How are our present emotions related to our soul?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So what is the difference between emotion and mutual satisfaction so is emotion the character of soul when we are satisfied does it mean the soul is satisfied in general it’s very difficult to specifically identify where something is coming from suppose I come in front I participate in a kirtan I feel very happy, I hear a class I feel very nourished by the class now I may just have some very strong musical inclination or I may have very strong intellectual inclination and that satisfaction and strength I am feeling that may be because of my musical or intellectual inclination after I participate in a kirtan or hear a class or it may be because through those things I am feeling the connection of Krishna and I am very connected with Krishna so now which it is, it’s very difficult to know so when we feel good in bhakti or we feel bad in bhakti while we are practicing we feel satisfied and joyful or we feel frustrated and irritated whatever then is that spiritual or is that material, it’s difficult to know so rather than focusing on where some emotion is coming from we focus on where that emotion is taking us, we focus on not the source but the destination because what is happening, where something is coming from is difficult to know but or the operating principle is anukulnesa sankalpa pratikulnesa vachita accept that it is favorable and avoid that it is unfavorable so if I feel good while hearing a class or participating in a kirtan it is connected with Krishna, it is the purview of Krishna and through that I am coming, I am staying in the circle of Krishna and that is good so maybe right now it’s only intellectual but if at least by that I am staying connected with Krishna then that is going to purify me at least at some level gradually from the intellectual I’ll move towards the spiritual from the musical I’ll move towards the spiritual so when the emotions are favorable to Krishna bhakti we can accept it but we don’t simply rely on the emotions alone oh I feel good so I’ll do it, I don’t feel good so I’ll stop doing it if that happens then we will just become prey to our minds if we keep liking whatever our mind likes we will end up disliking ourselves what does that mean? if say if somebody starts saying ok I want to study now but then let me watch this news let me read this news let me go on this facebook, let me go here, let me go there we keep doing whatever we like and then that person fails in the exam so if we keep doing whatever we like we’ll end up disliking ourselves because the mind is such that it will never let us be satisfied even if we go to paradise where everything is wonderful the mind will say yes but and it will find some reason to be dissatisfied so one thing is that if we like to do something if something feels good for us it’s good to do it but if we keep doing things only based on whether they feel good or not then eventually we will not be able to do anything good in the long run so our likings are important at the same time our likings can also be flickering so unless we go beyond our likings we go beyond our sentiment to commitment I like to write that’s my service and I do it but even when I like to write there are times when I get completely frustrated the ideas don’t come, the right words don’t come the thought flow is not coming people say you get a writer’s block why did I ever start this writing process so all of us will experience this some of us may be good at management we like to do management so that is I want to give this up and go somewhere else now that is our version of smashaan vairagya when somebody dies, people feel this world is temporary, let me just detach myself from it but actually that is not necessarily how you realise it even when we are doing a service we like to do when we get frustrated I want to give this up but if we do that then we will just become prey to the mind so even when we are doing something which we like to do, in the sense that that is our psychophysical nature, even then there are times when the mind will dislike and that’s why we need to have commitment so that’s one side, the other side is so we can’t simply go along the mind’s likes and dislikes constantly, at the same time the mind’s likes and dislikes can also some of them can be fleeting and some of them can be lasting we try to do something we can push ourselves against our nature for some time one day, two day, one year, two years five years so I was talking with one senior devotee in Australia and he was telling me how different senior devotees are all, if you see Prabhupada’s disciples Gurus, Sanyasis, Vaishnavas they are all serving in their own distinctive ways they have all found their niche and they are serving in their ways so I asked him, as we become more advanced is it that we can fight as we become more advanced we can fight more against our nature he said no, as we grow older we lose the energy to keep fighting against our nature in traditional Varnaashram we more or less knew our nature since childhood and then we use our nature to serve Krishna in today’s world most often, we serve Krishna and while serving Krishna we band against our nature I can’t do this and then we find the right way so for us to find our nature also takes some time so if it’s going on for a long time we are feeling this is incompatible this doesn’t work for me when we are practicing Bhakti Bhakti is not simply like a sometimes there are these marathon runs that people do and they are of symbolic value it’s symbolic in the sense that you run for a particular cause I run for the cause of protection of women, I run for the cause of social equality whatever now in these runs, who wins is not important you just have to cross the finishing line you ran for that Bhakti is not like a symbolic run where you have to get to the finishing line in Bhakti, you have to develop a relationship with Krishna so yes, we want to practice, get to the finishing line means we have to practice Bhakti lifelong but if you just keep fighting against our nature and things are not working out and we are just too in a sustained way for a long time, we are feeling incompatible or we are dissatisfied then if something is not just coming and going, coming and going but it keeps coming repeatedly and it is something which is not making us still do something adharmic but just we want to serve Krishna in a different way then that rather than seeing that this is coming from the mind or it is coming from the soul we focus on, okay, how can I in my particular way move towards Krishna so if we are internally tormented and distracted and dissatisfied even if we are practicing Bhakti it may not be wholehearted and Adharmic sometimes in a particular situation, the mind may be so strong that we may not be able to resist it normally we say we should neglect the mind but neglecting the mind is with respect to its whimsical urges which keep coming but the Bhagavad Gita also tells Arjuna you are a Kshatriya, you cannot act like a Brahmana now where is the Kshatriya propensity and the Brahmana propensity because it is in the mind only so you have the mind of a Kshatriya, you cannot act like a Brahmana don’t try to resist it what can repression accomplish so we have to see that in a steady way there will always be intermittent satisfaction and dissatisfaction but in a steady way we should be feeling my life is on track this is how I want to live there are phases when I feel dissatisfied I feel totally exhausted, exasperated with the way things are going but those are simply phases which come and go overall if you feel your life is on the right track then casual or intermittent brief transient period phase of dissatisfaction is something you should not have to worry about but if that dissatisfaction keeps coming on consistently then maybe that indicates that we need to serve in a different way