If our material activities interfere with our spiritual life how can we see those activities as spiritual?

Anwser Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So if our material activities, whether it is job or family, if they interrupt with our bhakti activities, then it becomes very difficult to see those activities as devotional, because you no longer have the inspiration which you can get from the direct bhakti activities. It is a serious problem. But in the sense, everyone will face this problem sometime or the other.
So for example, even those like we are in the temple. Sometimes we also have so many other services, say if a temple is being constructed, if a big festival is to be done, when I write books. Sometimes when the deadline comes, we have to work for hours and hours.
And although it is a book about Krishna, but at that time we are thinking about printing and spelling mistakes and this and that. It is not really directly Krishna that we are thinking about that time. So in general, whatever service we are doing, that service will have its own phases.
And just like when we are… Just like if we are going by traffic, if we are going on a road, sometimes the traffic becomes too much. Then we have to go slowly. Later on when the traffic will clear, we will move faster.
So that is just the way we travel. So like that sometimes in our spiritual journey, the traffic in our material life will become too much. So we have to recognize that this is a time when I have to pay more time to my material life, which is okay.
And some services are, even in our bhakti also we will see, some services are easier, some services are more difficult. Sometimes even while we are cooking, sometimes we get two items, special items which we like to do. Sometimes there are items which you just have to… lot of labor in cooking.
So like that, even in our material life, certain situations may be where we have to do difficult services. So in principle, we shouldn’t think that just because I am not able to do direct devotional activities, that’s why whatever I am doing is not devotional. It can still be devotional.
At the same time, we also have to draw our line somewhere. Like no matter how busy we are, we find time to eat. We find time to sleep.
We find time to nourish our body. So sometimes because the workload is less, workload is a lot, we may also sleep less, we may eat less. But there is a limit.
We can’t do it for one day, two days. We can’t do it for one week, 15 days, one month. Our body needs rest.
So like that, even for our soul, it needs nourishment. So sometimes, we may just stretch a bit and may not be able to come to the temple or whatever. But after that phase passes, then we can try to come back to the temple again.
And if that phase itself seems to be going for a long time, then we can sort of put our foot down and take a break. I need a break. It’s like if you fell sick, you would take a break.
If some other situation came up, which was emergency or urgent, we would take a break. It’s not that just because we are not there for a particular family or professional responsibility, the world is going to crash down. It doesn’t happen like that.
There are situations which are important, but if the same mood is going on for many days, then it’s not like a big emergency, just tomorrow things are going to crash down. So sometimes, we may have to put our foot down and make sure that we get our spiritual nourishment. But we can also, if we know that this is the pattern of our job, then we can plan for ourselves how we can get devotional nourishment in more accessible ways.
That means, if we are going for programs, we note down some nice points and keep them in a small diary, which we can refer to. So even if we can’t read a full book, just those 2-3 points we read, this is a good point, that will nourish us. And similarly, we can also try to find out whichever are the activities that can easily nourish us.
So they can become, just like nowadays when people feel exhausted, they may take some energy drinks. So for us in our bhakti also, some activities may be energizers. We do those activities, that way we can survive through that difficult phase.
And if we just show Krishna, Krishna I want to serve you, then soon Krishna will arrange the circumstances so that things will become normal. In some cases it may take a little more time, in some cases it may happen immediately also. But just persevere.
See this as a phase where there will be up and down. If you persevere, things will become better then.