Life confronts us with challenges both externally and internally. External upheavals – financial and political, for example – are like tornadoes that twist and topple the familiar landscape of our settled daily routines. Internal upheavals – emotional and intellectual, for example – are like tornadoes that puncture and rupture our enthusiasm and faith. Just one of these challenges is difficult to endure.But when both confront us simultaneously,enduring this double assault may seem almost impossible.Our very survival externally and our sanity internally may seem to be in jeopardy.

Times like these offer us precious opportunities to gain personal realization of the inestimable value of Gita wisdom. Though the Bhagavad-gita can offer us solace and strength at all times, we don’t feel the need when things seem normal in our lives. So, we neither seek its help seriously, nor experience it tangibly.

When lifetornadoes and torpedoes us, Gita wisdom escorts us on a journey to the innermost core of our being: our spiritual essence and our relationship with Krishna. There we discover a level of living that is beyond life’s worst tornadoes and torpedoes. We recognize that Krishna is ever-available for us in the innermost core of our hearts; no tornado or torpedo can make him leave our side even when everyone else and everything else leaves us. Our divine relationship with him is the platform of our real life, our supreme joy and our ultimate love. Once we attain this platform, the Bhagavad-gita (06.21) indicates that we never depart from it, for we understand it is life’s greatest gain. When we experience the tornado- and torpedo-proof reality of Krishna’s love, no loss can ever shake us.

Then we realize that life’s tornadoes and torpedoes were indirect invitations to make this secure level of living as our own.