Participant: What is the right attitude to approach the Master?
Marcos Gualberto: If you are invited to the royal palace in England to see the queen, you will receive some lessons about social conventions, about how to behave in front of the queen. Any different behavior can be considered an insult, and that means, at the very least, you can be expelled from the room she is.
In this meeting with the queen, who is the authority, who has the power, who owns the kingdom, who gives and who receives the favor? It seems to me that everything comes from her! From her there comes favor, hospitality, grace. She is the queen! You will not try to explain to her how to rule her own kingdom. You are not part of the government, neither to give an opinion nor to vote on decisions to be taken. You are just a visitor.
So, what should it be like to visit the Guru, the Presence, the Consciousness in the form? Will you say this Consciousness in the form is a liar? Or are you going to discuss how the Guru does or does not do his or her job? No! You cannot come to my kingdom and discuss how I rule it, if I cast someone out of the kingdom, if I mistreat one of my subjects... You don't have the power to do that. I am the owner of the kingdom. I am the king. I rule the way I choose to rule. When you do that, you are no longer part of the kingdom. This is the arrogant way of behaving in front of the Guru.
The Guru accepts and expels whoever he or she wants! Seeing justice or injustice in this is up to those outside the kingdom. If you're part of the kingdom, you don't argue about the king's decisions.
So, what is the way to be before God, which is the Presence, Consciousness? Without mind! No opinions, no judgments, no comparisons, no conclusions... Because you are before Grace! You depend on this Grace! And you cannot forget this: you are coming to me! I am not coming to you! You are coming to me to receive this favor, this Grace, which is the release of this lie, this arrogance. So, the real way to be here is to know what it means to be before a Sage, before the Presence, before Grace!
This arrogance drives you away from yourselves! You have to come here with tears, not screams, and with an inner sadness in your heart, for seeing everything with a background of fear, frustration, disappointment, anger... It's not time to scream. It's time to cry, to regret. It's time to ask, "Master, what's going on? The fear is here, the pain is here, help me out with this!" That's the attitude you should have when you're with me! If it's true that you only have me to help you out with this mire of arrogance, prepotency, vanity, fear, then learn to look at me. Come here and say, "Master, help me out with this!" Do it here, in person, and also when you're away! You are not talking to a physical form, but to Consciousness, to God!
You don't go to the Guru to question him or her. You go to the Guru to give up being "someone" in front of his or her gracious Presence, blessing Presence, enlightened Presence. Serving the Guru is not serving another person. It is surrendering to the Truth! When there is this surrender to the Truth, the hidden Guru in the disciple's heart reveals as the disciple's own Self. This is Enlightenment! This is Realization!
Don't demand me for Realization. Deserve that! Be worthy of that Grace – even though Grace is not earned by merits. When you are "deserving" this Realization, you will receive it by Grace, not because you deserved it. This is how Enlightenment happens: it has to come to an end, then there is no "someone," only Enlightenment.
You can see on the stories of those who attained Realization through Zen: hearing absurd things from the Guru, getting nose-pulled, being thrown out of a window, being punched, being hit with a baton, sitting in front of a wall, witnessing and hearing absurd things like Koans. All this for many, many years! And apparently, it is like nothing was happening, not even a slap on the back from the master saying, "you're fine, you're evolving." No acknowledgment, no applause for deeds, for obedience. On the contrary, the "rope" gets shorter and shorter; the demands, greater, year after year. But questioning the Guru, never! Doubting the Guru, never! Thinking about desertion, don't even think about it! Year after year! Apparently, nothing is happening, and there comes a day, like a stumble – or a literal stumble on a small rock – and the ego crashes!
The disciple ceases to be a disciple, when he or she makes oneself worthy of this Grace, through surrender. This Grace comes without merits to a disciple who ceases to be a disciple, only because the inner Guru has flourished, has taken over... Because the "king" returned to the throne and recognized his royalty. By grace? Yes. By merit? Yes. By merit? No. For all those years? Yes. For all those years? No.
Don't go to the Guru asking him or her for what you cannot receive, even if the Guru has that to share with you. Go to the Guru and surrender, surrender yourself, deserve to touch the Guru's feet, enable yourself to do so. It is not possible to realize God by being someone. It is not possible to realize God while still having many dreams, being too attached to other things.
Your place is in this space: in the space of meditation, surrender, renunciation, liberation from the world and its fantasies of paradise, happiness on earth. This is the path of Grace: surrender. It's the only way to be worthy of what you can receive without any merit. You either believe in yourself or trust Grace in the form of the Guru.
One day Christ said, "He who remains till the end will be free, he will be saved; if you truly abide in my words, you will truly be my disciples, then you will know the Truth, and the Truth will be that Freedom, and the Truth will set you free."
One day, Buddha said, in his last sermon, "be a light to yourselves." Is it possible? In the ego, no! In Consciousness, yes! And Consciousness is present when the Guru is present, when Grace is present, when Truth is present. So, the Light is there.
It is a huge mistake to see the Guru as just another person. The Guru is not just another person. The Guru is God, Consciousness. The Guru is infallible. The Guru is a solved case!
When you go to a living Master, you are going to encounter Freedom. You can't steal it from Him or Her. You're not going to understand Him or Her. You're not going to take a little piece of Him or Her and take it with you. You will not learn anything from Him or Her. There is nothing you can take from Him or Her, but The Guru is as generous as the sea to receive you into His or Her waters. You cannot steal anything from Him or Her. Either you give up on doing this with seawater and plunge into the sea, or you will fall into this illusion of trying to grab a part, which will end up returning to itself. So, when you go to a living Master, it is better to bathe in the waters of His or Her Freedom and be free with Him or Her.
You have to come to me to be One with me, not to draw conclusions about who I am, who you are, what I know or don't know, what I've learned or not, what I can or can't... This is nonsense! You have to come to me to be in that Silence, to dive into my eyes, my heart, my absence, my Presence. Plunge into that Meditation which is where I am, where I am What I Am.
Stop thinking about your personal, private life, your relationships where there are things to hide or to say in private. When you are with me, come to dive in this sea, come to forget about this "someone's" story. "Someone" who has to make a trip, to have distractions... What for? Come to this sea, travel into this ocean of Liberty! Otherwise, you will keep taking that ego to those trips with you.
Live without ego! Live without the sense of separation! Live in Supreme Happiness, in Freedom! Live without fear, without conflict, desires, anxiety about future, without worrying about the past, without personal stories! When you come, come in and immerse yourself in my art, in the art of Being, in the art of being nothing, of being nobody! Without being born and without dying! Nobody is ever born, and nobody ever dies! Nobody ever gets married. Nobody ever gets divorced! No one ever is or isn't...
This is so simple... but you make things complicated…
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