Reach deep into your core being, searching, probing. How's the feel, the texture? Carefully, honestly note the lumps, indeed maybe the chunks.
Most likely we're blaming someone for something that happened in our life—or didn't happen.
You see, the blame-game, so popular though so unsatisfying, hardens areas of the heart. And loading guilt-trips on others will backfire on us in the same way. The stonelike lumps in the heart affect not only our material life but our spiritual advancement too.
Amazingly, even devotees, though not easily admitting, burying it in the heart, aim blame at Krishna.
"Why did He let this happen to me? Why didn't He let me have this, or that?" Even we are more direct, charging (devotionally, of course): "Why did He do this to me?"
The demons outright accuse Krishna maliciously. Consider Sishupala and Dantavakra, for example, who Narada Muni says, as infants were blaspheming Krishna even before they could talk.
As they grew, so did the venom of their accusations against Him. Sishupala, especially ablaze after Krishna stole Rukmini from his marriage ceremony, denounced Krishna's activities as creating mass havoc in society. He consummated his last harangue by declaring Krishna a low-class, garbage-hunting bird, a crow.
Dantavakra's madness peaked after Krishna liquidated his friend Shalva.
"Krishna, You're my cousin, and I shouldn't have to kill You. But You killed my friend Shalva, and so now, because I always pay my debts to my friends, I have to eliminate You, a boil needing surgical removal."
Our own accusations against Krishna, veiled, not demoniac, generally owe to material disappointment and frustration in bhakti. We may subtlety maintain that our material desires and conceptions weren't handled [by Krishna] the way we thought best. Or we are bewildered that, in spite of our "undeniable goodness," nevertheless bad things still came our way. "We are devotees—why did [Krishna let] material nature show us its vicious side."
Especially: "After all the service I tried to do for Krishna, why did [He let] devotees misunderstand me?'
Accusing Krishna produces heart-stones that impede our bhakti flow. Our chanting and practical service gradually become problematic, sputtering, even flickering out, but we don't know why.
Krishna really deserves our guilt-trips?
"I am completely under the control of My devotees. Indeed, I am not at all independent. Because My devotees are completely devoid of material desires, I sit only within the cores of their hearts. What to speak of My devotee, even those who are devotees of My devotee are very dear to Me." (S. bhag. 9.4.63)
Krishna has neglected or maltreated His devotee? Promise me today you'll search out any such notions in your bhakti heart and vanish them. Minus these stones, our spiritual life will go so much better, when we no longer even just subconsciously or indirectly accuse Krishna of shortcomings.
"O best of the brahmanas, without saintly persons for whom I am the only destination, I do not desire to enjoy My transcendental bliss and My supreme opulences." (9.4.64)
Dissolve the lumps clogging the heart, by removing Krishna from the blame list. Never mind if you don't understand completely why some challenge targeted you in the past, or even now. Though we may never fully comprehend the whys and wherefores of a difficult passage in our life, nevertheless—winter, spring, summer, or fall— we want our service to Krishna marching on, dancing on, free of bhakti blockages.
HH Devamrita Swami
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