If we are searching for something in the dark, we need to focus our flashlight in the direction where that thing is located. If the flashlight is directed elsewhere, we will stay searching for a long time.

We stay similarly searching for long when seeking pleasure. If we compare the soul to a flashlight, our consciousness is like its beam of light. With our consciousness, we are always seeking pleasure. Unfortunately however, the light of our consciousness often gets misdirected to the arena of matter, where pleasure is fleeting, instead of the arena of spirit, where pleasure is enduring.

Why is our consciousness thus misdirected? Because our materialistic culture and our materialistic mind mislead us, relentlessly. Our experience keeps confirming the Gita (05.22) declaration that sensual gratification ends in frustration, even tribulation. Yet we keep hoping that worldly things will soon give us the much-promised pleasure.

Though bhakti-yoga is a powerful process for redirecting our consciousness towards Krishna, it is we who need to do the redirection. While practicing bhakti, if we keep internally craving for worldly pleasures, then our inner flashlight remains pointed in the direction away from Krishna. Even if our legs move towards Krishna by our external devotional practices, our head remains turned back towards worldly things. Consequently, our progress remains sluggish. And while practicing bhakti, we feel mostly deprived, not satisfied.

Nonetheless, the source of the supreme satisfaction, Krishna, always remains eminently accessible to us. The Gita (05.24) urges us to focus our inner light on spiritual reality and seek happiness within, not without – by so doing, we transcend worldly illusion and realize our spirituality.

When we resolutely redirect our consciousness from the world towards Krishna instead of letting it be misdirected by our cravings, we slowly relish increasing satisfaction through absorption in him.


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