Why Do I Feel Disconnected From God Even When I Still Believe?

Yesterday, something happened that made me think deeply about what it means to feel disconnected from God even when you still believe in Him.

The day had been particularly difficult for me spiritually. I did not feel like looking at the photograph of Holy Mother or chanting Her name. 

I could not feel that warmth or emotional connection that I normally feel towards Her. 

And because my spiritual life is so important to me, this disturbed me deeply.

Then, late in the evening, I happened to speak to someone I had met online. 

We had a long, soulful conversation about God, spirituality, love for God and how we protect our spiritual lives while dealing with everything else in life. And then, something shifted inside me.

I suddenly felt that emotional depth towards Mother again. That warmth I had been missing throughout the day seemed to return. I felt relieved. And my first thought was not that the conversation had somehow solved my problem. I felt that this too was Mother’s Kripa.

But the experience left me with a question that I have asked myself many times:

Why do I feel disconnected from God even when I still believe?

I have not stopped believing in Mother. I have not stopped wanting Her. So why are there days when I cannot feel Her at all? Why does that absence frighten me so much? And why, sometimes, can I not even explain what caused the disconnection in the first place?

I don’t think I have all the answers. But I have experienced this enough times to know that believing in God and feeling connected to God are not always the same thing.

Why Do I Feel Disconnected From God Even When I Still Believe? Some Powerful Insights

If you ask me why do I feel disconnected from God even when I still believe, I don’t think there is always one clear answer.

Sometimes I can identify the reason. Maybe I am going through a difficult period. Maybe I have been praying about something for a long time, and nothing seems to be changing. Maybe there is too much uncertainty in my life. Maybe I am mentally exhausted. And sometimes, honestly, I have no idea why it happens.

That is what makes spiritual dryness so confusing.

You may still believe in God. You may still love your Ishta. You may still want God-realisation. You may still have complete faith in the Divine. And yet, for some reason, you may not feel connected to God.

I have experienced this many times. And every time it happens, it frightens me.

Believing in God and feeling connected to God are not always the same

I think this is the first thing we need to understand.

You can believe that God exists and still go through a period when you cannot feel His presence.

That is exactly what happened to me yesterday.

I was not thinking, “I don’t believe in Mother anymore.” Nothing like that happened. My faith had not suddenly disappeared. I simply could not feel Her warmth. I could not feel that emotional connection that I normally feel towards Her.

And that difference matters.

Sometimes, when we say, “I feel disconnected from God,” what we really mean is:

“I still believe in God, but I cannot feel Him the way I normally do.”

That can be a very painful experience.

For me, it is especially difficult because my spiritual life is not something separate from the rest of my life. My life centres around Holy Mother with Her Kripa. Of course, I am a simple human being. I have desires for comfort, luxury, money, and material things. I will never deny that.

But beneath all of that, my life centres around Mother.

So when I suddenly cannot feel that connection, it affects me very deeply.

Sometimes we do not know why we feel disconnected from God

This is something I have had to accept.

There have been days when I could clearly connect my spiritual dryness with what was happening in my life. Perhaps I was struggling with something I desperately wanted to materialise. Perhaps a prayer had remained unanswered. Perhaps I was going through difficult circumstances or waiting for an answer that was not coming.

But yesterday was different.

I genuinely could not tell you exactly why I felt disconnected from Mother.

Maybe several things were going on in the background. Maybe the uncertainties in my life were affecting me. Maybe some of the things I am struggling with were quietly weighing on my mind. Maybe physical factors also played a part. I was close to my menstrual period, so perhaps that affected my mood too.

I don’t know.

And I think this is important because we sometimes try too hard to find a spiritual explanation for every emotional state.

Sometimes you simply wake up and feel different.

You still believe.

You still want God.

But the connection feels absent.

And you don’t know why.

Unanswered prayers can make us wonder whether God is listening

There have been times in my life when I have prayed for something repeatedly, and nothing seemed to happen.

When you pray for something for months or even years, it can become difficult.

You may begin to wonder:

Is God listening?

Why isn’t this happening?

Why is Mother silent?

Why is my life not changing despite all my prayers?

And even when you know intellectually that God’s ways may not be understood by us, the human mind still asks these questions.

I have experienced this myself.

But I have also experienced something that completely changed the way I look at unanswered prayers.

There was something I had been praying for over many years. I wanted a particular outcome very badly, and it simply did not happen despite my prayers to Mother.

Later, I discovered why.

If that particular thing had happened in the way I wanted, there was a disaster waiting for me.

I was shocked when I realised it.

And I could not thank Mother enough.

That experience taught me something I cannot forget: an unanswered prayer is not necessarily an unheard prayer.

I still don’t understand why God remains silent in many situations. But I have personally seen that something I desperately wanted could have harmed me if it had happened.

And I sometimes think that Mother may have protected me from hundreds of such situations that I will never even know about.

Honestly, I don’t want to know all of them.

I just want to feel Her.

Sometimes we mistake the absence of a feeling for the absence of God

This may be one of the biggest reasons why you feel disconnected from God.

We expect God to feel a certain way.

Perhaps we expect:

• peace when we pray;
• warmth in our heart;
• tears during prayer;
• a sense of God’s presence;
• an answer;
• a sign;
• some kind of reassurance.

And when none of these things happen, we may think:

“God is not here.”

But is that necessarily true?

I don’t know.

Being just a few years into my spiritual journey, I will not make a big claim that I have understood God’s silence or God’s ways.

But my own experience tells me that not feeling God’s presence does not necessarily mean that God is absent.

Yesterday, I could not feel Mother.

That did not mean I had stopped believing in Her.

And later that evening, something changed.

I cannot explain exactly how it happened.

As I said at the beginning of this piece, maybe it was the conversation I had with someone about Mother, how to develop love for God, and similar things… suddenly something shifted.

Suddenly, I felt that depth towards Mother again. The warmth I had been missing since morning returned, and with it came a sense of relief.

For me, that return of the connection with Her was Mother’s Kripa.

Spiritual dryness can make you question your own Bhakti

When you go through a dry phase, another frightening thought can appear:

“Have I lost my Bhakti?”

I have asked myself this.

You may ask:

Why don’t I feel the same devotion anymore?

What has changed in me?

Was what I experienced earlier even real?

Why can everyone else seem to feel God while I cannot?

These questions can become very disturbing.

And if spiritual life is extremely important to you, they can become even more frightening.

My aim in life is God-realisation with Mother’s Kripa. So if I suddenly cannot feel connected to Mother, my mind immediately starts asking:

“Then how am I going to progress spiritually?”

“How am I going to realise God if I cannot even feel connected to Her?”

That is not a small concern for me.

It genuinely frightens me.

You can know that spiritual dryness is normal and still be frightened by it

I know that dry phases or spiritually empty phases can happen in spiritual life. I have read and heard advanced practitioners speak about them, and intellectually, I understand that not feeling God’s presence for a while does not necessarily mean that something has gone wrong.

I can even tell myself, “Maybe I am not in the right frame of mind today. Maybe I am physically tired. Maybe something else is affecting me.”

But when it actually happens to me, it still frightens me.

Knowing something intellectually does not automatically make it easier to experience emotionally.

I can tell myself that nothing may be wrong with my connection with Mother, but my heart may still be asking, “Where is She?”

That is the reality I have experienced. I understand spiritual dryness in theory, but when I go through it myself, I still struggle with it.

We can feel guilty for being disconnected from God

There is another layer to this.

You may start thinking that a genuine devotee should not feel disconnected from God.

I have felt this guilt myself.

I may know that such phases happen, but somewhere inside I still think:

Why am I like this?

Why can’t I pray properly?

Why don’t I feel the same intensity?

Is something wrong with my devotion?

And then another problem begins.

You start comparing yourself with advanced devotees and saints.

You look at people who seem to have deep devotion and wonder why you are not experiencing the same thing.

But then I remind myself of something very basic.

The same human mind that compares itself with other people in worldly life comes into spiritual life too.

We don’t suddenly leave all our human tendencies behind when we begin walking the spiritual path.

The mind that compares, worries, fears and becomes insecure in ordinary life can do exactly the same thing in spiritual life.

So perhaps even this comparison is something we need to recognise honestly rather than becoming ashamed of ourselves for experiencing it.

You can be disappointed with God and still believe in God

I don’t think devotion means that you will never feel hurt, disappointed or confused with God.

There have been times when I have been disappointed.

There have been times when I have not understood God.

There have been times when I have questioned certain things.

And yet I could not completely turn away.

That is another strange paradox of spiritual life.

You may say:

“I don’t understand You.”

You may even feel:

“Why are You allowing this?”

But somewhere inside, you are still turning towards God.

That has happened to me.

Even when I feel distant from Mother, when something genuinely difficult happens, I still instinctively turn towards Her.

That itself tells me something.

Perhaps feeling disconnected from God is not the same as wanting to leave God.

You can be hurt and still believe.

You can be disappointed and still pray.

You can question God and still want God.

Sometimes you don’t want a particular answer. You simply want God

This is something I understood particularly clearly yesterday.

I wasn’t sitting there thinking, “Mother, please give me this particular outcome and then I will feel close to You.”

I didn’t even know what I wanted from Her specifically.

I simply wanted to feel Her again.

I wanted that warmth.

I wanted that emotional depth.

I wanted to feel that I was not alone.

And when that feeling was missing for the entire day, I became deeply disturbed.

Sometimes, perhaps, what we are really longing for is not an answer to a prayer.

We are longing for the Divine Himself.

Sometimes emotional connection matters more to us than we realise

I don’t think my connection with Mother is simply based on whether my circumstances are good or bad.

Some prayers have been answered.

Some have not.

Some things have worked out exactly as I wanted.

Some have not.

And there are many things about my future that I have absolutely no idea about.

So I cannot say that my faith depends entirely on favourable circumstances.

But emotional connection matters enormously to me.

If I cannot feel that warmth towards Mother, I start worrying.

Sometimes I even panic.

Because spiritual life is not just another interest in my life. It is extremely important to me.

So when I feel disconnected from God, I don’t simply think, “I’ll get over it.”

I start wondering what has happened to my spiritual life.

And that is why these periods can feel so intense.

I cannot remember Holy Mother if She doesn’t want me to

This is something I feel very strongly about.

I cannot remember Holy Mother if She doesn’t want me to.

If She doesn’t want me to remember Her, I cannot force myself to remember Her.

If She doesn’t want me to turn towards Her, I cannot manufacture that relationship through my own effort.

So when I feel that emotional depth towards Her, I don’t see it as something I have created entirely by myself.

I feel that the very emotional depth I have towards Mother is Her Kripa.

I don’t see Her reciprocation directly. I am not claiming that.

But I feel that if She did not want me to remember Her, I would not be able to remember Her in the first place.

This is why even my periods of disconnection have a strange paradox in them.

I am frightened because I cannot feel Her.

But the fact that I am frightened about losing Her also tells me how deeply I want Her.

And sometimes I still don’t understand any of it

This is perhaps the most honest place I can end the “why” part.

I still don’t understand God’s silence properly.

I don’t know why some prayers are answered and others are not.

I don’t know why I sometimes wake up feeling deeply connected to Mother and, on another day, cannot even look at Her photograph.

I don’t know why these waves come.

I don’t know what will happen in many areas of my own life.

There are many uncertainties around me even now.

But I have also learnt that I don’t need to pretend that I have solved this mystery.

Sometimes all I can say is:

“Mother, I don’t understand what is happening. I don’t know why I cannot feel You today. But please don’t let me feel completely deserted.”

And perhaps that is where faith becomes very different from simply having an emotional experience.

Because when the feeling disappears, what remains?

For me, somehow, Mother is still there in my life.

And perhaps even my ability to keep reaching towards Her when I cannot feel Her is itself Her Kripa.

What Can You Do When You Feel Disconnected From God?

When you feel disconnected from God, you may not always be able to bring the feeling of connection back immediately. But you can still choose to keep turning towards Him.

Sometimes you keep reaching out even when you don’t feel like reaching out

Yesterday, I didn’t want to look at Mother’s photograph. I didn’t want to chant much, and I didn’t feel like speaking to Her. But I still tried.

I looked at Her photograph. I tried to speak to Her. I tried to do mantra Japa by counting on fingers. Sometimes, I was doing it completely mechanically. I even lay down and looked at Her photograph, trying to feel some connection.

There was nothing.

Still, I kept trying.

I told Her about my fears and, in my own way, asked, “What will happen if You don’t let me feel Your connection? How will I survive without feeling You?”

I wasn’t saying these things from some great spiritual state. I was saying them mechanically because I didn’t know what else to do.

And this is where my understanding of Kripa becomes very important.

Even mechanical Japa can be Kripa

When you are feeling spiritual loneliness, your mantra Japa may feel mechanical. Your prayer may feel forced. You may not know what you should I pray for. You may look at God’s photograph without feeling anything.

But I don’t think we should dismiss that as meaningless.

Even the ability to continue mechanically can itself be Kripa.

If I cannot even feel like remembering Mother, but somehow I still pick up the mala, look at Her photograph and try to speak to Her, I feel that even this ability has come through Her grace.

I cannot and won’t take credit for anything.

Why Do I Feel Disconnected From God Even When I Still Believe – Final Thoughts

There may be days when you feel disconnected from God even though your faith has not changed. You may not understand why the feeling disappears, and you may not know when 

it will return.

But you don’t have to understand everything.

Keep turning towards God, even when you cannot feel the connection. Keep the small practices alive, and leave the rest to His grace.

In most cases, perhaps, the connection is still there even when we cannot feel it.