05.20 – No problem is so dreadful and no pleasure is so wonderful that it is worth losing our inner connection with Krishna

The world offers us two main distractions: problems and pleasures. Both attract, even demand, our attention and make us forget the higher inner reality of our existence: we are souls whose real eternal life is in loving relationship with Krishna.

Worldly emotions may seem titillating in the case of pleasures and irritating in the case of problems, but either way they distract us. Such problems and pleasures will keep coming and going. And if we let our emotions go on a roller coaster with them, then we will not grow much emotionally or spiritually. Worldly things do need our attention, but they don’t need to monopolize our attention.

To prevent such monopolization, we need to cultivate our devotional relationship with Krishna, who is the supreme reality residing far above all the temporary realities of life. The more we become rooted in our inner connection with Krishna, the more that Krishna-connection brings security, clarity and maturity into our life, especially into our emotional life. We realize that problems and pleasures, no matter how dreadful or wonderful they seem, are not worth losing our inner connection with Krishna. In fact, if we keep our Krishna consciousness intact, then we are able to respond to the worldly situations much better. It is this realization that enables serious spiritualists to stay fixed in Krishna even amidst the pleasant and the unpleasant, as the Bhagavad-gita (05.20) indicates.

What if we don’t have this realization of the greater importance of our inner life over our outer life?

By taking the leap of faith of not letting our outer life disconnect us from our inner life, we can progress towards that invaluable realization and also progress towards living our outer life more stably.

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A person who neither rejoices upon achieving something pleasant nor laments upon obtaining something unpleasant, who is self-intelligent, who is unbewildered, and who knows the science of God, is already situated in transcendence.