Part 2: Dealing with the challenges of family life
From a platform of lust, it’s practically impossible to understand what pure love is. Most of us have to go in steps. Family life is exactly the institution that can help to progress past this stage.
« Things I Wish Someone Had Taught Me When I Started Krishna Consciousness
Part 2: Dealing with the challenges of family life
There are different types of love according to our degree of purity. In this material world, love between men and women is generally considered low on the scale because more often than not, this type of love is based on mutual satisfaction. I start a relationship with a person because I think he or she will bring me happiness, and I invest in the relationship to the proportion I expect to get a return. If at some point the relationship is not bringing me the happiness I expect, I break it and go look for something else.
Amongst the challenges many of us deal with when entering family life is what can be called the post-brahmacārī syndrome. Brahmacārī life is recommended in the Vedas as a place for learning, a time when a boy goes to live with the spiritual master to receive spiritual education that will help him navigate the challenges of life and attain the ultimate goal at the end. The goal of the brahmacārī āśrama is not so much to form a lifelong celibate, but to train a boy or young man according to his natural tendencies, giving him the best tools to fulfill his potential.
Nowadays, brahmacārī life can be conducted in the same spirit, as a process of training that helps a new devotee to find his place in life and gives him the necessary spiritual wisdom to do so. Prabhupāda even established the brahmacāriṇī āśrama, offering the same opportunity to women.
The problem is that often brahmacārī life is used merely as a means to produce lifelong celibates, leading one to insist on the path even when it is clear that he would be more suited to family life, leading to repression and unhealthy relationships with members of the opposite sex. When one finally decides to enter into family life, he has to undo the mental conditioning and return to a more balanced state, often at the expense of the sanity of the wife and children.
« Things I Wish Someone Had Taught Me When I Started Krishna Consciousness
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