His Presence Is Burning Like a Flame in Your Heart, We Are Not to Leave it Untended.

Remember that nothing is worth leaving His temple for. Whatever the action may be, whatever the outcome may be, whatever the world promises you will gain, how would you leave Him? A metaphor that is coming is that His presence, for some time in this human condition because Maya is strong, will seem like the light of a Diya, the light of a lamp, you see. So your job is to just tend to that light and don't leave it. Like on Diwali night, at least in the north, my family and other families do this, that throughout the night they have to keep the Diya burning. So you get up many times in the night to make sure it's burning well; some may even stay up the whole night and tend to it.

So His presence is burning like a flame in your heart, is it? And then He'll reveal more and more of Himself to you. But initially, remember that you are not to leave that light untended, come what may. Because what happens when you leave it untended and you go with the world? It seems to burn out. It seems to... we seem to get disconnected. Then we have actually no guarantee, but His grace of course helps us, but we don't have a guarantee that we'll ever find it again. So actually the risk is in that. The risk is in leaving His presence, isn't it?

Like, can any of us say, 'No, I'll just be mind-y for ten minutes and then I'll return to God's presence'? Because God's presence is not guaranteed if you've been selfish for ten minutes, if you've been just 'me, me, me.' I know it sounds stern, but really there is no guarantee. But we have faith in His love and His mercy, and yet we don't know. So what is the greater risk? The mind tells you that, 'Oh, but if you're just going to be like that, you'll be vegetative, you'll not be active, you'll lose opportunities at work.' All these things will happen, and those things sound like risks. So we leave God and we say, 'Okay, let me tend to all of this, then I'll come back,' is it?

And it's His love that allows us to take Him for granted like this, but that's a huge risk because it may also not be like that. It may be like Narad, you see, who went to get a glass of water for Krishna. Then when at the river, he sees this beautiful lady and says, 'Oh, what a beautiful life I could have if she could be mine and they could be married and together,' you see. And he forgot about the mission that Krishna had sent him on to get him a glass of water. And he spent a large part of... of course Narad being Narad has millions of years, but we don't. So he spent many years in that Maya of having worldly attachments till great suffering came. I don't want to repeat the whole story because you all know it, but we don't have to wait for that.