When we pray to Krishna to give us the strength to serve him how can we recognize his reciprocation?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

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So, when we say that Krishna us time to serve you, how does Krishna reciprocate? How do we know that Krishna is reciprocating through devotees? Krishna can reciprocate in many different ways. Krishna essentially says, I will give you the intelligence to come to me.
So, that means, to come to him means that to make wise choices, choices which will help us to go closer to him. So, basically, when we connect with Krishna, that calms us down, it calms us down. So, without a connection, we are very agitated.
So, we don’t just see external situations with our eyes, we see it with our mind also. If our mind is agitated, we can’t see things properly. So, at the very least, the practice of bhakti, it brings us to the mode of goodness and when you come in the mode of goodness, our inner world becomes illuminated with light.
We can start seeing this is short term, this is impulsive, this is long term, this is sound, this makes sense and we can also decide. Sometimes when we are having problems, you know, we just talk with somebody, talk with even some devotees, some friends, and because we ourselves are so confused, we are such a mess that, you know, the talking only makes things worse. But if we do our homework, we calm ourselves down, then we can present our problems.
If we have to consult devotees, it’s like a patient goes to a doctor, the patient has to tell the symptoms, then the doctor can treat him. So we can decide whether I should consult devotees, which devotees I should consult, what exactly is the problem and what are my options. So Sri Prabhupada writes in the Nectar of Instruction, Introduction, he says, once we come to the mode of goodness, how to advance further when we are revealed from within.
So revealed from within doesn’t mean automatically Krishna, we hear Krishna’s voice speaking from within. We just get a hunch, we should do this. And then we think of it in light of Shastra, we consult senior devotees, yes, let me take this step forward.
Bhaktivinoda Thakur also says that in life, decisions don’t have to be irrevocable. He says that, say, if I’m going from here to here, and I find out this is the wrong path, it is not that I have gone till here, I have to come back and then start again. No, if I’m going this way, and I find actually I have to go this way, he says, you go this way, you make course correction.
So you just move from there towards the right destination. So it’s not necessary that every step that we take in our service to Krishna has to be the correct step. Sometimes by making every action too consequential, we paralyze ourselves, we all make mistakes, we all make choices that are not the best.
But once we realize that, okay, it’s not the best, we turn back, turn on and then we move onwards. So sometimes a specific action may or may not be right, but if the intention is to serve Krishna, if we take small, small steps, then we will move onwards. And generally it is very good if we have some devotee association, some devotee who’s really close to us.
See, mostly we look at people through the mind. That means, you know, if somebody starts speaking sweetly to us, we start, you know, what does this person want? We are suspicious, you know, I’m speaking sweetly, they want something from me. So what happens for most people, we look at them through the filter of the mind.
But if you’re very close to someone, then what happens? We can look at the mind through them. That means, okay, my mind is saying like this and they’re saying like this, which is true. Yeah, what they’re saying makes sense.
So if we have that, our own sharp intelligence by the study of Shastra, by the practice of bhakti, if you have a strong association where we can share our heart with devotees, then Krishna will guide us. So the important thing is, actually, if we just decrease the agitation of the mind, then decisions become much easier. And we take small, small, small steps forward, as we keep observing, keep learning, we can always do course correction.
The important thing is not to let life paralyze us. Just take small steps, even if they’re not the best steps, you can always do course correction. Does that answer your question? How?