Today’s sensual culture fills our mind with agitation, dissatisfaction and frustration. When we start living by the Gita’s spiritual wisdom, we become significantly free from gross sensuality. And we gratefully appreciate that we have been saved from a pointless life of temptation and tribulation.

However, after we practice bhakti for some time, fixing the mind on Krishna may start seeming monotonous. Or the effort for controlling our senses may start seeming onerous. If we let such feelings make us lax in our bhakti practice, then our past conditionings start resurfacing and pulling us towards relapse.

To protect ourselves, we need to understand that to whatever extent we have risen above sensuality, we have done so not by our own power, but by higher grace – and for a higher purpose. We are souls who are Krishna’s marginal energy. Living on the margin, we can either cultivate devotion or gravitate towards illusion. Krishna has given us the opportunity to cultivate devotion so that we can assist in his mission of compassion for spiritualizing everyone.

The Bhagavad-gita (18.58) states that if we become conscious of Krishna, we cross over all obstacles by his grace. Becoming conscious of Krishna essentially means becoming conscious of his purpose for us: “How does Krishna want me to serve him, given the situations he has put me in and the talents and interests he has given me?”

When we strive to help others in a mood of service to Krishna, temptations don’t agitate us inordinately because our consciousness is meaningfully engaged in Krishna. That engagement itself gives us some higher satisfaction. And as we become purified by our steady Krishna-connection, our higher satisfaction increases and concomitantly our worldly infatuation decreases, till we eventually become situated in the supreme safety of pure devotion.


To know more about this verse, please click on the image
Explanation of article:

Podcast:

Download by “right-click and save”