Our consciousness, our attention and our energy are normally centered upon the outside world. It is our attachment to the material world that keeps the soul confined to our body and hides God. Our ego tries, through our material desires, to satisfy our soul’s fathomless longing for God. Yet these desires of the senses only serve to increase our misery and dissatisfaction. The hunger of our soul for God can never be appeased through indulgence of the senses in the material world.

When we gain self-control and see the futility of this outward quest, we gain power over the ego. When we turn within, we can taste divinity, the divine bliss that is our true Self. Instead of being the slave of material desires, we experience the soul’s all-pervasiveness and bliss.

We have to want God and choose God. Our intense craving for God pulls at God with an irresistible force. It is through our love and devotion that God is drawn into the range of our conscious awareness. We first feel His peace and then know His presence.

God only reveals Himself to us when He sees that He comes first. Often, we do not feel peaceful or blissful and the fleeting pleasures of the material world offer relief or small, temporary joys. So, we continue to choose the pleasurable over the beneficial, the material over the Divine. While legitimate pleasures can serve to expand our appreciation of God as this universe, it is only God Himself that truly satisfies our longing for bliss.

When we feel the desire for a joy, a pleasure or an outcome from this material world, remember that the desire is always the insatiable longing for God.

Blessings,