How long does it take to experience lasting love – what about the love we find in this world?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So how long does it take to find, to experience lasting love? We do find love in our various relationships.
There is, there are many places in this world where we repose our love and we do get fulfillment from there. Now what the Bhagavad Gita tells us is everything attractive in this world reflects a spark of God’s all-embracingness. So a mother feels love for the child.
A child feels love for the mother. That is real. That is real.
At the same time it is a spark. The spark cannot produce, cannot provide us the illumination and warmth that is provided by the sun. Like by the full flame, by the sun.
So like that, the spark can serve three purposes. The spark can take me away from the flame, from the sun. The spark can make me satisfied with the spark and forget the sun.
Or the spark can become like a pointer towards the sun. So in the Bhagavatam, the Bhagavatam is an ancient Bhakti Yoga text. So there, you know, there is a story of a prince Dhruva who is very terribly insulted.
And then he goes to his mother and his mother is also powerless because factors beyond her are involved over there. So she tells him that you pray and then she makes a statement that the love I can offer you, millions of times more love can be offered to you by God. So here what is happening? We have horizontal relationships in this world.
And the ideal situation is that our horizontal relationships point us towards the vertical relationship. They reinforce the vertical relationship. And conversely, our vertical relationship strengthens our horizontal relationship.
Because when we get some amount of emotional strength, emotional security, emotional satisfaction from our connection with God, then we don’t become emotionally dependent on others, over dependent on others. And thus, if sometimes some person, others whom we love, they speak harshly, they neglect us, they do something wrong, we don’t get unduly crushed by that. And that way, both these can grow together.
Our horizontal relationship can inspire from our vertical relationship. And our vertical relationship can stabilize us in our horizontal relationship. And with this way when we progress, so how long does it take? Ultimately, it’s a matter of our choosing.
The more we redirect our love towards God, the faster we move towards God. So it’s like the rising of the sun. If early morning, say before dawn we wake up, it’s dark.
And we may go for a walk, we may go for a jog early morning. It’s dark, it’s dark, it’s dark. And then suddenly, hey, it’s sunrise, it’s morning now.
Now actually, the sun had been rising gradually, gradually, gradually, continuously. Our realization happens at one particular moment. Oh, sun has risen, it’s day now.
Similarly, if we just keep practicing the process of Bhakti Yoga. Bhakti Yoga is a process by which we redirect our love from this world towards God. So it involves chanting the holy names, associating with spiritual minded people, studying the spiritual texts.
This is the ABC, association, books and chanting. So we do this, by this, just by doing this regularly, our love is redirected. And over a period of time, it’s not that we stop loving the world, but we learn to put God first.
When we learn to love God more than the world, then God takes us beyond this world to his abode. And that is when we find lasting love. So how long will it take? It’s just a process of redirection.
It can happen in a few years, it can happen in a few months, it can happen at the end of our life, it can take many lifetimes. But we don’t have to worry about how long it will take. Because even the process itself is joyful.
Just this redirecting ourselves, that itself will bring us peace, it will bring us joy. And that peace and joy will keep increasing as we move on towards God. So this process of spiritual evolution may take its own time.
But just the process itself is joyful. And that’s why without worrying too much, again, here also, there is something which is in our control, something which is not in our control. So we focus on that which is in our control.
That is, in our own small appropriate way, we try to redirect our love to God. And by that, we will evolve. So the process itself is small steps.
The process is evolutionary. The result is revolutionary.