09.22 – When worry accelerates the imagination, let faith become the brake
Worry accelerates our imagination. When we face problems, worry paints dreadful pictures of the many further things that may go wrong, thereby sucking our mental energy into those gloomy possibilities.
Saying that worry accelerates our imagination doesn’t mean that the problems we worry about aren’t real. They may well be real. But we can live only one moment at a time and we need to take things one at a time. Worry paralyzes our capacity to utilize the present, the only resource that we have to deal with issues.
Moreover, many of the scenarios that worry makes us agonize over are in fact imaginary – they are possibilities that may never become realities.
If while driving the accelerator gets pressed accidentally, we regain control is by pressing the brakes. The brake that slows down our hyperactive imagination is faith – faith in Krishna’s omnipotence and omni-benevolence. He is always in control and is always our well-wisher. He assures in the Bhagavad-gita (09.22) that he personally protects those who constantly meditate on him.
The stipulation that we constantly meditate on him is not a stiff demand meant to disqualify us, but a necessary condition meant to help us access his protection. When we redirect our thoughts from things that worry us to things that pacify us, worry loses its power to accelerate our imagination.
To facilitate this redirection, Krishna offers himself as a pacifying object of thought. He is the best object of thought, for he is all-attractive, embodying within himself everything attractive about everything. The more we choose to put our faith in him and habituate ourselves to meditating on him, the more we relish that attractiveness and develop a taste for it. Then faith no longer remains a brake for worrying thoughts; it becomes an accelerator for fulfilling thoughts.
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09.22 – But those who always worship Me with exclusive devotion, meditating on My transcendental form — to them I carry what they lack, and I preserve what they have.