If we are tormented by strong conscience and weak willpower… Gita 10.10

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
by strong conscience and weak willpower, the solution is strengthening our willpower, not weakening our conscience. We all face various difficulties in the course of our lives, especially our inner life, because we often do things that militate against our own principles, our own values. Our own principles means values and principles that we have by our own conscious choice accepted.
And when we do something that we know is wrong, why do we do it? Because there is some force within us, some impurity within us, which is very strong and our willpower falls short. And thus, we feel conflicted, we feel tormented, we feel guilty. And this is a very uncomfortable stage to be in.
How do we come out of this stage? We are tormented by weak willpower and strong conscience. Most of us choose an option that we just weaken our conscience. That means we start thinking, oh, it’s okay, everybody’s doing it.
I’ve done it so many times, nothing went wrong. Even if I do it once more, nothing will go wrong. And in that way, we let ourselves be misled.
We let ourselves be overcome. And then we become degraded, we become addicted. We may even destroy ourselves eventually.
So the solution is not to weaken our conscience. Our conscience is our inner guard. It’s like an alerting system, the inner security system that gives out an alarm when we are doing something wrong.
And what do we do at that time? We strive to correct ourselves. And how do we correct ourselves? By strengthening our willpower. To strengthen our willpower, the best way is to connect with the source of all power, to connect with Krishna.
When we strive to connect with him by practicing bhakti, then what happens is we become purified and strengthened. The impurity becomes weaker and our connection with Krishna makes our willpower stronger. And this both strengthening our conscience and strengthening our willpower both happen when we connect with Krishna.
And this is what the Bhagavad Gita assures us, that whatever be the situation we are in, if we strive to connect with Krishna, then he will give us the intelligence by which we can come closer to him. We can choose wisely. Even if we have a little willpower, we can make optimal use of that willpower and grow.
And as we use that willpower constructively, we will get more willpower. So we stay connected with Krishna, hearing scripture and practicing bhakti and by that we will all surely get elevated and our conscience will become stronger, our willpower will become stronger and then we will live a life of purity, spirituality and spiritual joy. Thank you.