Simple Living, High Thinking #17: Moving from an abstract God to a personal loving Deity

[Bhagavad Gita, Ch 4, Texts 5-11]

Time stamps & topics:

4 min, 27 sec: Summary of where we are in Chapter 4. Krishna starts to reveal himself as God.

9 min, 9 sec: How we think of God as an abstract concept. It takes more of an effort to include God as a person in your life, with personality, character, and the ability to come into your life to transform it.

14 min, 8 sec: Does the Christian conception of God align with the philosophy of an all-good God? The philosophical differences between Krishna consciousness and Christianity.

25 min, 18 sec: The importance of teachers, gurus and elders in a religion. How disciplic succession has always been an integral part of any established religion. We wouldn't have the Bible without the apostles.

31 min, 15 sec: How resistance to a spiritual teacher is an obstacle to a spiritual practice.

37 min, 48 sec: Why critical thinking for each individual is important when analyzing a religion or tradition. We must avoid blind faith foolishness and ask questions of our religious leaders. A solid tradition will be able to address any philosophical question with logic and reason. God created us with logic and reason, and it's natural that we should be able to use logica and reason to understand God.

42 min: The role that suffering can take in our lives to help us in our spiritual growth. Do we allow suffering to help us grow?

46 min, 45 sec: How important it is to work on ourselves in order to grow spiritually and absorb religious teachings. We have a misconception that spirituality should be easy and "fit into" our daily material lives.

1 hr, 7 min: How learning about Krishna and knowing who he is allows us to fall in love with him. To know him is to love him.

Tukaram Prabhu's 7/17/2020 Bhagavad Gita class: https://www.facebook.com/lagunabeachtemple/videos/293014208605311

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