When we have pressure to get a new job, can we adjust our spiritual commitments to focus on our career?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
If we are in a phase of job transition at that time, so if we feel that we should focus on getting a new job, at that time, apart from our basic chanting, other spiritual activities like attending classes, and we tend to decrease them or even stop them to suffer some time.
So is that okay or what should we do in such a situation? Actually, we have to know that in our spiritual life, when we are in material existence, there will be going to be phases. And we have to be flexible. We shouldn’t think that this is a spiritual deficiency if we are not attending programs.
It is more of a practical necessity. It’s like if you are going on a road, if the road is crowded, naturally you will go slowly. And when the road becomes clear, we will move faster.
So overall, we should be moving in the right direction and we will get to the destination due course. So like that, sometimes in the journey of our life, too many material things come up. And then the road becomes a little crowded.
Then our spiritual activities may become a little lesser. That is fine in principle. There will be phases like that.
So if students have exams, they can’t be expected to come for programs. So in one sense, interviews for somebody who is looking for a job, they are bigger than exams in one sense. So naturally there will be anxiety.
Having said that, one more thing is that if we don’t hear at all and only chant, then chanting itself, firstly, it will become mechanical. And second thing is that sometimes hearing something or reading something may calm our mind and may give us some strength and solace by which we will be able to do our job search also a little more intelligently with better strategy and things like that. So although when emergencies come in our life, we do need to give our best effort there.
At the same time, we shouldn’t always equate maximum time with best effort. So sometimes you just get too much into the passion of doing something. And then if you don’t sometimes think calmly, we may ourselves make mistakes.
And in one mistake, we need to not exactly mistake a wrong thing, but we were less than the best thing. So rather than seeing, hearing or some devotional activity like that, as a interruption in the job search, you could see it more as a break which may reorient you. So you don’t have to necessarily attend the standard programs which are going on.
You can find something to read in Shastra which deals with the mind and the problem that the mind creates. Some section from Shastra which speaks to you or some verses from scripture which talk about how in anxiety we can keep faith in Krishna and how Krishna is protected in the past. And maybe just memorizing those verses, reciting those verses, singing some Vaishnav songs.
Singing Vaishnav songs can be very powerful if you can connect with Vaishnav songs, then that gives a very nice connection with Krishna. So because often when we sing or chant, it’s mostly centered on the holiness. It’s musical or it becomes mechanical.
And if you study scripture, it’s largely intellectual. But Vaishnav songs, they bring both together. There’s the intellectual also because there’s a meaning in the song, but there’s also music in it.
So it is relatively easy to absorb for many devotees. So you can surely adjust the specific forms of spiritual activities you do. But it may be that somebody is coming for a program and attending lecture may not give you as much strength as just coming to the temple and taking darshan and praying to the deities, maybe singing a Vaishnav song in front of the deities.
That is also fine. There’s no need to make your spiritual life into a zero beyond chanting just so that you can focus on your job search. You can have some things going on which give you strength.
And that way you will be able to deal with the situation also better. In general, we have to. There’s no need to feel guilty about it.
First of all, you know that. Oh, I’m not practicing spiritual life so much or something like that. It’s OK.
Krishna is always an understanding God. And these are the situations which come in our life. There’s one tendency of the mind which you need to counter.
The other day I gave a seminar on the Holy Empire studying that the mind often eternalizes the present. That means we are having a problem in the present. The mind thinks that this problem may go on forever.
And then it is like if you are traveling in a crowded car or a crowded train, then it’s uncomfortable. But if we know it’s a 15 minute or half an hour, one hour journey, after that we are going to get off. So that gives us some solace.
But if we are told that we have to live in the train the rest of our life, we would find even half an hour intolerable in that case because the mind just builds up the thing. So, you know, although we may feel, you know, if I don’t do, if I don’t find a job, then I may always be jobless. But that’s not right.
It’s very unlikely to happen because surely something will work out. And if you look at our own life, we see in the past also we had problems. And those problems at that time caused a lot of tension.
But now if you look at them, you say that I don’t have to be so tense about it. So similarly, just as those problems have come and gone, this problem will also come and go. So by thinking about how we were able to weather a problem in the past, which came and went, we should know that this will also come and go.
And that sort of distancing from our situation, you see that this is, we don’t let the mind eternalize the present. That is what is required. I have a website called GitaDaisy.com. There is an article on this topic only.
Don’t eternalize the present. So you may want to search on GitaDaisy.com for eternalize the present. You may find an article, you can read it.
There, especially in the second chapter, 14, 15, 16 verses, if you read some of the purports, they talk a lot about how by meditating on the spiritual, we can deal with material ups and downs better. So that sort of, not just my articles, but that sort of anything that gives you a sense of perspective and security, that you should do. That will vary what specific thing it may be for you.
You can check that and do that.