ACE your life with gratitude
Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI and may contain occasional errors or inaccuracies.
Where we have special opportunity to enrich our devotion. So today I'll speak on one aspect of devotion which is important for developing our relationship with Krishna and that is gratitude, counting our blessings on not feeling constantly that there is so much wrong in my life. If we feel there is so much wrong in my life, then how can we connect positively with Krishna? And if our consciousness is consumed by that negativity, that dissatisfaction, that frustration, then our heart has very little room for devotion to flourish.
So, we'll talk broadly on the theme of gratitude in… Do I have… So, the first point is, I'll speak on this, ace your life with gratitude. That means, ace is a central acronym that I use, ace means to explain how we can move forward from whatever situation we are in life with gratitude. So, I'll speak this based on the Bhagavad Gita, 17th chapter, 16th text, where Krishna says, He is talking about austerity of the mind.
And therein, one feature of the austerity of the mind is satisfaction. So, Krishna is telling, just like sometimes, many of you may be fasting today. So, fasting is an austerity that we perform.
We feel like eating, but we still choose to fast. Similarly, Krishna is saying, you may feel dissatisfied, but cultivate satisfaction as an austerity. Cultivate satisfaction as an austerity of the mind.
So, how we can do that and why we should do that? Both these things we'll discuss. So, if we are not grateful, in our life, we will be resentful. Resentful means, why is this happening like this? Why is this person like this? Why am I like this? We can be basically, broadly, three ways things can go wrong in our life.
Some person, somebody else in our life may do something bad to us. We ourselves may make a mess of things. Or just by the way of things in the world, something may go wrong.
We are coming for a program and suddenly there is a big traffic jam. This can't move forward. So, whenever these things happen, we can become resentful.
And resentment of reality often hurts much more than reality. If we are sick. Now, if we are sick, normally, there is some pain, some discomfort.
But it's not a very frustrating situation. It's not a very painful situation. Say, if we have a fever or if we have some minor sickness like that.
But, if, say, we compare ourselves with others. Say, some of our friends have gone for a picnic, an outing, a party. And they send photos of that on Facebook to us.
And we see that. And we start thinking, why am I sick like this? And that hurts us much more. So, normally, we think of our experience, happiness and distress, as a one stage phenomenon.
This is the cause and this is the result. This is what made me unhappy. This is what made me happy.
However, happiness or distress is not just a one step process. It's a two step process. There is the event.
There is our conception or our main process of the event. And then we experience it. Say, suppose, somebody wanted to… Say, same event.
Say, we got flu and we felt sick before going for an outing. Now, suppose, that is an outing. It is some tourist place and we have gone 100 times before.
And we have no interest in going. But everyone else is going there. And they want us to go.
And we don't have a good reason to say no. And then if we get flu, and then we don't have to go. What will happen? We will be happy.
I got an excuse to not go there. So, you see, the event alone is not the cause of the emotion. The event is here.
The emotion is here. In between is our perception of the event. Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita, events will happen in the material world by material nature's arrangement.
But whether we experience happiness or distress, according to that event, because of that event, will depend on us. Will depend on our conceptions. So, this understanding that the external event alone is not the cause of our emotion.
This is vital. This will be central to our class. So, I will give one more example for this point.
Say… Say, you are going for some program. And you know at the end of the program, there is some desert. I mean, it's Gulabjamun.
And you love Gulabjamun. And you are waiting, waiting. When will the Gulabjamun be? And then, after the program is over, you go to Prasadal place, and there is no Gulabjamun.
What happened? Later, actually, the person was supposed to cook. He made a mess of everything. So, he couldn't have Gulabjamun.
And you will feel annoyed. You will feel disappointed, feel angry. But suppose, in the same situation, there is somebody who also loves Gulabjamun.
But just a few days before this program, they had to diagnose with diabetes. So, now, they know, if I go there, it's going to be torture. I will see everyone eating Gulabjamun, and I won't be able to eat.
And then, they come to you. There is no Gulabjamun. You will feel relief.
The absence of the Gulabjamun alone is not the cause of the emotion. It is how you process. So, if we are grateful, then we learn to process situations much more positively.
So, bad things happen in our life, but it is our resentment of the bad things that often hurts us much more than the bad things. So, in general, if we are not trying to be grateful, we will gravitate towards being resentful. And we will hurt ourselves.
So, to avoid hurting ourselves more than what life is hurting us already, we need to cultivate gratitude. So, if we are not grateful, then we are great fools. So, why is that? I was in Australia, I was in Brisbane, just a few months ago.
So, generally, whenever I travel, because I can't walk very easily, I use crutches, so I use a wheelchair assistant. And then, somehow, at that particular airport, maybe it was that wheelchair assistant's way of doing things or whatever, so they told me that we can take you only to the baggage claim point. I said, no, from here, the person who is going to come to pick me up, coming in a car, just take me till there.
He said, no, we can't take you. Our policy doesn't allow you to do that. So then, I had two of my bags, I had to push it to the trolley, and I was feeling annoyed.
I had travelled many places, nowhere was I left half way like this. And usually, I don't want to inconvenience the devotees picking me up, so I told them, no need for you to go and park and come, you just wait at the pickup point. So then, I was just pushing along my trolley, and I was feeling annoyed.
And then suddenly, as I was walking along, generally, the mind starts getting a negative thought, you're not even aware of what is happening much at all. I was also becoming a little annoyed, maybe a little resentful also. And then suddenly, I looked around, I was looking where is the exit, where I have to go to the pickup point.
And there, I saw a person who, I have at least one good leg, this person had no legs at all. And he was actually balancing himself fully on his crutches, and he was trying to, with his mouth, hold the trolley and push it. Then, of course, I was shocked, I thought I should help, I couldn't help it.
Then, suddenly, some other person came and helped me, and that struck me. We may always feel that my problem is bad, but there are always people who have problems worse than us. So, it was probably, what had happened over there was, that it was not their normal policy, but they were having low wages being paid.
So, that was their way of protesting. So, if they strike, they will not be paid anything. But they drop people half way, that creates problems for everybody.
So, anyway, it struck me at that time that whatever situation we are in, there are always people who could be in worse situations. Now, we don't want to think about worse situations and make ourselves miserable. But the mind is very tricky that it's like, suppose we fall sick, we will be annoyed.
But if there is an epidemic and everybody falls sick, we don't feel that bad. It's not that we want everyone to be sick, but the mind is such a thing that when it makes us imagine that we are suffering alone, that is when we suffer much more. Few things make us as unhappy as our belief that everyone else is happy.
So, the fact is that, yes, some people may be in a better situation than us. There are many who are worse than us. We see in the Bhagavatam, Parikshit Maharaj was cursed to die in seven days.
At one moment, he was not just a young, powerful, successful person, he was a ruler of the whole world. The most powerful person in the whole world. And yet, just within a few moments, he is cursed and he is going to die.
If ever anyone could be resentful, he is an example of a person who had every reason to be resentful. But, no. Now, when the sages come by his side, when he is sitting on the banks of the Ganga, he doesn't ask this protest against the sages, why did this happen to me? He says, thank you for coming to be with me in the most difficult period of my life.
So, he could have been resentful, but he chose to be grateful. So, why do we say that if we are not grateful, we are great fools? Because we simply end up increasing our misery. The misery is there, but when we are not grateful, we become resentful and we increase our misery further.
So, now we may say, how can we be grateful in all situations? Yes, there is a subtle shift in perspective required. Bad things happen in life and it's not that we have to think that the bad thing is good. The bad thing is bad.
We can't be grateful for all situations, but we can be grateful in all situations. For all situations means this particular situation. When something good happens in life, it's easy to feel grateful.
But when something bad happens, when we are diagnosed with some terrible disease, or say we lose our job, or somebody in our family meets with an accident, then how can we feel grateful? It's a bad thing. We can't imagine it's a good thing, but our existence is not limited to that particular situation. If you look at the bigger picture, we can't be grateful for that situation, but we can be grateful in even that situation.
So this, how can we be grateful in all situations? In the earlier point I made that our emotion is not produced only by a situation. Our emotion is produced not by a situation, but our conception of the situation. So, when Lord Ram was told, when Lord Ram came to know that he has to go to the forest, he also was in a situation similar to Parikshit Maharaj, but in some ways it was worse, because he had to go to the forest in exile, and everyone whom he loved, everything that he lived for, was just taken away from him, for no fault of his.
And it's worse because, if he had been in material consciousness, it's that we lose something is bad enough, but if we lose something and someone else gains it, that is even worse. If I lose it and it's gone, everything is fine. Say, if we have some business, and the stock market crashes, and we lose all our property, that's bad.
But say, suppose we are supposed to get an inheritance, and suddenly that whole inheritance is transferred to somebody else, that will hurt us much more. So, in such a situation also, Lord Ram remained very composed. And what he says over there is amazing.
So, he is grateful in all situations. I'll explain a little later, what was Lord Ram's reaction. But essentially, rather than lamenting and telling, oh, what an unjust thing happened in my life, his attitude was to minimize everyone else's suffering.
When Kaushalya is furious, she is very hurt naturally, and she says that, I longed for so long, for so long I did not have a child, and I suffered so much because of that. And then, when Dashrath married Kaikeyi, she was younger to me, but he paid more attention to her. That neglect hurt me even more.
Finally, I got a child, and a child like you were the fulfillment of my dreams. You were what I lived for. And now, you are being sent away from me.
She was so hurt. She says, how can Dashrath do this to me? So, at that time, Ram, he pacifies Kaikeyi. He says that, Lakshman is also similarly angry.
Lakshman is so angry, he says that, Dashrath is blinded by lust. And because of that, he has punished you, although there is no fault of yours. Actually, to be exiled is a punishment just one level lower than to be executed.
Exiled means, like in today's world, some people are deported. So, if they are not wanted in a particular country, they will be deported. But they can at least go back to some other country.
But exiled means, you cannot even go to any other country. The sentence is such that, you have to live in the wilderness with absolutely nothing with you. So, apart from the disgrace over there, it's an extremely distressing situation.
So, he wants to rebel. And at that time, Ram pacifies him. He says, I was with Dashrath Maharaj, and I can see that it was not his intention to exile me.
He says it was his obligation. He did not do it willingly. He has done it very unwillingly.
So, he tries to decrease the temperature of anger, of negativity. When everybody is angry on his behalf, but he is calming everyone down. So, he demonstrates how to respond to adversity with dignity.
If you move forward further. So, as I said, we can be grateful in all situations, not for all situations. So, how do we get grateful in all situations? These three points.
This is acronym ACE. ACE means A-C-E. So, when something bad has happened, our mind tends to obsess on that bad.
Why did this happen? Why did this bad happen? Why did this bad happen? So, but we can look for the good around the bad. If this bad thing is there, but there are many other good things in my life also. Then, we can look for the good that helps us to counter the bad.
This bad is there, but I am not helpless. I have these resources which I can counter the bad. And E is Emerge.
We can wait if this bad has happened, but sometimes good can come from the bad. So, let me not become judgmental. Let me not become resentful.
Let me be patient and watch. So, what does look for the good around the bad mean? That means that we need to learn to count our blessings and we need to make our blessings count. What does this mean again? This means that if we look at our life, there are many things wrong in our life and there are many things right in our life.
But when any bad thing happens, the mind catches on to that and obsesses it. It expands it and it fills our consciousness. And at that time, it is not easy for us to shift our focus to the things which are good.
So, on an average, in the normal course of our life, if we make a habit of listing our blessings, what are the things that are right in my life? I have good health. I have good financial security. I have good family.
I have the opportunity to practice Krishna Bhakti, which is so rare. I have good association. You can look at all the good things that are in our life and note them down.
And why note them down? Because when we get overwhelmed by negativity, at that time, it is very difficult for us to think of positive things. So, if something is written down, then we can revisit it. At that time, it is difficult to think about it, but we have already thought about it.
Count your blessings means write them down. Make your blessings count means that look at them when the mind starts feeling this is a problem, this is a problem, so many problems in my life. Everybody has problems in their life.
But there are some countries in the world, say some countries in Africa or other places, where the average lifespan is around 45, 46, 42. There is a country where the lifespan is only 32 years. So, most of us are alive.
Most of us are older than 32. So, the very fact that we are alive, that is also a blessing. So, we can count our blessings, write them down, make them count.
Make them count means refer to them whenever we start being filled with negativity. And in general, the mind is like a child. If you have a child, and you give the child 10 toys, and the child sees an 11th toy, and starts crying, I want this toy, I want this toy, I want this toy.
And the parents say, not now. Then the child starts saying, you don't love me only. So, what happens, the child is like that, where the child will look at all the things that they don't have.
So, our mind is like a child. So, when the mind instinctively starts remembering the problems that are there, we have to remember the blessings. Say, it's like, if we are, if we have a computer, on which sometimes some pop-up windows come up.
Say, on some pop-up windows, some horrible images have come up, some horror movie stims, with all blood and gore and everything sprinkled, it's ghastly to see. And now, it's so ghastly, we don't want to see it. But it just popped up.
Now, when it pops up, if we click it, it will zoom. And once it zooms, it consumes our screen. Now, we can minimize it, or we can maximize something else.
Once we maximize something else, then, maybe there's a beautiful image of Krishna, there's a nice picture of nature, we see that, then on the screen, there's not something bad. So, like that, when a bad thing happens, we can say, in our mind, that thought pops up. And then it zooms and fills our screen.
So, we need to have another window open to impress that. When the mind will count the problems, our intelligence needs to count the blessings. When we do that, then we can have a positive attitude in our life.
So, this is, first point is around. There are many things good in our life. So, this bad thing is there, but let me focus on the good.
That will create positivity within us. Then, there are, we need things which can, okay, the bad thing has happened, but how do I deal with that bad thing? Let me say, okay, all these things are good, but this is bad still. How do I deal with it? Yes, then among all the things that are good, look at the good that will help us to counter the bad.
So, counter the bad means, suppose we are diagnosed with some terrible disease. Then we can say, oh, I have this disease, this person is healthy, this person is healthy, this person is healthy, why do I have this disease? But we can look at what we have. Okay, overall, I have a healthy body, I've got health insurance, this disease is curable, I've got a good doctor, I've got a good supportive community, and I have Krishna Consciousness.
I can remember Krishna. That can give me strength. So, look for the good that will help us to counter the bad.
And there is always, that is also there. This is what I talk about, satisfaction is the austerity of the mind. Sometimes you may say, I feel satisfied.
Sometimes you say, I don't feel satisfied. So, we often think of satisfaction as an emotion. Yes, satisfaction is an emotion, but satisfaction is also a decision.
Decision means, when we conscientiously decide to look at what is positive in our life, look at what is right in our life, we will be satisfied. Say, suppose, after this program, we have prasad. Don't suppose, prasad is there.
But suppose, there was a special kind of feast. And in that feast, say, everybody is going to have a different dessert. Say, somebody has jalebi, somebody has gulab jamun, somebody has baklava, somebody has this, somebody has that.
Everybody has a different dessert. Now, we also have a dessert, and the dessert in our plate is also delicious. But, if we start looking at what all, who else has.
Oh, you got that. Oh, you got that. You got that.
Now, what will happen, the dessert in our plate will stop tasting good. Even if it is good. Because we are just looking at what everyone else has.
And unfortunately today, the advertising industry specializes in this. It specializes in showing us all the things that we don't have. And thus, we end up dissatisfied.
So, we need to consciously look at the things that we have. The mind is such a thing, even if we go to paradise, where everything is wonderful, the mind will say, yes, but, the mind will be dissatisfied everywhere. So, when the bad thing has happened, we look at, okay, what are the things that are right, and which can help me to deal with the situation.
So, somebody has hurt us. Somebody has spoken in a very bad way about us, and we feel hurt. Okay, we may say, why did this person speak like this? Yes, they may have spoken like that.
But, simultaneously, I have other friends, I have other well-wishers. I have so many other people who are supporting me, whom I can open my heart, whom I can share with. So, look for the good that helps us to counter the bad.
Then, E is Emerge. So, actually, we see only the present situation. But, if we consider life to be like a play, in this play, the present is just one stage in the play.
Suppose there is some movie, and there is a particular famous hero in that movie, and we come to watch that hero. And then we find that that hero is just being beaten up, beaten up, beaten up, beaten up. The villain is beating up, the villain's assistant is beating up, the villain's friend is beating up.
Say, what kind of movie is this? But then, if we are patient and we watch, through all this, the hero becomes determined, the hero becomes stronger, and then the hero wins at the end. So, if we just watch one scene of the play, we will think, what kind of play is this? This is horrible. So, like that, one situation in our life is just like one scene.
Our life is much bigger. And sometimes the good, the bad that has happened presently, that may be setting up some stage by which something good may emerge in the future. So, we need to be patient.
We need to watch. So, we don't know what the future holds. But we know who holds the future.
Who holds the future? It is Krishna. Krishna is in control even in the future. And he can bring good even out of the bad.
So, rather than letting our mind get filled with, oh, this will go wrong, that will go wrong, that will go wrong, just focus on the positive. Yes, this is bad. We can't imagine the bad to be good.
But, if the truth is bad, something good may come. Let me just deal with it one step at a time. So, these are three broad attitudes.
I'll conclude by talking about three broad ways in which we can change our vision. And especially, how bhakti can help us to change our vision. So, when we get spiritual knowledge, so, gratitude, so, gratitude is something which even ordinary people talk about.
Can you guess why I decided to speak on gratitude today? Thanksgiving? Yes, perfect. Thanksgiving. So, many people talk about gratitude.
Now, even the Christians who came here and they had this Thanksgiving idea, that was thanks to God. We have come to a new place and we are safe or whatever. But nowadays, many people divorce virtues like this from God.
They say, I'm just grateful. To who? No, I'm grateful. So, to be grateful in general is like to be married in general.
You say, are you married? Yes. Who are you married to? No, I'm married in general. What do you mean married in general? Marriage is not in general.
Marriage is in particular, isn't it? So, we cannot divorce these virtues. I'm grateful, but if I don't accept that there is some higher being who shapes my life, what am I grateful to? People may say, I'm grateful to the universe. I'm grateful to the source.
So, somehow, God has become a dirty word in mainstream media today. Say, in the Star Wars series, they say, listen to the force. May the force be with you.
The force will guide you. Instead of the force, they had put God will guide you. May God be with you.
You know, movie theatres will become empty. People don't like to hear about God. But ultimately, anybody who is trying to cultivate such an attitude of gratitude, they understand, they may not consciously accept it, but subconsciously they understand that there is something higher.
Some higher plan is working out. Only then we can have this attitude of gratitude. So, how does spiritual knowledge help us to develop gratitude? I talked about this.
Look around. Look what ACE I talked about. How does spiritual knowledge help us to develop this? There are three points.
We can look within. We understand that we are souls and we are indestructible. Look up.
And we understand Krishna's plan is operational. And we look ahead. One small step is always possible for us.
So, let's look at these. This will be the concluding part. So, look within.
The first teaching of the Bhagavad Gita is that we are not our bodies. We are souls. The soul is indestructible.
So, we exist beyond our situations and beyond our emotions. We exist at a higher level of reality. Suppose, say, you have a child and your child is watching a horror movie.
As they are watching the horror movie, crying, screaming, shrieking, trembling. Now, you are in the same room next to that person, next to the child. You are not affected.
Why? Because you know that nothing in that horror movie is real. So, that horror movie affects the child because the child's consciousness is caught on that screen. But the child exists separate from the screen.
So, like that, we as souls, the world is like the movie screen, and we as souls exist separate. So, if you just understand this point that actually, I am different from this. I am an observer of this.
I am a soul. Yes, what happens over here matters to me. But it is not happening to me.
It is happening to my body. It is happening to my mind. But I am different.
We are concerned, say, we are concerned because the body matters to us. But we are not threatened by it. Say, if we meet with an accident and our hand gets fractured, then that's an injury to ourselves.
But if our car tyre gets punctured, that also matters to us because we want to drive that car. But a car tyre getting punctured is not the same as the hand getting fractured. So, the car is different from us.
Similarly, we understand when we get spiritual knowledge that the body and the physical reality is different from us. What happens over there matters to me. But it doesn't affect me directly.
So, we get an inner security that we understand that I am a soul different from my body. Then, we can look up. Look up means that we normally think of life in two terms.
Either things are in my control or things are out of my control. But, spiritual knowledge helps us understand the third option. Just because things are out of my control doesn't mean that they are out of control.
They are in Krishna's control. And Krishna has a plan. I may not understand this plan right now.
But there is a plan. Suppose, you have a child and the child is lying on the mother's lap and the mother is doing some embroidery on some cloth. So, the needle is going up, coming down, going up, coming down.
The child is looking from below. Now, if you see from below, the threads look all random, disorderly, no sense at all. But, the child will think, what is this needle coming up, coming down? I think anytime the needle may come and hurt me.
But, the needle is not going to come and hurt. The child is just disorderly. But, after the mother completes the embroidery, and then she turns around.
And the mother has embroidered the child's name over there. And this is for you. So, the embroidery can be seen from above, not from below.
And in due course, the cloth will be turned and you will see the embroidery. So, sometimes from our perspective, things appear to be going wrong. But, from a higher perspective, there is a plan.
So, if we just look at the situation, we will feel, this is so bad, this is so bad. But, if we look up, beyond the situation to the Lord, who is in control of everything. Krishna says, you just become conscious of me.
You will pass over obstacles by my grace. So, we lift our vision up, beyond the situation to our Lord. And then, we look ahead.
Look ahead means, just take one step forward. Today's problems are always manageable today. But, it is only when yesterday's problems and tomorrow's problems are piled up on it, then it becomes unmanageable.
If you have to carry a 10 kg or 20 kg suitcase, you can do it. But, if you have to carry 5-10-20 kg suitcases, it will be impossible to do it. So, usually what our mind does is, okay, this bad thing has happened.
That bad thing happened at that time. That bad thing happened then. That bad thing happened then.
In the future, this can happen. In the future, that can happen. And the mind says, your destiny is rotten.
You are doomed. Nothing is going to happen in your life. Nothing good is going to come out of your life.
So, what happens is, that when our mind tends to pile up problems, when we don't pile up the problems, then one step is always possible. What can I do right now? Krishna, in this situation, what is my service? How can I serve you right now in this situation? One step. We don't have to think about the whole life and how to solve all the problems of our life.
Sometimes we have a plan for our life. It's like, this is the road I want to go. And these are the lights on the road.
The street lights are there which show the way. But suddenly the street lights go off. And we are plunged into darkness.
We have a plan for our life. And suddenly everything seems to just get disrupted. What to do at that time? We can, if there is darkness, we can either curse the darkness or we can turn on our flashlight in our phone.
That is how we will replace the street light. But that can show us how to take one step forward. And you take one step forward, then the same flashlight can show us one step forward.
So, if we have this attitude, look ahead, Krishna, you are my lord, I am your servant. How can I serve you in this situation? जीव कृष्णदास एइ विश्वास कोरले त्वार दुखना Bhaktivinoda Thakur says that, as long as we just have this faith, Krishna is our lord, we are his servants. We are just meant to serve him.
Krishna, how can I serve you? What is my service in this situation? That will help us to take steps forward. One step, one step, one step. And then, by a higher plan, the lights will come on again.
Lights will come back in due course. So, Lord Ram, when he was leaving the country and the citizens said, Oh, a terrible thing has happened to you. Lord Ram said, I don't see anything terrible.
He said, my life was meant to serve my father. As a service to my father, I was going to accept the throne. Now, as a service to my father, I am going to the forest.
He says, it is my privilege that I am able to honour my father's word by doing a difficult service for him. And he said that, as an older brother, and the older brother Bharat is like my son. So, every parent desires that their son become great.
So, in my own presence, if Bharat becomes the king, that is my joy. He says, and I am going to the forest. He says that generally, most of us, we have to live through our entire life, do all our responsibilities.
Only then we can go to the forest and associate with the sages and get spiritual wisdom from them. He says, now, in my youth itself, I have that opportunity to go there. He says, I don't see any bad.
I see good in every way. I see good for my father. I see good for my brother.
I see good for myself. It's a remarkably positive attitude. So, if we have a spiritual understanding, we can all be grateful.
And all this is not to say that problems will not be there. Problems are there. We may have to live with pain.
But we don't have to live in pain. Live with pain means we acknowledge that this situation is bad. And it's a problem.
But live in pain is, that is the only situation we think about. Let's say somebody has got back pain. When they have back pain, it's just a fact of life.
But sometimes the back pain becomes intense. Sometimes it is less. So, when it is less, they are also thinking, when will I get this back pain? When it comes again, why is it so bad? Last time it came, it was so bad.
So, then, not living in pain, they are not living with pain, they are living in pain. So, when I was about one, at that time, my parents took me to a doctor. We lived in the remote part of India.
So, there was a fear of polio. So, they gave polio vaccination. But somehow the physician over there messed up everything.
And the vaccine was not well kept. So, the vaccine ended up giving me polio. So, my parents were very upset.
And now, as I grow up, as I sometimes go and give talks to people who are special needs, who are physically handicapped. And after that, when I talk with them, one thing that strikes me is that many of them are still fighting battles that they have already lost. Now, why did this happen to me? Why did this happen to me? Why did this happen to me? It's already over.
It's happened. You can't do anything about it. If we are fighting battles that we have already lost, then we can't fight the battle that we can fight right now.
When I look back at my life, I don't remember being resentful like this. I have to use crutches for walking. And that's just a fact of life.
And somebody who sees me first, they see the crutches first. But for me, the crutches are like my glasses. I need them.
I can't function without them. But it's no big deal. So, when I look back, how did this happen? I actually feel grateful to my parents.
They never made me feel burdened. They told me that, they tell me that, whatever you lack in physical ability, God has given you an intellectual ability. And I always learned to focus on my studies, my intelligence, and that was my strength.
And after I was introduced by Prabhupada's mercy to the Bhagavad Gita, then I understood I am a soul. This is just a limitation of the body. So, we may have to live with pain.
But we don't have to live in pain. We don't have to obsess over the bad. We are bigger than whatever bad situation may come in our life.
We have existed in the past, we'll exist in the future. So, by gaining spiritual knowledge, we can expand our vision. And by expanding our vision, we can cultivate positivity in every situation.
Concluding meditation, it says that the world can hurt us in many ways, but greater than the world's power to hurt is Krishna's power to heal. If we focus on why is this happening, why is this happening, why is this happening, we will just hurt ourselves more and more. But if we shift our focus, that Krishna is with me, Krishna will give me strength, Krishna will protect me.
Try to become conscious of Krishna, even amidst the stress, we will gain calmness, we will gain strength. And thus, we will be able to find that our gratitude is not just a conception. Oh, I'm somehow imagining I should be grateful.
If we connect with Krishna, we'll realize that with Krishna's presence with me, nothing really matters. Things are fine. Krishna will take care of things.
So, greater than the world's power to hurt is Krishna's power to heal. So, I'll summarize quickly. I spoke today on this topic of Ace Your Life with Gratitude.
I started by talking of when we are practicing, when we are going through life, bad things will happen. And if we are not grateful, we will become resentful. And that resentment of reality hurts us much more than reality.
And why should we hurt ourselves more? If we are hurting ourselves more, then it is like we are not being grateful, we end up being great fools. Whatever our problems, there are always people who have more problems than us. Then, how can we be grateful in all situations? I talked about the difference between we can't be grateful for all situations.
Bad things are bad. But we can shift our perspective. I talked about the acronym A.C.E. A is around.
There are a lot of good things in my life around it. Count your blessings and make your blessings count. Remember those blessings.
So that the mind doesn't obsess over the negative. There is a horrible pop-up coming up. We open a positive pop-up on our mind screen.
Then look for the good that helps us to combat the bad. Satisfaction is not just an emotion we feel, it is a decision that we can take. By looking at what we have rather than what we don't have.
And E is Emerge. Bad things may have happened, but from the bad, good can come. The embroidery pattern appears random from below, but a beautiful pattern is there above.
Just because things are out of our control, doesn't mean that they are out of control. They are in Krishna's control. And then I talked about how spiritual.
Somebody may say I am grateful, but I am not spiritual. I don't believe in God. That's like saying I am grateful in general is like saying I am married in general.
We need an object to be grateful to. And spiritual knowledge helps us in three ways. We look within to understand that we are indestructible.
Life is going bad, it's like a horror movie. I don't have to obsess over it. I am beyond my situations and my emotions.
Look up to understand that there is a higher plan working in my life. And then look ahead. Not way ahead, just one step forward.
Today's problems are always manageable today, unless we pile on yesterday's and tomorrow's problems. And I concluded by talking about how we may have to live with pain, but we don't have to live in pain. If we shift our vision to Krishna, then greater than the world's power to hurt is Krishna's power to heal.
Thank you very much. Hare Krishna.