Baba says, “Those who stumble around don’t know Me.”

A child never stumbles, orphans do. A child has parents, and teachers to guide them, help them resolve issues that come up, help them get through situations, face crisis etc. An orphan, on the other hand, has to fend for themselves, figure things out the hard way. They don’t receive guidance, they end up knocking on every door trying to find the answer,….falling down many times, getting up again, searching again. Indeed, I was an orphan before God adopted me and so I know this by experience. But now, that I have become a child of God, my stumbling has stopped. Or has it?

God comes at this most auspicious confluence age and becomes my Father, Teacher and Satguru. I don’t even need to go to three different souls for advice or guidance, He is all-in-One. He is also my Friend, and my Beloved. He becomes my constant Companion. He is available and longing to be part of every tiniest aspect of my life. He says, “I have come to give you the inheritance of happiness. Your account of sorrow now comes to an end.” I can only claim that inheritance of happiness when I accept God as my constant Companion and fulfill my responsibility of companionship in every thought and act. If I continue to live life on my own, then I am left to rely on my own limited and dysfunctional intellect and thereby continue to claim the inheritance of sorrow from Ravan.

A companion’s life is simple. All I have to do is place my footstep in the Companion’s footstep; I don’t take even a single step according to the dictates of my own mind or the dictates of others. I have a Companion, I don’t have to take steps on my own anymore! I then experience life to be easy, because the Father, the elevated Companion, makes the path clear and clean by stepping along it. Indeed, that’s what a father does! A father walks on ahead of his children, clearing the path ahead, ensuring all is good. Then, all that the children have to do is keep their steps in the father’s steps. Physical fathers haven’t been able to show me the right path for the last half the cycle- they too became plagued by the same disease of body consciousness and they passed it on to me. Therefore, whether it was my own dictates or theirs, they were always wrong. Now, I have the fortune of having the eternal Father show me the path. He is Truth, His path is true. He is the most elevated, His path is most elevated. I simply have to place my step in His and claim ease, comfort, happiness, rest, peace. This is my birthright for being born to God, I just have to receive it.

The Father incarnates in the corporeal world and becomes my Companion in order to fulfil the responsibility of companionship and places the feet of His acts through the corporeal medium, Brahma, to demonstrate to me. Brahma thus becomes my spiritual father. He makes it easy for me to follow and place my footsteps in His footsteps. He makes it easy because He knows that the ones whom He has made His companions have wandered around a lot and have become weary. They are disheartened and weak. I became disheartened because life was hard, so hard! So He came and made it the easiest of all! “Simply place your footsteps in My footsteps“, says the Father, “your duty is to simply place your footsteps in His. To make you move, to make you go across, to fill you with power at every step and to remove your tiredness is the duty of your Companion.” Just take care, He emphasizes, that you don’t place your footsteps anywhere else.

To place my footsteps means to make a decision. Whatever the Companion says, however He makes me move, I have decided that I will move in that way. I have decided that I will not use my own head. Why? because, based on half a cycle’s worth of experience, I have realized that to use my own head is to cry out in distress. The Father comes and He offers to take on all responsibility…if I will allow Him. God never imposes His will on me, He respects the soul too much to do that. He waits for me to let Him in. To the extent that I delay this relationship, to that extent, I lose time to claim all that I can from Him. Not to mention, I continue to lead a very difficult life by continuing to stumble in the forest of confusion- ‘why?’, ‘how?’, ‘when?’. I am pricked by my weak sanskars, I am lured away by the different thoughts of iron-aged attractions. I waste my thoughts, my time, my energy, and lose all power.

Unlike an orphan who has no reference, as a child I get to verify my every thought. Is my thought the same as the Father’s thought? I simply have to copy Him in everything – thought, word, action. I don’t even need to think! “Since the Companion Himself is offering you His companionship, why do you leave that Companion? To step away means to let go of your support.“, teaches Baba. The attraction of limited company, of some relationship or some facility attracts me to itself and because of that attraction, I make that person, that relationship, that facility, my companion or support and in the process, I lose the support of the eternal Companion. To be deceived once is part of effort-making but accurate effort means, I don’t get deceived by that same thing again. Those who are deceived repeatedly would be considered unfortunate, explains Baba.

The Father has come with heaven on the palm of His hand. He hasn’t hid it in His pocket or in His bag, it is displayed in plain sight for me to take. All I need is faith that indeed this is the Father and then based on that faith, I have to follow His and only His directions for every aspect of my life. “Simply remember this one thing constantly“, He says: “I am in the company of the elevated Companion.” Verify this and you will remain satisfied with yourself, He teaches. I have wandered and stumbled as an orphan for half a cycle. If I continue to stumble even as a child of the Boatman, as the child of the Bestower of Fortune, it would indeed be most unfortunate. It would means that I still haven’t recognized the Father or what I mean to Him. Let me recognize that I am a pure soul, not the body. As a soul, I am the child of the Supreme Father, the Supreme Soul. He is here now, practically, in the corporeal, to show me the way, to rescue me from stumbling. And so on the basis of the faith of who I am and Whose I am, let me always move along considering myself to be a companion of God at every moment.