If after praying we take a decision and it turns out to be wrong has Krishna misled us?
Answer Podcast
Transcript
This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So, when we sometimes pray and make a decision, and later on we find that the decision was wrong, then we feel that, is it that Krishna did not guide me? Or what I thought was Krishna’s guidance was actually the mind’s voice? Yes. See, first thing is, life is too short to be wasted in post-mortem operations. So, sometimes despite our best effort, despite our best intelligence, sometimes things go wrong.
So, we learn from it and we move on. So, it’s not that Krishna misled us, or it’s not necessary that we deliberately heard the mind’s voice or rationalized it as Krishna’s voice. It’s just that life is complicated.
Because life is complicated, sometimes things just work out in unexpected ways. Mahashtra Prabhupada, his own example if you see, his intention was to serve spiritual masters, selfless intention completely. But still so many things went wrong.
His business collapsed, his godbrothers did not help him, the people with whom he was working in Jhansi, in the League of Devotees, they conspired against him practically. So many things went wrong. So, if there is something to learn, was it that every time Prabhupada did something, he started the League of Devotees, if you read the manifesto, he made it a very celebrated, it was going to be the center of his, it was going to be the headquarters for his world movement.
And then after this collapsed. So now was it that Krishna was not guiding him? See, sometimes we think of success and failure only in external terms. Sometimes, you know, going through failure and growing through it is also a success.
So if we stay determined to serve Krishna, even if in retrospect we find that this is not the best decision, but still the principle of serving Krishna will always stand as a good step. And gradually as we keep serving Krishna, we will also learn that in this situation, if I act like this, this is not the best thing. So maybe I need to do more introspection, more prayer, more consultation and we learn to improve.
It’s not that because we are on the path to perfection, every single decision has to be perfect. Sometimes even mistakes can help us to grow. So as long as, see, the success for a devotee is not so much whether the external result comes out or not.
We want the result to come out. But the primary success for a devotee is our inner connection with Krishna becomes stronger and stronger. So if that is happening, then we are on the path to success.