How can we practically cleanse our mind of negativity?
Answer Podcast
Transcript
This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
How can we practically begin to cleanse our heart of envy and insecurity of negative self-conception? Yeah.
See, satisfaction is not just an emotion. It is also a decision. Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita that satisfaction of the mind, he says is the austerity of the mind.
In 17.16 he says. That means I’m not feeling satisfied now. Oh, I’m feeling inferior.
I’m feeling inferior to this person. I’m feeling like this. I’m feeling like that.
These feelings may be there but often our conception, what we think about is based on our conception. Say, imagine now, no need to imagine, it’s real. You’re going to have food after this soon.
So, now suppose there is a feast after this program. But this is a special feast in which everybody is going to get different items. So, now what is in your plate is different from his plate, is different from her plate, is different from my plate.
Suppose I get the feast and instead of eating, I start looking what is in her plate? What is in his plate? Oh, I don’t have that. I don’t have that. Well, eat your feast.
Why bother about what is there in other people’s plate? So, similarly what happens is that we have a negative self-conception, we feel envy or we feel insecurity that is primarily because we are too caught in looking what is there in other’s plate. We are not looking at what is there in our plate. Some of our talents may be immediately evident.
Some of the talents may need to be discovered. But whatever it takes to gracefully navigate our life journey, we haven’t provided that. That is Krishna’s arrangement.
We may need to develop some talents more or we may need to adjust our life journey based on our talents. But we have what it takes. So, if we have a spiritual understanding of life, then we will not get caught by simply by craving for certain glamorized talents.
But rather, we will focus on whatever talents we have and we will develop those talents. So, by recognizing, by accepting that everybody has been given some gifts. What are my gifts? Let me explore them.
That way we can avoid this negative self-talk. So, if we focus too much, oh this person can do this, this person can do this, this person has this, this person has that. When our vision is on others too much, we feel insecure, we feel envious.
But when our vision is focused on service to Krishna, then we start seeing, okay, what it is that I have for serving Krishna. And then, that way we can so, by connecting ourselves more strongly with devotion to Krishna, we can overcome the negative