Bhagavad Gita 11.55

mat-karma-kṛn mat-paramo

mad-bhaktaḥ saṅga-varjitaḥ

nirvairaḥ sarva-bhūteṣu

yaḥ sa mām eti pāṇḍava

 

Working for my purpose, making me the goal,

Serving with love, unattached and undivided;

Free from hate toward all that be—

Such a soul comes home to me.

 

My dear Lord, life can sometimes feel like a frightening storm, driving me to seek refuge in a safe underground basement. And you mercifully provide me such shelter through your remembrance. Yet let me not forget that you also manifest beyond that basement—as the wide world outside and even as the storm itself.

O all-pervading Lord, if I use your remembrance to hide from life—refusing to face its challenging situations and confusing emotions—I unwittingly reduce you to just one object of thought, disconnected from those very situations and emotions. But you are so much more—indeed, you are everything. You are beyond everything, yet you act through everything.

O infallible Lord, when I seek shelter in you through moments of exclusive, dedicated remembrance, let that experience attune my consciousness to you so I can sense your purpose beneath all of life’s drama and trauma. And bless me to honor your purpose and harmonize with it, so that my actions may spring from an aspiration to serve you. Thus, may I experience the situations and emotions of life fully—not by being so immersed in them that I forget you, but by seeing you in your fullness, shaping my life through those situations and molding my heart through those emotions. Through whatever is happening externally and internally, may I recognize that you are inviting me into your embrace—and may I respond by choosing carefully whatever draws me closer to you.

***

11.55 My dear Arjuna, he who engages in My pure devotional service, free from the contaminations of fruitive activities and mental speculation, he who works for Me, who makes Me the supreme goal of his life, and who is friendly to every living being – he certainly comes to Me.