What is holding us back in our spiritual life?
When we start spiritual life, we have the chance for a clean start, no matter what we did in the past. However, not always we advance as quickly as expected. Why?
When we start practicing spiritual life, and especially chanting the holy names, we have the chance for a clean start. No matter what we did in the past, we have the opportunity to very quickly erase it by the potency of the holy names.
By the time he was approached by the Yamadūtas, Ajamila had killed, stolen, kidnapped, and so on. Still, when the Yamadūtas came to take him, the Viṣṇudutas immediately appeared in the scene and questioned why they were taking an innocent man. The Yamadūtas were surprised by such an inquiry and described the sins of Ajamila, arguing that they were under the authority of Yamaraja, but the Viṣṇudutas rebuked them and sent Ajamila back to his body. What the Yamadūtas failed to realize was that Ajamila had destroyed the results of his past sinful actions by calling the name of Narayana while addressing his son. By the time the Yamadūtas were ready to take him to hell, he was indeed an innocent man.
The same process can work for us. There is however a complication: while the potency of the holy names is unlimited, one is supposed to stop committing sinful activities when one starts to chant. We can see that after chanting and becoming purified, Ajamila immediately stopped all his sinful activities, leaving the company of the prostitute and dedicating himself to serve Lord Vishnu in a temple at Haridwar. By serving and keeping himself free from sin for the remaining years of his life, he was able to finally go back to Godhead.
We can see that many devotees are capable of strictly following the orders of the spiritual master and very seriously practice the spiritual process, and as a result, they progress very fast. Most of us, on the other hand, continue to be tied to our material desires, and often we do things we are not supposed to do, and this limits our progress. We are trying to advance in spiritual life with the handbrake pulled, so to speak.
One point I understood over time is that our propensity to break the rules is directly connected with our propensity to see ourselves as enjoyers. That's the trap of Maya: it allows us to assume this position of enjoyers of what we see and in this way ties us to this material world. The tendency of being an enjoyer thus manifest when someone sees some attractive material object, such as a man looking to a beautiful woman, a woman looking to a handsome man, when we see some palatable dishes or some beautiful object and so on, and leads us to do whatever it takes to obtain it. That's the way Maya attracts us to this material world, just like a fish hooked by the mouth.
How to counter it? The best solution I found is to chant the holy names attentively, putting ourselves in a position of service. In the same way, when we see ourselves as enjoyers, we have the propensity of enjoying matter; when we put ourselves in the position of servants of Krsna, we have the propensity of offering everything to Him. In this way, our propensity to break the rules is curbed, allowing us to advance quickly in spiritual life.
In other words, chanting attentively puts us back in our original position, reinforcing our propensity to serve, and when we finally exert this propensity, we make quick progress. Attentive chanting and service thus work best when combined, and the chanting is the basis for an attitude of service.
For this, it's important to not just chant our rounds mechanically, but to really reserve a time to chant as an offering to Krsna. Just as we may reserve part of our money and donate it to devotees or to Krsna Conscious projects, we should also reserve part of our daily time and use this time to chant our rounds attentively, as an offering to Krsna. If we can put ourselves in this platform of service, everything else in our spiritual lives will become easier.