How to increase your love for God

When do we develop love for any object or person of this world? We develop love for something or someone when our intellect decides that there is happiness in it, when we believe that possessing that object or person will give us happiness. The more ‘chintan’ (repeated thinking) we do that there is happiness to be gained from that object or person, the stronger our decision that there is happiness in that object or person. The stronger this decision, the stronger is our attachment towards that object. And the more we are attached to something, the more we desire that object.

The exact same concept applies to loving God. The stronger our decision that God is the source of happiness that we are looking for, the more we will fall in love with God. Right now our decision that God is the source of happiness is very weak. On the contrary, we firmly believe that this material world can give us the happiness we are looking for; the objects and people of this world are sources of happiness; the more objects of this world we possess, the happier we will be. This has been our thought process for infinite lifetimes. And this is the reason why we are so attached to this material world. Now if we reverse this thought process and start believing that God is where we can receive happiness from, we will automatically start falling in love with God. Right now, either our belief that God is the source of true happiness is weak or we don’t believe that we can attain God.

So, the next question comes – how can we start believing that God is the real source of happiness, not this material world? How can we strengthen our belief that it’s God alone from where we can derive true happiness? This requires continuous ‘chintan’ of some facts about God and this material world. Here are some important points for daily ‘chintan’.

I am the soul, not this physical body. The soul is a fraction of God. It’s a divine entity. Being divine, its subject can only be divine – that is God. The objects of this world cannot be the subject of the divine soul.
I am not the mind either. The mind is material whereas the soul is divine. It’s a subtle thought generating machine given to me but it is separate from me. The desires of the mind may not be what the soul is looking for.
God is my everything. I belong to him alone and he belongs to me. My every relationship is with God. He is my master, friend, mother, father, brother, son and beloved.
God loves me irrespective of how good or bad I am. He loves me more than I can ever imagine. He is always with me, watching me and protecting me.
There is a unique power between me and Him that is so powerful that it WILL bring us together one day.
I can never get from this world the kind of happiness I am looking for. I must only desire the love and vision of God since He is the ocean of true bliss. God has given me enough power to fight worldly desires. No worldly desire is more powerful than the power that God has given me to fight it.
Besides contemplating on the above points again and again, we must also practice to do the following:

Practice ‘roopdhyan’ every day. Close your eyes and visualize God in front of you. Visualize His lively form, not His statue or photo. Visualize Him standing in front of you. His eyes are blinking. He is looking at you and smiling. Talk to Him, play with Him, share whatever you have on your mind with Him, feed Him, go for a walk with Him, go for a swim with Him…there are endless ideas of what you can visualize with Him. This practice is sure to increase your closeness to God. While doing Roopdhyan, make an effort to experience Him with all your five senses.
While doing Roopdhyan, build an increasing and continuous desire and belief that He is just about to speak to you, about to embrace you, etc.
Think – “He does come in front of me, but because of His habit and love for playing hide-n-seek, He disappears when I open my eyes. That is acceptable to me since that is what pleases Him. However, one day He will HAVE to come to me!”.
The basic idea is to increase the feeling of our belongingness to Him and to realize that we can achieve the state of perfect bliss only by attaining God.

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