Make a list, my beloved ones, of your crutches. Crutches can be physical like clothes and food, and money and people. These are physical. But how many know that this is a crutch?  You have to answer a very simple question:  is this necessary for my happiness? Not Joy - a crutch brings you happiness. It cannot bring you Joy.  If your answer is Yes, then that is your crutch. Once you have answered, then what are you going to do?  A lame man knows that he must respect his crutch. He cannot kick it away till his legs are strong. So do not kick your crutches. Be aware of them and every time you use those crutches acknowledge the moment that you are using them. Initially, awareness and acknowledgement is enough but, the more aware you are and the more often you acknowledge the use of your crutch, the less you automatically will wish to use it. Then there will come moments, when just for transient fun you use the crutch for a short time, knowing that your legs are strong enough and the crutch has now become only a little play thing. That is when you can leave it or use it, as and when your whim desires. Physical crutches are easier to be aware of and to let go.

But emotional ones are very, very difficult to be aware of. Emotional ones come in ‘many disguises’. They come as ‘praise’, they come as ‘physical love’, they come as ‘insatiable greed’, and they come as ‘insult’. Yes little ones. Insult and emotional pain is a crutch used by several of you, without knowing that it is your crutch.  How do you recognise an emotional crutch? This needs complete awareness of every moment.

When a word of praise is given to you, judge for yourself honestly, your feelings at that moment. Is there a rush of thrill, happiness, excitement, confirmation, validation? If there is such a rush, then that praise is your crutch. But if praise is accepted by you in a matter of fact way, causes no undue surge of happiness nor does ‘insult and injury’ cause any surge or depression, then neither is your crutch. The emotional crutch that is even more difficult is the one that comes disguised as ‘insult’, ‘abuse’ because here your conditioning and your physical consciousness helps you in making this crutch stronger. How does this work? When an angry word is spoken to you, when you perceive that there is abuse, when you experience insult, when you experience a battering to your physical Ego and you feel a sense of sadness, grief,
despondency, rejection, abandonment, this is a crutch. But you are asking Jade Fire: ‘a crutch is something that I need.  I don’t need insult and abuse in my life’.  Oh yes, my little ones, you do. These are moments when you can experience your physical ego completely and this is what each one desires. How good it makes you feel to say that ‘my son acts in such a hurtful manner with me’. How good it makes you feel when others pity you, because you have no love and understanding from your partner. How good it makes you feel when you think about all the sad moments in your life – honest answer - does it not make you feel better? Isn’t there, my little ones,
a sense of fulfilment when you say : No one loves me. I have no friends?   No one understands me! I have been betrayed. What a sense of fulfilment this is! But physical consciousness has been conditioned, not to believe that this is true. So even now, many of you have difficult in accepting that ‘pity makes you feel good’. That is why this crutch is very difficult to see and be aware of.

And how should this crutch be removed? Very, very gradually. The most difficult step in its removal is its acknowledgement. Not intellectual acknowledgement, but deep down, where the inner Spark resides. To acknowledge that you like moments of self pity. To acknowledge that you enjoy the experience of abuse and anger. To acknowledge that many, many times, not at a conscious condition level, but at a level below, which is more real, you in fact initiate this experience, so that you can enjoy it.  Very difficult. Very difficult. When this has been acknowledged completely, then every moment that this crutch is used it will come to you like a huge pillar, which you will not be able to ignore and in that moment of its awareness, a little part of its strength will have diminished for good.

How many of you feel good after you have cried? You feel ‘I have become light’. (Many hands went up.) Do you know why you feel that? Because the tears that you cried were those of self-pity and they made you feel rejuvenated. And that is true. The physical Ego has been strengthened and revitalised by every tear of self-pity. But now do you know what you will do when you wish to cry? You will deliberately suppress it! (Laughter) Jade Fire is not a ‘Master’ for no reason. He is watching all your thoughts. And do you know that your thoughts have as powerful a physical manifestation as you do? When we watch you, we do not watch your physical. We are watching - watching in every sense of the word – your thoughts.

So now do not be foolish and suppress. Because every suppression will lead again to another part of the Ego being revitalised! That part which uses the most difficult crutch to release. It revitalises that part of the physical Ego that uses spirituality as its
crutch. And so when you suppress, what will you be? The word that Jade Fire does not like – you will feel ‘holy’. ‘I have done right. I am now on my path of evolution.’ Oh little one, not at all. You have in fact become more ‘hole-y’. The spiritual fabric has been torn more and more, by these physical attempts at spirituality. How can you be spiritual in a physical manner? It is like asking you to turn right by turning left!

We have explained this many times and yet we are sorry to find that it has not been understood. Spirituality is not a process of ‘prayer’, of visiting temples and churches and mosques. It is not a prayer, it is not a chant, it is not a meditation, it is not an affirmation. It is LIFE. It is LIVING; when you use all the joys of the physical world not as crutches but as gifts of the Universe. Again we ask you to remember the example of the child playing with its ‘train set’. When, my little ones, when will you understand that this is spirituality. It is not attending meetings like this that makes you spiritual. Many wonder: ‘why has Jade Fire not taken me into the Core Group? Why? Is there something wrong with me? Am I not spiritual enough’?

How can you be ‘spiritual enough’? We are not looking for religious leaders.  We are not looking for those that are experts in theology. We are not looking for do-gooders, who do good, so that others may know. NO! We are looking for signs, silent work with your inner Being. That is what we are looking for. Why is it, that some, like this son of mine (Dhiren) - as many of you thought - was admitted into this Core Group, without, what you felt, any effort?  You didn’t see the effort. We did. The effort is not now, it has been ongoing over the years, even before his intellect knew of concepts and truths that we have taught you! His inner being knew and worked. His oneness, his awareness of his inner processes has readied him for the work he has to do. That is spirituality. Awareness of your inner processes.  BE AWARE! That is all we ask of you at present! BE AWARE! There are so many more moments in your day, when the Universe gives you the opportunities to look outwards.  Awareness of the ‘inner’ makes you grab in all greed these opportunities, to turn them into opportunities to look inwards.

How easy it would be to blame this child for annoying you. And how difficult to say that ‘she has played a wonderful role in this opportunity’. You have really grown, when you can turn around – and again, not intellectually and from a ‘holy’ point of view – don’t fall into that trap; it is a ready trap, waiting for you to fall in. But when you can, from your Inner Being, turn towards the person, who causes you pain, harm, injury, irritation, frustration, delay – when you can turn and embrace and love that person for having played such an important role in this moment when you can evolve a little more, that is spirituality.

Spirituality is not giving up worldly goods. It is not ‘not enjoying’ the money and wealth. ENJOY IT. Why have we given you the hologram for wealth, if wealth was so un-holy? It is a gift. USE IT. Do you not use the air every moment that you live? Is there guilt? When you sip water to quench your thirst is there guilt?  And yet there is guilt about money and wealth. USE IT! Give it and receive it as freely as the air. There is so much guilt. But the more you cling to it, the more it doesn’t come to you. When your hand is empty, the Universe will fill it. But if have clutched something in the palm of your hand and closed it into a tight fist, how can the Universe pour its gifts into your hands?  USE this. Use all the worldly pleasures with great joy and not illusory happiness. When the eye looks inward, the Mind automatically turns inward and then this is the ‘Beautiful Mind’ that is there at your command. This Mind that turns inward, knows that my every wish has to be fulfilled, because ‘I AM, that I AM’. How then can desires not manifest?

And yes, each one of you also feels ‘will this not lead to people becoming greedy?  Observe! Those who are greedy get nothing. Those who give freely, receive it all! A thousand fold! Their every need is answered even before it is felt. And yet you feel that ‘in order to be spiritual I must not think of money and wealth’. And you are right. Do not think of money and wealth with a Mind that is trained to look outwards. Think of it with the Inner Mind. Enjoy! Enjoy the world around you. You have chosen it. If it were your lot to be poor and in lack, in poverty and sickness and destitution, that would have manifest. Because that is what you had chosen. But you have chosen abundance. You have chosen abundance of all that the material world has to offer. Why then do you now feel guilty about your choice? We have given you on many occasions an example of this beloved heart of ours (Silla) – so much wealth, and so much has she given silently, for no one to know and no one to talk of. And then the Universe gives her more and more and more.

THESE are your crutches. BE AWARE of each one. It is very, very easy to become self-righteous. Don’t fall into that trap, my beloved ones. We have seen this happen to many in this group. And so we are urging you to climb out of this trap that you have fallen into. There is a tendency now to talk of yourself as ‘us’ and ‘them’. We who are on the ‘spiritual’ path and ‘they’ who are materially trapped. And so there is condemnation and sneer, never physically manifested because you are ‘too holy’ for that. Condemnation and sneer is inside, on one hand and on the other hand, there is a growth in Ego. And Core Group members are being even more cautioned, because Core Group members seem to think that they have – (to Sohrab) what is the word you
use? - ‘arrived’. (Sohrab laughed heartily) ‘I have already proved ‘my spirituality’

Mergence with any level of higher self can be broken at any time. Continue the process of inward search. Know your Self. How long each one spends in analysing another! ‘She behaves like this because of this and she doesn’t even know it, but ‘I’ know it’. Good! Now move on and see if you know YOUR self as well as you know another.

And this leads us to another subject that we wish to discuss today. PERSPECTIVE. A person is what you think that person is and not what the person really IS. If for you, he is a beautiful being, kind and gentle, then all his actions, words, deeds and thoughts, you will judge by that ‘mental’ perception. But if you perceive this child to be mean, and greedy, and small, you will judge all that she does and says and thinks by THAT perception. And so she does not become for you what she IS, but what you judge her to be. This is another test for you. How many people in your lives are mean, are greedy. How many of those that you know are selfish, materialistic, indifferent, power-crazy? And now the next step. WHY have you perceived them so? You perceive a person to be what YOU judge him to be, because that person REFLECTS a part of YOU. If you judge and perceive another as materialistic and greedy, there is an unfulfilled physical desire in YOU, which you are fearful about expressing. THAT desire is reflected in that mirror. If you perceive another as lazy or mean or indifferent, there is a part of YOU that the other has REFLECTED. And now the biggest question. Does anyone here perceive ALL to be wonderful beings? You shake your head sadly my child (Jimmy) And it is sad. Because the answer is: You cannot have this universal perception because THAT is not how you perceive YOURSELF. You judge others, by WHAT YOU ARE. So many times in your course of work you have come across those whom you perceive have come in the way of your progress, your promotion, your career, your profession, your business. And you look at that person and you blame and you say: ‘THIS person is power-crazy’. Now use that mirror to look INSIDE. People in your lives are your mirrors. And it takes great courage to LOVE the reflection you see. It does not take courage to condemn and break and shatter that mirror. If you do not like what you see in a mirror, then do something about it to YOURSELF. How can you change the reflection? You can only change the object that is being reflected.