When life’s adversities push people down, they often feel so dejected that they desperately seek something to lift themselves. And often they turn to chemicals such as drugs. 

Drugs can raise their drooping spirits, but that rise lasts only as long as the chemical surge in their brains. Thereafter, their spirits go low, in fact, lower than earlier. Why lower? Multiple reasons. 

Nature of life: Life never stops sending difficulties. Once the capacity to endure discomfort is weakened by drug use, life’s next blow pushes drug users down further than earlier. 

Nature of drugs: Drugs have a powerful gravity pull – even when life is good, drugs allure users towards relapse, with increasing compulsiveness.
Nature of people: When drug users resolve to stop using drugs but fail, they start losing their self-confidence and self-respect, thereby compounding their emotional woes and lows.  

We may not be taking drugs, but we all may have unhealthy ways to deal with life’s lows. 

How can we move towards healthier responses? By getting a healthy dose of reality through Gita wisdom. 

The Gita explains that though we can’t stop life’s lows, we can stop ourselves from going low. How? By connecting ourselves with something higher. Higher than our situations and our emotions is our spiritual essence: our souls. As spiritual beings, we are parts of the supreme spiritual reality, Krishna (Bhagavad-gita 15.07). By spiritualizing our consciousness, we can face life’s dualities steadily (05.20).

How can we spiritualize our consciousness? Through the process of yoga, which raises our consciousness to the spiritual level. 

Bhakti-yoga is especially efficacious because it gives us direct access to Krishna. When we diligently engage ourselves in those limbs of bhakti-yoga that connect us easily and joyfully with Krishna, we gradually attain inner stability that isn’t shaken by life’s lows. 

 

Think it over:

  • How do chemical highs aggravate life’s lows?
  • How can we protect ourselves from life’s lows?
  • How can bhakti-yoga help us access spiritual reality efficaciously? 

 

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05.20 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.


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