Baba says, “The duty of you children is to make effort.“

It is said: Student life is the best life. A good student has love for the study, they enjoy the process of learning new material- failing at first, then understanding a little, then feeling the penny drop. They keep churning, experimenting, tweaking until they have perfected their understanding of something. This is called studying. Baba says, “The duty of you children is to make effort.” Often I have love for BapDada, I have love for service, but I don’t have enough love for effort-making. When adverse situations come, or when I have to confront difficult sanskars, then I becomes afraid quickly and give up. I cry out to Baba to make the situation or the person go away. I see the situation or the person as a hinderance to my effort-making, a block to my peace and happiness. In reality though, to feel this way is to miss the point about what effort-making is entirely.

Situations or people come not to hinder my effort but to enable me to speed up my effort, to enable me to learn something new, to strengthen me. So they are the means or the set-up for my effort-making rather than hinderances. If there were no situations or difficult sanskars or an illness or a crisis, how would I ever know what I am made of? How would I ever be able to assess my level of courage, strength of character or my faith? “The reason you become afraid“, Baba says, “is because you create your stage (sthiti) with the support of the situations (paristhiti). You don’t change the situation through your stage.” That is like saying “I am smart” without ever taking an exam. Most people are nice people until they need to interact with other people! That’s when the rubber meets the road and truth comes to bare. To think that I will be able to create my stage when the situation goes away is the opposite of effort-making. True effort-making is to summon the power of my original stage to transform the situation.

Situations are external, whereas the stage is of the self. When I allow myself to be influenced by external situations, I become weak whereas by stabilizing myself in the original stage of the self, I receive power. “Therefore“, says Baba, “don’t come to a standstill by being influenced by external situations. The original stage of the self has so much power that it can overcome any kind of external situation. Because of your weakness in stabilizing the self in the original stage, the external situations sometimes become powerful.” When I become dependent on the external things, then I take my requests to Baba.

Rather than complain to Baba saying: “Baba, please put this right, this is a hinderance”, reveal your courage and then you will definitely overcome those situations, He says. It is good to put a request, He notes, but together with that request, you also have to put the advice you receive into a practical form. But often, although I know that I need to be courageous and face the situation, I defer that part to later. I tell Baba: “yes, Baba, I will do that later, but now, please make this situation go away.” To remove instantly whatever weakness is visible is to have love for effort. “You mustn’t do that slowly“, teaches Baba. The main virtue of Brahma Baba was that he never left anything for later. It had to be done there and then. “Just as he used to do it at that very moment, in the same way, you have to do it right away“, teaches Baba. Those who become slack in their efforts will let this precious time of the confluence to slip through their fingers. And so, use each breath and second in a worthwhile way, He cautions. Have love for effort and increase your effort.