What are the kind of questions that fall under counseling questions which you won’t be answering on the site?

Transcription By: Geetanjali Nath Mataji

Edited By: Shyam Venkateswaran P

Question:  How exactly do you define mentoring questions which you will not be answering on the site? I had asked questions earlier to you and you replied that this was a personal question based on mentoring which will be answered only by the counselor and not by you. Can you explain what kind of questions you will be answering and you will not be answering.

Answer:  In the question-answer guidelines that come whenever you submit a question in the “ask a question” column on the web site, I have addressed this in point number six. This question-answer forum is for educational purposes, not for counseling purposes. So I will not be answering questions that involve direct personal application like, “I don’t have a job what shall I do,”“my social services are creating XYZ problems in my practice of Krishna consciousness, how shall I deal with it.” So I will give some other examples. “I feel that my spouse is cheating with me and I am a devotee, what should I do in such a situation?”Or, “I want to become a brahmachari, but I have earlier had problems with the opposite sex, can I become a brahmachari? How should I go ahead?” Or, “I am entrapped in an incompatible marriage, what I should do?”

These are the kind of questions I have got, in spite of having specified this guideline, or other questions like, “Because of my improper behavior as a counselor, I have created disruption in my counselee group, and how should I rectify the situation?”  So these are questions which involve specific situations and they cannot be addressed over a distance, they need personal involvement, and they need guidance from some senior person. Till now, I have been sending a mail saying that these are the questions which fall in this category, please consult some senior devotee, but I will not be sending such mails in the future. I shall be just neglecting those questions because as you can see, on this site, I have over 700 questions pending, and despite my best efforts to answer as many questions as possible, I am just getting overwhelmed. So I understand the problems that you are facing are serious, and when I see such situations I do feel concerned, I pray in the situation for you, but beyond that I am not in the position of giving specific guidance. So please don’t ask such questions, and even if you ask questions, you do not expect any reply from me.

So specific situations relating with one’s own individual conditions, circumstances, background, especially social interactions, these are not situations which I will be dealing with. So with respect to preaching application in the questions-answers, especially when you ask the question, please consider whether this question will be relevant for others and whether if you were in a position where you were asked guidance in such a situation, I know it will be difficult for you in such a situation to think of that eventuality, but if you were in a situation where you did not know a person and you were asked a question like this, could you honestly have given an answer which you would have been satisfied was a good guidance?  See, these are situations which are specific; it’s like you know, a surgery requires to be done and if somebody calls the surgeon on the phone and says, “Doctor, I have got lung cancer, how do I cut the lung cancer, or how do I cut my lungs?” It just can’t be done Just as we wouldn’t do such a thing with respect to serious problems physically; similarly, we can’t expect that to be done for serious problems spiritually. So my not answering the questions is not indicative that your questions are not serious; they are serious, they require serious attention, but I am not the right person to give that kind of guidance, and Krishna is there with you in all the situations, and if you pray to Krishna and seek within the devotee association wherever you are, or in an association nearby, wherever you can find out, seek a proper guide and arrive at a solution. If you can’t find aguide, then you can turn inwards and pray to Krishna, maybe in such a situation, writing a personal journal is helpful. Write down your thoughts, your emotions, and let them get vented out afterwards, and after that look back at them and see – I have written about how to use a personal journal- that may help you a lot in dealing with the situation and arriving at a conclusion of how to go ahead. Even if you eventually get a counselor, a mentor or a guide, still this may help you to present your situation better and to apply whatever the guide says better.

These are some broad principles I can share in such situations, but beyond that, I will not be answering such questions. Kindly excuse me.

Thank you.