One big truth about many people into spirituality: they believe God will aid them in material ways. From my past personal experience but also judging from other people's actions, it seems that praying, meditating etc is usually done in a totally fruitive way. That means doing it for money, fame, looks etc - the basic stuff all people crave. However, this is not what religion and spirituality intend to bring us, not even at a basic level.
The millions of self-help books, modern "holistic" spiritualists, self-proclaimed gurus and so forth all seem to denote that performing spiritual deeds will somehow lead to materialistic fulfilment. Be good, chant a money mantra and so on. But why should our material wishes prosper through spirituality, especially when there is not higher goal in the picture? God surely wouldn't want to make our materialistic illusion even stronger. So there is the question of why do we ask for what we ask. Furthermore, how could a matter of the heart (such as spirituality) lead to material success? These are two completely different things, two different realms. Material success comes based on one's karma, as well as iron discipline and its accompanying framework of thought and action; but asking God to simply make you filthy rich is kind of lame and shallow. Sure, God can help you in many material ways, but it's not His first priority to give you riches and fame. His priority is to do what is g o o d f o r y o u: to aid you on a spiritual level, to make you stronger, more versatile, more compassionate, more humorous, or whatever it is you need to be in order to make your way in this journey that you've chosen. KRSNA is here to grant you with the strength and inspiration to do what must be done.
KRSNA is indeed very merciful. In the Bhagavad Gita, it is explained that turning to God with material gain in mind can be actually acceptable. It is not as good as turning to Him for knowledge, inspiration and spiritual fulfilment, but it is "good enough" because at least we resort to God for our success. Acknowledging His total power is a good first step. Yes, God comes from another, non-material realm where worldy gains are nothing, but rest assured that He can help with material nature. After all, this is His creation. The main thing is that KRSNA helps people in regards to material nature, but in different ways. Relying on KRSNA will lift a huge burden off our shoulders in our worldy battles because we won't feel disappointed or guilty about things not working out. Sometimes, it's "meant to be". We've placed our hopes on something more important than ourselves. We do our best and let KRSNA decide. Personal effort will always be important in order to make it, but it's good to know you have our back covered.
But most of all, KRSNA's wish is to remind us that the here and now of material energy is not the whole picture. Living in this material world will always have its materialistic problems. These two things just go together - material energy will have material problems. As long as we're here, our natural inclination is on ways to make it big, to have more and more material success. But this is all due to our ego-tripping. While we crash headfirst on walls of the various obstacles of material life, we kind of understand that we have fallen from a more spiritual life. Our faith, according to the level it has developed, helps us in accepting this very fact (the vicious circle of materialism) and helps us remember that this material world is not ALL. There is more. But since we do live on this material plane, using the spiritual to transcend the material is the best we can do. And whatever happens, it happens.
For a more detailed and better explanation of what I talked about on this article, check out this article that inspired me in writing the above: http://krishna.org/making-the-best-use-of-a-bad-situation/
No comments:
Post a Comment