Stages of bhakti

The glory of ishvara is such that without his blessings no work or desire will meet a positive end. Every positive end to a good work only happens with the blessings of ishvara. This ishvara is the overlord, the infinite wisdom.
When we say the gayatri mantra, we ask this lord ishvara, as matha savitri , to bless us , by guiding our actions and thoughts, with her infinite wisdom, we say light our minds with your presence, which is of the nature of infinite wisdom.

This bhakti we can develop, by inviting the presence of the lord , of ishvari in ourself.

Here the ourself, and the lord is separately looked at from the standpoint of ahamkara, which is a idenitification with body mind, and the totality, which is looking at ishvara as the totality. Here there can be a relationship, from the standpoint of the body mind, I can have a relationship with the total, with bhagavan.

However when one comes to the vedic knowledge given by bhagavan, bhagavan brings us closer to herself, via knowledge, and makes us non separate from herself, by means of this knowledge.

She gives brahmajnanam, wherein brahman is the all pervading, non dual reality, that pervades the body mind, and pervades the totality, and is in fact the truth of the totality.

So from the absolute standpoint, in absolute truth, ishvara and jiva are both non dual, one reality, and this reality is atma.

It is only in the mithya standpoint, we can talk about ego, identification with body mind, a totality of infinite wisdom, of manifest and unmanifest ishvara and so on, is from the mithya standpoint.

So in and through vyavahara, we need not lose sight of the one all pervading reality, which is the truth of vyavahara. So any actions performed, we see that it is only performed when we look at it form the mithya standpoint.

Even pooja, and so on.. and relationships, all are from the mithya standpoint.

Satyam is the viewer, the very truth of the one who views, and is not something that subjects itself to any analysis at all. Simply pervades every point of view.
Without which no point of view 'is' , it itself is free from all points of view. The very beginning, end and middle of all is brahman, brahman is not a separate subject matter for discussion.

There is a good reason we say that, brahman is knowing that, knowing which, everything is known. Because there isnt anything else left to be known, it is the very reality of knower, known and knowledge. It is the very initiating point of knowledge, the very culmination of knowing, the process of knowledge itself, that being the case how is it possible to miss brahman, but for a peculiar kind of ignorance, that can as though cover it.

The only way to know brahman , is 'I am' brahman.

So why I bring this up, is initially when we start off worshipping the lord with name and form, with a particular form, then as the very totality, then we graduate to worshipping the lord as the very brahman the non dual reality, the atma itself.