On the material platform, success means relying on our own ability, strength, or potential. But for spiritual success, we need to be empowered by spiritual energy. How to get it?
The blessings of the devotees are non different from spiritual power.
The real fuel of our personal spiritual advancement and the advancement and impact of our services is actually the blessings of the devotees. Their blessings and well wishes are non different to spiritual power. Therefore, the more blessings a person receives, the greater their spiritual achievement can be. In other words, we are advancing by the blessings of others, meaning the empowerment of the devotees, but those blessings don’t come or stay automatically. There is a science of how to hold those blessings!
To the degree that one is humble, to that degree they can hold the strength of the blessings invoked by their spiritual practises, services and pleasing the devotees. Krishna is so intelligent, that He creates a system whereby one can only hold spiritual empowerment to the degree that they are humble. Humble means that they consider and do whatever Guru and Krishna would like them to do in all circumstances. This is what it means to put Krishna in the centre.
In other words, the 3rd verse of Sikshastakam is actually the eternal formula for consistent spiritual empowerment. Try this: Request the blessings of the devotees in all endeavours, in a humble mood and serve them. Its not a trick. Unless the humility is genuine and consistent, the potency of the blessings won’t remain. They will run through our fingers. If its real, the potency can remain and increase. This isn’t the “be humble or you’re a bad person” idea. This is “be humble because only by humility can we can fully access the potency invoked by all of our practises and services”.
That’s one reason why we advance so much and spiritual life is often so joyful in the beginning…because at first we are humble, knowing we don’t know everything, and we truly respect all devotees. Then we become over familiar…Thats why some are able to achieve big things, and then later lose out, because we forget that the achievement was due to the empowerment of others. We start thinking that we are great, instead of recipients of great mercy. We start claiming ownership of the success, which means our humility diminishes, which then causes us to struggle, because now we have less access to that mercy which made us successful and strong in the first place!
There is a cycle of empowerment. We invoke blessing by practically doing our best in whatever service we have, and offering sincere respectful humble service to devotees. We see our advancement and the impact of our service as their mercy, not our greatness. We feel gratitude for their kindness, knowing that they made the result happen, and that we are dependent on them for our progress. This deepens the humility (as we see clearly that we are not the doer) and in that deepened humility, we are able to invoke and hold even more of their blessings! In this way, the cliches (you are not the doer/ depend on the mercy of the Vaishnavas etc) make sense.
This can be a huge paradigm shift. Noone has to be proud of what they have been used to achieve-it was the mercy of the devotees. Noone needs to feel insecure about what they have yet to achieve-it can be done by the blessings of Vaishnavas. Noone need be envious of what another person has achieved-the achievement was due to the blessings of the devotees!
Whoever is truly sincere, humble, loving and appreciative, in service to the devotees, will naturally invoke and be able to hold tremendous blessings from them, and those blessings mean great power. The most humble and blessed is the most powerful, and the proud person is the one who is actually disempowering themselves because they are constantly reducing their ability to access the blessings.
To the extent that we rely on our own ability or potential, to that extent, we close down the channel of spiritual potency that we can access. In other words, placing ourselves in the centre severely minimises or slows down what we can achieve in spiritual life. Prabhupada and all the great Vaishnavas knew this, but they didn’t intend it to be a secret known only to a few exceptional people-they wanted it known to all devotees!
Now, imagine this. In a community where everyone is involved in genuine sincere loving Vaishnava dealings, those devotees will continuously be invoking the blessings and well wishes of each other by their loving service, which will in turn generate immense spiritual potency, as a side effect of their loving dealings. This can in turn attract even more divine mercy and intervention.
If we remain conscious of this understanding, and request and invoke blessings constantly, holding the potency by humility, our spiritual life will go through the roof, fuelled now by the mercy of others, rather than our limited efforts alone!. Try this for a month, and don’t forget to put your seatbelt on – our spiritual life will never be the same.
