When an army is fighting a war, it depends
on its intelligence – its information sources – to know the strength of the
enemy. But if the army’s intelligence has been penetrated and compromised by
that very enemy, then this untrustworthy source will give misleading
information. For example, it may misinform that the enemy forces are far bigger
than what they actually are, thereby demoralizing the army and thus defeating
it mentally even before the war has begun physically.
When we battle life’s inevitable problems,
we are often targeted by a similar misinformation campaign. The inner misleader
is the mind, which misinforms us about the size of the problem. It depicts the
problem to be gargantuan, making us seem like ants utterly incapable of dealing
with it. And the more we uncritically listen to the mind’s assessment of the
problem, the more we feel dwarfed and demoralized. Thus, our mind-shaped
perception of the problem can become a bigger problem than the problem itself.
To avoid being thus misled, we need to
resist the temptation to immediately tackle the problem and instead invest time
for beating the problem-magnifying mind down the size. For subduing the
problematic mind, the most effective way is meditation, specifically spiritual
meditation. Such meditation connects us internally with our unchanging side:
our indestructible spiritual core and the highest spiritual reality, Krishna.
The Bhagavad-gita (06.27) outlines the fruit of such meditation: the mind
becomes peaceful, being purged of the obsession with matter that makes it
misperceive material things and misinform us.
Additionally, spiritual meditation enables
us to experience Krishna’s shelter, helping us realize that no matter how big
the outer problem, the shelter of a far bigger reality always awaits us within.
By the resulting calmness and confidence, we can assess the problem objectively
and tackle it intelligently.
No comments:
Post a Comment