What have you learned by practicing Bhakti Yoga?

I have understood that the Supreme is personal and has form. He is called Krishna and looks like a beautiful young boy in the prime of His youth. He is very hard to understand. Even when your heart is breaking with anguish and your legs can hardly hold you up, He just smiles at you, or sometimes looks right through you. He never looks worried or concerned, He just smiles and shows you that He is there if you can make the grade. When we are in a mess, we created the mess we are in, not Krishna, it’s not His job to get us out. He is happy to assist, but the effort has to be ours.

He never indicates that a person must do something or has to do something, He is just here, there and everywhere if we want to find Him. He is hidden no doubt, but it is our defects that hide Him. He says you can see me here, and here, if you look closely. He says you can know me in full if you do this and this, but He doesn’t mind if we ignore Him. Our suffering is not pleasant for Him, but it is self-induced and Krishna is renounced, not sentimental.

He permeates the whole universe, controls it, maintains it and destroys it, but He is ever aloof from it. It is His universe, but it is for the kiddies to play in. He monitors it but He seldom gets involved personally. Whatever happens to us good or bad is caused by our desires. They are not Krishna’s problem. There is no point in going to Him with every problem we have, except that it’s nice to remember Him. Other than that there is no need to ask for this, that or the other if they are material in nature.

If you think there is some scope to enjoy material life in some way or other it is difficult to approach Krishna. If you suffer and lose what is dear to you, if you are dumped by friends, ignored by relatives, impoverished, desperate, your health broken and feeling alone in the world it’s a good place to be, if you want Krishna. Don’t try it at home, but if it does happen and your mind holds together through it all and keeps fixed on Krishna then so many things will make sense.

If you want to change but can’t, then Krishna will arrange the experience that changes you. Some of our attachments are very very deep, it is not possible to imagine ourselves without them. They are so much a part of who we think we are, and some have been with us for millions of births.

We think we are decent people, that our values are important, that we have some significance, that our lives have meaning, that we can exercise some control over our life and we can have some influence over others. Sadly none of it’s true. We are an artificial identity that has bundled some cherry-picked ideas into what we want us to be and what we want others to see us as being. If we don’t give them up, then we will not get really close to the Supreme. He is not interested in this concocted person we are in love with, He is interested in the real person who is hiding behind all these imaginary identities that we assume. The real us is buried very deeply, but we can use the false identity that we have assumed to act in a way to attract favourable attention from the Supreme.

Experiences are not discussed much at my level. They are personal experiences. It is fashionable for singers and musicians to sell their experiences in public, their love, their tragedies & sorrows, their hopes & dreams, their successes, so many experiences are sung about. It gives them more body than just writing about them. Often they are expressive, sometimes beautiful, more usually dull, occasionally idiotic.

If you are a parent from a happy home with a close sibling you will have access to the basis of spiritual experiences.

We love our parents as we grow up. They are unimaginably wise and comforting. We share our experiences with a close sibling, often telling secrets that we don’t tell our parents. We fall in love and marry, rejecting all others for that special relationship. We take care of a child, who is completely dependent on us and we worry about him/her, try to give them the best, work our day around theirs as much as possible to help them do what they want.

If someone has deities in their home then all these flavours are there in a devotee’s life. Relationship means experience. There is no meaning to a relationship that has no experiences or no reciprocation to it. Relationships with other living entities are what is important. Not a relationship with a bank balance or a relationship with a car or computer or some other dead matter. Matter is important when it is connected with a person. (She/he gave this to me.)

The more interesting the person, the more interesting the relationship and the more interesting the experience. No one is more interesting than Krishna.