Make SPace

Sacinandana Swami

As devotees, we have to be careful. The new year will bring a lot of busyness into our lives, like the years before. Have you noticed that life isn’t becoming more peaceful and less busy, it seems to get faster and faster? We live in a very fast-paced society. Maybe this is the heavy price we have to pay in Kali-yuga: being more and more dedicated to activity on the outside. And we miss Krishna. We surround ourselves with people and projects and lack the direct feeling of Krishna’s presence. But without Krishna, our life is like a meal without salt, tasteless. It’s not even life, it’s like a dead body without a soul!

We need to make plans on how to be closer to Krishna, and I’m thinking of simple things we can do. My tip to you is, don’t make big new year’s resolutions, form one specific resolution and all good things will come from it: create space in your life to be together with Krishna. In the 10th canto of the Bhagavatam Krishna explains how he can be met: by hearing about Him, by singing His glories (like in kirtana), by worshiping His deity form, and by remembering Him. This is how you can meet Krishna in this life. If you have Krishna, you have a place in life from which you can develop inner strength; the salt is in your meal; the soul is in your body.

Do you know that most of our problems arise because we are not in contact with ourselves and Krishna? We have become so externally busy that when we stop and ask ourselves, “Where am I in all of this?”, we have to conclude, “I’m really not into it, I just do this because I have to.”

This problem can be solved, by pausing and focusing on that place in the heart where you and Krishna are present. It’s that simple. Go into alone time with Krishna. Be together with Him. This will create space in your crowded life. In fact, being connected with Krishna and yourself can create so much space that unnecessary and unhelpful things will be moved to the side and fall off from the table of your life so to say.

This is something you need to learn, and the association of devotees is very helpful for that. Consider this famous Bhagavatam verse (11.3.30): “One should learn how to associate with the devotees of the Lord by gathering with them to chant the glories of the Lord. This process is most purifying. As devotees thus develop their loving friendship, they feel mutual happiness and satisfaction. And by thus encouraging one another they are able to give up material sense gratification, which is the cause of all suffering.”