What is the most important progress in life we are neglecting?
The body is the chariot, buddhi (intelligence) is the charioteer, desires are the roads through which it is drawn by the rope of sensual attachments, moksha (liberation) is the goal and the primal-all-pervasive-Divine is the Master in the chariot.
The car which you carry about has to be treated thus. Instead, people are wildly milling round and round, in dreary circles, from birth to death, pulled by wishes or pushed by needs.
No milestones on the pilgrim road are crossed, no bridges are negotiated, and no progress is registered. The very process of the journey is ignored.
You may say that progress is possible only through His grace; but though His Heart is soft as butter, it melts only when there is some warmth in your prayer.
Unless you make some disciplined effort or undertake some sadhana (spiritual practices), grace cannot descend on you.
The yearning and the agony of unfulfilled aim melts His Heart. That is the anguish that wins grace.
- Divine Discourse, Jan 13, 1969.
First, the Name should melt the devotee's heart; then only it can melt the Divine's heart and draw His Grace upon the devotee.
Source: radiosai.org