How can we introspect about our devotional progresss? How can we rise from kanishtha to madhyama level?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
answer your question? Hare Krishna.
Question. How do we introspect whether we are progressing in bhakti and how can we rise from the kanistha to the madhyama level? Answer. The essential difference between kanistha and madhyama is the capacity to see the Lord beyond the deity.
To understand that our relationship with the Lord depends not only on how we worship him as the deity but also based on how we reciprocate with others depending on how they relate with the Lord. So those who are envious of the Lord, if we are too friendly with them then our relationship with the Lord will be injured by their blasphemy, by their enviousness. So we keep a distance from them and then those who are innocent we try to share Krishna’s message with them.
Those who are devotees we befriend them. So to the extent we are developing this attitude to that extent we can understand that we are advancing from kanistha to madhyam. Of course that is one parameter.
Another parameter is how much are we overall committed to the process of Krishna consciousness. So in the kanistha stage the worship is there of the deity but that is largely ritualistic. So but and because it’s ritualistic it is done because of cultural feelings or cultural sentiment or because of some good feelings that when one gets one does the worship but when one comes to the philosophical understanding then one understands that this is the supreme object of my love.
So how if now if we love someone then it is not that we let the relationship go by our moods. It’s not that if I say a man is married to a woman or woman is married to a man yes today my mood doesn’t feel like it so I will divorce you today. No the relationship has to be there has to be commitment so that commitment means putting aside our moods and doing whatever is required within that relationship.
So of course the moods may create some ups and downs but we ensure that there is a balance so like that it’s not that we can avoid the fluctuations of the mind but if we are overall committed to the process of devotional service then even if the mind goes down in its fluctuations it won’t go so down that it will cause us to break the regulative principles of give up the basic practice of Krishna consciousness. So understanding this is very important for the overall practice of devotional service properly. So by looking at how steady we are in our devotional service that means do we chant our rounds properly do we study Shastra regularly do we associate with devotees properly and checking whether our overall attraction to Krishna is developing how do we understand whether our overall attraction to Krishna is developing one way is of course the Artha Pravrutti that means whether our attraction and our commitment to the activities that connect us with Krishna is steadying and increasing the other is also an Artha Nivrutti how much is the our attraction to those things which are non devotional anti-devotional how much is that going down so by looking at these factors by how we relate with others and how we relate with the Lord and how we relate with those activities which connect with him connect us with him and which disconnect us with him so by all this we can actually rise from the Kanishtha to the Madhyama level now as far as introspection is concerned often writing a journal helps quite a bit in keeping track of our feelings and our feelings are just going round and round in our head they sometimes choke us over there and they don’t allow us to think clearly but it’s getting those thoughts out in a diary and then looking at them okay I’m feeling like this today and then there’s feeling we look at it after seven days oh that is still passing fleeting thought why did I get so worried about it that will come and that will go but sometimes some concerns stay regularly and then okay this is something which is major which I have to deal with so writing a journal gives us like a mental snapshot of our own minds is a snapshot of our mind a verbal snapshot and that enables us to evaluate our mental state and then we can take steps for correction so basically introspection means at our level looking at our mind we can’t look at our soul right now and we certainly can’t look at the super soul but we can look at our mind and okay now this mind is saying mind is making me greedy the mind is making me angry the mind is making me lusty now we may not realize it when that happens at that moment but if we have a habit of introspection then we will understand okay this is what the mind does at different times and then we can anticipate those situations and preempt those situations that means prevent them from happening by taking appropriate measures for example in a certain situation if I go if I feel angry then I prepare myself in advance or I take precautionary measures so that I won’t get angry when I get into that situation so essentially introspection means looking at our mind evaluating its feelings and distancing ourselves from those feelings which are not appropriate and a journal can help us in doing that or talking with other senior devotees that can also help us to identify the false logic and the misleading pushings that the mind is giving us and in that way we can become introspective thank you Hare Krishna