Just Like a Little Girl

The more you serve Krsna, the more He will give you intelligence. ~Srila Prabhupada

Sometimes I can really relate to how Srila Prabhupada said that women are like twelve-year-old children. As a soul in a female body, my ability to analyze things in the proper perspective (Srila Prabhupada's definition of intelligence) can sometimes be compromised because of my emotions, my relationships, and my attachments to the same. Sometimes, I have seen that my emotions override my ability to analyze situations objectively, thus jeopardizing my ability to make wise decisions that are good for everyone involved.

Of course that's not to say that I don't make good decisions. I often do. But when a number of options are there, my choice will often be based on what will preserve and maintain the integrity of relationships and how everybody feels about the issue at hand, whereas my husband looks at the bigger picture and chooses according to the probable outcome and what would ultimately be beneficial in the long run for everyone involved. That's why in our family life, we've always operated according to Krsna's plan for families. Our Guru Maharaja, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada taught us that Krsna (a name for God, pronounced "Krishna") bestows upon the husband / father the post of leadership. The leader of the family is enjoined to protect, provide for and guide his wife and children. He has the duty to make the final decisions in the family, because he has a body, a brain and a psyche that is built for that. Krsna has arranged it that way. Men have emotions, but their decisions are generally not governed by their emotions. So, after hearing from our Spiritual Master, that's what we understood to be God's plan for families.

I love my children and still feel protective of them, even though they are all grown up well into adulthood. Women love and protect their babies. Men also love and protect their babies. But the father plants the seed, whereas the mother grows the baby inside her body and nurtures it for many years after it comes out. Therefore as mothers, our emotions are tied to the process of growing and nurturing our children. We depend on our husbands to plant the seeds that will give us children, and to protect and provide for our children as they grow into adulthood, but it is us wives and mothers who are built to handle the emotional side of family life. Successful families require that the wife / mother bear the emotional attachments to the husband and children in order to make family life work well.

Our female bodies are built to conceive and birth babies and grow them into adults, so naturally, we experience strong emotional ties to our children and to our husbands who give us those children. As wives and mothers, we are called upon to understand the emotional needs of our husbands as well as our children so that we can take care of them nicely and serve them properly. We need to be able to feel the feelings of our family members in order to carry out our motherly and wifely duties expertly. But sometimes, due to our tendency to put relationships and the emotions which are tied to those relationships first, we don’t always have the best judgment about what to do or say in certain situations, and thus we can easily make faulty decisions and mistakes and get ourselves or others into difficulties due to our naivete.

Back to my original thought of why I can relate to the description of myself as a twelve-year-old child. Because we women are in general governed more by emotional attachments than by objective intelligence, some of the fears we experienced in childhood can linger in our psyche even as we grow into womanhood. I still freeze up with fear when I hear married couples argue, because it brings back the sickening memories of the terror I felt as a child when my parents would fight. I remember also that I used to have nightmares as a child about being expected to do more than I was capable of doing. When I was a kid, especially in college, teachers would sometimes give me assignments that were very difficult to complete. Consequently, as a student, I would sometimes feel like giving up--"throwing in the towel"--if an assignment was too hard for me to do. To this day, if someone asks me to do something that for me is very difficult, I find that if I try and fail, I can easily find myself on the verge of a meltdown.

I was always afraid of grown-ups when I was little. As a soul in a grown-up woman's body, I have noticed that I still feel afraid of other grown-ups, even though I am also an adult! I am also very sensitive to noises. I am afraid of loud, sharp sounds such as the barking of dogs, the slamming of doors and the honking of horns, and sounds that I don't recognize as familiar in the nighttime.  

When I look in the mirror, I see that my body is almost seventy years old, and yet I often think and act rather like a child. Even though I consider myself a pretty capable person when it comes to getting things done, I often feel scared and insecure and cry just as I did when I was little, sometimes for reasons I can't explain.

Last night, as I lay down to take rest, a vision came to me. I saw myself as a twelve-year-old girl. The vision was precisely accurate. My face was just as it was at that age, my brown hair was loosely curled and hung just below my shoulders, my school uniform was a navy-and-green plaid jumper over a white blouse, just as it had been when I was at St. Philomena’s Elementary School in Denver, Colorado. In the vision, I was slightly smiling. I looked like a fairly happy little girl. I wondered why Krsna had given me that vision.

Just now, I had a realization. I understood why Krsna showed me a picture of my body when it was twelve years old. By giving me that vision of the physical form I (the soul) was encaged in at the age of twelve, Krsna showed me that twelve years old is the age level that my subtle body is still at, although my gross body is almost seventy years old. And it makes sense, because when I think about it, I see how I am still so governed by childhood emotions such as fear, impulsive anger, impatience and shyness that although I can perform my daily duties fairly steadily and well, if I make a mistake or fail at what I'm trying to do, or if the planets are lined up to create some negative influence on my mind, I can sometimes burst into tears and run to hide just like a little child. Silly as it may seem, I am afraid to call people on the phone. I am sometimes averse to crowds. I am afraid of being seen. Sometimes when I am out walking on the street, I try to hide from other people. I often lie awake at night fretting about how I've unintentionally hurt or offended those I love and care about. When someone questions me about something, if I am at a loss for words, I sometimes start to cry because of not being able to explain myself.

So I am a mixture of both adult and child, with many of the same fears I had as a child. I am much like the heroine in Bob Dylan’s old song, “Just Like a Woman.” He sings about a lady who does so many things just like a woman does, “but she breaks just like a little girl.”

For me, as well as for anyone in a material body, Srila Prabhupada taught that the ultimate solution to this duality of feeling the emotions of a child while trapped inside the body of an adult is to stop taking birth in material bodies again and again. To escape from this cycle of samsara, of repeated birth and death, requires a realized understanding that we are not these bodies that we are trapped in, but that we are instead the eternal, spiritual, conscious soul inside. This is called self-realization and is the goal of human life. Self-realization is achieved by chanting the holy names of God and by constantly rendering Him service with love.

Although one can chant any bona fide name of God and become self-realized, the most highly recommended chant, or mantra, for this current day and age is the chanting of the maha-mantra--Hare Krsna Hare Krsna Krsna Krsna Hare Hare / Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare. Maha means great and mantra means a sound vibration that cleanses the heart of desires and tendencies to perform actions that are not pleasing to God. This sound vibration of Hare Krsna lifts us out of our temporary material identity which is based on the false assumption that we are the body that we inhabit. The material body is a combination of both gross (earth, water, fire, air and ether) and subtle (mind, intelligence and false ego) elements. Chanting and hearing the maha-mantra gradually clears and uplifts our consciousness so that we can ultimately understand that we are not this body, but that we are the soul inside, an eternal servant of Krsna, from the spiritual sky--a blissful place far beyond this temporary material realm which is fraught with miseries (such as negative emotions).

The process of rendering loving service to Krsna is practically accomplished by offering everything we do and say and think and perceive to Krsna as an expression of our desire to serve Him and love Him. Coupled with the chanting of His holy names, practical devotional service is a must for anyone who is a serious student seeking self-realization, and can be easily implemented if one desires to transcend the cycle of repeated birth and death.

During the process of purification that takes place through the chanting of Hare Krsna and offering everything to the Lord as my practical daily service to Him, I sometimes lapse back into material consciousness, identifying with my temporary material body and mind. What I like to do when this happens is to offer my temporary material emotions to Lord Krsna, asking Him to kindly accept them and purify my heart so that my dormant love for Him can be uncovered and revealed. I find this a very helpful exercise.

"My Dear Lord Krsna, if You so desire, kindly accept this temporary material emotion (name the emotion) that I am experiencing, as right now it's all I have to offer You. My love for You is covered by layers of emotions that are generated by my identifying with this material body and mind, so although I would like to offer You my love right now, my true, eternal feeling of love for You is currently hidden under temporary material upadhis (designations), desires and emotions. So until my heart is cleansed and my love for You is reawakened, please accept this temporary, material emotion that I am presently feeling in my heart."

Krsna says in Bhagavad-gita (9.26) that if we offer Him a leaf, a flower, fruit or water with love and devotion, He will happily accept our offering of love. I find that offering Krsna a leaf (especially a Tulasi leaf), a fragrant flower, some delicious, ripe fruit and some fresh water is a very sweet and purifying meditation. We can offer Him not only these items listed in the Bhagavad-gita, but also other gifts that please Him, such as vegetarian foods cooked with love and devotion. We can even offer Him our emotions.

Both positive and negative material emotions can bind us to the material world. If our subtle body is filled with such emotions at the time of death, it can carry us to another material body, rife with the problems of birth, disease, old age and death. Better to stop the vicious cycle of repeated birth and death by offering Krsna all of our material emotions, whether negative or positive, so that we can gradually transform these emotions into spiritual emotions for Krsna's pleasure. That's what the human form of life is meant for achieving.

I like this new discovery of offering Krsna my feelings. It's helping me to learn how to take refuge in Krsna and to understand that my emotions are ultimately for His pleasure. He is Sharanya-pala, "the refuge of those who are seeking shelter." Whether it's gratitude, compassion, shyness, apathy, laziness, anger, guilt, grief, sorrow, joy, contentment, depression, shame, remorse, regret, happiness, excitement, admiration, affection, satisfaction, pride, fear, hope, hopelessness, gregariousness, reclusion, loneliness, insecurity or any other emotion, this practice of offering to the Lord what's currently in my heart is helping me to grow closer to Krsna by encouraging me to relate to Him in a personal way as my Supreme Shelter--my very best, most confidential Friend--and to recognize and deal with my emotions in a mature and devotional way.