How to see spiritually the grief I feel after my mother has passed away?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So, what is trauma? If a loved one, say if her mother has passed away, and she was just taking to bhakti and we feel sad that way, that she passed away so early, she could have practiced bhakti more and that causes us some distress, is that material attachment? I wouldn’t say it’s material.
Basically, we sometimes, we become too rigid in differentiating between material and spiritual. We call something as material. Ultimately, what is material and what is spiritual? In terms of functional roles, anything that takes us towards Krishna can be called as spiritual.
So, even if our relationships also, we may have material relationship with someone, but if they encourage us in bhakti, or we encourage them in bhakti, then there is a spiritual element that has already come in the relationship. So, rather than worrying too much about whether something is a material attachment or is not a material attachment, we can focus more on whether, how can, whether our thoughts are going towards Krishna or not. So, if, say, somebody like a mother or a father, they pass away, they have done so much for us, we are so close to them, there will always be a sense of emptiness in our heart because of that.
And it’s not that we are meant to not feel that just because we have become devotees. Rather, on one side, in bhakti, there is a, there is a clear-headedness that comes. The clear-headedness means that we don’t, we recognize that relationships in this world are temporary.
But there is a difference between clear-headedness and hard-heartedness. Clear-headedness means that we don’t let sentiments determine our decisions. We are able to use our intelligence and make decisions.
But that doesn’t mean that we are not meant to have any sentiments at all. Hard-heartedness means we don’t have any sentiments at all. So, what will happen as we keep practicing bhakti is that not that we will not remember a loved one who has passed away, especially a parent that’s a very close relationship with a mother, all the more so.
So, what will happen with the passage of time is that it’s not that the emotion will go away, the distress will go away. It is more that the emptiness will go away. It’s more that it will become spiritualized.
It’s rather than feeling that we should not feel the loss. It’s not that, yes, time does heal wounds. But more important than that is that we spiritualize our consciousness.
That means we see that whatever love our mother offered us, whatever love we offered to her, ultimately, whatever, whoever does for us, it is Krishna doing for us through that person. When a mother gives her breast milk to her baby, it is she who is giving her breast milk, but it is Krishna who has put the milk in the breast. She did not do anything to manufacture the milk at that time.
So, whenever somebody has offered us love and care, we are grateful to them. And we are also grateful to Krishna who has manifested the love and care through that person. So, we see, to whatever extent we can reciprocate with that person, we reciprocate.
But we are all limited beings. We are finite beings. And our relationship with each other are also for finite time durations.
Because of which, we may not be able to do as much as we would have liked to do for someone, either materially or even spiritually. So, that feeling that we could have done more, or that feeling that they could have come closer to Krishna, that is an expression of our genuine concern for them, of our spiritualized affection for them. So, what we see is that when there are things in our power, in our capacity to do some things, we did what we could.
Of course, we can always say I could have done more, but we did what we could. So, rather than saying that I couldn’t do, we see that even when I was helping, say, I was helping my mother to come closer to Krishna, rather than seeing that I was doing it, we have to see that it is Krishna who is her well-wisher, and it was Krishna who was using me to bring her closer to Him. And that same Krishna is there with her even now.
So, that same Krishna who used her to express His love for me, who used me to express His love for her, that same Krishna is in His heart, in her heart, and is in my heart. So, Krishna will take care of her wherever she is. And if I become more intensely devoted to Krishna, at least Krishna, the blessings for that will come not only to me, they will come to her also.
So, it is not that we have to… The blessings, if we practice bhakti more seriously, the blessings will come not only to us, it will come to our loved ones also. Krishna says in the 7th Canto, Narasimhadeva says that actually for one who becomes a devotee, Trisapta Pitapurtha, 21 generations get benefited, they get purified, they get elevated. So, by our intense practice of bhakti, they will also be blessed wherever they are.
And Krishna, we are connected to them through Krishna. So, that’s how our remembrance of them, the distress that we felt because of their loss, we needn’t see that as a material attachment, we can see that as just an affection that was there, and we can spiritualize that affection by trying to intensify our practice of bhakti. And knowing that, our intense practice of bhakti is going to benefit them also, wherever they are.