I asked for misery from God

Kunti ( a female devotee) asked the Lord for difficulties so that her devotion to God improves more and more.  She was the first soul to recognize the difficulties as the real preachers of devotion to God.  The second soul was myself who asked God for creating problems.  You know I did long prayers to Lord Shiva to grant difficulties so that the divine knowledge and devotion improve more.  God was astonished in these two cases since no soul requested God for difficulties so far after the creation!  As a soul, My devotion to God improved tremendously during the difficulties.  As God I enjoyed the difficulties in this world, which are not at all possible in the upper world. You can take Me in whatever way you like.

I share your attitude.

If not for all the difficulties in the past, I would not be what I am today.

The more difficulties I face and go through, the more courage and patience I have, to serve GOD.

But wait. are we sure we are doing the right thing?

Certainly. For GOD is not just a narrow concept of a single all-mighty God, but the WHOLE.

We are part of the WHOLE. Therefore in serving GOD, we serve the WHOLE. Every one benefits from our service.

Keep up with your devine service.

Yours truly,

The ignorant person invites happiness and wants to avoid misery with the help of God. The priests are exploiting this at a micro level and some of the present spiritual preachers are exploiting the same point at the macro level in a dignified way. A businessman exploits public at a micro level directly. A politician exploits the public at a macro level indirectly under the name of ‘social service’. Of course, there are good people in both categories doing a real social service. Sri Ramakrishna was a good priest and Swami Vivekananda was a good preacher.

The realized person invites misery and not happiness. Kunti asked Krishna for getting troubles always, which alone keep the person in devotion to God. Penance is a form of artificially creating misery only. In misery only, one becomes active and sincerely approaches God without egoism. Misery is the guiding force in spiritual journey.

The liberated soul, who came down in a role to this earth along with the Lord to enjoy this world-drama by direct participation invites both happiness and misery simultaneously like sweet and hot dishes in the meals. Anything bores if it is continuous. Entertainment does not bore even if it is continuous. But entertainment through continuous happiness or continuous misery bores. A picture either with continuous scenes of happiness or with continuous scenes of misery bores and the entertainment also bores.  

Entertainment should be same as a product but the sources of entertainment should change. You cannot entertain yourself with continuous sweet dishes or continuous hot dishes. Such continuous entertainment is called Bliss or Ananda. The word Ananda means continuous happiness (Aa samantat Nandayati Iti). If the happiness is a product, it is continuous. If it is the source it is discontinuous. Therefore, you can be continuously happy, if your happiness is the product of alternating misery and happiness. You are happy, when you get happiness. But you should be happy when you get the misery also. You must enjoy both sweet and hot. You must be happy to praise and abuse, profit and loss, life and death, sincerity and cheating etc. This world is already arranged with these alternating sweet and hot items.

If you can enjoy both, you are always happy during your life and after death. This is the state of God and is also the state of a liberated soul, who accompanies the Lord to this world. The king visited the cinema along with his family. All the family members including the king enjoy both the happy scenes and tragic scenes. This is equality of the liberated soul with the God in the cinema hall. When the cinema is over, king is king and servant is servant.

When one attains full enlightenment seeing that there is neither happiness not misery in life but only phenomenon, there is constant bliss.

Knowledge is like sitting in your house without happiness or worry. Devotion is like travelling to the Lord by bus or train, which gives you happiness only. But service with sacrifice (Karma Yoga) is like travelling by aeroplane to the Lord, which involves full worry and misery only. To reach the Lord, only aeroplane is effective and therefore you hear that a divine aeroplane came down to take a devotee. A bus or train does not come down from heaven.

The path is full with thorns. After reaching the goal also, you have to sit on the thorny thrown with thorny crown only. Lord Datta is said to be the ocean of bliss. This means that He is not enjoying the bliss but He makes His devotees to enjoy the bliss as said by Veda (Eshahyeva Anandayati…). The Lord transfers the evil effects of His devotees on to Him and always suffers. By this the devotees are blissful. Therefore, the path and goal are full of misery only and not the bliss.

The spiritual aspirant must always invite troubles and misery in his life, which are the real friends to give the advanced training. But if you analyse carefully, such misery gives you the real eternal bliss. This bliss is eternal because it is associated with misery and is not affected by misery. Thus, the real eternal bliss comes only through the misery in the sacrifice. The bliss that comes in the happiness of selfishness is always temporary. It disappears when the misery attacks it.

Therefore, you must try to derive the internal bliss through the misery obtained in the sacrifice. Misery also comes by sins but such misery will not give the eternal bliss. Therefore, you should try to attain the eternal bliss by sacrificing every thing and every body in this world for the sake of the Lord in human form. Lakshmana, Bharatha, Hanuman etc. did the same. Even Jesus says that unless one sacrifices all the bonds and even is prepared to sacrifice the life by carrying his own cross for the sake of the Lord, He is not pleased with such disciple. The bliss rising from misery and associated with misery can never be effected by misery and therefore remains eternal. A person who is grown up by the poison only as the food cannot be effected by the bite of a serpent.