By seeking God, you prevent God from finding you

Following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Questioner: Acharya Ji, what does Rumi mean when he says, “What you seek is seeking you?”

Acharya Prashant: What you are looking for is also looking for you and you are preventing him from looking for you by looking for him. That is what Rumi did not say, let us complete Rumi’s statement, “God is looking for you and you are looking for God and God keeps on looking for you, God cannot find you precisely because — you are looking for God; you stop looking for God and God will immediately find you.”

It’s like this, you tell somebody to meet you at the Madison Square; the other fellow is looking for you and by the time the other fellow comes looking for you to the Madison Square, you have gone to some other place looking for that fellow. How will he ever get you? — You stop looking, your effort is not needed. “God alone is sufficient, your efforts are a barrier.”

When you are looking for God, you are operating from an ego point which says that you are powerful enough to look for God. You look for God only in one way, if you are a real seeker — by letting God look for you. “You can never be an agency of unity.” “You would always be an agent of separation.” You cause separation when you look for separation and…