doing, would be, by definition, His grace working out for me. In this case, I think that Baba prompted my conscience to keep it simple. A clear message from my conscience emerged over several weeks of thinking, thinking about options: “Be useful; work with families”. Note that I am both, credentialed as a counselor and as a marriage and family therapist, but I have not been working with families for several years. So I looked for work that would directly fulfill those prescriptions.
were available were measured using my internal happiness meter: When I envisioned working there, my heart felt heaviness. My heart rejoiced at the idea of working with one agency, but darkened after meditating on the 50 mile commute. Trusting happiness as a criterion for choosing, I rejected these opportunities.
In Baba’s Discourse, “The Conditions of Happiness,” His main emphasis is that suffering comes through desires. In my work, I see that much suffering comes through the desire we have for others to behave as we want them to.
Eventually, in the process of doing everything I could think of, I contacted the owner of a relatively new private practice in town. My new relationship with this man felt natural, and I felt I could be myself, naturally, in his company. His group welcomed me with enthusiasm. Intuitively, I felt strongly that this is where I belong. The thought of working with this group gave me a feeling of lightness and happiness.
Eventually, based on this, I passed up opportunities to be useful as a supervisor of therapists in an agency, because it did not fulfill the part about working directly with families. And due to this second criterion, over time I came to believe that I was meant to work directly with folks as a therapist, rather than in an executive role as I have done in the past. Interweaving the application of the principles of honesty, intuition, being natural, and following the path of happiness figure heavily in the process, but are hard to describe. For example, having worked for over twenty years in my community I have numerous contacts in the mental health field who I know appreciate me and my skills. I called
Avatar Meher Baba
all of them. Intuition played a strong role in the meaning I gleaned from the responses to my calls. As I made more and more contacts, I honestly could not feel that any doors were going to open on old and familiar pathways. The agency positions that
Now I am being useful as a counselor in private practice and I am serving more and more families. I marvel at the richness and beauty of the people that Baba is bringing to me in my work. Throughout this process, I maintained a certainty that I was completely safe, that my course was certain in the orbit of my Ideal, Avatar Meher Baba.
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