Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Radhanath Swami on Reconditioning Our Habits

When you try to enjoy something, you’re taking shelter of that thing. In one sense, you want pleasure. You need pleasure because of an emptiness in your heart and this thing is providing pleasure so you are actually taking shelter of that thing. But you’re not just taking shelter of that thing, you’re taking shelter of material energy that is attracting you to that thing. Material modes of passion and ignorance are saying, “You’ll find pleasure here, you’ll find relief here” and when you go there looking for shelter, you become conditioned to that. Every time you go to some object for shelter or some manifestation of material energy, whatever it may be, you are creating that habit within. So when things get really bad, you are probably going to turn to those things because you are habitual.

Devotional service is about reconditioning our habits, learning to find pleasure in making God happy. Every time we seek shelter in devotional service, every time we seek our happiness in devotional service, and seek our refuge in devotional service, we’re conditioning ourselves in that way. It’s like the good dog and the bad dog. The more you feed the bad dog that's telling you to take shelter of material energy, the more it becomes a powerful calling within our heart and controls us. But every time we feed the divine nature - the calling towards bhakti - that voice, that tendency becomes stronger and stronger within us. So we should always sincerely try to cultivate love of God at each moment.

17 comments:

  1. Wonderful article ! in fact nice instructions to realise ourselves. Those are intellegent persons never tried to enjoy in this material, the more we enjoy the more we entangled in this material bondage.

    All Glories to HH Radhanath swami maharaj.

    Thank you so much for sharing wonderful nectar.

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  2. Association of self realized souls will tremendously benefit us in reconditioning our habits

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  3. Devotional service is about reconditioning our habits-so very true and inspiring.thanks for sharing this Radhanath swami

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  4. many thanks for the wonderful analogy by swamiji

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  5. I like to read such spiritual words spoken by Radhanath Swami. They are indeed worthy of deep contemplation. Thank you tons.

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  6. It really calls for determination.

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  7. Beautiful analogy. Thanks for sharing.

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  8. This was quite a piercing revelation - that we take 'shelter' of that which we enjoy. Radhanath Swami is a genius.

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  9. great analogy by maharaj!

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  10. Very helpful/inspiring - to work and re-condition our habits to devotional service rather than objects of material energy...

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  11. If we don't feed the bad dog, it will become weaker and weaker. Also we need to feed the good dog so that it gets nourishment to help us follow the path of Bhakti, the path of devotional service. Thank you Radhanath Swami for this nice message.

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  12. THANK YOU MAHARAJ for inspiring us how we should sincerely try to cultivate love of GOD at each moment,learning to find pleasure in making GOD happy by DEVOTIONAL service.

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  13. Thank you Maharaj
    for inspiring me.

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  14. Very nice explaination by swamiji.....

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