Baba says, ‘the unlimited Father has come into this unlimited gathering to adopt you poor children. He doesn’t need to go into a gathering of deities.‘

Baba has adopted me into His family. Do I realize this? The Father comes for His children who have been held captive and bankrupted by Ravan for half a cycle. He says, ‘Enough, no more!’ and liberates His children from the sorrow and suffering. ‘I cannot bear to hear the cries of My children’, He says. Of His direct children, us Brahmins, Baba says, ‘I cannot bear to see you labor’.

To adopt is to make me belong to Him. He adopts me through Brahma, His first son. He says, ‘You are my long lost and now found child‘. The moment I recognize Him as my same Father Whom I met last cycle and say, ‘My Baba’, I become His child, His heir. As God’s child, I have all privileges, I have complete and direct access to Him at anytime and anyplace. This relationship is what enables me to break free from the bondage that had allowed Ravan to hold me captive and bankrupt me for half a cycle – the bondage of fear.

‘As soon as I adopt you, I teach you’, He says. He tells me about myself- reminds me of my elevated identity, tells me the beginning, middle and end of my story. He tells me of my relationship with Him, the Creator. I am your Father, He says. I receive from Him, this new consciousness, this awareness of being a pure soul, a child of God. I am liberated from being a slave to the fears, doubts, worry, and anxieties that Ravan used to rule over me. You are no longer a slave of Ravan, you are My child, an heir to My inheritance, He says.

Suddenly, I go from being an orphan with no identity, no belonging, completely bankrupt, captive in Ravan’s jail,….to calling God, my Father! The moment I took my new birth into God’s family, the old life has no right over me; only God has a right to me. The past is canceled and the karmic debts are wiped out; I begin a new life with God and become an heir to all His treasures- peace, happiness, the powers, love, wisdom, everything! I don’t work for this, I simply receive it as inheritance, I already have it. This is not just for Brahma, He says, you too become a joint-heir along with him. I now have a new father, a new head of the family, it’s God! and my elder brother is Brahma! Do I appreciate this incredible privilege?

Until I accept this fact that God has made me His child, that He is my Father, deeply in my bones, I cannot trust nor experience God’s unconditional love for me. And until I do, I will continue to live in fear. Yes, I will continue to make mistakes till the very end. I will continue to have doubts about things but I don’t have to be gripped by fear, or punish myself with guilt and condemnation. That was the old way of living, I now have a new birth and when I remember Who my Father is, I know He doesn’t love me any less when I make a mistake or love me any more when I do something well. This doesn’t mean I live sloppy and think, ‘well, God loves me anyway!’ but it means that when I do make a mistake, I don’t live down on myself, guilt-ridden, dragging through life because I feel that I have let God down. I have to, with attentive effort, let go of this old body conscious, performance driven way of living. That is not how God loves, that is not Who He is!

Until I get my mind renewed, because the past conditioning is so strong, every time I do the tiniest thing wrong, I will feel the guilt and condemnation and sometimes, it stays with me days on end. I drag through life, hunched over with thoughts of: ‘I’m just a mess, no one messes as much as I do, I just can’t do anything right…’ and it cripples me and blocks God’s love. ‘I cannot bear to see you labor‘, He tells me. He has accepted me as I am, let me do the same. He doesn’t condemn me, I shouldn’t either. ‘I teach you to live your new life, as My child’, He says. Sure, God understands that I cannot go from living as an orphan, and a prisoner to a prince and heir, overnight. It’s a journey and takes time but I need to make the effort. I cannot simply sit back and think that the switch will happen on it’s own time. I have to switch my awareness, my consciousness to the new one- with deliberate practice. To the extent I do this, I will claim my inheritance of peace, love and happiness from God.

He is not surprised by anything I did or will do. He knew me before I knew Him and that doesn’t mean He knew my name, it means He knew my entire story– beginning, middle and end. And despite that, despite all that I have done and will do wrong, God chooses me as His instrument and He uses me for His task. He chooses those souls, especially the poor mothers and sisters, that have been dismissed by the rest of the world as useless…and He uses them. He is the Lord of the Poor, He says: ‘I adopt the poor ones and give them their inheritance. I do not adopt the wealthy; they remain lost in their own intoxication’. The ‘poor’ is not simply a reference to wealth but it is a reference to the bankruptcy of the soul. God in His amazing love, benevolence and compassion takes the lost, helpless, poverty-stricken, debt-laden impure souls that have sinned for half a cycle and adopts them into His own family, so that the old debts are canceled and the original glory inherited, that is, restored. The way to show my gratitude to God is to simply receive His love and inheritance and carry myself as His child. Let me not make the mistake of trying to ‘deserve‘ it or ‘earn‘ it because I can’t. That’s when I start to feel guilt and condemnation. Let me realize that I can only receive what He is giving me.

He is counting on me to help Him in His task of liberating His other children, my brothers and sisters. Until I accept who I am in relationship with Him and walk in that faith, I cannot remain fear-free, and stable. God needs loving and faith-filled intellects that are clean, clear and stable to work through. Only such intellects are able to connect and stay connected to Him. If the link keeps dropping – because I’m upset every time someone says something, or I’m guilt-ridden every time I make a mistake, or I’m worried of what/how/why- then, God cannot use me to serve His other children. He may already be using me in some ways but He wants to do so much more if I’ll only get myself out of my own mini-dramas and make myself available to Him.

Baba says, ‘remember Me and the inheritance, spin the discus of self-realization‘. This is how I continue to remove the impure alloy of wrong thoughts, attitudes, feelings from my intellect and strengthen and stabilize it, keep my faith stirred up. God has a great plan and purpose for my life but first, I need to become His child.