Ahankara - Foundational principle of our material existence.
In other words, the influence of false ego in this world is so powerful that it is extremely difficult to overcome. In fact the hindrance in the path of devotional life is nothing but false ego. Therefore as long as false ego remains, it is difficult to make progress on the path of devotional life - in the path of bhakti yoga. It is always easy from this conception for everybody to blame others and think himself or herself to be right and the other person to be wrong. This tendency becomes very prominent. We have to realize that the progress in devotional life will become very slow as long as this type of feeling or mentality or behavior is there in the mind of each one of us. In other words, the most important principle in the process of bhakti yoga is primarily to remove the influence of ahankara or false ego. This is done by the process of sadhana bhakti. Sadhana bhakti means devotional life with rules and regulations i.e. following the principles - the disciplined way of learning devotional principles. The whole process in sadhana bhakti is to remove this false ego. Until and unless this covering of false ego is removed, it will take a lot of time to progress in devotional life.
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