Baba says, ‘A soul who acts according to the signals of shrimat at every step is called honest, that is, honest and faithful.’

For half a cycle, I lived the life of an orphan, stumbling along with no guidance. No matter what area, what decision, what choice I had to make, everyone had an opinion. ‘What should I do?’, ‘Should I do this or that?’, ‘Am I right or wrong about this?’. I was never really sure and sometimes, even things I felt sure about, later, turned out to be false.

Now, I no longer have to second guess myself, wonder or stumble. I have my Father, Teacher and Satguru Who tell me exactly what I need to do about anything. But those who don’t have a relationship with God have a hard time believing this to be true. ‘How can God who is incorporeal tell anyone what to do?’, or ‘why would God, the Almighty, bother with all the little things a human would need to do?’. He would bother with my ‘little things’ because He is my Father. He is always my Father but at this auspicious confluence age, He comes into this old, impure world, takes an old, impure body on loan and becomes my Father, practically. This is also how, incorporeal God, speaks to me, relates to me.

Sometimes, I subconsciously expect God to speak to me in a rather supernatural way. Maybe, I’ll have a vision or hear a loud voice or see a light or something. But, God speaks to me in more normal, subtle ways. The most tangible form of God is the Murli where He speaks to me clearly, in plain words, through a body. Through the Murli, He answers my questions, gives me directions, and teaches me new aspects daily. Then sometimes, He speaks to me in other ways. Maybe, I have a decision to make and even as I’m thinking about it, someone unexpectedly stops by and gives me information that makes my decision easy. Other times, it is more subtle; it’s just a knowing inside me. I don’t know how, I can’t even explain it but I just know what I need to do in my heart. Sometimes, an idea for something just comes to me and unlike other ideas, this one feels different, it feels special, it feels just perfect, like something I couldn’t have come up with.

But even as God speaks to me in all these ways, even as He gets involved, even as He is helping me, I can only take benefit from it, if I can catch what He is telling me. That requires honesty. Just as many things automatically function through the power of science – I just need to turn on the switch and they function- similarly, when I have honesty in me, I easily and automatically move forward in this Brahmin life. I ‘just know’ what I need to do at the right time, I am able to receive the signal using the receiver of the divine intellect that BapDada gifted me right at birth. My catching power therefore directly depends on how well I take care of my receiver.

‘Is your line clear?‘, asks Baba. If it is, then I don’t ever have questions of: ‘Is this shrimat or not?’, ‘is this right or wrong?’ because it is clear to me. But if the receiving line isn’t clear, then, I remain confused, I battle within myself and live life tired and deflated. The basis for keeping my receiver, that is the divine intellect, clean and clear is the power of silence. Silence doesn’t mean that I shut my mind and intellect down, no. Rather, it is to ensure that there is no unwanted noise or disturbance. ‘If there is the slightest negativity in your mind or intellect for any soul, any task or any service companion, then that would not be called clean and clear’, teaches Baba. So check, He says, to what extent you have accumulated the power of silence? While doing service, do I waste my words by speaking useless things? while I am free or by myself, do I allow my mind to wander into the past or worry about the future or think about what someone said/did? All this is noise, Baba explains. Only when I eliminate this noise will I be able to catch those subtle signals Baba sends me. Otherwise, I will struggle to hear Him; there will be greater effort and less reward.

While one aspect of honesty is to have a ‘clean and clear’ intellect, the other aspect is faith. Faithful means taking every step according to shrimat. It’s one thing to have that ‘knowing’ in my heart- ‘I need to let this go’, ‘I need to forgive’, ‘I need to merge’- and another thing to follow through. That latter part takes faith and courage. If I don’t have faith in the One that is telling me, then even though I hear Him, I will question it: ‘but this can’t be right! why would anyone forgive such a betrayal!?’, ‘surely, I deserve better, how can I just let this go?’, ‘but I don’t feel like…’. ‘By mixing your own dictates with Shrimat, you wander away from the straight path onto the crooked path’, says Baba. This is another reason I get tired and end up disheartened.

Honesty is the specialty of a tapaswi. Honesty means faithful and honest. Only when I am honest, am I able to easily and naturally catch and follow the signals of shrimat I receive from the Father. Without honesty, I don’t really experience the fruit of Brahmin life, the companionship of the Father; I continue to wander and stumble. ‘So check yourself again and again‘, instructs Baba. ‘Now, pay more attention to accumulating the power of silence for the self and to bring about transformation.‘