A devotee offers Krishna service, choosing to perform those activities that cultivate a favorable relationship with Him. He seeks advancement and therefore meditates on how to improve himself. If we have a particular service to Krishna, if our meditation is to reject that service in order to accept another—because the service doesn’t please us—then that is not favorable to the cultivation of bhakti. “Favorable” means that we are doing those things that help increase our service attitude toward Krishna. As soon as we begin to calculate things according to what is favorable for ourselves, then we are no longer striving for pure bhakti.
(Bhaktyaloka, Moscow,1.12.97)