Radhanath Swami on An Offering Fit For God

On the journey from material life to spiritual life, we should know that God will take us through various experiences. Sometimes He will drag us through mud, sometimes He will put us on a golden chariot. To qualify us to become His eternal associate, we have to be perfectly purified to be offered to God by our spiritual master. Just like when we offer food to the Lord, we only offer the best food, similarly the spiritual master is very apt to make each devotee an offering to God. But God is so kind that He helps spiritual master to make us into a worthy offering. And how does He do that? Just like when crude rice comes out of the field, there is a big shell around it - nobody can eat it except the animals. So they take the rice and they beat it many times. Then the husk is broken and the rice can be offered to the Lord. So we have this husk of ahankara or false ego that is covering our divine quality. The spiritual master is like the farmer who just puts all the rice on the ground. And then God takes it from there - to run us over by the cars, horses, cows and trucks of material difficulties till finally when the last trace of this husk of false ego is completely separated from our existence. Then at that time we can be presented at the altars in the temple of God for Him to taste the sweetness of our qualities of devotion. This is what we have to go through, if we are to be eligible to be offered to the Lord. We should accept all experiences in life; this is the perfect opportunity to help us to advance in God Consciousness. If we always see everything in this way, there will be no impediments to our spiritual progress.