There Is A Purpose For Everything We Experience Even The Things We Dont Want To Experience BG 5.20

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Thank you very much.
There is a purpose for everything we experience. Even the things we don’t want to experience. During our life, we go through various experiences.
Some of them we crave for and long for. We want to see some things, touch some things, eat some things. And there are some things we just don’t want.
We want to avoid them. And yet, the nature of life is sometimes we have to go through the experiences that we don’t want. Now, you may say, why is this happening to me? Actually, in the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says that He oversees everything.
He guides our spiritual evolution. In 13.23 in the Gita, it is said that उपद्रश्टानुबन्ताच् that the Lord is the overseer and permitter of everything. And He is also our maintainer.
So He is present in our own hearts as the Supersoul, as the Paramatma. So, whatever happens to us and whatever we experience, it is ultimately meant to further our spiritual evolution. We are meant to elevate our consciousness to the spiritual level.
And for such elevation, we need to sometimes in an unvarnished way experience the brutality, the severity, the unpalatability at least of certain worldly experiences. And that acts as an impetus for us to take shelter of Krishna, to take shelter of the process of bhakti by which our consciousness can rise to a higher level. So, in that sense, everything is meant for our spiritual evolution.
The experiences we want, often, then we may crave for certain sensual experiences. And those are not really desirable for us because they bind our consciousness to matter. And the worldly distresses we want to avoid, sometimes they may be essential to that we need for being pushed higher in our consciousness.
So, if we understand this, then we focus, this purpose of spiritual evolution that underlies and unifies all our experiences, then we don’t get so agitated when we experience something unpalatable. Rather, we focus on trying to connect with Krishna and experiencing Krishna, trying to stay spiritually aware. And thus, through all experiences, we can further our spiritual evolution.
This spiritual focus is what Krishna recommends in the Bhagavad Gita in 520. And he states, He says, when you get something good, don’t get too excited by it. When you get something bad, don’t get rejected by it.
What it means is that you will experience these things, but don’t get too caught in the experiences. Rather, keep your intelligence fixed. Don’t get deluded by the varieties of experiences that come at the worldly level.
Know your spiritual identity and situate yourself in your spiritual purpose. When we are thus purposeful, then when we are spiritually purposeful, then we can see all our experiences as furthering, as pushing us towards the experience of spiritual reality, ultimately the supreme spiritual reality, Krishna. So we see distresses as reminders of the bigger distress that awaits us if we stay caught in worldly things.
And our pleasures remind us that they too are pointers of the far greater pleasure that awaits us if we raise our consciousness to the spiritual level. By thus being spiritually purposeful, we can we can experience whatever we have to experience and progress towards towards the ultimate experience of life, the experience of Krishna.