Baba says, ‘Break off all love for those perishable bodies of yours and love Shiv Baba alone.’

When I love someone, I want to do everything they want me to do. Similarly, when I have a loving intellect for the Supreme Father, I obey. Right when I wake up in the morning, I feel like ‘maybe I can just sleep in a little longer today…I went to bed late last night’ or when I sit down to read the murli, I feel hungry or think of something ‘important’ that I need to do right then. Somedays, I feel like having a ‘pity party’ because I feel like ‘no one cares about me’ and I feel like ‘even God doesn’t care about me and that He is a million miles away’. I feel, I feel, I feel…

I’ve been doing what I think and what I feel for half a cycle. Baba says, ‘you don’t have to think, just do what the Father tells you to do. You have faith that you now belong to ShivBaba’.

And often I may not understand why God is asking me to do something, it might not even seem fair. For example, I don’t understand why I need to submit to the authority of someone who is downright unqualified to be my boss at work, why I need to do as she tells me when God knows that she will take all the credit for my work! It makes no sense to me in the physical but then God isn’t thinking physical, He is interested in the spiritual. Baba says, ‘I only speaks to souls. The soul-conscious Father speaks to soul-conscious children.’

As I walk with God, I realize that these are tests that help me assess what I really love and how much I love it. Am I still attached to limited supports, possessions, facilities etc.? God does not ever ask me to do something just to make me miserable and to see me fret. He is asking me to do something ONLY because I have something to gain from it. Do I realize this? or do I still doubt this? Baba says, ‘Break off all love for those perishable bodies of yours and love Shiv Baba alone.’ Do I love Baba the most? Am I really willing to sacrifice something because He wants me to even though, at the time, I don’t understand it?’

I cannot be a bestower or reveal Baba if I don’t die from the self. Throughout the day, I have to choose between what God has asked me to do and what ‘I feel’ like doing. The battle is in the mind. Yes, it’s hard to submit to authority of someone less qualified, younger in age, who is unfair. But can I still work with them anyway, can I keep a good attitude anyway? Can I overcome my pride and collaborate, offer my expertise? Do I still feel enraged when someone else gets the applause, do I still hang on to: ‘it was my idea..’, ‘I did all the work…’, ‘it should have been me up there…’? Let me realize that Baba is not nearly as interested in changing my circumstances as He is in changing me. He uses the circumstances to show me my own hang-ups, the strongholds in my mind that are holding me back, and urges me to overcome them. Baba says, ‘You children know that the Father truly has come to teach you. No one, apart from Shiv Baba, can teach you this study.’

If I want to attain the elevated destiny that God wants for me, that I too want for me, then I have to go through the fires so that those bondages are burnt away. I cannot expect to sit comfortably and have God change my circumstances to suit me. In fact, that would be a huge disservice to me. And really, it isn’t me that is hurting, it is the ego and God comes to destroy that false ego and awaken the soul. Baba says, ‘He only comes when it is the time for destruction. Destruction has to take place now. Only the one Father changes the old world.’ All day long, I have to choose to humble myself, that is, be willing to not do things the way ‘I feel’ but do things the way God wants me to. Maybe I’m miffed at something someone said to me at the office, it was wrong and yet, Baba says, ‘learn to see but not see, be the peacemaker’. Now, every fiber in my body screams: ‘No!, it wasn’t my fault, Baba. They did me wrong and this isn’t the first time, they do this every time. How many times do I have to apologize! Let them do it this time…’ but God doesn’t change His mind. It’s a choice…what will I do? Will I keep count of who did what and how many times? or will I grow up, be mature enough to do as God wants me to? Will I live the ordinary, corporeal, body conscious life of ‘tit-for-tat’ or will I step into and embrace the part of being the image of support for the world? I cannot get there if I am not willing to do the hard things, and go through the fire.

Baba says, ‘you must die alive‘. It sounds harsh but really I die alive so that I can live. I want to live the good life, the elevated life, the true life that I am meant to live. And I don’t just die once, I have to die daily and multiple times a day. ‘You know that this is the same Purifier Father.‘, says Baba. He comes to purify the impure souls and take them back home.

Maybe I hurt someone and Baba is asking me to apologize and make it right, but that’s embarrassing to me. Immediately my mind starts reasoning: ‘maybe they didn’t notice, I’m sure they’ve even forgotten about it, my apology will just remind them of something they didn’t even notice’ etc etc. But Baba says again, ‘apologize’. What will I do? They might not have noticed but I noticed, Baba noticed. I don’t ‘feel like it’ but let me obey anyway. When I have a difference of opinion at home with my spouse or at the office with my co-workers, do I feel compelled to always have the ‘last word’? do I need to ‘win’? Baba is telling me to let go and my ego screams: ‘but I know I am right, I know their argument is flawed’. There is a rush I feel for a few seconds each time I ‘win’ the argument…I feel ‘smart’, but after those fleeting few seconds have gone by, I feel that discontentment, that unease: ‘maybe I shouldn’t have said that’; when I see those relationships damaged, I feel isolated. What’s more, now, I can’t have yoga with Baba, all I can think of is what happened, who said what, why no one likes me etc. It’s a very high price to pay for a cheap thrill. Let me mature up.  

Instead of disobeying God and paying the price, if only I would listen to God and simply obey in whatever area of my life He is asking me to- attitude, integrity, lifestyle, whatever it is – I would break the back of the ego and enter into a new level of my destiny. The only thing that is standing between me and greatness, me and my destiny is the body consciousness or ego. I know deep inside that I am meant for something much bigger, that I am meant to serve but the ego holds me back. I might be the picture of a perfect yogi in front of people, but behind closed doors, if I am disobedient to God, if I follow my own dictates, if I am immersed in body consciousness, then, I may try to serve but the souls will not receive anything from me. I will speak the knowledge but it won’t touch their heart, it will fail to provide them that glimpse of the Father and their inheritance, it will just be a performance, just another lecture.

Baba says, ‘as My child, every one of the Father’s praise is your praise.’. I want nothing more than to embody that, become like the Father. Indeed, I have His qualities within me- I have the ability to love people, to be patient, to be giving, kind, and humble. I have the ability to remain joyful in difficult circumstances, to remain stable when the ground beneath me is shaking. I have the ability to become God’s instrument to literally change lives, liberate souls from their strongholds. I have all this within me but in order to access it, I have to die from the body consciousness and become soul conscious. Only the Satguru can show me the path to liberation from body consciousness and He gets after me – about what I say, how I act, what I eat, my thoughts…it can feel like a never ending, unrelenting process day in and day out. And I can be tempted to say: ‘Baba, can You please teach someone else today!’ but because I have a loving intellect, I am grateful for this loving attention Baba gives me, I realize it keeps me on the straight and narrow path to greatness. So, rather than think: ‘here we go, yet another thing I am doing wrong!’, I will say, ‘thank you Baba for showing me’ and keep on changing. Let me never ever wish that God would leave me alone because that will end in destruction. I will be deceived into thinking of myself as something I’m not.

When I have the awareness of Who is teaching me, there is no more thinking needed, there is nothing left to do but to obey. Baba’s directions are very sweet: May you be soul conscious. May you have the consciousness of being bodiless.