Develop your personal relationship with Krishna (Uddipana explained) | Wisdom Munches 10

Hare Krishna Individual perspective that the Lord is eminently personal when he he has thousands and thousands and thousands of cows millions of cows and yet Krishna knows the names of every single cow and if one cow goes away Krishna calls her specifically by her name and gets her to come back so like that Krishna knows each one of us there may be millions and billions and quadrillions and zillions whatever word might be there, there might be souls in this world and the spiritual world but Krishna knows everyone individually Krishna has a personal and unique relationship with every soul and he reciprocates with each soul by manifesting his attractiveness in an individual and distinctive way so when we hear the pastimes of Jagannath when we hear about his activities for some people some aspect of Jagannath may be very attractive in Rath Yatra Rath Yatra itself is a festival but within that there are many festivals there is variety even within spirituality so the festivals begin long before the main festival Nanyatra is a festival that comes long before the main festival the main festival is Rath Yatra and there are devotees who may be attracted to a particular festival Rath Yatra goes one way and then the Uttarath that comes mostly we are not able to do the Uttarath but that's also another festival and the lord as Jagannath he comes out of Jagannath temple stays in Gundicha the cleaning of the temple is there so there are many many different aspects of the lord and his pastimes so each of us we need to find out which aspect of the lord attracts our heart this Rupa Goswami in his second version of the Bhakti Samrut Sindhu, the nectar of devotion is what Prabhupada called the Bhakti Samrut Sindhu in his translation so the advanced version of Ennodi the next book is Ujjwal Neelamani and there he elaborates on this term called Uddipan Uddipan is spiritual stimulus just like the people have sensory stimuli like for an alcoholic as soon as they see a bottle then Sarva Dharman Paritthaj I just forget everything I just have to drink so that's a trigger now that is a trigger that a person needs to stay away from because sensory stimuli they are such that now another person who is not an alcoholic may not be so agitated by that just as the sensory stimuli for each person are different so now the sensory stimuli we need to keep away from so that we don't get deluded but just as sensory stimuli are individual similarly there are spiritual stimuli that are individual each one of us may find a particular manifestation of the Lord attractive so we may find for example that one particular song or even one particular line in one song we may like that and yeah it is good to memorize the entire song but we could just recite one line Jai Gaura Se Krishna Se Jagannath Jagannatha Swami Nayanapatagami Bhavad Dume one line of one song can be our spiritual stimuli can be our so when we recite that when we remember that our thoughts start rushing towards the Lord our thoughts become immersed in the Lord so the spiritual stimuli keep them close not keep them far away but keep them as close as possible always so when we do this then it will be easier and easier for us to remember Krishna so when we individually take responsibility to find out which aspect of the Lord attracts us, which particular festival which particular deity dressing which particular kirtan, which particular song then we are taking responsibility for our spiritual growth and then that particular stimuli will be something that nourishes us when we are exposed to that stimuli we will feel strength strength coming in our life we will feel nourished just like when we eat food we feel nourished not only will it nourish us but we will also relish it relish means nourishment is ok when we eat some good food I feel content but relish is beyond contentment it is excitement it is ecstasy we will relish this stimuli bodhayantah parasparam kathayantasyamam nityam tushyanti tushyanti is when we are nourishing it but tushyanti cha ramanti cha ramanti is when we are relishing it so the uddhipan is what nourishes us and uddhipan is what we also relish and the key is that we need to cherish that uddhipan cherish means treasure it just like if we have some fond memories we keep them carefully on our phone we upload them on some drive we may take printouts and keep them in album so those are our fond memories for each one of us we have some spiritual stimuli some uddhipan when we cherish them that's when we will find that we have strength always we have joy always or at least we have access to strength and joy and that's how our bhakti can become stabler life will always be filled with ups and downs and those will challenge our faith those will challenge our devotional commitments but if we have our individual stimuli our uddhipan then those uddhipan can keep us strong and steady in our bhakti and that is what we can pray to jagannath jagannath swamy nayanapatagami bhavattume the song at one level seems strange because we are singing that song in front of jagannath isn't it? jagannath swamy please manifest before me he is already manifesting before us then why are we saying it? but the song is something more specific jagannath swamy nayanapatagami bhavattume manifest not just in front of my eyes but manifest on the path of my eyes what that means is our eyes often go on the path towards the sense objects our eyes just are wandering like that but whenever our senses get distracted our eyes are the primary senses that put us into illusion so on the path on which the eyes go there will be sense objects but instead may the lord manifest so that prayer is not just it is sung in front of the lord when he manifests but what the prayer is for is the lord manifests constantly in the path of our eyes that in one sense means that we find our spiritual stimuli and make them accessible make sure that we have them with us so that they can manifest in front of our eyes and within our minds and hearts and thereby we can be immersed in the remembrance of the lord we can never be immersed to the degree that Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was but we can be immersed following his footsteps and even if we can get a drop of his immersion we will find that there is extraordinary joy and ecstasy waiting for us in our personal relationship with Chaitanya.