Conversations about Meher Baba

Angela Lee Chen - Baba Zoom
  • 5.0 (2)
  • SPIRITUALITY

Different hosts, different topics, sometimes featured guests: but always about loving Meher Baba in the present tense. Conversations are held live on Baba Zoom at various times. If you want to join the conversation, visit babazoom.net for more information, login information is available under the ”Virtual Meetings” page.

  1. 16H AGO

    Sahavas for Everyone: guest Latka Thompson, Feb 19, 2026 live on Baba Zoom

    Sahavas for Everyone. Avatar Meher Baba is in each one of us. And His Love is the focus of this gathering. Open discussion with each session having a topic or theme. Hosted by Laurent Weichberger in SC. Jai Baba! This event was recorded live. To be first to be notified of a new video on this channel, please hit the red subscribe button, then the notifications bell. To join future live events, see www.babazoom.net. Please join our Facebook group: www.facebook.com/groups/meherbabafamily

    1h 19m

  2. 1D AGO

    Late Night Chat with JeffWolverton: E&G: ”Harm of Judging ourselves,” Feb 16, 2026, live BabaZoom

    The Topic: The Harm of Judging Ourselves Dear folks of Baba, Darwin was very insistent that we give up judging ourselves negatively, maintaining that it is one of the most insidious traps of the ego. We were young in Baba, and this was welcome news, because most of us had grown up regarding judging ourselves as a normal thing to do. Darwin has said, “Baba is not judgmental in any way, nor does He hold our weaknesses against us.” We had never met anyone who was like this, although for many of us, our mothers may have come the closest to this kind of love. In reading about Baba’s training of the mandali, we might conclude that He was often judging and disapproving of their behavior, but in fact He was only acting in their best interests. He is like a music teacher with perfect pitch pointing out that a student’s guitar strings are sharp or flat, which is interfering with their performance. Although Baba’s love is unconditional and not judgmental, from our side we must do our part by developing self-compassion and self-acceptance (two qualities, as Marion says, we must have in our “tool box”). Darwin would say, when we are hard on ourselves, we are interfering unnecessarily in our reception of Baba’s love which He is ever-ready to shower on us. Our receptivity is infinitely more crucial to our life with Baba than we could ever imagine. We must be absolutely accepting of His love and not buy into all our psychological and moral limitations. Baba is inviting us to be more loving, to truly love ourselves as He does, and each effort we make toward becoming more loving is His victory in us. Why is it so difficult to refrain from judging ourselves? Among the many ways we do this, there are two that are particularly difficult to avoid. It seems only natural to hold ourselves accountable when we are selfish or do something “wrong”. It is our habit. And we must continue to make efforts to be more loving. But Baba says in His description of the provisional ego, which He encourages us to adopt, that we must think it is “Baba doing everything.” He says, even when we do something wrong, we should think it is Baba doing wrong. That for me was one of the greatest hurdles I have had to rise above and still struggle with. I would think to myself that Baba would never be as critical of others and as petty-minded as I am! Too often, we unquestioningly take credit for what we do, good and bad, but Baba insists that He is the sole doer. We must continue to strive to live by the most loving values we are capable of, but unfortunately much of the struggle in our lives is due to the fact that we are often trying to improve our personality self exclusively, our lower identity, rather than thinking more and more of Baba and aligning ourselves with Him who is our higher Self. One of the most surreptitious contributors to negative self-judgement is our mental ideals that we have bought into, which are set too high for what we are really capable of achieving. We wind up always falling short and even after decades, we may find that we are still harboring the thought, “I’m not good enough. I feel so inadequate.” Our negative self-judgment may even be secretly masquerading as humility. One thing I learned from the mandali is that our ideals should be practical—what is the next baby step we can take—not the impossible achievement of the highest ideal. We don’t learn patience or forgiveness overnight. The ego has a way of colluding with the mind to guilt-trip us when we fall short of our mental ideals. On the other hand, the ideals formed in the heart are much more compassionate, not so black-and-white. The heart knows just what we are capable of in the present, our next step. In fact, the ego is fighting a battle for the supremacy of our attention, and it is a victory for it when the ego can get us thinking negatively about ourselves instead of remembering Baba and others with love. The ego can also hide in feeling superior to those who have a healthy attitude toward themselves, seeing their attitude as naive and an expression of the ego! Or the ego can hide out in envy of others, rather than having a positive appreciation of the valuable qualities they express. All the time we spend thinking critically of ourselves, we all know, is time spent away from thinking about Baba and responding to the love He’s asking us to share with others and this world. In judging ourselves, we are clearly not fully in the present where Baba is most found, but rather we are mentally in the past or the future. And consequently, we are not really in a receptive state in the present moment either to Baba or to others. Rumi has said, “We are so obsessed with the bad stitching on our sleeve That we’re blind to the magnificent beauty of our own garment.” In His love, Jeff

    1h 12m

  3. FEB 10

    Late Night Chat with Jeff Wolverton: E&G: ”Ascending Spiral of the Path,” Feb 9, 2026, live BabaZoom

    Dear folks of Baba, Darwin would sometimes describe life with Baba using the metaphor of an ascending spiral encircling Him to depict the spiritual path. It starts at the outer ring, and spirals upward and very gradually narrows around Baba until, sooner or later (usually a lot later), we are face-to-face with our Beloved! There are walls that separate the ever-narrowing spiral. To expand on what Darwin describes: in the beginning, as we move along the outer ring, we revolve through all the many repetitious experiences we have to face in life: our diverse emotional complexes, desires, tests, bindings, breakthroughs, relationships, disappointments, failures and successes. Taking, as an example, one complex such as the fear of public speaking: at the beginning of the spiral, say, we have to give a talk before a class in college. We go through all the agony in anticipation, extremely fearful that we might lose the thread of what we want to say. We try to give the whole ordeal to Baba as best as we can in our agitated state. In the actual talk, we find ourselves stumbling over our words, struggling to remember what we planned to say, and in the end, we embarrass ourselves. We are left with a painful memory. We now avoid public talks in any way we can, but suppose a year later we have to again give a talk which is unavoidable. We go through all the incredible mental turmoil like the previous time. We say to ourselves, “Not this again!” And the talk goes about the way it did the year before—poorly. We conclude that we’re not making any progress whatsoever. This goes on year after year. We do get better, but not enough to call it a substantial progress. What Darwin would say is that unknown to us, each time we face this fear, we have made a circuit of the spiral and are dealing with the fear at a higher level. We are facing our complex at a more refined elevation even though it seems like the same “stubborn old problem”. Again and again, we have to work intensely with the fear, and we surrender a little more of the complex to Baba. Every time we deal with such difficult situations in our life, we are really working at a higher level, and at the same time, we are moving closer and closer to Baba who is ever-present at the center of the spiral. That is, we are making headway even if it doesn’t seem so at all. Going around and around the spiral, rising slightly and often imperceptibly higher each time, we are, Darwin would say, gradually freeing ourselves of our sanskaras (our past karma). But there comes a point when we see that we can burn through the wall of the outer spiral where we are and into one of the inner spirals, and bypass the longer outer route. This is when we make Baba the center of all our aspirations, when we are facing directly toward Him and are turned away from all our emotional complexes that we have had to face along the outer spiral. Darwin calls this a “spiritual bypass”. Through Baba’s grace, we can actually burn through the walls of the outer spirals one by one, and we find ourselves closer and closer to His immediate presence and facing away from the presence of the world and all our karmic complexes. This greatly speeds up our progress toward merging with our Beloved. We are facing the sun, as Baba says, with our backs now turned away from our shadow, the world and our many issues with it. In a Rumi quote liked by Darwin, he says, “On the spiritual path, effort is required. But grace is a thousand times greater than effort. When the morning sun appears, the candle of self-effort can be blown out.” I have always found Darwin’s metaphor of the inner path very helpful and hopeful and which confirms that we are really drawing closer to Baba all the time through our seemingly muddling efforts! Baba, in a profoundly encouraging message, says in His Discourses, “The aspirant is generally conscious of the manner in which he has been responding to the diverse situations in life, and rarely conscious of the manner in which he makes progress towards self-knowledge. Without consciously knowing it, the aspirant is gradually arriving at self-knowledge by traversing the Inner Path through his joys and sorrows, his happiness and suffering, his successes and failures, his efforts and rest, and through his moments of clear perception and harmonized will as well as through the moments of confusion and conflict. These are the manifestations of the diverse sanskaras which he has brought from the past, and the aspirant forges his way towards self-knowledge [towards Baba] through the tangles of these sanskaras like the traveler threading his way through a wild and thick forest.” Does Darwin’s metaphor of the inner life clarify how we proceed on the path? Is it clear how turning directly to Baba within can be a spiritual bypass of our otherwise slow karmic journey? In His love, Jeff P.S. We are continuing on page 68

    1h 17m

  4. FEB 10

    In Touch with the MAC: a conversation about Beads on One String, Feb 7, 2026 live on Baba Zoom

    Join host Evie Lindemann and guests Marnie Frank and Sevn McAuley as they talk about the history and work of the Beads on One String Foundation, whose mission is dedicated to the exploration and expression of the Oneness that lies at the heart of all. Hosted by Evie Lindeman and Ashley Lowe in NC This event was recorded live. To be first to be notified of a new video on this channel, please hit the red subscribe button, then the notifications bell. To join future live events, see www.babazoom.net. Please join our Facebook group: www.facebook.com/groups/meherbabafamily

    1h 47m

  5. FEB 3

    Late Night Chat with Jeff Wolverton: E&G: ”Bad to Good to Love,” Feb 3, 2026, live Baba Zoom

    Dear folks of Baba, In our early years with Baba, many of us were surprised that the mandali did not give “good” the prominent place in life that we did. Rather than being the ultimate quality we need to cultivate, it is something in the end we need to rise above, for most of us mistakenly conflated good with love, often with binding consequences. Good is a learned or cultivated behavior that becomes a part of our conditioning (our sanskaras), whereas love springs spontaneously from within, from the innermost dimension, the soul. Victor Hugo, the French novelist, said it very insightfully, “Virtue, as in the case of vice, is a calculated action, but love is not calculated. It wells up in the heart and expresses itself spontaneously.” In my early years with Baba, Eruch once said to me seemingly out of the blue, “Jeff, the accumulation of virtue is not the goal.” It can take years to discern the difference between good (or virtue) and love. Baba has said, “Feelings and emotions are the creation of mind and energy. Love is the creation of the soul.” Feelings and emotions (the heart) are great vehicles for love, but also for the ego! For this reason, you don’t want to give the heart a blank check! Because both good and love make their appearance in the heart, it is easy to equate the two. As I gathered from the mandali, it requires keen inner awareness to see that love expresses itself through the heart, whereas good comes from the heart. Love, because it comes from Baba, is “impression-less” as Darwin and Eruch used to say, and has its origin in the soul, from beyond the world of time and space. Although good is learned and originates in our conditioning (our sanskaras), this is not to say that good is bad! Baba has said that in general we go “from bad to good to God [Love].” Yet good, in its highest expression, is transactional; it still seeks to get something however infinitely subtle that might be. Love gives itself away spontaneously and is not seeking some hidden result for the self. Good has a limited fund of energy to draw from, and when overdone can lead to burnout. Love has an unlimited source of energy because it springs from the soul. The kind of love Baba is inviting us to explore and experience has a different, more exquisitely refined vibration. Eruch, in his seemingly casual remark, was actually hinting that the highest virtue or good that we are capable of is still within the realm of duality and is at best a reflection of the highest Love, not its source. This is similar to the moon, which is not the source of its own light. That is, the good or virtuous sanskaras in us, at their highest levels, only reflect Divine Love and its qualities, but they don’t have the spontaneous beauty of these qualities, and there is invariably the sense of the “I”. Good or virtue involves the effort of willpower, motive and deliberation, whereas love is effortlessly expressed, spacious and liberating. Baba once said to Bhau, “In a virtuous life, evil is suppressed and good surfaces; but the evil is still there. The bad sanskaras remain and have to be worked out, if not in this life, then in the next or the one after. In the spiritual life, both good and bad sanskaras express themselves, and both get nullified. A spiritual life leads one toward naturalness, whereas a virtuous life, in the guise of humility, inflates the ego and perpetuates it!” To discern the difference between the highest good or virtue in us on the one hand and the divine qualities of Love on the other is like distinguishing between crystal and pure diamond; we have to become expert jewelers. Over time, I feel Baba awakens this discernment in us when it is helpful to our spiritual unfoldment. The divine qualities (or divinely human qualities) are like the refracted rays of the Sun of Baba, and they originate directly from Him. The more we are drawn to the divine qualities (as well as to Baba’s immediate divine presence itself) and away from the good and virtuous sanskaras, the more our consciousness moves toward merging with the Divine, our Beloved Baba. As the mandali have said, at first this merging is fleeting, but eventually after many years, through longing and Baba’s grace, we will spend more and more time moving toward the Soul, toward Baba and Oneness, until, as one of His mandali, Dr. Harry Kenmore, once said, we become “His residence”, where He lives permanently. Eruch, in hearing this from the doctor, confirmed the supreme importance of our becoming His residence, a home for His Love. In His love, Jeff

    1h 14m

  6. FEB 1

    Irwin Luck: Amartithi Message, Jan 31, 2026, live on Baba Zoom

    Dear Lovers of the Lord and anyone else who likes him. I am giving a talk about my experience of the first Amartithi when Meher Baba gave up his body in this advent of His. I was there to help cover his body. I will tell you about what happened and the intensely intoxicating atmosphere surrounding the area during my time there. Hosted by Diana Goodheart in NC This event was recorded live. To be first to be notified of a new video on this channel, please hit the red subscribe button, then the notifications bell. To join future live events, see www.babazoom.net. Please join our Facebook group: www.facebook.com/groups/meherbabafamily

    1h 25m

  7. JAN 28

    Late Night Chat with Jeff Wolverton: E&G: ”Realization vs. Effacement,” Jan 26, 2026, live Baba Zoom

    Dear folks of Baba, “The way of My Work is the way of effacement, which is the way of strength, not of weakness and through it you become mature in My love." - Meher Baba In the coming chapter, Darwin Shaw writes about the path of self-effacement encouraged by Baba. It was a new concept for most of us, and the term is rarely used even in spiritual circles. Simply put, it involves vacating our interior, so to speak, and letting Baba move in. His mandali would use the phrase: “When He takes over.” This transformation does not occur instantly, but gradually over our lifetime as we surrender our interior to Him. In my view, Baba affirms two major spiritual approaches, that of self-realization and that of self-effacement. On the path of self-realization, we seek to realize our spiritual potential, going up through the planes of consciousness, gross, subtle and mental, to realize our own divinity. Many of the saints are on this path. On the path of self-effacement, which Baba guided most of His mandali and close ones on, is about vacating our interior and allowing Baba to live our life, with us as the witness. In the Bible are the words, “Not I, but Christ liveth in me.” Unlike the path of self-realization, self-effacement means giving up even our spiritual experiences, which can be so compelling. Rick Chapman, in his meeting with Baba at Meherazad in 1966, was told by Him, "In fact, pay no attention whatsoever to the spiritual path, the planes of consciousness, or to any spiritual experiences—they are all nothing but toys for children, because they are nothing but illusion.” In this approach, Baba is implying to even renounce our "spiritual experiences " in favor of self-effacement. Such spiritual experiences are still in the dual realm. In truth, Love is the higher self, which is ever-present in everything, in what is “unspiritual” as well as “spiritual.” It is a matter of realizing Love heart-to-heart with Baba and each other, not chasing after spiritual experiences. The one Love that surrounds us and is ever-present only needs to be cleansed of its impurities, and its sanskaric veils removed. In clarifying the two approaches, Baba gave the metaphor, as Irwin Luck shared with me, of two methods of taking down a large tree. Paraphrasing, in the first method, we go to the top of the tree and cut down, say, ten feet of the topmost branches, and then we come down another ten feet, and then another and another, until we reach the base of the tree. This is like going through the inner path of consciousness, plane by plane, until Divinity is reached. In the second method, continuing the metaphor, Baba introduces termites into the bark of the tree, and gradually the tree is hollowed out, so that to all intents and purposes the tree appears to be thriving at the gross level. We remain at the level of the world where we can express Baba’s personal love to those around us. Baba becomes the indweller, and we become vehicles of His love in the world, rather than regarding our self as the base of operations. The remembrance of Baba in any way, shape or form acts like an invasion of termites that eventually destroys the tree. As has been said, Baba affirms both paths. The path of self-effacement allows us to empathize with others in the gross world; we are spared the infinite vastness and complications of the overwhelming experiences of the higher planes. However, we are nevertheless exposed to the experiences of the ups and downs of life in the gross world. Baba has said, “I will teach you how to move in the world, yet be at all times in inward communion with me as the Infinite Being.” On the path of self-realization, the bliss of the higher planes makes it difficult for the advanced aspirant to truly empathize with others in the gross world; there is sympathy and the sharing of the higher expression of love, but empathizing with others as they experience themselves at the gross level is not really possible. Among the myriad methods leading toward self-effacement, adopting the provisional ego is essential, in which we imagine Baba as living our day and doing everything through us. What starts as a mental exercise eventually becomes our actual experience, the gradual transition from micro-managing our lives to letting Baba take over. And of course, focusing on Baba in all the ways that we can is paramount, making Him our constant companion, which over time, gradually effaces our ego in Him. “I believe that as spiritual aspirants our concentration should be on loving God and merging with Him, and the predominant process we are engaged in is not self-realization but complete self-effacement, which is both total annihilation and complete merging of the personality self into God.” - Darwin Shaw P.S. We are continuing on page 61

    1h 17m

  8. JAN 22

    Late Night Chat with Jeff Wolverton: E&G: ”No Villain is Required,” Jan 19, 2026, live Baba Zoom

    We have some informal chat after every arti, the "post-arti party"! But once a week, Jeff Wolverton joins us for some serious mining of the spiritual depths. Join us for conversation, more readings, songs, quotes - you never know what treasures will be uncovered! The Topic: No Villain Is Required Dear folks of Baba, When I went off to college in 1962, although coming from a free-thinking, fun-loving and non-religious family, I nevertheless naively bought into the world as being the “reality" as it is described in the excellent article below. I think probably all of us did. This was before Baba entered my life in January, 1968. It was soon after that I found myself going to Darwin and Jeanne Shaw’s meetings in Schenectady, N.Y. Darwin would speak of the myriad ways of the world as a “mayavic trap”, and at the time I felt, although he radiated such a rarified love, that he was a bit too detached from the world—ha! He didn’t seem to see some of its valuable and creative possibilities—haha! My parents encouraged my siblings and me to strive to leave the world a better place. Now decades later, I find my orientation toward the world has changed 180 degrees. What I had struggled with for years and found most difficult to resolve is this: How do I express the love within me in this world without getting bound up in it? Ultimately, I have had to give up even "my own loving agenda" in regard to the world and actually liberate Baba’s Love in me from my agenda—who would have imagined that! I had to quietly step out of the game and let Baba and His Love do its own thing. Here are Baba’s magnificent words about our purpose in the world: To penetrate into the essence of all being and significance, and to release the fragrance of that inner attainment for the guidance and benefit of others, by expressing, in the world of forms, truth, love, purity and beauty—this is the sole game which has any intrinsic and absolute worth. All other happenings, incidents and attainments can, in themselves, have no lasting importance. To me, this has meant to not live in the world on its terms, but on Love’s terms—Baba’s Love has its own agenda. How is this done? This is taking me a lifetime to fathom. The article below describes succinctly how difficult it is to disentangle from the clutches of the world. It is not only colorfully written, but in my view, reveals a very profound insight into the subtlety of Maya, the principle of ignorance. It bears studying. I should say that it isn’t written knowingly from Baba’s point of view. In His love, Jeff A link to the PDF of Effort and Grace: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xrR75eksY-tErdKZm9aOBs3omuhioasb/view?usp=sharing To join the email list for Late Night Chats, contact Angela

    1h 10m
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Different hosts, different topics, sometimes featured guests: but always about loving Meher Baba in the present tense. Conversations are held live on Baba Zoom at various times. If you want to join the conversation, visit babazoom.net for more information, login information is available under the ”Virtual Meetings” page.

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  • Creator
    Angela Lee Chen - Baba Zoom
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    100
  • Rating
    Clean
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    Conversations about Meher Baba