Re: The Test of Complete Faith

Dear devotees,

       Nityananda Gauranga Hare Krishna!

       Everyone, even people who come first time to devotion experience faith issues. What to speak of things like that -- try my situation like the dreaded semester examinations. People putting late nights, making the donkeys and bulls look fortunate in comparision . When under pressure from maya, a weaker will simply breaks up and people start getting desperate. All thoughts come in, "Oh no. How will I pass? My average is low. If I fail what will people think of me?" Out of desperation we resort to skipping our chanting and try to find other ways to get out of trouble. In the process what happens is that our chanting gets thrown off completely.

      This is just one situation. Everyone has their own share of troubles like this.  What happened was that our faith was weak. So when tested, we lost the thread. Then all seemed hopeless. We become eager to seek the temporary solution rather than the real solution which seems far away. This is where I see many give up. Some get back, others get angry. I see people breaking their beads, wiping their foreheads, leaving the devotional path, shouting, "God you did not help me!" I am not blaming you for being weak. We are all weak. We just need to understand a simple truth. See, this is the way maya works. Situations like these are EXACTLY those where more faith is needed more than anything. These are the times when we need to get closer to the Lord rather than just giving up.

       Faith requires very strong will power that has to be cultivated with some effort. First everyone please understand this message, "There is never an ideal time or a better time or a better situation for devotion in the material world." Wherever you are, maya will always throw fireballs at you. You may be working for deadlines, dealing with depression, facing economic issues or you may be a big CEO of a huge company, having $50 billion of assets, but even if you are Indra and king of heaven, still maya will always put you in some situation that distracts you from chanting. Take ANY situation, ANYWHERE, ANYTIME. There is always some defect. We cannot say, "Now times are bad. I'll wait for better days." There are no better days.

       We are in maya's abode. There's no way she will give us better days. By postponing our devotion by even a few seconds we ultimately fall into the trap of postponing it all life. And then BOOM! Before you know, life's over! So first ACCEPT the reality, just accept. The first step is ACCEPTANCE. What acceptance? Ans : The world is a bad place. There's always going to be suffering, pressure, problems. Accept the fact that you are where you are and tell the Lord, "Look my Lord. This is me, this is where I am. I have to start somewhere, so why not now?" When you accept your situation, it becomes easy to concentrate on devotion, what we have to do, rather than what's happening around us. Spiritually your situation is not different from anyone else's. So start NOW. Live the spiritual life in the NOW and the HERE. The present is the only time we have. Past gone, future no idea. So only the present we have. And we have to make advancement in that.

     I will continue this in the next thread. Thank you very much.

Daaso'smi,
Srinath

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