Most of us are not yet pure devotees, therefore we need good association to progress in our spiritual life. If we live in the middle of a congested city with the closest devotees living more than an hour away, the opportunities for us to associate will be limited. As a result, we will spend most of our time associating with materialistic people and as a consequence, our spiritual progress may not be as swift as desired. This is an even more serious problem for the ones who have children since children need friends to play with. Devotee communities are therefore very important for our spiritual progress.
However, anyone who ever tried will attest that building successful communities is not easy. Devotees may work well together when they see each other only on the Sunday festivals, but as soon as people come closer the problems increase exponentially.
We may think that this is a problem specific to devotees, but the truth is that nowadays most people can’t be part of any type of community. Big cities are very impersonal spaces, where everyone tries his best to isolate themselves from others. Physically people live very close, but in reality, they are very distant. People can live in a building without ever talking to any of the neighbors. Unexpectedly, such environments can be very unfavorable for our spiritual practice.
How to deal with it? How to grow in spiritual lives even while living far away from other devotees and spending most of our time working in unhealthy environments and associating with materialistic people, without any realistic possibility of getting out of it?
As in other situations, we have to do the best we can with what we have. The situation we live in is frequently determined by factors that are beyond our control. We may be able to change a few things, but we may not be able to completely move away from it.
Fortunately, spiritual practice is not something that is tied to a particular external situation. One can remember Krsna even in hell, and one can surely remember Him even while living in a congested metropolis, far away from other devotees.
Reality is actually not so much dependent on where we are, but on what our attention is focused. A pure devotee can serve Krsna in the spiritual world, even while technically living in a material body, by completely focusing his attention on Krsna’s pastimes. Prahlada Maharaja was living in a quite terrible situation, living amongst the asuras and being constantly watched by his demoniac teachers, but he was not affected the least by such an atmosphere because of his absorption in Krsna and the remembrance of the instructions he received from Narada Muni.
During soviet times many devotees were imprisoned for distributing books or simply practicing Krsna Consciousness. Although living in incredibly difficult conditions, many describe this as the best period in their lives, since it was the time were they felt more strongly connected with Krsna.
Most of the time we can’t control or change our external situation, but we can still direct our thoughts. We always have the choice of thinking about Krsna, chanting His names and remembering His pastimes, or focusing our attention on something else. Regardless of our external situation, we can create our own small world, where we are always with Krsna.
By always thinking about Krsna we connect with the spiritual reality. As long as we are capable of maintaining this connection, we will be indeed always with Him. Vrindavana is not a geographical location, but a state of consciousness. One may not be able to visit Vrindavana even after living there for a whole lifetime, while another may be able to live there even while residing thousands of kilometers away.
Of course, this demands us to be in a quite high level of spiritual realization. Even though we always have a choice, the environment we live in undoubtedly affects our consciousness. It’s much easier to remember Krsna while we are amongst devotees, so what to do when it’s not possible?
Another way of creating our small world is by building a Krsna Conscious family. That’s actually what most devotees do nowadays, with varied degrees of success. One of the greatest mistakes we can make in family life is separating it from Krsna. When we exclude Krsna from our family life, it becomes just another source of illusion. Conversely, when we can bring our spiritual practice into our family life, we can make our home a small temple, and we can find inspiring devotional association among our family members.
Although a little harder, it’s also possible to connect our work with Krsna, be it by working in some activity that is directly or indirectly connected with Krsna Consciousness, or simply by working in a regular job, but having the mentality that we are doing this to maintain our family, this small group of devotees who are practicing together with us. We can also apply part of the money into other devotional activities, and thus have the mentality we are working to be able to sustain these projects. All of this is Karma-Yoga, performing our work as an offering to Krsna.
As we can see, by following these steps we can remain quite well connected with Krsna, even while living hours away from other devotees. Ultimately, being in the material world, or being with Krsna is a conscious choice. The place we live surely has some influence, but the deciding factor is how we spend our energy, and especially where we focus our attention.