Worldliness and suffering
The worldly go to the world.  The spiritual go toward God.  We need have no anxiety about this.  Now, can we change human nature?  This is what the Ramakrishna Order declares to be the only miracle: the transformation of mind resulting in the building of character.

Politics, maya, etc. -- good and evil -- do not get sucked into the world.  As a spiritual devotee you have to renounce it.  Then from that position do your work.

Leave the stand against evil to those who are qualified for it.  Can you watch your countrymen die and suffer without becoming violent yourself, like Dalai Lama or Gandhi did?  These beings are qualified. Forbearance of suffering qualifies certain beings to be special leaders of men. Their actions are all based in sacrifice.  They suffer in knowledge, and take it all on as sacrifice.

Worldliness was the problem in Sri Ramakrishna's time, but now we are seeing the effects of this prolonged, inordinate worldliness: extreme restlessness, even a form of insanity masquerading as normality.

You can neither perform actions nor give up actions so long as you are in ignorance.  Both of these crucial modes are only consummated in knowledge, and beyond.

Deceitful, worldly, even intellectual life, cannot compare with religious life, dharmic life and divine life, what to speak of beyond life as Sri Krishna shows us.

Sri Ramakrishna spoke of going from the Nitya to the Lila and back again.  In this regard He did not mention Maya.  But everyone else goes from the Nitya, which they don't know anything about, straight to the maya, and stay there for many lives.  They just suffer there.

The famous Vedantic saying is "Brahman satya, Jagad mithya - Brahman is real, the world is unreal."  People complain when they hear "The world is unreal," and cry out in protest.  But what about the good news?  "Brahman is Real."  This just shows how attached they are to the world....and how little they love God!

Nothing that proceeds by attachment ever works.  Only that which proceeds by detachment succeeds, but you have to hold this attitude of detachment for a long time.

When people come across the great teachings of spirituality they want to emulate all the virtues cited therein, but they try to reach for these before they have purified their minds. You see, there are all these unresolved karmas and samskaras lurking in the impure mind, the beginner's mind. Practicing devotions and meditation with an impure mind often proves futile. Disillusionment is the result, and people give up the path. This lack of follow through is called alabdhabhumikatva in Yoga. Beings try unsuccessfully again and again, but this inability to reach the goal is due to the lack of gaining initial qualification. And if one repeats this shortcoming one develops a samskara for failure. It is thereby that people who were once aspirants merely go back to the world, because it is easier to get success in the world. The "Pearl fo Great Price" therefore always alludes them and, as Sri Krishna states, "they fall into wombs that are shrouded in darkness, and worse...."

What is a spiritual life?  It consists of: meditating daily, study of scripture, practicing devotions and performing daily japa, and turning all work into worship.  Notice that these represent the four classic yogas: raja yoga, jnana yoga, bhakti yoga, and karma yoga.  If people would embrace and enact these their suffering would disappear....their unnecessary suffering, that is.  One can't get rid of necessary sufferings; they are the grain of sand in our bed, the hair in our food....but they help us build up our character.