisters here who are going to join this community. We're all willing to open ourselves to everyone in the universe who would like to come and join us and be with us. OK, so let's just be with it then. [Silence] It's going to be a nice Satsang. It's going to be a silent Satsang [all laughing].

Comment: It will be very easy to transcribe [all laughing].

Question: About the second part of the Thirty-Three Virtues, "Purification of one's existence." Do you want to speak about that?

Maitreya: Well, what is the existence of a person? A person consists of the physical, mental and spiritual. So when we talk about the purification of the existence of a person, we're talking about purifying on all levels of existence.

Purifying physically means to keep yourself clean. What is the relationship between the physical body and the environment? Your physical body is also related to the environment that you live in. So you also purify your environment.

You live in a place where the direction of the thoughts, the direction of living and whoever is around you is also thinking about God and creating an environment that is mostly related to God consciousness, and is Godly. So physically you are always surrounded by Godly characters, because your mind is affected by the environment you live in. You try to live in an environment that affects you in such a way that it directs your mind toward God all the time.

We also purify ourselves mentally. But what affects our mental sphere? The people we keep as company, the environment, the books we read, the magazines we look at, the television programs we watch. Anything that affects us mentally also has to be purified. We have to be very discerning, very aware of what affects us and in what way.

When you go to a bar or somewhere with low energy vibrations, it affects you in a different way than when you go to a church or synagogue, or to a place where people talk about God, or to come to the Mission, because we talk about God and people are very God-conscious.

And also you purify yourself spiritually. Spiritual purification is like meditation, prayer, etc. Also these three levels are not disconnected. They are interconnected with one another. When you purify yourself physically, for instance, fasting is a part of purification, by fasting you get rid of toxins which is physical purification. You get rid of the energies that pull you toward the external world which is mental and spiritual purification.

With the fast you really calm down your senses because your senses are not as powerful, as effective as when you eat all the time. When you eat and you never fast, what happens is the food you eat has energy that awakens different parts of your tendencies. With fasting and purifying your food, you purify your physical body.

By watching the things that affect your physical body, your mental body and your spirit, more and more you create such strong three levels in yourself that your mind can be directed to God very easily. But if you are not purifying your existence you will not be able to keep the mind focused on God all the time. That's when your mind falls into Maya, it falls into the external world. You no longer have control over it. It controls you.

Suddenly you don't feel God anymore. You just are confused, or you want to just do like everyone else, go to the bar and drink, do things that most of the people are attracted to doing. Suddenly one day you just look at yourself and you're no longer really interested in spirituality any longer. You are lost to Maya.

Of course, as usual, you go down and down until you hit the bottom and then again you say, Hey, what am I doing here? Then you may return. The moment you return, God is there for you. He says, I am here, I always was here. I never left you. And then you can come back.

So purification of one's existence relates to all levels of one's life. With meditation, being aware of the effect of different things on you, physically, mentally and spiritually, you can create an environment for yourself that purifies you physically, mentally and spiritually.

Of course, if you don't have any support to do that, if you are living by yourself in an environment where no one else cares about God, or everyone is trying to create a rat race, like the external world is and a lot of people live in, what happens is it's going to be very difficult for you to purify your existence. You purify your existence on the weekend, and Monday morning you start going to work and suddenly this driver cuts in front of you. Suddenly the energy out there gets to you. Maybe not Monday, not Tuesday, not Wednesday, but probably by Wednesday afternoon you feel you are one of them. You are really doing whatever they do.

So the support that is necessary to make you able to purify your existence is important. That again brings in the concept of the Communities of Light.

You can create a community if your family supports you in your spiritual path, if your environment supports you in the spiritual path. If you live in a place where they support you spiritually, it would be much easier to purify yourself. It's much easier to create that keen mind to see what affects you.

For instance, after you live in a community for six months, or one year or so, when you go out there you feel the difference between living in a loving, sharing, caring environment and being out there where no one cares. Everyone is for himself or for herself. What can I get out of this for me? But the community is, What is good for the community? How can we help one another?

So it is much easier to purify one's existence when there is a support system for it. And again, it falls back to the Communities of Light.

In the Communities of Light we eat food that affects us in a much more spiritual way. We talk about God, and we create an environment where our mind is more directed to God. With this we create a better, easier way to focus on God instead of focusing on, as most of the people do, their own limited ego, which creates an environment where there is separation between one another.

This helps us to be more focused on God and to purify our existence on all levels, physically, mentally and spiritually.

Question: I find it more difficult to purify the emotions, like fear, anger, etc. How do you purify the emotions?

Maitreya: Emotions are actually related to your ethereal body, your chakras. Emotions come mostly from your second chakra, your sexual chakra.

As we've said, the sexual chakra is related to passion, and passion doesn't have any mind. In passion no mind exists. Passion is the mindless action, mindless desire, mindless pull.

So passion, anger and all those emotions come from the second chakra. That's why they are so hard to control, because there is no mind there to control it.

Mind means discipline, control, or logic. Logic is the controller in the universe. Father is the Controller and Mother is just The Grace. Without mind, there is very little control. There is passion. There is emotion. There are fears and desires. To overcome an emotional problem you have to bring the energy to higher levels. You have to bring the energy from the second chakra to the higher chakras.

When you come to the third chakra, or third energy center, you have much more power over your emotions, and you can control your emotions. But still you are in your lower nature. You control your emotions to be able to control your environment and others.

When you come to the fourth chakra, the very passion becomes compassion. It's the same energy you use for anger, fear, and desires. It's the same energy, however when you transform it to the higher chakras a different kind of propensity is being activated. So the very passion in the second chakra becomes compassion, becomes unconditional love, in the forth chakra. So to take the grip out of your emotional problems you need a lot of meditation.

Again the kind of food you eat affects you very much. As it is said, You are what you eat. Because of that, we try to be vegetarian as much as possible. Of course, as we say, the middle path is the best path. We don't condemn not being vegetarian but it is recommended to consume more vegetables in our diet. It's much easier to transform the energy in vegetables because they are a much subtler energy. It is much harder to transform the energy in meat to the higher chakras.

That is why your diet, your environment, the things you read or watch and whatever is affecting your mind, your support system and also your background, are very important. What kind of an environment were you living in, and why did it affect you in such a way that these fears, desires and attachments have been created in you? Of course, background means this lifetime and many others. It doesn't mean just this lifetime. There might have been some experiences you had in previous lifetimes that affected you in such a way that now you have those fears, or those desires, or attachments.

So again, by meditation you might remember, you might break those blocks that have been created in different levels of consciousness for you. Also there might be lessons that you have to be learning in this lifetime. By meditating, you can go through the experience.

In your meditation you can go through the experience. You can bring it to your consciousness, and just sit it there and say, I have this fear. Just look at it. Just keep it in the Light.

You see, we used to talk about the creatures, everyone has some creatures in them. And these creatures have control of our lives. They create habits. They create our emotions. They create our fears and desires, and they control our lives. They tell us what to do. They say, Go here, go there, do this, do that. After awhile they completely run our lives.

Now, one day you wake up in the morning and say, I'm not going to listen to you creatures anymore. I know who you are. You dark creatures in the darkness, I'm not going to listen to you. Do you think they're going to let go easily? Do you think they're going to say, OK, we're not going to control your life any longer? No, they're going to fight back, because they've been running you all this time. They want to stay where they are.

Now you want the control of your life. A lot of people, the moment they start meditating, get more in trouble, or their lives become even a little more difficult in the beginning. Why? Because the moment you close your eyes you're shedding Light in those dark corners of your Soul, those places where these creatures can hide.

Then think about these creatures, that they can just live in darkness. They cannot live in Light. And if you keep the Light on them long enough, they just dissolve, they just die. They go away by themselves. That's why meditation is so important, to meditate and keep the Light within you until this darkness just dissolves by itself.

As I said, they're going to fight back. They're not going to give up easily. They have been there and running your life all this time. But if you keep meditating and be sincere about it, after awhile they're going to dissolve.

One day you wake up and say, Hey, I don't have that fear anymore. It's gone. It doesn't even need an effort on your part. The only effort you have to make is to keep the Light shining. And those creatures can't live very long, they just dissolve by themselves.

You see, there are different propensities in different energy centers in the body. The first energy center, the first chakra is related to existence, to the fear of death and all the things related to existence.

The second chakra is related to emotion, anything related to your emotional problems. The third chakra is the chakra of control. You want to control other people. You want to create an environment where you are in control. Most politicians are in that third chakra.

The fourth chakra is the unconditional love, but at the same time shame, and some fears are related to this chakra. The fifth chakra is the chakra of blessedness, of knowing there is heaven, the ethereal level. And by the sixth chakra you are almost one with God. You just have a small thread of "I" left. You experience being one with God and/or being separated from Him, going back and forth in this experience.

These different propensities are in different levels of energy centers. So if you have problems with emotions which are related to the second chakra, you have to bring your energy up to higher chakras. Again meditation is going to help you out.

Question: What was meant by the phrase, "My burden is light?" I have my own ideas, but I'd like to hear.......

Maitreya: If the Christ is Christ, then how much karma does he have? Almost none. So in a sense, for himself, his burden is light. You can look at the sentence as, My burden, personally, is light. And also if you relate the burden he's putting on other people, it's also light. So he says, I'm not putting too heavy a burden on you.

It might seem to be a big burden in the beginning, when we tell someone to give up a lot of worldly attractions and become God-conscious. It sounds like a big burden. Actually many times they misunderstand us. They think we mean to give up the world and life, leave their children and husband, and forget about everything in order to get to God. But as they meditate more, they see they don't have to.

You can be God-conscious and do God's Will wherever you are and whatever you do, and in any situation you are in. And you can do it and start it from where you are.

Of course, some people are called to drop everything and go for God. Some others aren't. Some can just be Godly as they are, where they are. So as they meditate and they realize that they can be whatever they are and where they are, at the same time realize God and His Love and His Ways, they see it's not really a big burden. They didn't lose anything, but gained a lot.

So the burden is light and they can progress and become freer and freer every day. Actually, they had burdens before Christ came to them. They were burdened with life. They were burdened with their desires, their attachments and fears. But when the Christ comes he says, You don't have to be like that. You can be light. You can lighten yourself up, and let God take your burdens away from you.

Another burden is, you think you are the doer, don't you? Oh, I should do this. I should do that. I should take care of this. I should take care of that. But if you realize that it's God doing it through you, what happens? Again you no longer have that burden. You just do it. You're not attached to the result of your actions. You just walk away and say, OK, I did my best. And you're not burdened again. Your burden does not stay with you because the result does not stay with you. The results are not yours.

So that's another way you can look at that sentence. When you know God, your burden is going to be light!

You don't have any burden, because what do you need? What do humans need? They need only a little food and a place to put their heads down, and that's it. The rest we can utilize to progress physically, mentally and spiritually.

So God didn't create us to have a lot of burdens on our shoulders, or to be unhappy, etc. We create those burdens. Christ takes those burdens away. So his burden is light. The human burden is great because they do not know God.