Devotion is...

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Devotion is out heart, when it pervades and hymns through our relationships in the world outside, it becomes true Bhajana. Thus, if love (Bhakti) is the emotion, service (Bhajana) is its expression.

If Bhakti is the emotional accompaniment, Bhajana represents the joy dance of activities in the life of the diligent devotee.

During all our undertakings in life, this element of devotion unto the Lord can be brought in, if we learn to fulfil our duties and strive to achieve even our material goal in a sincere spirit of dedication and total surrender unto Him. When one is really interested in any activity or in its results, it ceases to be any longer a laborious work for that individual. It becomes a 'play'. A sincere devotee discovers and takes an interest even in the struggle of his early days.

To a young man who is tossed about in the world among the exacting duties of life – thrust upon him by the world outside, or entangled by his own natural inner promptings – "listening to the discourses of true devotees" is an easy method for lifting his tired mind out of the fatiguing ruts of the strenuous competitive world.

A devotee must try to spend his time in accomplishing such mental and physical changes in his ways of thinking and acting so that he will come to open his heart in true devotion to the inflow of Lord's Grace- the blessing of the great ones who are, again, none other than Narayana Himself. All that stands between him, as he is, and his God, which he is trying to attain and experience, is his own ego which is fed by his misconception and by the consequent body mind identifications. When this ego is surrendered, the Supreme Consciousness explodes into awareness, and all the sense of limitations experienced earlier by the seeker is lifted off his mind in one great heave.

The required guidance will always reach him who has decided himself to turn sincerely towards the Lord, during his regular prayers and habitual loving service of people around him.

To seek him, to directly experience his peace in our bosom is the peak of devotion.

He, who renounces both yoga and kshema, crosses Maya, because such a one declares, "I don't want the joy that is inherent in the objects of pleasure. I want the happiness that is inherent in me. I want to explore and reach the source of happiness, not the reflected happiness in objects; I seek only the supreme source of all Bliss."

Not only such an individual crosses over Maya but the lives of all saints prove that the Divine Self, for whom the Bhakta has renounced everything of the world, provides him liberally with all he needs. No more he worries about his own preservation or maintenance. Lord Krishna has said in the Geeta: "To those men who worship Me alone, thinking of no there, to those eer-self-controlled, I secure that which is not already possessed and preserve what they already possess (kshema).