Ego blocks bond between devotee and the Divine

THERE is intrinsic goodness within everyone. We do not have to think how to be good. It just happens. When someone asks, “What is your name?” you do not have to think. It spills out. Does it require effort or imagination to speak the truth? Only lies require effort. Goodness comes naturally.

Some perform their daily rituals, whether spiritual or religious, out of fear. They think that if they skip the rituals, they may be fated for hell. Some others, in enforced piety, perform rituals out of temptation for a heavenly abode, offering prayers to God to allow for their safe passage in this world and for reception by him into his.

But to seek a return on an investment of love is to profane that love. This is the reason that “love for the sake of loving” has been highly praised. When our input is tainted with desire or ego, the bond between the divine and the devotee suffers. Bribing the divine with ritual inducements in return for economic prosperity, not to mention a happy, healthy and wise life: can this be just? When a person has a transactional relationship with the divine, he will naturally learn to behave the same with other people — to take advantage. Suppose a drug maker wants to boost his profit by mixing counterfeit but harmless fillers with potent ingredients, but then rethinks. It occurs to him that he might get caught and lose him customers, so he decides against it. Does that decision make him virtuous? Although he did not cheat, it was for the wrong reason: his reputation. However, in so doing, he has compromised the intrinsic goodness of his own heart.

If we refrain from doing wrong — but only because we are afraid of being discovered — it proves that we still require rules and policies to avoid straying from a principled life. But if we allow our intrinsic goodness, our decency, to manifest and prevail, automatically and justly in the natural outcome, rules and policies become redundant. The more the rules and policies, the further we stray from our intrinsic goodness.

If our acts are righteous, but only in so far as to look good in front of others, we still compromise our intrinsic goodness. Society may reward us for our virtue, but though our acts may be just they are not pure. We still are not expressing our true goodness. We are only wearing masks of goodness and morality. It’s an imitation — a counterfeit of virtue.

To burnish our reputation by doing good deeds only because others are watching increases our burden of ego, which then disturbs us at the subconscious level.