When our emotions don’t keep pace with our convictions, as when facing adversities, what can we do?

Transcript

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we are not able to do that because our emotions feel agitated, resentful so what should we do actually just last Sunday I gave a class in Alachua even if we can’t be grateful for all situations we can be grateful in all situations what that means is that often bad things do happen in life and it’s not that we have to somehow deny our experience and imagine that bad things are also good when and say in the scripture Siddharapati was dishonored nobody tells her that it all was good it was bad so bad things do happen in our life but how can we be grateful even in that situation how can we still be positive first is we can look at the many other good things that have happened in our life so the mind by its nature tends to count problems but our intelligence can count blessings we need to use our intelligence to direct our attention towards the many things that are right in our life and if we start counting them we do find that there are things which are right in our life that there are many people who have far bigger problems than what we have so basically even if the problem seems too much we can’t be grateful for that one is we can be grateful for the other things that are right in our life that are associated with that problem say if I get a terrible disease now I can’t be grateful for that disease for getting that disease but I can be grateful that there is a treatment for this disease so if there is something which is helping us to set that thing right we can be grateful for that and focus on that and especially in material existence when we are whoever we are we are all in a disease condition and in the disease condition we have to experience pain the difference between those who are spiritual and those who are non-spiritual is not that the spiritual people don’t face problems and the non-spiritual people face problems no the nature of this world is everybody has problems so that’s because we all here are sick but the difference between the spiritual and the non-spiritual is people are being diagnosed and are being treated the materialistic people are those who are sick but they are not even diagnosed what is wrong with them and they are doing something which is going to aggravate their sickness so when distresses come it’s difficult to be grateful for the distress but we can be grateful for the fact that we have Krishna Bhakti by which we can we are on the path of recovery we are in a distressful situation but the distress is going to decrease Krishna Bhakti acts as a cure for the disease of material existence and it can also act as a pain killer when problems come in our life quite often the more we think about the problem the problem becomes bigger and bigger so if somebody has betrayed me then naturally I will be in pain but the more I think about that person my pain increases more and more but if at that time if I can turn my thoughts towards Krishna think about Krishna Krishna is always in my heart Krishna is never going to abandon me let me connect with Krishna more deeply then that can give us relief so if in our Krishna Bhakti we are expecting release from problems then we will be frustrated but what Krishna Bhakti can offer us is relief amidst problems the problem may still be there but by directing our thoughts elsewhere towards Krishna we can get relief even amidst the problem and that problem if we are not fixated on the solution to the problem if we are not fixated on this wrong thing becoming right then that wrong thing can become an impetus for us to absorb ourselves more in Krishna and at that time we may well realize the potency of Krishna Bhakti in giving us relief so if this same problem had come upon me when I was not practicing Krishna Bhakti I would have been shattered but now I am able to move onwards so what does this mean there is something special over here and thirdly often Krishna works in ways different from the way we work so the things that are happening bad for us they are from our perspective right now bad now we look at the present and we plan the future Krishna looks at the future and plans the present so just like a child is having pain in the stomach and a child goes to a doctor thinking the doctor will free me from the pain but the doctor takes out an injection what is this but the doctor is seeing the future this infection is going to worsen so although there is some pain here and the pain may seem to increase by going to the doctor but it’s going to decrease so if we just persevered Krishna Bhakti then even the bad thing it was not that the bad thing was good it’s not that everything that happens is good but everything that happens can be for good Krishna is so expert that he can bring even good out of the bad so then we just tolerate so toleration can come by focusing on the positive and one more point which I will conclude this is that we have to understand that just as the pleasures in the world are temporary the problems are also temporary sometimes the problems that we face are like leeches one of my friends recently told me that he was caught in a marsh where there were leeches biting his leg so I gave this example from my real life experience on this there are some leeches when they catch us if we try to pull them out they have such a tight hold that they will rip out the whole skin at that time but if we just tolerate now it’s very difficult to tolerate because they are sucking our blood but still if we understand with our intelligence that the leech does not have infinite capacity to suck blood its tubules are finite and once its tubules are filled then I can just flip and the leech will fall off so like that problems that come in our life are like leeches if we overreact at that time then that’s like trying to pull out the leech we make the situation far far worse just tolerate just calm down yes it’s painful but it’s not permanent tolerate and in due course the problem goes away or we get the intelligence to deal with the problem so tolerance can come from the knowledge that the problem is temporary and tolerance can also come from the shifting of our vision from what is wrong to what is right from the material things which are temporarily wrong to the spiritual that is eternally right so that’s how with our intelligence we can acknowledge the distress that we are feeling the anger that we are feeling the resentment that we are feeling but we don’t have to act on it normally we think of emotions only in two ways expressing them or repressing them but with intelligence applied in the process of bhakti we can go beyond expressing and repressing our emotions to processing our emotions yes I am feeling resentful right now if I say I should not feel resentful no but I am feeling resentful I accept that I am feeling resentful now let me process the resentment and if you do that way then we will actually grow not only go through that problem but we will grow through that problem thank you very much so are there any other questions or shall we stop here one last question you were saying that there is a desire for eternal joy