An important first step for sadhana bhakti or preliminary practice of bhakti yoga is to keep your practice free of material desire. Since we are material beings living in a material world, and everything we think is material, this may seem a bit challenging. Try to imagine it like this -if you were to eliminate all divine desires from your mind, what would remain are material desires.
At the outset, our goal is to start by keeping our practice free of material desire. As your devotional experience deepens along with your understanding of the limited nature of worldly happiness, your tendency for forming material desire will decrease naturally.
The secret behind this guideline is that Sadhana bhakti is done through mind , and you have only one mind. The mind is such a vessel, that it can be filled with worldly aspirations or the desire for spiritual enlightenment. Although we hold both of these aspirations simultaneously in the initial stages of our sadhana bhakti practice, only one is our true goal of life.
A typical worshipper of God may actually view his devotional relationship as a means to fulfill his self-directed worldly desires. This means he is looking for any kind of divine intervention to satisfy desires for his own happiness. Bhakti yoga teaches the opposite of this - selfless devotion or forming those desires that are only for the happiness of your divine beloved.
Awesome!!
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