How does one praise God? We praise God by raising our consciousness and the consciousness of all who come in our contact. When we rise above our petty feelings and emotions, when we diffuse tension, when we stop insisting on having our way (i.e., when we drop our ego and images), when we stop feeding into our selfishness or the selfishness of others, then we are truly praising the presence of that Supreme Being within us. God listens to such praises and holds them dear to His heart.

The power to overcome all selfishness, insecurity and insincerity, negativity and egocentricity—i.e., the power to dispel all ignorance is within us, but we must invoke that power through our humility, and through our deliberate and consistent practices. Only those who are steadfast (committed) become stable minded, and only the one of stable mind is fit to know the Self. The imbalanced mind is unbecoming and makes our life ugly. When the mind is unbalanced it becomes fixed in images, it becomes rigid and inflexible and stunts our spiritual growth.

How does the mind become imbalanced? The mind becomes imbalanced when it consumes unhealthy thoughts, sights, sounds, and sensations. We are living in an imperfect world—that is, not everything in this world is conducive to happiness and well-being. Not everything is nutritious—some things are poisonous and detrimental to our health, and we need to have power of discernment to distinguish between what is good and what is bad. If we are indiscriminate we will become incapacitated, because our capacity to learn and grow is retarded when our mind is filled with nonsense and our body is poisoned with meat, alcohol, drugs, and tobacco (or even too much sugar or fat). We need to become fully alert and see what we are doing to ourselves. If we contaminate our mind and body, we will not be able to contain ourselves, i.e., we will not be able to keep our ego in check and it will wreak havoc in our lives. We should make our motto, "Be self-contained, not self-contaminated."

We need to know what is going on at all times, but we do not necessarily participate in what is happening. Because we are embodied souls living in the world of multiplicity, we are bound to come in contact with uncentered people and unhealthy environments, but we do not need to relate to those people or engage ourselves in harmful situations. This world of Samsara (the world of the selfish) should be like a background noise, like the shallow music in a shopping mall: we hear it, we know it is there, but we are not listening to it. Or, it can be compared to the chitter-chatter and gossip of co-workers on the job: you can hear it, you know it is going on, but you are not listening to it, you are not interested in it. Or, you can compare the sights and sounds of this world of Samsara to the graffiti scribbled on the walls of a public restroom: you see it, you know it is there, but you do not read it. But those who unnecessarily involve themselves in this gross world of Samsara, their minds become shallow and imbalanced, and they suffer the consequences of their distorted perception.

Let us all live intelligently, with power of discernment and grace. Our lives are healed when we control our mind and open our heart to that Supreme Power within us.