If we keep doing something that we had resolved to give up, what to do?

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Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Sometimes we, although we know we should not react in a particular way, but still we react in that way. Yes.
It’s like some people say, I’ll make a resolution. I’m not going to get angry. And they start getting angry.
And somebody tells them, somebody tells them, you’re getting angry. I’m not getting angry! So they become angry about being reminded that they’re angry. So I did a retreat in Brisbane on burn anger before anger burns you.
So the point is that if we consider our the graph of our consciousness with respect to time, there are our urges have surges. So our urges sometimes surge up. It’s not that that anger or any anger or greed or whatever, it’s constantly at a high level.
It is maybe at a normal level and then sometimes it surges up. Now, when that surge of the urge happens, we might just get overwhelmed. Now, of course, it’s good if we can resist that, but we don’t have to define our spiritual advancement only in terms of what happens when the surge comes.
So in between the surge is what we are doing. So even if we can’t resist our urges, we can persist between our urges. So this surge came up, I did that thing, I didn’t want to.
But what do I do in between? Next time when the surge comes, if in between I am practicing bhakti, I am trying to connect with Krishna, purify myself, strengthen my intelligence, then gradually what will happen is I will become strong enough and when the urge comes I will be able to resist it. So that’s why in our spiritual life we may fall down but we don’t have to fall away. Fall down means just knocked down by the forces.
Fall away means we just give up the path. So sometimes the urges might come and we are just helpless at that time. What can we do? We are just too strong at that particular time.
But what do we do in between the urges? We can either become disheartened and think I am never going to change. Now, if we are ever going to change, the first thing that has to change is the attitude I am never going to change. If we start thinking I am never going to change, this is the way I am, then that’s… To lose faith in our potential to improve is the path to destruction.
It’s a terrible… To lose faith in our potential to improve, that’s the worst loss we can have. We may feel that this improvement is difficult but to think that I will never improve and to start justify that this is the way I am, that is very dangerous. It is actually cowardice.
We are not having the courage to fight and it can be malice. Why? Because what happens is our conditionings if we give in to them, they won’t keep us at this level. They will drag us further down.
So that’s why we need to have that at least, okay, in between let me keep building myself up. Don’t let me define myself solely by what happens during the urges. In between just consistently start connecting with Krishna, try to equip ourselves, try to become stronger and secondly with the urges also there’s one key insight that we need to have.
Sometimes when the urge starts coming and you say no I’m not going to do this, I’m not going to get angry or I’m not going to do this, I’m not going to do that. Then we start feeling the urge is becoming stronger and stronger and stronger and stronger. How long can I resist this? Better let me give up now.
So when we start resisting the urge, we start seeing the urge becoming stronger and stronger and stronger. That’s when we give up. But we have to understand this urge is not like an endlessly rising line.
It’s like a wave. It will go and it will grow and then it will subside. Or another example you could have is like say somebody is playing an arm wrestling match.
Okay, come on, let’s play. Now suppose the other person is much stronger than us and they got our hand down, down, down, nearly. Now we think oh this person already got it down, it’s so much paining to hold on.
But if we knew that it is an arm wrestling match but it is a timed arm wrestling match. It’s three minutes. In three minutes you have to get the hand down.
If we can just resist it for those three minutes after that if we can just survive the present round. Then we will resume on neutral ground. The next round, it won’t be from here.
It will be from here. So we just have to wait till that much time. The mind tricks us into thinking that this force is going to be like this forever now.
And how can I live like this? I can’t. Let me just vent it out now. But it’s not like that.
The urge will be strong, strong, strong but it’s not going to be that strong forever. So even during the surges of our urges if we just know this is not permanent. Then we might find that it’s not that difficult to resist it.
And even if we just understand this is not going to go on rising permanently then even if we succumb to it, we won’t give in completely to it. It’s like when we give in then we may do far more wrong than what we need to. That’s why sometimes they say we are planning to do something and we fall down.
And when we fall down, the mind says now we have fallen down, now fall down completely. No, we might push down but we don’t have to be pushed down more than what is necessary. So it’s like we might be forced down, forced down but at one point we give up and let go.
But if we don’t let go we might still be forced down but we won’t be down for that long. So basically these two things persist between our urges and when the urges are rising, we understand this is not going to be forever. Just try to hold on.
Yes, definitely. We have to forgive ourselves in the sense that we have to understand that we have certain conditioning and we can’t change ourselves overnight. So sometimes on the spiritual path there is self control which is required but even more than self control, humility is required.
So what happens sometimes, we might by not being able to resist our urges we might think I have failed. But actually that may make us feel more the need for Krishna, that may increase our prayer, that may increase our devotion and that humility to call out to Krishna might be a bigger spiritual advancement than just success in the self control. So forgiving ourselves doesn’t mean that this is how I am and this is how I am going to be.
Ok, I could do this but Krishna I want to stay connected with you, please help me. Ok, that happened end this chapter and move on. So spiritual life is subtle, what is success and what is failure, we can’t know.
Sometimes we might succeed in self control and fail in humility. Like sometimes it happens and people fast on Ekadashi and they are very strict about fasting on Ekadashi. They fast completely without water also.
They are fasting nirjal and then everybody who is not fasting they are saying this is nirlaj. So attached. Hopeless, glutton.
Now somebody is sitting like that and what is happening? Their body is fasting but their ego is feasting. So, they may not make any spiritual advancement by that. On the other hand somebody, they try to fast but they just feel so much weakness, fainting, maybe acidity and I have to take some food.
They take that food and they continue their service. What happened to them? They may succeed because they have grown in humility. So we don’t have to judge ourselves only by how much we succeed in resisting our urges.
We can focus primarily on how much we are striving to connect with Krishna. Ok? Thank you.