What if your entire spiritual search is just you running from yourself?
Most people turn to spirituality when external achievement stops working. When the career, the relationship, the next accomplishment no longer fills the void. But here’s what nobody tells you: if you’re seeking God to escape yourself, you’re not seeking at all. You’re performing. And performance keeps you stuck in the same patterns you’re trying to transcend.
Swami Revatikanta has been a monk for nearly 20 years, and in this conversation, he dismantles the spiritual ego most seekers don’t even know they’re carrying. This isn’t about how to meditate better or find your purpose. This is about why chasing enlightenment guarantees you’ll never find it, and what it actually takes to stop running.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode
Why re-deciding who you are every single day matters more than any commitment you made in the past. The person who became a monk 20 years ago isn’t the same person Swami Revatikanta is today. And the version of you who started your spiritual practice isn’t who you are now. Growth requires you to re-choose your path daily, not out of obligation to your past self, but because it’s still your number one priority today.
How God chasing you actually works, and why you can’t chase God no matter how hard you try. When you embody the qualities that attract divinity—humility, selfless service, genuine love—God can’t resist you. But when you’re stuck in spiritual performance, arrogance, and ego disguised as devotion, God stays asleep in your heart.
Why simplicity and clarity are the same thing, and how mental clutter keeps you from knowing yourself. Most people wake up asking “What do I wear? Who do I need to impress? Who do I have to be today?” That constant decision fatigue creates the perfect conditions for doubt and stagnation. True transformation happens when you simplify your focus to the point where there’s no room for your mind to second-guess your path.
Why Spiritual Seeking Matters Right Now
We’re living in a time when people are waking up faster than the systems around them want them to. The old models of achievement, success, and external validation are collapsing. More people than ever are turning inward, asking bigger questions, deconstructing the narratives they were fed.
But here’s the shadow side: spiritual seeking can become just another form of achievement. Another way to perform. Another identity to curate. The seeker who collects teachers, modalities, and insights like trophies is no different from the corporate climber collecting promotions. Same ego, different costume.
This conversation matters because it calls out the performance. It asks you to examine whether your spiritual practice is actually transforming you or just making you feel like you’re doing something. Because the truth is, enlightenment isn’t a trophy you earn. It’s a natural consequence of becoming someone God can’t resist.
About Swami Revatikanta
Swami Revatikanta has been a Bhakti monk for nearly 20 years and is the host of Thinking Bhakti, a podcast that bridges devotion with critical thinking. His path began when he noticed a pattern: people around him reminisced about their younger years as if life had already peaked, and from then on it was just coping. He wanted a life that kept evolving, not one that plateaued at 25.
What makes his perspective unique is his willingness to stay in the world rather than isolate in a monastery. He teaches meditation, gives public lectures, and opens a center in Manhattan in January 2025. He believes monks can’t afford to hide anymore. The world needs people who’ve done the deep work to stay engaged, not escape.
Key Insights From Swami Revatikanta
You Re-Decide Who You Are Every Single Day
Most people think commitment means sticking to a decision you made in the past, no matter what. But Swami Revatikanta challenges that. The person you were when you started your spiritual path, your relationship, your career—that’s not who you are today. And clinging to past commitments out of obligation robs you of the power to re-choose.
Every day, he wakes up and asks himself: Is being a monk still my number one priority? Not because he’s doubting. Because re-deciding with the new version of himself is more powerful than defaulting to what he chose 20 years ago. This applies to everything. Your marriage. Your business. Your spiritual practice. Are you choosing it today, or are you just going through the motions because you said you would?
God Doesn’t Need You to Chase—God Chases You
The entire spiritual industrial complex is built on the idea that you need to do more. Meditate longer. Chant better. Pray harder. But what if the whole premise is backwards? Swami Revatikanta says when you embody humility, selfless service, and genuine love, God can’t resist you. You don’t need to chase God. God chases you.
The problem is most people are chasing enlightenment to validate their ego, not transcend it. They want the spiritual status. The knowing nod from other seekers. The identity of being “awakened.” And God sees through that. Arrogance, pride, and hypocrisy repel the divine. God stays sleeping in those hearts, present but uninterested in what’s happening.
Simplicity and Clarity Are the Same Thing
When Swami Revatikanta talks about simplicity, he’s not talking about minimalism or decluttering your closet. He’s talking about mental clarity. Most people wake up with a hundred decisions to make before they even leave the house. What to wear. Who to impress. Who to be in front of which people. That constant decision-making creates the perfect breeding ground for doubt.
As a monk, he wears the same thing every day. Shows up the same way. Stands for the same things no matter who’s in front of him. That simplification creates an incredible power: clarity over what he’s meant to do. No room for doubt to creep in and stagnate his life. And you don’t need to become a monk to access that. You just need to identify the clutter and cut it.
Devotion Without Thinking Is Dangerous
Most people associate devotion with blind faith. Turn your brain off and just believe. But Swami Revatikanta’s podcast is called Thinking Bhakti for a reason. He believes the intersection of mind and heart is where transformation happens. People who only follow their heart without thinking eventually get shaken. People who only think without feeling become heartless intellectuals who can’t access the most beautiful parts of life.
True devotion requires both. You need to think critically about what you’re dedicating yourself to. And you need to feel deeply enough to actually commit. A dumb blind devotion is dangerous. A heartless intellect is equally dangerous. The sweet spot is when your mind and heart both agree: this is my path.
Love Is a Verb, Not a Feeling
For Swami Revatikanta, devotion isn’t an emotion. It’s a series of actions. Selfless service. Dedicating your energy to something without personal gain or glory. He tells a story about fundraising for a temple construction. Donations were slow until they offered to inscribe donors’ names on the altar. Suddenly the whole temple was funded. That revealed the truth: behind most “selfless” acts is an ego wanting validation.
Real love is given for the sake of love. You serve because you love the thing, not because you want recognition. Yes, you’ll benefit. But as a side effect, not the primary motivation. This applies to relationships, work, and spiritual practice. If you’re doing it to look good, feel good, or be seen as good, it’s not love. It’s ego in disguise.
The Uncomfortable Truth About Spiritual Seeking
Here’s what most spiritual teachers won’t tell you: your practice might be keeping you stuck.
If you’re meditating to avoid dealing with your relationships, that’s not spiritual growth. That’s spiritual bypassing. If you’re collecting certifications, workshops, and teachings to build an identity as “someone who’s done the work,” that’s not transformation. That’s achievement culture in yoga pants.
The hardest thing to accept is that you might be using spirituality the same way you used external success: to feel special, validated, and superior to people who “don’t get it.” And until you’re willing to examine that, all the meditation in the world won’t set you free.
Swami Revatikanta learned this the hard way. He’d give a public lecture, people would thank him, tell him he changed their lives. And if he wasn’t careful, his mind would say “Damn right I did. Because I’m great.” That kind of thinking creates consequences. Bad relationships. Difficult conversations. Eventually enough bad experiences set you straight.
The path forward isn’t to bash away the ego and pretend it doesn’t exist. It’s to re-decide every day whether you’re serving God or serving your image. And then make the choice to walk away from the adulation. Give your service and leave. Don’t stick around for the applause.
Quotes That Hit Different
“I didn’t want to face a life where it had already peaked in my early 20s and from then on would just be a sort of coping.” — 01:27
This is what drove him to become a monk. The realization that most people spend their lives looking backwards at when things were good, rather than continuing to evolve. If your best days are behind you, you’re not living. You’re coping.
“The person that decided to become a monk 20 years ago is not the same person that sits here in front of you today. And so for me to just sit here and say, well, because I gave my word 20 years ago, I now have to stick to it no matter what—there is a truth to that, there is a power to that, but what’s even more powerful is that I get to re-choose that every day.” — 08:21
Re-decision is more powerful than obligation. You’re not who you were. Stop living like you are.
“God can be there dancing or God can be there sleeping. And I think in a lot of these hearts, God is sleeping. He’s like, I’ll never abandon you. I’ll be here, but I’m not interested in what’s going on up there.” — 54:55
The quality of how you’re living determines whether God is awake or asleep in your heart. Arrogance, pride, hypocrisy—they put God to sleep.
“You don’t need to chase God, God chases you.” — 54:55
When you embody humility, love, and selfless service, you become irresistible to the divine. The whole premise of spiritual seeking is backwards.
“God speaks the language of intentions. And for me, intentions are only ever heard, only ever bought, if they are married to effort and sincerity.” — 53:00
You can say “I love you” a hundred times. If you never put effort into showing it, it’s just words. God doesn’t buy lip service. Neither should you.
How to Apply This in Your Life
Start by asking yourself: Am I choosing this today, or am I just going through the motions? Your spiritual practice, your relationship, your work. Are you re-deciding with the version of you that exists right now, or are you operating on autopilot because you said you would?
Next, examine where you’re performing instead of transforming. Are you meditating because it changes you, or because it makes you feel like you’re doing something? Are you reading spiritual books to actually integrate the teachings, or to collect insights you can drop in conversations? Get honest about the ego hiding behind your practice.
Finally, simplify your focus. What’s your number one priority? Not your top five. Your number one. Everything else is second place. And second place doesn’t get to win the battle for your attention. When you have that kind of clarity, doubt doesn’t have room to creep in.
Resources & Links From This Episode
- Thinking Bhakti Podcast – Swami Revatikanta’s YouTube channel exploring devotion and critical thinking
- Instagram: @swamirevatikanta – Connect with him directly
- New York City Center – Opening in Manhattan, January 2025
- The Bhagavad Gita – Referenced throughout the conversation as a core text
Take This Work Deeper
If this conversation hit you, you’d love the Mind Love Collective. We meet monthly for themed calls where we get intimate and real about what’s actually happening in our spiritual practice, not just what looks good on Instagram. It’s the kind of community where breakthroughs happen because we’re willing to call out the performance. Join us at mindlove.com/join.
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