H.G. Matsyavatar Das

Monday, 8 February 2016

Winning the Shadow – Part II


 
"Valuing people's talents."
It seems perfectly useless to deny and remove the Freudian envy, as it will go on working within the psychic structure and thus reinforced, it would do even worse.
On a practical level it can be purified and transformed by learning to value the talents of others, inspiring people to offer their talents in Krishna consciousness. This propensity will draw us nearer to the qualities of the eternal inhabitants of Vaikuntha so we'll become extremely beneficial to all the living creatures, ourselves included. In this way people can get closer to the Lord beginning to taste this new spiritual relation but how can it become true if they do not even know who is Krishna? Let us help them to put their talents to His service. For example, if someone cooks well, we can suggest a menu and offer the meal to Krishna: "Please, Lord Krishna, accept this food and bless the person who has prepared it."
Although in a first stage such service is indirect as accomplished without awareness, still the person will get a great benefit that will gradually increase in the process of serving. Once the meaning of service is intimately understood, the attraction to serve will be empowered with the taste and thus the person reaches further important step of awareness, up to a higher level when the service is offered not only as an act of one's own will and pleasure, but also consistently and without egoistic motivations. Yet if the person commits offenses, almost always because of residual envy, there is still a risk to crash down to the lower states of consciousness even from this level thus descending to the darker regions of mind. In such a state these people appear like shooting stars that, having made a light path in the sky, become obscured. Even in this case we should not forget the infinite mercy of divine forgiveness, that comes promptly to our rescue when, once repented, we start over following our path towards perfection.