Even if we can’t be ideal people, we can still be people with ideals

Living as we do in a confusing world, we are like seafarers adrift in an ocean that seems shorelessly vast. In such a world, ideals are our compass.

Just as storms may prevent a ship from going in the intended direction, the storms of desires arising in our mind may prevent us from living according to our ideals. At such times, ideals, like a compass, remind us of our destination, the unintended deviation and the needed reorientation.

In a culture that glamorizes in the name of fashion pandering to the strongest and latest whim which possesses the mind, we need ideals more than ever before. But sadly many people dismiss ideals as impractical: “It sounds good, but I can’t do it.”

Gita wisdom offers us desirable ideals that are realizable through small but significant steps of divinely aided individual development. Its ideals center on the idea that is innermost to our very being – love. The Gita urges us to purify and direct our love towards the all-attractive, all-loving Supreme Being, Krishna. This devotional redirection of our love connects us with Krishna’s divine presence within us, thus cleansing the inner dirt and bringing out the best within us. The Bhagavad-gita (12.20) assures that those who faithfully cherish the path of love endear themselves to Krishna.

When we thus attract Krishna's omnipotent grace, we gain access to the higher happiness of spiritual love. By providing this happiness, bhakti makes progress towards the ideals much easier and far more enjoyable than progress towards non-devotional ideals.

When instead of lamenting about not being ideal, we cherish the ideal of spiritual love by practicing bhakti-yoga diligently, each day makes us better than what we were the previous day till finally the ideal becomes the actual.

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