18.73 – Send resentment to retirement

Few things can check and choke us as badly as resentment. When things go wrong, resentment builds up within us, seeking a target – outwards, inwards or upwards.

When it targets outwards, we blame others for our problems, imagining that our life would be much better if the people around us were different.

When resentment targets inwards, we blame ourselves, thereby making ourselves depressed and vulnerable to inferiority complex and even suicidal urges.

When resentment targets upwards, we blame Krishna for our problems and become covert or overt atheists.

Resentment saps positive energy out of our life and leaves us drained. Even when it sometimes fills us with negative energy to hit out at those whom we resent, still that negative energy can never make us truly fulfilled or joyous. By some inverse or perverse thinking it makes us believe that hurting those who have hurt us will make us happy.

However, misery can never bring lasting or fulfilling happiness. Only love can.

Love is what Gita wisdom offers as the escapeway out of the black hole of resentment. It gives us access to Krishna’s supreme love – a love that can reform and redeem the most reprobate.

Accessing this love begins with accepting responsibility. Whatever wrong is happening to us is due to our own past karmic misdeeds. But we are souls who are separate from and higher than our past actions. And we can further increase this distance between ourselves and our less-than-honorable past by the power of devotion.

By recognizing that Krishna’s love can raise us above both our lower self and our confining surroundings, we can send resentment on retirement and wholeheartedly accept Krishna’s will. It is this graceful and grateful human acceptance of the will of the divine that is the conclusion of the Bhagavad-gita (18.73).

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Arjuna said: My dear Krishnṇa, O infallible one, my illusion is now gone. I have regained my memory by Your mercy. I am now firm and free from doubt and am prepared to act according to Your instructions.