Life is a mixture of happiness and misery, love and hatred, fitness and sickness, clarity and complexity, hopefulness and helplessness. Amid these dualities, what role does ‘belief in God’ play? Can believing in God make life simpler, easier and happier?

Absolutely! Let’s see how…

Firstly, ‘Belief in God’ is a raw knowledge term. Adding life and beauty to this knowledge comes from experiencing the sweet and firm bonding that exists between a soul, yourself and the supreme soul, God!

Bow down and allow God to lead you! Allow him to take over you and then His grace begins to shower by bringing the following three changes in you. These changes dissolve the bad karma slowly so that you can absorb the change more gracefully, and return to your natural state!

  • Your knowledge unfolds in the right direction (gnanam)
  • ’You will feel His love and fall in love (prema/bhakthi)
  • You will develop a wish to serve Him (kainkarya buddhi)

If you are filled with all the above three, do you think you can be impacted by other external factors? The dualities we first talked about – the happiness and misery, the love and hatred, the fitness and sickness, the clarity and complexity, the hopefulness and helplessness…?

Imagine that you are behind a glass door working on your tasks. The door allows you to see what’s happening outside the room, but does not impact you (unless of course you choose to!). Similarly, the dualities may still exist because that is the nature of existence. But, what matters is whether they impact you! Absolutely not! You are shielded by God’s love and you are busy in working for His objectives. You are busy spreading His love. God pledges that, if one bows down, He will slowly remove all the obstacles in one’s path to serve Him. So, there you go! Definitely ‘Belief in the bonding with God’ plays a huge role in making life happier.

Now you may question why should I bow down? Why can’t He help me even if I don’t bow down? This ahankaram blocks us from receiving His grace. God does not mind your ahankaram and continues to grace upon you, but ahankaram blocks you from receiving His grace.

Example: Let’s say you are in a classroom trying to solve a problem, you do not know how to solve it and you are struggling with it. You raise your hand seeking for help from your teacher, and the teacher begins to help you. In the process, you seem to understand a bit and ask the teacher to stop helping. The teacher then patiently waits. The thought that you can solve it yourself blocks the teacher to help you. You may wonder, ‘Isn’t it good to try and solve it ourselves?’. Well, a mathematics problem is perhaps easier. But, we are in a body that can’t even digest a bit more food than what we usually consume, how can we expect ourselves to burn loads of karma that is stored at multiple levels in our body from countless lives!? Leave that hard work to Him like how the pandavas did! Sounds harsh on Him, doesn’t it? If you want to help him help you, then He expects you to welcome Him with a tender heart, that’s all!

It seems there was a day when Krushna was lying down on the laps of Arjuna with his feet towards Satyabhama! Drowpadi, in love with Arjuna was sitting across him! How sweet, isn’t it!? Krushna shares such a close association with Arjuna! That day, Sanjaya came to Krushna carrying a message from the Kauravas. Generally, no one disturbs them during such instances, but Krushna permitted Sanjaya to come in and witness the room. Krushna’s intention was that Sanjaya carries the message of his close association with Arjuna back to Kauravas!

Arjuna and Dhuryodhana approached Krushna for help, prior to the great Mahabharatha war. Krushna gave himself to Arjuna while Dhuryodhana was fine to choose Krushna’s army on his side. The power behind all powers is with Pandavas. That shows how the close bonding with God protects and directs one to victory!

God stays away from helping ones who do not like Him or approve of His existence. He can’t help them, because they won’t be able to receive Him. It would be anonymous to trying to feed a child who is not hungry! They might feel sick or throw up if you force them. He waits for them to be ready. For those who approach him and show some level of interest, He works with them slowly but surely to lift them up from the current state of ignorance and ego!

Nammalwar constantly felt connected with God. His songs tell us how strongly he believed in the bond with God. His songs clearly tell us that He could see the sins walking away from him without his efforts.

History tells us how greatly he was rewarded by God, acharyas, and devotees! All knowledge that exists about God was evident in Nammalwar’s songs. His love for God preserved His natural state (ignorance free and ego-less state – the blissful state of togetherness with almighty, God!). That love outpoured in the form of pasurams, the potions of love to all of us, like Homeopathy pills – sweet to taste, and powerful to cure!

– From the discourse of Sri Chinna Jeeyar Swami, Bhagavad Vishayam