Suppose we enroll for an exercise program meant to build our muscles. Suppose we are told to move some heavy objects. Moving those objects can be discomforting, exhausting, even frustrating; yet it is only by such exertion that our muscles will become stronger. If we request our trainer to give us smaller objects to push, they won’t always oblige. If they obliged all the time, they would be poor trainers who prioritized our comfort at the cost of our growth.
Life is like an exercise program meant to build our inner muscles. These muscles enable us to discharge our responsibilities even when confronted by problems. The stronger these inner muscles, the less we are disturbed by problems and the better we can focus on a higher purpose. Thereby, we increase our resilience – and progress toward transcendence, wherein our consciousness becomes so spiritually absorbed that even giant problems don’t faze us (Bhagavad-gita 06.22).
In this exercise program, God is like our supreme trainer. If we pray to him expecting, even insisting, that he will remove our problems, we may end up defeating our life’s ultimate purpose. Even if he does away with our problems, it is we who will be deprived of the inner growth that could have been ours if we had faced those problems. Instead, if we pray for the strength to persist in our responsibilities done in devotional consciousness, we will experience remarkable growth.
Given that facing problems can be beneficial, does that mean we have to deliberately create problems by being incompetent or negligent? Not at all. Our overall purpose is to help make things better, and make ourselves better, by doing our responsibilities diligently and devotionally. During such responsible action, whatever problems we may face, we will grow through them and beyond them by divine grace (18.58).
One-sentence summary:
Praying to God may not make our life easier, but it will make us stronger.
Think it over:
- How is life like an exercise program?
- How does God train us for developing our inner muscles?
- How can Gita wisdom help us change the focus of our prayers?
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18.58: If you become conscious of Me, you will pass over all the obstacles of conditioned life by My grace. If, however, you do not work in such consciousness but act through false ego, not hearing Me, you will be lost.
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