Jatayu dasa: A friend came home from India and upon seeing me came over, placed his arm around me and asked, \u201cHow are you doing?\u201d I said that I was being purified and he smiled in such a way that he knew what I was taking about.<\/p>\n
In this peculiar time in my life trouble seems to come at me from all sides; from the moment I wake up tragedy awaits me. So being purified does not just mean that I am chanting Hare Krsna and taking prasadam but it means I am being forced to look at myself, see the faults and make changes. The first two are indeed difficult but the third requires courage and faith. And it also requires some deep and honest prayer. Usually instead of seeing my own faults I look at others. <\/p>\n
By looking at others faults I become blind to my own. The tricky part is that others are also full of faults but my business is not to deal with their faults but to pull out these weeds in my own heart. If they do not purify themselves that is their business; my business is to purify myself. Perhaps at the same time I can assist them but it is wrong for me to neglect my own purification because of their faults. Recently I have been forced by Krsna to take a good look at myself and what I see is not very pleasing. Not only do I see a number of serious faults but I also see how I have kept myself from seeing these in order to protect my false ego. And the deeper I go into my heart the more problems I see. <\/p>\n
At times it appears that I am in a deep forest with no direction to run or hide. I also find that there are no excuses for my bad behavior. I am wrong, I have made mistakes and it is now my responsibility to change. That is, if I desire to remain a devotee. Right now Krsna has placed me in a situation where I have to make a major change in my life. Events have occurred that puts me at a crossroads demanding I make a decision which way to turn. We will soon see what kind of devotee I am. Although it appears that I am in a difficult situation, the prospects for making a lot of advancement has been placed before me. My first step of course seems to gather whatever humility I have and chant some very serious rounds of Hare Krsna. I am in trouble and only Krsna is my shelter. This type of chanting is required at present. What I see is that Krsna is bringing me closer to Himself. Actually I should always be in this mood but there was a time that I just casually drifted along in my service thinking I was a good devotee. I am also being corrected for my mistakes, for offending devotees and improper chanting. <\/p>\n
This is Krsnas love for me and I accept it with open arms. At times I am placed in situations that appear completely ridiculous since the devotees who are pointing to my mistakes are committing the same mistakes. So if this does not make me a little humble I do not know what will. But the fact is that the faults they see in me are actually there and so in essence they are acting as my friends although it seems the opposite. I want to be closer to Krsna but have been lazy the past year or so and now Krsna is giving me a push. And Krsna does things in such an amazing ways also.<\/p>\n
If I were to succeed in accepting this situation and changing for the better then I will not only get closer to Krsna but I will also develop a more caring relationship with the devotees around me. I think if I really wanted to succeed in a first class way I would ask for the blessings of those devotees in whom I have found fault with recently. It appears that there is trouble in my life; I do not believe so. I believe these circumstances are a gift from Krsna to assist me in ridding myself of unwanted dirty things in my heart that are causes me to suffer. <\/p>\n
Krsna’s kindness is that instead of being angry with me He blessing me by encouraging me to improve. I do not know what I did to deserve this kindness but I pray that I remain strong enough to accept His instructions. So many times I feel as though I could take one step and I would sink in an ocean of happiness but the false ego holds me back with the fear of losing my individuality. The holy name is so wonderful and could fulfill all my desires and wants but again and again I hesitate to just let go and fall into it. What is there to fear? The holy name is Krsna and Krsna is the goal of my activities. Krsna stands before me every day and like a fool I refuse to reach out to Him. I am suffering and when I reach out to Krsna I find happiness, so what is this madness that surrounds me that keeps me from just letting it all go and throw myself into Krsnas arms? And that is what I dream about, being held lovingly by Krsna in His arms. It is these monsters of lust, envy and greed that torture me day after day that keep me from real happiness. But it\u2019s going to stop. I am going start right here to make a greater effort to take another step forward towards Krsna. There are so many reasons standing in my way to stop me such as, the prasadam is bad, the management is unqualified or the devotees are not pure. They are gone, Krsna is there, His holy name is there and all I have to do is take them. <\/p>\n
I am tired of suffering, tired of worrying about money and happiness and tired of fooling myself about what a good devotee I am. I want Krsna and one day I want to wake up and find myself reaching out to him with a sweet ball in my hand. Here Krsna, this is for You, just so You will be happy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jatayu dasa: A friend came home from India and upon seeing me came over, placed his arm around me and asked, \u201cHow are you doing?\u201d I said that I was being purified and he smiled in such a way that he knew what I was taking about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[93],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5620\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}