The Joy of Spiritual Practice | Pravrajika Shuddhatmaprana

[mantra chant] Now and then Ramakrishna was, would, uh, visit various religious groups in Calcutta just to gauge the, um, religious to, condition of the city.

And once he told the following story.

He said, "Once I went to a meeting of a Hari Sabha.

The preacher of the day was a pundit named Samadjayi, and can you imagine what he said? He said in the course of his sermon, 'God is dry.

We must make him sweet and fresh with our love and devotion.'" [laughs] Ramakrishna says, "I was stunned to hear these words.

[laughs] Then I was reminded of a story.

A boy once said, 'At my uncle's house, there are many horses.' 'Oh, yes, his whole cowshed is full of them.' Now, if there was really a cowshed, then horses could not be kept there.

Possibly he had only cows.

What did the, what did people think on hearing such an incoherent statement?" He said, "Just fancy, to describe God, who is the, the very nature of love and bliss, as dry.

It only proves that the man has never experienced what God is like." Now, as spiritual aspirants, our goal is to experience that love of, and bliss of God.

But we also want to feel the joy of God now when we are doing His, doing our spiritual practices.

After all, as Swami Vivekananda reminds us, we are children of immortal bliss.

We are inheritors of God's own nature.

But, so why do, don't we feel that joy, that love and bliss, when we practice our spiritual disciplines? So often devotees say that repeating the name of God is tiresome or that the mind cannot be controlled.

Now, there are various reasons for missing out on this experience of God's joy.

It might be that we are, we have become blinded by Maya and stubbornly hold on to wrong ways of thinking or behaving.

Or perh- perhaps we, uh, perhaps our, due to our karma we encounter obstacles on our path.

Or peh- perhaps we just succumb to laziness.

Now, God's nature cannot change, so the fault is surely ours.

Yes, we need to overcome these obstacles, these faults, but there is something else we can do also in the meantime.

We can also try to move forward by increasing our desire for God.

After all, as Ramakrishna says, "If you move towards the east, then the west is left behind." So let's try putting our attention on moving towards the east, and maybe our obstacles and faults will fall away.

Now let's look at some ways we can take a joyful approach to our spiritual practices to remind ourselves what God is really like, so that we can feel the presence of His divala- divine love and bliss.

But let's also remember that God is closer to us than anything or anyone else.

No matter how we think of Him or Her, our main goal is to remember that God is right within our hearts as our own inner self.