13.29 – We suffer not because we are last but because we are lost

“Everyone is better than me. I am good-for-nothing.” Our mind sometimes discourages us with such thoughts.

These thoughts are the tricks of the mind, tricks that we can see through with Gita wisdom. It explains that in the conditioned stage, our mind is addicted to playing God. In that game, one of its favorite moves is comparison to prove our superiority over others. The flip side of this game is that we sometimes find out that we are inferior to others. So, we end up miserable, feeling sorry for ourselves, wallowing in the morass of self-pity.

The root cause of our suffering is not that we are last, but that we are lost. Due to our desire to enjoy separate from Krishna, we have lost our inner loving connection with Krishna. Thereafter, we have lost ourselves in the maze of innumerable material desires. As these desires keep us forever dissatisfied, irrespective of how little or how much we have, we feel miserable due to coming out last in our mind’s games of comparison.

However, this secondary misery of being last becomes irrelevant when the primary misery of being lost is healed. Gita wisdom explains that each one of us is irreducibly, intrinsically unique. All of us are Krishna’s beloved children who are individually recipients of his supreme love and are meant to delight eternally in that love. When we relish Krishna’s love, the resulting oceanic joy makes the drop-like pleasure or pain from comparison insignificant.

The Bhagavad-gita (13.29) indicates that once we understand that Krishna loves us – as he does everyone else – so much that he is personally present in everyone’s heart, then the mind can no longer delude and degrade us; we march straight and strong on our journey back to Krishna.

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One who sees the Supersoul equally present everywhere, in every living being, does not degrade himself by his mind. Thus he approaches the transcendental destination.