How do we differentiate between accepting the presence of our inclinations and pandering to them?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

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so how do we balance between accepting our inclinations and simply acting on them which would lead to this further conditioning as I give the example that if I have taken a wrong turn while I was going on a journey I have gone somewhere where I didn’t intend to go I have to accept that I am at the wrong place then I steer around and go to the right place so like that if you understand that based on my conditionings I tend to make some wrong choices so as soon as I recognize that I have made the wrong choice at that time I veer across and come back to the right track so to some extent by our conditionings the wrong choice may be like a default for us and we may do it to some extent without thinking but as soon as we realize at that time we can correct in a different context use the example that while running the race we have gone off course it is not that we have to go back to the starting point and start the race again from wherever we are we can come back on course so like that to some extent our default conditionings will send us off course and sometimes even before we realize it we go off course so what happens sometimes we do something which we have resolved not to do, we fall down and then after we have fallen down the mind says now we have fallen down a fall down wheel just binge more and more and no we don’t have to do that I fell down that’s ok that happened because of my conditionings now I can get up quite often it is a reaction to a mistake that aggravates the mistake much more I made a mistake but then I just reacted in a negative way and then I aggravated perpetuated so if a snake has bitten me how dare this snake bite me I am going to go and beat it to death and the snake is slithering away and I go and chase the snake pound on it, pound on it I may kill the snake but in the process what happens I am killing myself as I am running after it as I am pounding my leg the poison is circulating in my blood stream it will reach my heart my brain faster and I will die so sometimes by our conditioning the snake may come and bite us some desires may just come up and we do something but as soon as we realize it stop it so accepting means just recognizing that there is a high probability of this happening we don’t live in a fantasy land where we think that oh I have decided now and from tomorrow onwards this is never going to happen it doesn’t work like that so quite often we are not able to perceive the resolutions not because we don’t have enough determination rather it is because we have unrealistic expectation here is my resolution here is the reality I want I think I just made the resolution immediately the reality is going to happen we have determination to perceive here if we recognize that when I start walking when I start moving forward sometimes I slip sometimes I fall again I will rise just keep doing this gradually I will learn but when we expect that as soon as I have decided from tomorrow onwards I expect to be perfect when our expectation is unrealistic then when there is even a small reversal small failure we get so discouraged then we just give up on it so accepting our default setting doesn’t mean surrendering it doesn’t mean that not attempting to change ourselves it just means acknowledging the reality that I may make wrong choices but if we just rationalize the wrong choices and perpetuate then aggravate them then we will never be complete but recognizing that the probability this will happen and then as soon as it happens I correct myself so in a sense in terms of inner improvement now the right and wrong choices are not so much like digital they are analog in specific incident there may be right choice and wrong choice but overall in terms of our self improvement of our purification of our overcoming our conditionings our moving towards Krishna it’s more of an analog process that yesterday in the past I was here where I just succumbed to the conditionings if I expect the clock will just go from here to there immediately I transited the conditionings it’s not going to happen but everyday we struggle everyday we fall a little bit struggle rise again by that the clock is moving so our capacity to resist the conditionings is increasing everyday that we are chanting everyday we are associating everyday we are hearing Shastra everyday we are doing Seva actually that conditioning is changing although that change may not reflect immediately in our having overcome a particular condition choice that we are making but that change is happening and as that change happens gradually we will find that the wiser choices will become easier and the unwise choices will become more and more will also become easier to resist so it will happen gradually we don’t accept the conditioning in the sense that we think this is the way I am and this is the way I am going to be but we accept the conditioning in the sense that this is the way I am right now and this is likely to happen so when it happens let me be alert so that I can course correct as quickly as possible does it answer your question? so thank you very much