Late Night Chat with Jeff Wolverton: “Effort and Grace,” June 1, 2025, live on 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!

Topic: Reading and Discussion

Dear folks of Baba,

From our last meeting, I felt the consensus from most of you was to delve in depth again into Darwin Shaw’s book, Effort and Grace, and perhaps see its insights in a new light. With each reading, as with Meher Baba’s Discourses, our inner camera angle no doubt has since then shifted to fresh perspectives, and the landscape of the heart is seen with new clarity. This is the first book of its kind in the Baba literature, and it is significant that Darwin, with his rich inner experience, was the one destined to write it. It is about the conscious inner journey from the head to the heart to the Soul--our Beloved Baba. Most all books about the inner life describe the path to realizing our spiritual potential by ascending the planes of consciousness to arrive at Self-Realization. Darwin’s book is quite different and unique in that it describes the path leading to the goal of total self-effacement, where we empty the heart of all strangers so that Baba Himself can live in us, as St. Paul says in the Bible, “Not I, but Christ liveth in me.”

To give you a little background of how I stumbled upon all this: Seemingly by a lucky circumstance, a buddy and I found ourselves at the doorstep of 2 Castine Street in Schenectady, NY, in 1970. We had no idea what a fortunate destiny was about to unfold. It was the home of Darwin and Jeanne Shaw, two of Meher Baba’s early Western mandali, who had first met Him in the 1930s. So profoundly moving was our experience with this dear old couple that we decided then and there to drop all other plans and stay in Schenectady. In their modest home chock-full with Baba memorabilia, we had the impression that their house was a favorite resting place in the world for Baba, and the three of them enjoyed a most sublime and yet informal camaraderie. How did Darwin and Jeanne arrive at such an intimacy with Baba? We were about to throw all hesitancy to the winds and ask! Fortunately, in the years to come, Darwin remembered and shared with us the many stages that he and Jeanne went through to reach such an unspeakable intimacy with Baba. We had no idea at the time about Darwin’s mystical side. The uplifting atmosphere of their home, reminding us of the Lagoon Cabin at the Center in Myrtle Beach, should have clued us in.

Up to this point, my buddy and I had read just about everything by and about Baba, and He would make reference occasionally to the inner life with Him. We had only a vague idea about this and just assumed that it would somehow unfold automatically in time. Darwin, to the contrary, made it absolutely clear that we can actually be pro-active about our inner life. He shared with a few of us many inner practices, and one of the main ones came directly from Baba to their family. In 1956 in New York City, Baba said to them, “If you love Me, you must give Me everything, all your pleasures and pains, your strengths and weaknesses, your joys and sorrows. Hold nothing back and be free. And this will please Me.” Darwin, in his very low-key, unassuming way, shared with us a method of giving the contents of our heart to Baba. It involved first focusing deeply on a particular troubling emotional complex we were facing such as anxiety, taking time to bring it up within in its many aspects and how it is experienced in our heart, and then imagining it flowing energetically to Baba. Darwin would say, “The deeper the feeling, the deeper the healing.” On one occasion, he said, “Baba is impression-less Being. Whatever you give to Baba is gone forever. But there is a layer behind it that looks exactly like t