One Persian couplet states the following:
God the Beloved says to the lover:
Vacate your abode of its millions of strangers;
Then only, will I enter. I feel shy of strangers!
And who are the strangers? Wants, desires, thoughts! They are all so compressed within you that they leave no room for God the Beloved, whom you would invite in.
As the strangers begin to leave the heart, it becomes cleaner and purer. Then God peeks into it, and His all-loving glance wipes out all worries. And the glimpse of God that one experiences leaves no scope for any doubts about His sweet will that manifests through “good” and “bad” times.
The God-realized Soul lives in the world, but the world does not and cannot touch him. But to achieve God-realization is not child’s play. For this, one has to surrender all — body, mind and heart — to the Perfect Master.
-www.lordmeher.org, p4671
May, 1960; Guruprasad