Monday Morning Greetings 2026 #4 – How to Feel Bad About Yourself!

I’m a hopeless optimist. A friend once joked: “You’re so optimistic that you could be falling out of the Empire State Building and on the fiftieth floor say, ‘So far so good.’ We laughed, but it is no joke.

A dose of pessimism, however, is essential for bhakti. I think I am realizing that increasingly with age. Hopefully my unhinged optimism is cracking. How?

The pain of purification

Devotion gradually cleans the heart and helps you see yourself, warts and all. When the mind is cluttered with desires it is often hard to notice our faults, like not noticing something out of place in a cluttered room. Finally, a glimpse of reality: How many lifetimes have I been parading as Pauṇḍraka?[1] Can I bear the pain of purification?

The pain of understanding God

How painful it is to conform one’s way of living to a truth higher than one’s whims and attachments. The Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam informs me page after page, “You are not up to the mark. Change!” Can I bear the pain of transformation?

The pain of realization

I not only understand a truth; I see a truth — a realization. That realization is so clear that I kick myself. “It’s so simple. How in the world did I miss that?” I am pained to have lived in ignorance. As more realizations inevitably come can I bear the pain of self-realization?

The pain of regret

Bhakti begins with regretting our previous life of selfishness separate from God and then surrendering to God. That first stage of spiritual commitment is called tapa, or remorse. Tapa also means heat. Such remorse is heat because it challenges or burns our false sense of superiority. “No, I am not wrong! It is not my fault! It wasn’t a mistake!” Am I strong enough to resist such rationalization and enter the path of devotion? Admit it; regret it. Let that acknowledgment burn your charade. Can I bear the heat of remorse?

The pain of opening the heart

The essence of the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam is to chant the name of our beloved Lord without attachment or inhibition. Such simple-hearted sincerity is painful because the proud fear such vulnerability. Chanting means to open that heart fully and beg for the mercy of the holy name. Why the resistance? Can I bear the pain of opening my heart in devotion?

The joy of pain

The world is humbling, which is painful, but it doesn’t have to be ordinary suffering. If we can turn it into the soul’s aching for connection to God, it can be the birth of devotion and a source of the greatest joy.

And that’s how to feel bad about yourself on the path of Bhakti!

[1] A foolish king described in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam who paraded around in the dress of Krishna and declared himself God but was later killed by Krishna.