Who Is Your Master?

I have begun to ask myself this question again —
Who is my master today?

Amidst the marrow of motherhood, I had forgotten the primordial importance of this wondering.
I forgot that we are always in service to something,
whether we choose it consciously or not.
So I must choose wisely.

There was a time this question came to me in a very different season of life.
I was drowning in a sea of self-help books,
digging endlessly toward some imagined place of wholeness.
I was convinced that if I could just become “healed enough,”
I would finally be worthy.
But I had become enslaved to a new kind of master:
the god of personal development —
ever just out of reach, always whispering that I wasn’t quite there yet.

That question, Who is your master?, rose up like a divine interruption.
It burned in me like a fire from the belly of a dragon —
a dragon of protection, of fierce remembering.

For myself, I chose long ago who my Master is:
God. My Beloved. Meher Baba.
And I had forgotten.

I had been working for someone else.
Not someone with a face, but a swarm of voices —
the endless authors and podcasters of the mental wellness world.
As silly as it sounds, I was hustling for their approval.
I wanted to prove to them — and to myself — that I could be whole.
That I was finally enough.

But that dragon roared inside me:
“You are not my master. I chose One long ago.
My Master is Meher Baba.”

And just like that, I was snapped out of my desperate striving.
Realigned with what has always been true:
That I am already loved.
Already worthy.
Already His.

I return to this question now as a mother,
in the quiet hours of dawn and the blur of long days.

Because once again, I have forgotten.

I wake each morning overwhelmed by the impossible to-do list:
Make breakfast.
Do the dishes.
Pick up Mani because she doesn’t want to be put down.
Breastfeed.
Put her down so I can sweep the floors.
Pick her back up again.
Eat.
Do the dishes again.
And again.

I asked myself: Why am I doing this?

Then I felt the pang of grief:
My daughter will only be this small once.
She won’t remember if the laundry was put away —
and honestly, neither will I.

But I will remember whether I cherished her softness,
whether I let her sleep in my lap a little longer,
whether I gave her the full presence of a mother who knows what matters most.

My intuition — the only compass I truly trust —
tells me that God gave me this soul to love, hold, and do my best with.
And a perfectly cleaned sink at the cost of sacred presence?
That is not the way of the Master I serve.

Once again, I had made something else my master.
The dishes.
The pre-cleaned house for the nanny, so she thinks I’ve got it all together.
The invisible rules that say a woman should keep pace
with the life she had before birthing a universe into her arms.

I call now on that dragon again —
to burn away the false masters who try to claim me.
Because I am not theirs.

Now dear sister who walks beside me, I ask you the same questions

Who is your master?