Devotees who succeed in getting external results are looked up to in our movement – what to do?

So it is that go-getters even in our movement are the people who are looked up to and that's what everyone tries to emulate it can be seen in two ways one is that external success can be a result of internal success and that is the best the worst is external success is a substitute for internal success the first is that means I am so happy serving Krishna that I want to tell the whole world how do you serve Krishna, it's so wonderful so there is internal success and there is a connection with Krishna and satisfaction with Krishna and because of that there is one joyfully shares Krishna bhakti and people get attracted the other extreme is that one has no inner relationship with Krishna one needs satisfaction so one can't get satisfaction in the remembrance of Krishna so one gets satisfaction in the external service oh you are still a great devotee you have done this, you have done that and that glorification is the driving force for a person for most of us we are somewhere in between you know there is some amount of internal success and there is some amount of absence of internal success there is definitely, if we are continuing the practice of Krishna bhakti we have got some taste because in our movement our sadhana standards are quite strong one has to get some taste otherwise one just cannot continue that for very long so now for us we have some amount of internal success and we also need some amount of external success so while we are pursuing gradually we need to move towards the the situation where internal leads to external but if we don't we are not careful then we will move towards others and that can become a problem so in in every movement see there is a story of Hanuman and the squirrel Ram was satisfied with both of them because they were doing their best at the same time if you are going to ask at the end of the day who built the bridge it is not the squirrel it is Hanuman who contributes practically to building the bridge and similarly if we want to there is this, I talked about contribution and satisfaction of purification so our service, our devotion is meant to both, internally there is purification externally there is contribution because we are a preaching movement functioning in the world contribution is also very important for the functionality of the movement, for the growth of the movement so if we want, we are having a public program where we are having kirtans there we may have a very advanced devotee who is not a very good singer and we may have a very young devotee who is a very good singer we may engage a young devotee over there because there from the point of view of making contribution in that service somebody may be very good at management but they may not have very much of a service attitude they have a lot of controlling mentality somebody may have a very deep service attitude but they may not have very good management skills now if we make the second person into a manager they will not hurt any devotee but they will not get anything done also so on the other hand if you have somebody who has a strong manageable talent they may hurt some people but they will get things done also so that is the challenge that in a movement which is also meant to do practical contribution in the world those who have the ability to do that contribution, they will inevitably get the positions of power or get the positions of visibility so it is necessary as a part of the education given in the movement that just those positions of visibility are not the sole markers of success now we have to also acknowledge that those who take up responsibility, they are also doing a lot of sacrifice for Krishna's service there is prestige that comes through position of power but there is also a lot of challenge that comes so we also acknowledge that they are doing a lot of service for Krishna they are taking a lot of responsibility but that doesn't mean that they alone are spiritually advanced or they are the standard of spiritual advancement for everyone so I think that has to be a part of the education that is given in the movement in terms of practical functionality it is always going to be that those who have talents, those who have abilities they are going to become prominent that we can't avoid that we have very sincere devotion for the Deities but they don't have an aesthetic sense of how to decorate the Deities we can't have the Deities decorated in a messed up way so somebody who is very sincerely devoted but they can't be made into Pujaris if they don't have that aesthetic sense so the the importance of purification is what has to be stressed through the education so the functional reality of the movement purification will tend to get more to the background contribution is what will be focused on that is just the way any movement in this material world will work.