Don’t use God to stay away from God
To stay away from god run away from god god is for those who are religiously or spiritually inclined is understood to be life's ultimate so so much in doing for god connect me with god spiritual growth will come more and more in the powerful there will be purified there will be uplifted so but when we neglect this reality when we focus instead on just running around is and the fourth without giving due time and thought for the level of our consciousness for our inner purification for our for the upliftment of our consciousness we may well be ending up doing to our spiritual life while thinking that we are nourishing the spiritual in spiritual life for spiritual growth there are a wide variety of activities that can be done some are external some are internal which means external and internal components to them now when we do these activities we are losing track of the purpose of inner growth in a different way there are so many things that happen in this world and there are a few things that happen in this world but what we need is the intention the intention to connect with the one who is beyond this world the one who is supreme the one who is our lord we want to absorb ourselves in him and thereby attain him to do this we need that purposeful redirection of our consciousness inwards when we run around doing things we often get so caught in the external so the nature of the mind is that it will always try to find some way to keep us away from God and one of the subtlest and also the most insidious ways in which it does so is by directing us away from God while we think we are being directed towards God so we do a lot of various activities but our eyes are fixed on the world not on God so we do these activities for getting praised by others for getting lauded by others as being so pious, so religious so selfless so dedicated now being dedicated is more important than appearing dedicated of course we would like to have both so there should be both together but if we are dedicated and then that inner dedication and inner commitment to God is expressed externally through our committed actions in the service of God and thus there is the substance and then there is the appearance but sometimes the appearance is used as a substitute for the substance that is we may do all the externals of devotion very diligently but instead of looking inwards to connect with Krishna through these activities we are focusing more on getting appreciated by the world getting praised for being dedicated and that is the driving motivation so this kind of externally obsessed spirituality leads to spiritual starvation and it leads to emotional exhaustion and it leads to physical burnout so we neglect our inner growth thinking of it simply as external then we all need some kind of satisfaction somewhere and we look for satisfaction and praise by others instead of absorption in Krishna so we may do more and more of the devotional activities that earn praise from others so we may chant a lot of rounds far more than the normal doing a lot of japa or we may study scripture primarily with the desire to appear learned and to to be able to look learned in the eyes of the world so scriptural study is meant to help us look at the world with learned eyes not to look learned in the world's eyes you have to look at the world with learned eyes that means when you look at the world you should be able to understand what are the temptations that we need to resist what are the delusions that we need to counter and how best we can counter them understanding that is what is primary and central for our growth and spiritual knowledge is meant to deepen our conviction that we need to focus our attention and consciousness on Krishna we are fighting a war the point is not to look to others as if we are fighting vigorously the point is to be fighting vigorously of course sometimes the appearance also matters that if a warrior who is tired appears to be fighting vigorously the enemy who is tired may lose morale and feel that oh we can't keep fighting with the enemy this this warrior who has so much energy and that may accelerate victory but if a person is just swinging around the weapons without any proper strategy then the enemy who has a strategy will actually have a big advantage over someone who is fighting unstrategically so while fighting it's important that there is serious attention to the specific fact of fighting with keeping in mind the purpose of fighting as Krishna says in the it is said about bhakti that we need to always remember the lord so remembrance is pivotal in the process of devotion and we may be running after this and that in hundreds of things but if we are not remembering the lord then whatever we are doing will not be of much spiritual value of course there are times when we may get so externally absorbed in activities that the remembrance of the lord may not register within us certain times occasional absorption in the purpose of the lord wherein the inner substance is somewhat lacking and it's not that we are meant to have a kind of split personality that half of us is doing something externally and half doing something internally so when we use god to stay away from god that is when we let the externals of devotion occupy us so much that we have no time, we have no heart we have no strength and nor do we have much intention to focus on the internals when we are actually deluding ourselves so here we see the example that if someone is fighting going through the motions of fighting we need to actually be fighting and fighting has to be effective in terms of pushing back the enemy knocking down the enemy and building the territory that is to be won similarly our purpose whenever we are practicing bhakti is to remember Krishna and not just remember Krishna in a historical sense or a sentimental sense but in a transformational sense remembering Krishna in a historical sense means that oh there was a person named Krishna who existed thousands of years ago and this was the place he was born this was the place he did this these were the things that he did so its not like remembering Krishna is not meant to be a historical memory which we may have to pass a history test nor is it meant to be a sentimental memory that means we hear some stories and like those stories and we are not concerned in the substance of those stories whether they are real or not for example like a fictional character like a fictional character at that time we end up using that fictional character we may just become mad after the fictional character and when we are thus mad we are we are suspended our rational faculty we are enamored by whatever is told and whatever imagery is being told over there so we need to move onwards beyond this sentimentality towards the substance of the spiritual intention that we do be or strive to have so our life is meant to remember Krishna transformationally transformational means that we want to become devoted to him we want him to be our goal we want absorption in him as our destination so even if we are not remembering Krishna constantly if at least our intention is Krishna I am doing this for you and that intention is manifested in the overall redirection of our life towards him in the overall convinced movement of our life towards attaining him then we want him within the practices with trying to increase our attraction to him if we are acting in this way then we are being elevated and we are moving towards becoming liberated that is the kind of serious purposeful devotion that we need but if we lack this purposeful devotion then we need to do the externals of religion so we think that spending time with people we may think that I am caring for them but we have no substance left within ourselves to actually connect them with Krishna for we are running on empty tank we because our activities are so externally directed we are spiritually running empty we are so there is spiritual starvation in remembrance of Krishna there is attraction to Krishna it is stimulating there is attraction to Krishna by doing the activities that attract us to him it comprises our spiritual nourishment when that spiritual nourishment is lacking then gradually we start feeling emotionally exhausted we feel fed up of whatever we are doing and why we are doing it we feel totally tired we just want to get rid of this and get rid of it soon just want to move on move ahead in my life I would like to do other things so there is emotional exhaustion we are human beings our body is a machine our mind is also a machine it needs breaks Krishna talks about Tara Vyasa saying that we need to be regulated in our actions and he is talking about such regulation even for those who have renounced the world and are devoted to God even they he says need to be renounced what to speak of those who are even they need to be balanced even they need to regulate their actions so that they are not excessive Krishna says that those who eat too much those who sleep too much or those who eat too little or sleep too little they cannot become devotees they cannot become devotees their bodily side will not be regulated enough so that they can connect with their transcendental side the body can disconnect us from the supreme but we also need the body to connect with the supreme and that's why if we are unidimensional in our understanding of what the body is meant to do then we may not use our devotional activities for a devotional purpose we may actually be alienating ourselves from Krishna and thinking that we are moving towards Krishna so when we do whatever it takes to ensure that our consciousness is focused on him to see that we stay spiritually connected with him then whatever we do we won't be carried away we will make sure that the external promote the internal rather than running away from the world in the name of persuading God we will actually be absorbed in God and thus we move towards him the body, mind and the soul will be in harmony all of them taking us towards the Lord whom we are ultimately meant to.