Love God your way
There are three eternal entities: God, the individual soul and maya. The individual soul has been under the bondage of maya since time immemorial, and this is the root cause of all our sorrow and suffering. Even though there are many prevalent spiritual disciplines in the world today, none will free you from the bondage of maya except the path of devotion. While traversing this path, an aspirant encounters the intriguing dilemma of how to practice devotion correctly. In our scriptures, many types of devotional processes have been described, for example, in the crest jewel of all Puranas, the Bhagawatam, the most learned sage, Vedavyas, who classiďŹ ed one type, ďŹ ve types, nine types, eleven types and up to thirty types of devotional practices at different places. Nevertheless, most spiritual teachers recommend the nine processes of devotional practice, Navadha Bhakti, as revealed by the child-devotee Prahlaad to his fellow beings.
devotional practice. In whatever way one can absorb his mind in loving meditation of God, it will be a type of devotion in itself. For example, one sings the glories of God being fully absorbed in His loving remembrance, while another offers Him a variety of delicacies totally unaware of the outer world. One chooses to decorate the deities installed in the temple, while another is equally absorbed meditating on decorating their self-created image in his mind, or contemplating upon some other sweet loving pastimes, and so on.
So there is no speciďŹ c method to engage your mind in the loving remembrance of God. Whichever method is effective in attaching the mind to God is called bhakti. Our only goal is to attach the mind to God and not the senses. The mind! It can be attached in any manner. Iron and touchstone should Saint Tulsidas in the Ramayana also describes nine kinds touch each other. It does of devotional processes as recommended by Lord Ram to not matter whether you the great devotee Shabari. However, Shukadev bang them together angrily Paramahans advised King Parikshit to practise only three: or bring them together shravana, kirtana and smarana, i.e. listening to spiritual gently, the iron will turn principles from one's Spiritual Master, singing the glories into gold. of God or chanting His holy name, and engaging your Hence, do not restrict mind in loving meditation. yourself to one type of Shri Maharaj Ji also advocates the practice of these three devotion, love God in your kinds of devotional processes. He attributes a name to the own way. combination of all these three - Bhaktiyog Sadhana. He further states that the essence of all the scriptures is to lovingly meditate on God, regardless of the process, and hence there are not only three, but innumerable types of
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