How can we act intelligently when adolescence impels us to act rebelliously?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So, in adolescence and teenage, we usually don’t want to listen to others. And we want to explore. At the same time, how can we sharpen our intelligence to make right choices? Yeah, it’s a very tough age, period of adolescence.
The important thing is that rather than thinking of things that… …I am doing this because my elders are telling me or because someone else is telling me… …we need to recognize that… …okay, if I don’t want to listen to my elders, am I truly acting freely? Because then I am listening to my peers. I am listening to the media. So, there is a famous story, there is a guru who would say that… …you don’t need any guru at all.
Don’t listen to anyone. So, there was one young man who came to Prabhupada. So and so Swami says that, no, don’t follow, you don’t need to follow anyone.
And Prabhupada asked him, then why are you following him? So he is saying, don’t follow anyone and you are following him and you are saying, don’t follow anyone. So, the fact is, we can’t avoid authority. We always follow someone.
So, the question is, whom do we follow? So, the challenge happens because… …you know, there are, say, our parents or our elders or whoever they are… …they have been, since the beginning of our life, we have connected with them. And when we have our peers and others, there is a newness to the whole thing. Okay, maybe I can have some new experiences, I can explore some things.
And… …because of that, we may feel that, okay, this guide, I don’t want to follow. This, I’ll follow. But first thing if you recognize, that there is no way that we can avoid following someone.
Once we recognize that, it’s not that this is restriction and this is freedom. No, everywhere, we are actually following someone. We have to check who is more reliable, who is more trustworthy.
And wanting to explore, experience new things is natural. But then, if we, rather than plunging into something ourselves, if we have some specific issues, you know, okay, maybe, what is wrong with doing this? Then we need some… …friend circle, maybe some senior devotees or whoever, who will non-judgmentally answer our questions. So, if you go and ask about something, hey, you are thinking like this, they start judging us, then we’ll clam down.
So, we need that kind of association. Even if you have one or two devotees like that, oh okay, you know, Prabhupada was asked one time, you are saying that we shouldn’t take drugs, but have you taken drugs yourself? If you have not taken drugs, on what authority can you say that drugs are not good? So, Prabhupada said, I have never taken drugs, but my disciples have taken. And he asked them to tell.
They said, yes, by taking drugs, we go high for some time, but then after that we come crashing down. Whereas, by practicing spirituality, we go high and we keep going higher and higher. So, we don’t have to necessarily ourselves experience everything.
We’ll see this idea that you should experience yourself. Well, in this world, there are millions of things. What all are we going to experience? We can’t just spend our whole life experiencing everything that is there to be experienced.
We make choices all the time. So, we have to use our own God-given intelligence and find out those guides whom we can trust. So, that may take some time.
And we have to do a little bit of research. Faith can never be legislated. I am your guide and you have to obey me.
Well, I may obey like that till I get my freedom. And afterwards, there is often rebellion. So, we ourselves among the devotee circle, among the devotee friends, we can find out someone whom we feel we can connect with and then take guidance from them.
And overall, using our intelligence is important. So, in general, if any impulse comes to do something, we may, if we say no, it’s very difficult. But we just say later and delay it to think about it.
And we decide. And then by that time, we can think, deliberate and quite often that impulse will go away. So, I would say three things then.
Recognizing that there is no freedom from authority, finding out a reliable authority and like it was shown in this movie, delaying impulse. So, if we do that, then we will be able to sharpen our intelligence and make right choices. Does this answer your question? Thank you.