A Day for Divine Work

A Day for Divine Work

I'll read chapter 54 of Isaiah, which I call the head of the human soul.

Whoever believes that his soul came from God, he will never be deprived of His Love. A man is not in the external form we see - dressed in flesh and blood, but he is in the soul that came from God. The soul is the Divine in human beings, exactly what Isaiah is writing about. Throughout the book of Isaiah we see his great consciousness, even though he had lived before Christ. He juxtaposes things justly by comparing the soul to a woman and comparing the relation of the soul to God to the one between the Earth and the Sun. If the Earth was inexistent the rising Sun itself would still shine. For the Earth revolving around however, the Sun is rising and setting. The sun rises and sunsets have their meaning on Earth. What the Sun is for our Earth, so is the idea of God for the human soul. Only the idea of God is capable of bringing life into the human soul, to help her growth and development. The Sun for the human soul is God - when this Sun gives light, the soul is growing, when It is not shining, the soul stops its progress. If somebody asks: “Why believe in God?” this is equivalent to asking why the Sun has to rise. Faith in this sense is a motion – when the man believes, he is moving near God. Similarly the Earth in its motion is turning around the Sun.

We shall name today a day for divine work. You shall consecrate it to work around our camp. Where there are twisted paths, they should be straightened; where the paths are bushy with grass or pine-scrub, they should be cleaned. Whatever changes you perform outside, whatever you clean outside, the same happens inside you. How many hours shall you dedicate to the work for God? (– Three hours.) So everybody shall dedicate three hours from his time to cleaning. You shall be content looking around the site, and the outsiders coming here shall be content as well. Whoever comes from the outside shall see that the people who live here possess great ideas. You shall clean as if God is going to visit you. Whenever you work with love, you shall be joyful and merry.

Many are sitting thinking about their affairs and worrying that they are messy. You must know that today contains all the goodness in itself. If today was a good day, tomorrow will be good too; if today is bad, tomorrow will be the same – this is the Divine law. If the tree is good, the fruit shall be good too. In the Divine World what is the beginning, so is the end. The opposite is also true – what is the end, so was the beginning; in the human world however it is not so.

Often people are not successful in life because they collide with two ideas. For instance they start a task and immediately think what shall be its ending – they think about the stuff they shouldn’t. After getting up in the morning, and seeing that the weather is good, they say: “What shall tomorrow be?” Tomorrow should be what today is – if today is good, tomorrow should be better. When we reach tomorrow, it should be good, and the day after should be better. The word better means comparison and good means something realizable. For that reason today is always good because it is giving us the possibility to achieve.

I say: everybody who came here to the Rila Mountains must free himself from a shortcoming or from an evil habit. For instance, one is walking too stooped. If you come here, you should not have any hunches, pains, or faults. You must leave all pains, all ailments in the water and return home liberated. The fresh mountain air can heal anybody. You have to breathe pure air and bathe several times a day. For instance, you should wash your hands five, six, or ten times every day each time saying a beautiful verse. A quality of water is: no matter where you pour it, it flows down and nothing remains. When you wash your face with water, it falls down without remaining on it.

Therefore, “the water of Life” meaning is twofold, as clarified in the verses Christ had said a long time ago: “If you are not born from water and Spirit, you could not enter the kingdom of God. Whoever is born from water and Spirit is always pure”. Hence the water is a symbol of spotlessness. Could the fish have mud on his back? This is impossible. However, when the fish gets out of the water and begins to roll on the ground, it could get dirty. Similarly to this, one sometimes makes assumptions without any logic. For instance, it is impossible to stumble while watching the sun rising, or if the sunlight enters into one’s soul.

Why? Because the person can see through his eyes. Whoever has eyes could not and should not stumble. If he is stumbling, this signifies a defect in his eyes or somewhere else. If the man is stumbling and falling down, this is evidence that two elements, Peace and Light - are missing in this soul. The same appears on the physical plane too – if a negative thought enters one’s mind, he/she either stumbles, or falls down. Hence all discouragements are like stumbling sticks in Life. Whenever one is being discouraged, the invisible word tells him: “The Sun of Life is high, it is day outdoors. There is Light, and nothing to worry about.” Therefore the discouragement is a temporary process.

Isaiah the prophet says: “No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper”. The human soul is invincible – it could be besieged or attacked, but no weapon is capable of defeating it. Somebody walks alone in the forest thinking: “What if a bear appeared now from somewhere; what could I do alone, where could I hide?” And God tells him from inside: “There is no weapon or a killer able to harm your soul”. The bear then would ask him: “Do you know who created me?” - “The Lord.” – “Because you recognized that God made me, even if I like to slay horses and donkeys, I shall not touch you.” If a burglar meets you, he would ask you: “Do you know who created me?” – “The Lord.” – “If you know that God created me, even though I am robbing and cheating people all the time, I’ll do nothing bad to you. You are free.” The Black Death or another illness would come to him and ask: “Do you know who created me?” – “The Lord.” – “Because you know this, I’ll go around without injuring you.” So God said through Isaiah the prophet: “No killer or a weapon is able to damage the human soul.”

I ask: why the diseases are coming into Life? Suppose a man has some impurities inside him, and then the malady as a garbage collector would come with its chariot to throw away these impurities. After the healing, he would weigh himself and see that the disease had taken about ten kilograms of his weight. When he was healthy, he was quarrelling with one or with another, but since he has fallen ill, everything had been taken away. And he says “Glory to the Lord that I am free from this great disaster!” In this sense, all the diseases, sufferings and miseries are nothing but blessings sent by God and which are to be grateful for. After each difficulty like this the mind and the heart are put in order. And a man is joyful and content that all his affairs are moving forward – he gained in his consciousness an internal Peace and Light.

Now apply yourselves to clean the place around your tents, to dig around well, to remove all the sticks. After that, pour three buckets of water on every tent to clear the dust from it. Do not wait for the rain to do the job. The water is a life blessing - taken symbolically, it washes, dissolves and carries the dirt away.
Whenever you are worried or sad, experiment different ways to transform your condition. A consecrated man is capable of gaining an income from everything. Take the moss for example: the stones are still a good soil for it, while unable to serve as such for higher plants. Being able to live on the rocks, the moss is somehow fed from them. Therefore, when you feel sad and worried about something, do the following experiment: Take a bucket full of water and pour from it ten times onto some big stone, while saying to yourself: “As the water is washing this stone, so let it wash and take away my sadness.” You would say that such an experiment is ridiculous, because it could not give any result. Just try it - as the stone is able to give food to the moss, it could give something to you as well. I ask: if you bake stones aren’t they giving something? You would again say that it is impossible to bake a stone. Then what would you say about limestone? When the limestone is baked, it brings lime and carbon dioxide. After that, when the lime has slackened it has a good application into life. Therefore, when the stone is washed with water there would be a reaction similar to slackening the lime. The wise would use this reaction, and the unwise would abandon any effort. Not every stone indeed would give something new when washed with water and baked on the fire, but the aspirant must search and perform experiments. For only research and experimenting will bring results.

Once, a Turk was engaged to dig and to clean a vineyard from the grass and the weeds. There was a lot of couch grass in the vineyard, which was extremely difficult to eradicate. The man had worked all day long and was totally exhausted. When leaving at dusk, he took some of the couch in his pocket (he did not know the herb’s name), to avoid working at such a place again. The next day, he went again to the marketplace looking for a job. A gentleman approached him to engage him to clean his vineyard. The Turk took the grass out of his pocked and asked, “Is there a herb like this in your vineyard?” – “Yes.” – “Then I am not taking the job.”

And so, we shall begin the day with work and we should give thanks for all the good days we have.

Petar Deunov's (Beinsa Douno) website:
http://www.beinsadouno.org

More lectures of Petar Deunov (Beinsa Douno)
http://www.beinsadouno.org/bwork.htm