Buy yourself the gift of faith
Barter with devotion and you become faithful!!
Today I was reading about greenspaces that are good for cardiac health, a well known fact, but I found evidence that artfully combined various researches in this matter; a meta-analysis. I found that people are publishing evidence, that if young humans are exposed to a picture of green space for only 1 minute, it can ameliorate their fatigue and stress, reduce blood pressure and heart rate also. I found the 1 minute research rather funny. There are many more, since 2006.
The green space; man-made or natural, is devoted to cure us. Forest bathing and gardening reap lots of benefits for the mind, body and soul. Interestingly, browns and blues also. Experiencing or visualizing a desert or sea also has a lot of impact on cardiac well-being. But not the grey. Grey is the city life, with people, trash, concrete, barren and devoid of trees, smoke from industries and so on.
There are people in my country who started to clean beaches off plastics, formulating The Plastics Act in 2011 as a consequence. This is an encouragement for a common man who lives in this globalized world, improves it, in small ways by increasing the comfort level of both living beings and nature, and not leaving the world in the form of a disaster. The man should be an asset alive, like a good grandparent, father, brother, friend and a lot more. Let’s not be gender biased so a good mother, sister, wife, teacher and so on. They could be devoted to create a healthy and equitable ecosystem for all around them, of which they are a part, for a very small or a very large circle of influence.
I have devoted myself to many things like, my profession but mostly to the love of a supreme power that watches over me, protects me, and maintains me. This supremacy of Gods guides me to correct myself whenever I go wrong even in my thoughts. The clean things are always the clean things. For example, if you take bath you feel fresh, if you water plants, you feel green; not jealous (joking); you go green with peace and prosperity.
When someone leads a noble life, dedicated and devoted towards all that he takes up as responsibility, he becomes the best creation of God. People believe in him, he earns respect, he inculcates good-will and patience that begets faith in him. He never shuns responsibility and becomes the finest gruelled and modified version for good.
Devotion is not to be shown, it is seen. All sincere efforts reap successful completion of tasks. For instance, the subject you read for 6 months, and not just before exams betters your performance and the topic read just 3–4 days before exam is futile in the long run. It becomes a missed opportunity in learning. We wasted the exam, and could not gain marks due to our carelessness in preparation.
So barter devotion when anyone told you that they look up to you for something. Have you ever tried to fulfill another person’s needs? For any friend, family or a stranger? How good it must have felt with smiles all around or joyous thanks immediately with your efforts? It feels good when people have faith in you that you are there to watch over, protect and maintain them like you are a best friend!!
The Caitanya-caritamrita (Madhya-lila, 17.137, 139–140) states (as iterated by Stephen Knapp), that
“Those who are self-satisfied and unattracted by external material desires are also attracted to the loving service of Sri Krishna, whose qualities are transcendental and whose activities are wonderful. Hari, the personality of Godhead, is called Krishna because He has such transcendentally attractive features.”
Before enumerating the Lord’s attractive features, I would press on the fact that all the religions help us to become psychologically sophisticated. All self-awareness and meditations bring you closer to your soul inside and makes you strong enough to manage the world with devotion and sense of duty. Just receiving never fulfills you, the desire to serve, the servitude is the best way to live. We do not acquire knowledge to do injustice to it, it keeps growing by teaching. Blessed are our teachers throughout our life-time, who brought us here. They could be some enemy teachers or friend teachers. Usually enemies teach us more wisdom than friends.
So let us now praise the Lord (your Godhead, for non-believers they could be according to your religion, or a teacher, mother, friend, spouse in whom you have faith) as the one being:
with beautiful bodily features, strong, ever-youthful, effulgent, highly learned and intelligent, artistic, grave, gentle, heroic, happy, expert in joking, talks pleasingly, source of all other incarnations, giver of salvation, performs wonderful pass times, attracts everyone by His flute playing- a truly developed form of personality.
Such a person is difficult to find. Only the Gods can be such, and we must devote ourselves to conform to these ideals. Live like your Godheads, people will start trusting you, which you have truly bartered with your devotion towards them.
For the first time I say, do not be smug but satisfied in your pursuit of spirituality. Smugness is not bad, it builds your confidence, but in the spiritual world, start and retire in complete devotion to the cause of the day which you got as a debt from God.
Remember I trust Gods and would be luckiest if at least one person on this Earth trusts me. Then I paid with my devotion yet being indebted by your faith.
