How To Fix Your Mind on God | 3 Best Practices for Devotion

the power of your attention you guys is more powerful than you can imagine whatever you focus on has to manifest and grow and increase in strength by seeking God all throughout the day in our heart it actually activates our third eye to begin to see and perceive the Divine energy and Essence that permeates everything and in fact the famous St Lawrence they would see him washing dishes in the kitchen and glowing with the presence of God but you just do this a few times a day and you begin to reap powerful spiritual [Music] rewards now

the the topic of this lesson is that devotion is to keep your mind fixed on God so if we begin or use any working definition for devotion we can use that devotion is keeping the Mind fixed on God and we find that when we attempt to do this it's not as easy as we thought right but I've talked about this before and I want to bring this theme back because to me this is the most essential theme for understanding devotion is that devotion increases in direct proportion to the size and the strength of your God

idea and so we've used that term before here um on our calls your god idea and I want to expand upon that today course of Miracle says God is in everything I see because God is in my mind believe it's one of the first maybe 20 lessons in the course God is in everything I see because God is in my mind and so that's the premise for the god idea when I use that term is that we are all Experiencing God to the limits or the capacity of our current level of awareness and to say

to have awareness of something is to have the idea of it in mind in attention in Awareness right to have the idea of something means you're aware of it and so you know let's you can think about the feeling you have when something new completely captures your attention we've all had the experience of you know falling romantically head over heels in love with someone and they just capture your whole attention you can't do anything without thinking about them all day long your mind is fixed on that person you're just counting the seconds counting the breaths

until you get to be with them again but we've also experienced this feeling of passion for different forms of art perhaps such as music or painting or um a new fiction novel that you can't put down some of us develop a passion for different modalities like sacred geometry or astrology or genan keys or tarot or some other modality right and it sweeps you away you can't think of anything else you're just obsessed with it and so the interesting thing is that we all have this experience right of being passionate being obsessed having our whole attention

in mind consumed with love for something but isn't God the maker and the creator of all those things that capture our attention isn't music art sacred geometry tarot astrology isn't anything in the universe you can possibly fall in love with isn't it all just different expressions of God's being so the fact is that God is actually the most devastatingly beautiful obsessively interesting marvelous all inspiring fact in the universe and so the question is if that's true and we all resonate to what I just said yep that's true why isn't our mind completely fixed on God

at all times with thoughts of love and passion and inspiration and joy why does our mind so often wander to distracting things limiting beliefs negative thoughts fear anxiety anger attachment aversion jealousy guilt why does our mind so easily wander into these things if God is so all consuming in God's majesty and Perfection and it's because we haven't increased the size and strength of our god idea to match the totality of what God is our god idea is very small and so if you're only relating to a small limited concept of God in your mind you

won't experience God in everything all around you until that idea expands right so maharaji nimoli Baba his famous instruction to his devotees for reaching Enlightenment was love everyone tell the truth and always remember God in fact maharaji would say remember God and repeat the name of of God like Mantra repetition to keep the Mind fixed on God always is the most direct path to Liberation so the fact that our whole mind heart and attention is not consumed by thoughts of God all day long is a testament to how tiny our god idea is and that's

because you know most of us still associate god with religious conditioning of some sort or whatever the societal idea is of God and so our mind gets kind of darkened by these you know the ignorance of separation and so we don't see God in everything yet but one of my favorite quotes by a Spanish Mystic from the 16th century Michael Molinos Miguel de Molinos uh he said you will know that you are far from the truth when you do not see God in everything you will know that you are far from the truth when you

do not see God in everything so again this is why for maharaji remembering God and repeating God's name was the royal way God was always just a breath away and appeared again and again on maharaji's lips all day long talking about God reminding everyone to think about God keep their mind fixed on God and maharaji said the best service that you can do is to keep your thoughts on God keep the mind on God every minute and know that everything is God's Will and then maharaji would also say that God has given us Eyes Ears

a nose mouth but he also gave us wisdom to use to attain God Consciousness so keep God in your heart keep God in your mind like you keep money in a safe and maharaji said he who knows God knows everything AKA he who sees God sees God in everything knows everything as God uh what was it um shankara's famous threefold Declaration of the advita non-duality path was that only Brahman exists The World Isn't illusion or Maya and God is the world or Brahman is Maya Maya is Brahman so it sounds like a contradiction right only

Brahman God the absolute only God is real nothing else is real the whole world the whole universe is Just an Illusion and the whole universe is Brahman and the the third item of those three solves the first two the Paradox of the first two that when the world is seen as Brahman or God then it's seen truly because it's just God that's all it is there's nothing else there when the world is seen as apart from God as it's it's something else you know there's God and then there's this world that God created and all

the people God created in it and they're separate from God you know God's creation God up here creation down here when you see it like that it's all an illusion you're not seeing reality it's just God every person you see every blade of grass every gust of wind is just the Creator so what can give us the eyes to see God in everything is the question and it's our theme for today right it's the practice of devotion devotion alone opens the eyes of the heart to see God in everything by seeking God all throughout the

day in our heart it actually activates our third eye in direct proportion to become open to the awareness of the Creator in all things so as we meditate on God in the heart feel the presence of God in the heart fix our thoughts on God with loving affection it actually activates the pineal gland the third eye chakra to begin to see and perceive the Divine energy and Essence that permeates everything and so more and more we stop seeing separate forms and we directly begin experiencing different manifestations of the one we just see the ant as

oh that's one way God expresses wow we see the tree oh that's a way that God expresses wow God is treeing God is anting God is peopling God is waving God is doing everything right it's all activities of God's being so we come to see that God is not some monolithic being way up in heaven somewhere else God is the the very oxygen which fills our lungs God is the intelligent energy which which permeates all form all of nature every cell in my body that works automatically to move my blood my thyroid gland my organs

that intelligent energy that is allowing me to be here right now talking to you without thinking about all the billions of things going on behind this skin that's God that's the god power but are you aware of it cuz if you're not you won't be able to enjoy it will you God is in every thought that we think God is in our very body in our very mind our very personality God is Joy itself God is peace itself God is silence itself God is love itself and so when we come to be seeing feeling hearing

tasting touching God everywhere our heart becomes filled with this wrapped devotion when we dedicate ourselves to fixing our mind on God as often as possible our God Consciousness begins to awaken this is why Jesus could say things like I only do what I see the father doing it's a level of God Consciousness where everything in the scene about Jesus was God and so through that awareness the intelligence of the Creator was able to dictate Direct and point Jesus in the right directions to be fulfilling God's perfect will through his body and this happens effortlessly spontaneously

intuitively there's no one that has to think about it it's God moving God God being God I can only do what I see the father doing I always do what pleases him Jesus said and so we start to realize that we never saw God before in the ant because we didn't look for God there did we our our mind said oh I know what an ant is this is just a tiny insignificant ant this is obviously not God God's a big powerful being in the cosmos this is just a little ant we didn't see it

we didn't look for God in the ant this is just a mere tree I already know what a tree is it's a lower life form of the vegetable Kingdom big deal God's obviously not the tree God's bigger than the tree but yet at the same time God is the tree God Is Bigger than the tree and the tree at the same time God is everything so we have to look for God everywhere for going to see God everywhere right there's no other way the third eye will crystallize that awareness unless we put a demand on

it by looking for God in everything can you see God in the person who's annoying you can you practice seeing the Divinity behind the form that's disguising it because if you don't then you won't see it you won't see it until you look for it so we have to overcome this ignorance of the ego Mind by actively praising God everywhere looking for God everywhere seeking to expand our god idea until it encompasses the whole universe this is the practice of devotion expand your god idea until it encompasses the entire universe until you are incapable of

looking at anything and not seeing God that's the goal and the practice at the same time so this is how the great Saints enter what we call somadi their god idea is so extraordinary that all the saint needs to do is close their eyes and think of one thought about God and off they go to Divine ecstasy and you can just start thinking about God how the Majesty of God manifests in the great mountain peaks how God's power demonstrates in the mighty Rolling Thunder in the great ocean how God's intelligence demonstrates everywhere in nature in

every animal every creature in their animal instincts and rituals and survival mechanisms God's intelligence permeates everything everywhere and so if you begin to meditate on that you you will start to feel an elevation in your frequency it's called Bliss Consciousness and so if we want to get to the point which is true fourth density Consciousness where we have bliss all the time we have to practice integrating Bliss don't we everything has to be integrated it doesn't just come for free without any intention or any effort on your own part you're the Creator you choose where

your attention goes and so if you don't move your attention away from worldly things transient Pleasures egoic desires and move that attention towards the Divine then it won't go there by itself you're the only Creator so you have to choose where to place your attention you have to say I want to experience God all the time not just in fleeting moments so I will cultivate that awareness by looking for God all the time thinking about God all the time connecting to God's presence all the time and then you can start practicing in meditation lifting your

mind your your attention to your god idea and letting your god idea take you away carry you to heaven and experience God's Majesty experience God's presence right there where you are cuz God's already all around you right God's already in the air you're breathing right now but if you're not aware of that fact you don't get to enjoy its benefits so this can also be practi RTI throughout the day in ordinary life the presence of God is made available on Earth as it is in heaven through the experience of conscious Union it has to be

a conscious Union on your part because again God has given all sentient beings the free will to use their attention their I am as they wish so God's not going to force you to place your I am attention your precious I am EMP power on God if you want to place it place it on lust or greed or something God will let you place it wherever you want it's got to be on your behalf that you choose to have conscious Union with your Source throughout the day so the presence of God is available on Earth

as it is in heaven but only through conscious Union so when you're able to reach this state where one single thought of God can sweep you away into Euphoria and ecstasy then you also can enjoy it throughout the day as well through what we call Bliss Consciousness and Bliss Consciousness is nothing super extraordinary although sometimes it can be don't get me wrong but for the most part it's just like a subtle feeling of joy and peace that pervades your state of being all throughout the day it's kind of like a feeling of like you know

the best kept secret in the universe and you can hardly contain it and the secret is that God is the very soul of man in every living thing and that God is manifested everywhere surrounding in countless expressions of glory and yet nobody sees it but you do so it's like you're best kept secret and the Bliss of of that secret that God is everywhere it just kind of bubbles up in you all day long and so it's maybe not an overwhelming Joy although it can be sometimes but it's always this subdued kind of compressed feeling

of Joy if I can use that term so I like the analogy for for devotion as like nurturing the Christ child you know the the story of the Christ being born as a babe and swaddling cloths right and Mary and Joseph raise the Christ child from infancy to adulthood that's kind of what we're all doing with the presence of God within us because the Christ the the I am Spirit nature of what you are is is the Christ but it's kind of like a babe right it's it's like a little infant that needs to be

nurtured into maturity and so you can never rise higher in Consciousness than the current limit of your god idea and each one of us right now has a certain god idea a certain level of awareness of what God is who God is and so we must all start with what we have right we must begin with what we've been given if you have even this much awareness of God's presence or if your god idea is only this big great start with this see God in this much and it'll start to expand it'll start to rise

and increase and reach out to touch everything surrounding as you nurture it as you practice it as you contemplate God contemplate the Creator in everything you see and then begin to not just with the masculine with the awareness but with the heart the feminine feel God in what you're seeing it's one thing to be aware of God In The Ant and say oh I see that that's God in there it's another thing to feel the presence of God in the ant so if you can do both of those things you get double the power double

the bang for your buck in ex expanding your god idea so just like we raise a newborn infant into adulthood with care and protection and nurturing we have to raise our god idea into full maturity as well through daily devotion your Devotion to God is your nurturing of your god idea letting it grow right in time as it matures becomes deeper richer more wise more powerful more loving more all-encompassing we have we all have this kind of newborn Christ child within us but if we don't give it our attention and our devotion it will it

will remain an infant won't it kind of just laying there in potential being glimpsed and touched every so often but never expanded and grown and matured so the more we give our attention to the Christ principle in us the god presence the I am the more it grows and matures and then the more we enjoy the Bliss of that conscious Union we come to know God is my very own self God is the first person in the present tense I am and so when I connect to I am I connect to the very presence of

God and that's first an idea that you have to focus on and meditate on and it eventually becomes a direct lived experience so if you're like Aaron come on I know this stuff but I don't feel it yet when I say I am it's just words it doesn't mean anything to me that's okay just keep repeating the words with the desire to connect with the essence keep repeating the words I am with the Devotion to experiencing the truth of I am devotion is what shows up when you don't feel everything when you don't feel great

when you don't feel inspired can you still be devoted when you're not having an easy day when there's it's a challenging day and you feel completely separate from the presence of God you feel like God is a million miles away can you still be devoted then because I promise you in those moments in those days where you say God I don't know what's going on but I feel like you're a million miles away I don't feel the slightest tinge of your presence I feel lost in darkness alone I feel hopeless but God even here I

will praise your holy name I will bless you God with my heart and my soul even when you feel far away I know you're closer than my breath it's just my mind getting in the way of my awareness but you cannot be any farther than me farther from me than my own I am feeling and you can just still stay in Devotion to God and lift your mind to God even when you don't feel it that day and I promise you I've learned this from experience you get the most bang for your buck when you're

devoted in those times because it's easy to be devoted when you feel joyful right everyone can do it who's the real devotee other than the person who when they feel alone and far away from their beloved they still give praise they still turn their mind and heart to God and say even in the pit even in the dust of Despair I will praise you I will love you I will devote myself to you and man the universe takes note of that guys what more powerful demonstration of your will can there be than when you're suffering

and you still cry out to God so someone's going to gain some SQ points doing that and in fact that's actually the whole reason by the way we go through dry seasons we talk about the Ascension spiral how we're always kind of spiraling through our energy field and we go through periods of where the positively polarized energy gets to be experienced and enjoyed we go wow I feel so joyful I feel so peaceful and expanded this is great and then a week goes by and we're back in the lower frequencies again a die off a

release we feel flat in our frequency we don't feel the joy anymore and we're like man this is so tough why do I go through these spirals well it's cuz every time you spiral around you're cleaning up you're getting an opportunity rather to clean up more of the negative energy so you've got to take advantage of it while you're there because if you don't you're going to keep swinging around that merrygoround you're going to it's going to keep coming up right what's what is negatively charged in you as a positively polarized being has to come

up eventually in Cycles it can't stay suppressed forever and it comes up in every little seemingly mundane way right a little bit of an attitude towards somebody is that energy coming up a feeling of frustration while driving all the way to a freaking Dark Night of the Soul where you're days on end weeks on end buried alone in your room you know crying screaming just an anguish that whole Spectrum represents something coming up to be healed and so this is why we go through these Seasons we might call them because when we're in the negative

frequencies when the die off is happening when something's coming up to be seen and healed can you still stay devoted there because if you go back into victimhood and start crying about why have you forsaken me God why have you abandoned me where' you go this is so unfair I'm doing so much spiritual practice I shouldn't suffer anymore then you've just left the heart of devotion de devotion is to trust your beloved always to know that your beloved always has your best interest in mind and your highest good in mind and so even when I

don't know even when I can't see still I will praise you still I will give you my full attention and when that spiral comes back around and the negative frequency is lifted you get a upgrade in frequency you experience a higher level of Joy than before you experience a higher level of bliss than before and I'm not I'm not speaking this to you guys from some kind of book knowledge this has been my journey this has been my path for years now I've watched and studied this progression in myself there's always a spiraling there's always

a rotation of negative to positive negative to positive like a vibration and as we rise in frequency the negative simply gets less intense it gets subtler it gets harder to see maybe our negative downward dips are no longer taking us into depression but they take us into a kind of just feeling of normaly or something you're not in that Bliss anymore and you're like you know I don't feel bad God but I don't feel that Bliss that I want so much and so you know that okay I'm in the I'm in the spiral right now

so let's while we're here let's praise God let's take advantage of this to show our love level of devotion and it begins to increase as you can be faithful in the dry seasons as well as the fruitful Seasons so let me give you guys as we wrap up three ways to increase devotion if I had to give you three tips on what you can do to really stoke the Flames of devotion in yourself number one is practicing the presence we've talked about this quite a bit haven't we the goal of devotion is to fall madly

in love with God and so if God is everyone and everything in existence then every single moment can be engaged through the remembrance and the awareness of God so even the most seemingly mundane aspects of life such as going to the grocery store uh taking out the trash washing the dishes all of these things can be permeated with a blissful awareness of God's presence and in fact the famous St Lawrence who wrote practicing the presence in the uh 17th century I want to say he was famous for this that there was people who told stories

about him that he would be they would see him washing dishes in the kitchen and glowing with the presence of God because he was always practicing the presence and that is simply just to turn your thoughts several times a day to the heart to the place where you can sense that gentle presence of love and through your heart just kind of smile into that presence like recognize it acknowledge it right give attention to the presence this can start with you know you can do this twice a day you can make this a twice a day

practice every day just at two points of the day minimum two is my minimum I'm going to turn my attention towards the presence of God and maybe you do it sometime in the morning and then around dinner time you know you're getting ready and you go oh yeah practicing the presents you take a moment you go within you place your attention on the heart you feel the presence of love and you smile into that love say hello God thank you for being here with me and then you move on and if you can just do

it even once or twice a day it has a kind of magnetic effect to it it's it's addictive it's it becomes like like the only water that truly quenches your thirst so you give that presence attention you give it thanks you give it praise and you move on could be one minute could be 30 seconds but you just do this a few times a day and you begin to reap powerful spiritual rewards and pretty soon all you want to do is be aware of God's presence in every activity in every moment but you have to

start somewhere right the second tip for increasing devotion which we've also talked about is following your passion and we said this at the beginning of the lesson our passions reveal God to us because when you fall in love with something whether it's a science an art form a hobby anything a person doesn't matter anything you fall in love with is actually just an aspect of God that you're in love with but do you see that or are you still mistaking it for a form or a separate thing of some sort so use what you're passionate

about use what captures your interest and attention and begin to see God in that thing this is one of the best ways to increase your Devotion to God I promise you you could watch you know an inspiring documentary about something and you can see God in whatever it's about uh we watched one about you know the soil a a few uh months ago that we really loved we watched fantastic fungi that I mentioned on a call and like can you see God's intelligence in the fungi of Earth and all the things the fungi does in

Earth and go wow God is just so magnificent if you can see God in it it increases devotion it increases love in your heart and so you can actually Chase your passions pursue your passions because you know all of them are different expressions of God and so you have full license to explore and discover and love and appre appreciate everything cuz it's all just God so everything in the world that can be enjoyed that can be explored is God are you looking for it start looking for it this will increase both your love for God

and your passion for life itself and that's devotion and then the third tip which we haven't talked much about in our 40 you calls before is Mantra repetition mantras are powerful Technologies but they have to be used in a certain way to really work effectively if you can start your day with let's say a 10-minute meditation and just doing looping a mantra of some sort whatever Mantra provokes you to feel centered on God it could be I am that's my favorite I am I am I am and just Loop that it could be God is

love God is love love God is love God is love or it could just be God the name of God could be anything that provokes you to feelings of Devotion to God Loop that in the morning it's called japa and then strive in any moment where you don't need to actively think about something to repeat that Mantra throughout the day look look for the dead space in your day this is what I found to be most effective with mantras right if you need to be on a phone call do emails go to this talk to

somebody run an errand uh think think about something solve a problem no big deal be engaged in the present moment with what you need to do but when you don't need to actively think about something which is 95% of our day right can you fill that dead space with the Mantra can you go back to the Mantra and the first phase of when you know that your Mantra is working is when the ego starts to question the Mantra and you'll hear your ego mind saying things like come on what good is this really doing what

a waste of time or what's the point of this mindless repetition and when the ego starts to push back against your Mantra and question it this is so stupid nobody repeats something all day I'm a lunatic you know it's starting to work because What's happen happening the mind is becoming one pointed all of the attention is zeroing in on one thing and that's what the ego fears the most because a mind that is able to concentrate we talk about this in meditation Mastery module one right a mind full of the power of concentration is an

uncontrollable mind for the ego ego needs a very lazy undisciplined unfocused mind and then it can just whoop grab your attention and move it wherever it wants over here here over there this thought that thought this thought this thought and you're just being carried away Swept Away by the ocean of thoughts but when you hone your mind in on one thing God is love God is love God is love God is love God is love God is love and the ego tries to pull you away no no stop thinking about God is love think about

this think about this and maybe you do oh I can't believe she said that wait no no no God is love God is love you're you're draining the ego of energy when you do that and secondly you're training your mind to be able to focus on something and that's a very important ability to have for devotion remember we said devotion is keeping the Mind fixed on God so if you can't even fix your mind on a mantra how could you fix it on God yet first be able to do do it with something simple right

if you can train your mind to hold on to a mantra you can use that same discipline to hold on to the awareness of God's presence because let's be honest a mantra that you can repeat mentally I am I am I am it's very tangible right I can say the words I am all that I want I can just keep saying them and they're always there but the presence of God the feeling of the presence of God the the presence of Love is seemingly more fleeting and subtle than that it doesn't feel like we have

the same command to just always immediately be able to contact the presence of love and Bliss at any moment right it seems like it comes and goes and when it's there we enjoy it and when it goes we say okay thank you it's not like we have the ability to just provoke it right well we do if we can train the power of our focus of our attention and so you can be able to repeat you can be able to connect to the presence of God as easily as you can say a mantra if you

can first say the Mantra and say it throughout the day keep your mind on it for long periods of time there's no more useful tool for training a strong abiding awareness of God's presence than a mantra and this is why the Hindus are so big on mantras because they know that they work and really the the Buddhists are as well to another extent but especially in India man it's like Mantra chanting japa chanting is one of the most common practice is given for good reason it's like a simple easy practice you can give any entrylevel

devote to really make significant progress quickly if they can give themselves to the discipline so it's admittedly difficult and cannot be done half-heartedly but when it's done with real sincerity just being able to keep your attention on a mantra wanting to keep your attention on a mantra is devotion isn't it your devoted to the Mantra as what as a symbol of your Devotion to God you're saying God I want to be able to fix my mind on you all day without wavering and so to practice that I'm going to fix my mind on this Mantra

about you or of you that points to you I am I am I am I am and as often as I have free time when I don't need to think about something when I'm in the pantry you know rearranging things or whatever cooking I'm just I am on the inside and what very Advanced Mantra um japa chanters will tell you is that eventually the Mantra Goes On by itself and while you're talking on the phone there's a a voice in the back of your head I am I am I am you've ingrained it into the

mind you've drilled it into the mind because your the power of your attention you guys is more powerful than you can imagine whatever you focus on has to manifest and grow and increase in strength and so at a certain point you chant the Mantra and then eventually the Mantra starts chanting you and you're just in the frequency all day long I am I am it's carrying you and all of a sudden the deeper meanings the feeling the experience of I am begins to flourish in your Consciousness the words I am take you to the experience

of I am [Music] [Music] [Music]