Our false ego should be dissolved, and the ego of selfsearching should awake. God-searching is self-searching; to search for Kṛṣṇa is really to search for our own higher interest. If you search for Kṛṣṇa, your own interest is also included therein. So, only search for Kṛṣṇa with the spirit of service, not with the spirit of enjoyment.
The false ego must be dissolved. Bhidyate hṛdaya-granthiś: there is a knot in the heart, and it must be cut asunder (Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 11.20.30). ‘Ego’ means, the stored collection of separate interests of different types. Just as when an airplane has crashed, the authorities search the wreckage trying to find the ‘black box’, the record of the airplane’s flight. Similarly, our material ego is like our black box; our ‘plane’ is passing through different lives, but the box is there with the recording. There we can trace from where a person is coming and to where he will go. His karma in its most subtle form is reserved in that recording box. There are specialists who can read if any previous birth was as a tiger, an insect, or horse or some other species. And they can also see what the destination of any next life will be. This can all be traced in the ego.
That ego should be totally dissolved so that our soul’s future destination will be in the spiritual existence and nowhere in the material world. There are so many planes of life in the universe of three dimensions: bhūr, bhuvaḥ, svaḥ, maha, jana, tapa, satya-lokas. Our goal, our destination, should not be any of them. Neither should we go to Virajā, the area beyond all the qualities of material nature, nor to brahmaloka, the non-differentiated world of spiritual light. Our aim should be only: “I want to have a ticket for Goloka, for Vṛndāvana. I want to go there to live; I have heard, and I feel, that there is my true home, the home of my previous generations.” Such feelings will come to us. When our inner self awakens we will feel, “I only want to go there.” And Mahāprabhu and Nityānanda Prabhu are distributing tickets to that land.

―Śrīla Bhakti Rakṣaka Śrīdhara Mahārāja (Divine Aspiration)
Image/Art made possible by Pixabay.com