Even in favorable situations we should always try to remind ourselves that God comes first. God is our true Self. I’m not here to preach to you that you have to kneel every day to God and worship Hirm because if there is such a God, Hes doesn’t need us to worship Hirm anyhow. But remember that Hes is us. God is us. So we first have to remember our great Self in order to survive, and then get out of the darkness of this world; because in favorable situations and times of physical happiness we tend to forget the most important thing. We forget and then plunge back into suffering and scream and pray to God and so on. But sometimes it’s too late; we’re already suffering.

So it’s better that we remind ourselves every day, or at least endeavor to try. Before you sit in meditation, try to pray to God in any way that touches your heart. Pray to God, pray to the inner Master, pray to your inner Self, pray to Buddha or to whomever you feel is dearest to your heart and say, “Please help me to remember who I am. Please help me to become more and more enlightened every day.”

That’s it; once is enough. If you sincerely pray one time it’s enough because you yourself can hear it. If you’re not sincere, you can shout the whole day long but you know it won’t work because you aren’t putting your whole self into the prayer. That’s why it won’t work.

But sometimes prayers do work because when you’re already desperate and you know you’re really down, you pray and at that time you see the Light. Even if you ordinarily wouldn’t see it or if it’s difficult for you to see it otherwise, at that time you see it. If not, you can try again. If we fail, we have to stand up and do it again.

Every day we have to renew our strength in God, in our practice, in what’s beautiful and in Truth and glory. We can’t just sink into this material world with its material comforts and material kind of life forever. We can’t because we’re not that. We’re not that at all, including this body. At the moment, we’re aware of it so we still stay here, but in samadhi we don’t even remember the body. The body doesn’t exist and we know we’re not the body at all. At that time we know our true Self.

All of us have to endeavor to reach that state of selflessness. Then we’ll know what God truly is. At the moment, we only know God as an abstract being. Hes blesses us, helps us do this and that and answers our prayers so we do already know God to some extent, but that’s not enough. It’s not enough that every day we pray to God for material comfort and to solve some problem for us and so on; that’s not enough. We have to reach the state of being one with God. Then we know we are God, we are the children of God and we are also God. That’s the state that Jesus, Buddha and other Masters have attained and we must endeavor to attain as well.