Surrender

Before I was a Hare krishna monk I had a few jobs. being a typical student I would work during the summer in factories, long hours, good money but absolutely brain numbing. The motivation was always the money and the fun I would have with it. Whenever things would be hard I would just think of the money, always the money.

Questions are coming into your head.......Where am I going with this, this doesn't follow on from the last one!!! ( no it doesn't but I am seeing the nature of blogging to be one that you have to write about what's on your mind rather than be to contrived.)

I always thought I was pretty surrendered, what ever was asked of me I would do. I have been to some very materially intense places selling Krishna Conscious books and worked very long hours getting projects together. (Be it painting walls in a yoga centre to staking pegs in muddy ground with a storm going off around me for 5 hours) etc etc. Boy was I wrong about being surrendered

Yesterday I had to work in a factory making cheesecakes. I really didn't want to, but I had to and today I have to go back. It's not something I am looking forward to and I realize, thats what surrender is, doing something not because you want to but because it will please some one else. Thats what you do when you want to show your love for someone isn't it?

Now the motivation isn't money it's that somehow it is pleasing to Krishna. And that is pretty much the secret to spiritual consciousness. It's not what you do but the consciousness behind it. Doing something to please Krishna.

So off I will go again this evening with the mood that making these cheesecakes, which will then be offered to krishna (making them karma free, spiritually energized  food known as Prasadam ), to sell all around Europe is pleasing to Krishna. My mind will scream, my body ache and I will carry on, not for money or material benefit but in the hope that my surrender makes God happy, and show Him that even though I rarely show it, I am trying to love Him again.

That, after all is the goal of life.