What is God's work?
When you perform any action and ideate that you are doing it for God, you are engaged in God’s work, otherwise known as karma yoga. In particular, karma yoga is the work you do for the betterment of humanity and while thinking that you are serving the Divine. When you are doing good and avoiding doing bad, you will naturally attract Divine Grace, which will take care of all your needs.
The advantage of karma yoga, as compared to any other yoga, is straightforward and very important: while we are living, we cannot avoid acting—even if we sit and do nothing, we are still doing something. Moreover, every self-identified action will produce karma, which draws us deeper into the world of duality—limiting freedom and causes us continual pain.
Of course, the purpose of spiritual practice is to rescue us from the vicious circle of karma and lead us to freedom. However, if you meditate twice a day, you are on the spiritual path for only that short time twice a day. When you offer your every action, every active moment of your life, to the Supreme Being, then all of your time is spend on the spiritual path. Most importantly, when you ideate that you are the instrument of the Divine, you do not generate karma because you are not the doer of the action—God is the doer and He will reap the fruits of your-now-His action.
Karma yoga is simply any work done with Divine ideation and with real love for the Supreme Being and Its Creation. It can be the work you do for a living, attending a music recital or going to the bathroom—it is good intention and Divine ideation that are important. Karma yoga is the most effective spiritual practice because it engages every moment of your life in the spiritual pursuit. And that is why it is the fastest way to self-realization.
An additional benefit of karma yoga is that it allows you to choose the timing for the release of your negative karma. Every person has an allotted quantity of pain (and pleasure) to experience, as determine by his or her past harmful actions. Ordinarily, we have no control when a particular sam’ska’ra (karma) triggers an accident and cause us grief and inconvenience. While you are doing work for God, however, you are exhausting your karma at that very moment—not at some unknown and ill-timed occasion.
-- Anatole
