The Music of Krishna Living Within Me

---Ellaeenah JadeFire

For me, Krishna Consciousness is not something distant, difficult, or wrapped in complicated spiritual language. It is something very alive. Very intimate. Very human. When I think of Krishna, I do not first think of philosophy. I think of life. I think of colour, laughter, music, love, mischief, beauty, play, tenderness, wisdom, courage, friendship, and that mysterious sparkle that sometimes makes being alive feel like a miracle.

Krishna is the child within me. The part of me that can still wonder. The part that can still be delighted by something small. A flower opening. Rain on the earth. A song I love. A ridiculous joke. A moment of affection. The moon looking particularly beautiful for no reason at all. That childlike place inside that does not need everything to be useful or serious, that can simply enjoy what is here.

Krishna is also the funster in me. The one who wants to laugh loudly sometimes, be a little silly, tease, play, dance, and not make such a huge drama out of everything. There is mischief in Krishna. There is cheekiness. There is something wonderfully irreverent about him that reminds me that spirituality does not always have to sit with a straight back and a grave face. Sometimes spirituality can laugh. Sometimes it can steal butter. Sometimes it can dance. Sometimes it can flirt.

And I love that.

Because somewhere along the way, many of us have made spirituality terribly serious. We begin to think that if something is deep, it must also be solemn. But Krishna does not feel like that to me. Krishna feels vibrant. Alive. Full of rasa. He reminds me that joy itself can be sacred. Pleasure can be sacred. Friendship can be sacred. Music can be sacred. Beauty can be sacred. Laughter can be sacred. There is nothing unspiritual about enjoying life.

Krishna is also the love within me. Not only romantic love, but that deeper capacity to meet another person with openness, warmth, delight and tenderness. The part that says, “How beautiful that you are here,” rather than, “How can I make you behave in a way that makes me feel secure?”

And perhaps that is where love begins to change.

Because we human beings do strange things with love. We love, and then we become afraid. We hold tighter. We want reassurance. We want guarantees. We want the other person to stay the same. We want them to love us in exactly the way we need. Without even realizing it, love can turn into possession.

Krishna reminds me of another possibility. To love deeply and still leave space. To be intimate without becoming controlling. To care without trying to own. To enjoy another person without turning them into the answer to every emptiness within us.

Krishna is also the lover in me. The part that responds to beauty. The part that longs to merge with life, to adore, to be touched, to be moved. There is something about Krishna that makes love feel bigger than relationship alone. Love becomes a way of meeting life itself. A way of saying yes. A way of being touched by existence.

And yet, with all this playfulness, sweetness, mischief and love, Krishna is also wisdom. Deep wisdom.

That is what makes him so complete for me.

The Krishna of the flute is also the Krishna of the Bhagavad Gita.

And what I love most about the Gita is that its wisdom is not some high-funda spiritual teaching that sounds impressive but feels impossible to live. It is not asking us to become saints sitting on mountaintops. It is speaking about the life we actually live.

Confusion.

Fear.

Relationships.

Responsibility.

Difficult decisions.

Attachment.

Disappointment.

Action.

Loss.

Duty.

Choice.

Letting go

The Gita begins with a man who does not know what to do. Arjuna is not sitting peacefully in meditation. He is overwhelmed. His heart is heavy. His mind is confused. He is torn between love, responsibility, fear and duty. And Krishna meets him there.

I find that incredibly moving. Krishna does not wait for Arjuna to become calm, wise and spiritual before speaking to him. He meets him in his confusion.

That tells me something very important.

We do not have to wait until life becomes peaceful to become conscious. Consciousness is for the messy moments too. It is for the moment when someone hurts us. The moment when we are afraid. The moment when we are jealous. The moment when we do not know whether to stay or leave. The moment when we want something desperately. The moment when we are confused about what is right.

Krishna Consciousness, for me, is not about escaping those moments. It is about bringing awareness into them.

Can I stop for a moment and see clearly?

Can I remember who I am beneath the fear?

Can I ask myself what is truly mine to do?

And can I then, do it?

This is what feels so practical about Krishna’s wisdom. It does not tell us to do nothing. It does not tell us to withdraw from life. It tells us to act. Do what is yours to do. Do it sincerely. Give it everything you have. But do not make your entire inner peace dependent on what happens next.

This is such a simple truth, and yet it can change everything.

How much of our suffering comes from that hidden sentence inside us: “This must happen my way.”

This relationship must work.

This person must understand me.

This project must succeed.

This plan must happen.

This person must stay.

This result must come.

And when life does not agree with us, we collapse.

Krishna seems to say, care deeply, yes. Act fully, yes. Love wholeheartedly, yes. But do not hand over your entire inner stability to the outcome.

There is freedom in that. Not indifference. Freedom.

The freedom to participate without being swallowed by what we participate in.

The freedom to enjoy without clinging.

The freedom to love without possessing.

The freedom to act without trying to control every consequence.

The freedom to feel pain without believing that pain is all there is.

This, to me, is Krishna Consciousness… not becoming detached from life in some cold way, but becoming large enough to hold all of life within us.  And perhaps that inner spaciousness is why I am so drawn to the image of Krishna’s flute. A flute can make music only because there is space within it. It allows the breath to pass through.

Sometimes I feel we are like that too. We fill ourselves with so much… our fears, our plans, our opinions, our hurts, our expectations, our need to control what happens next. There is hardly any room left for life to move through us. For me, Krishna Consciousness is about creating that little bit of space within. Enough space for love to move through. For wisdom to move through. For courage, joy, creativity and the right response to arise without being crowded out by all our inner noise.

And then, just as breath becomes music through the flute, perhaps something larger can begin to express itself through us too.

I also feel that Krishna Consciousness changes the way we see the sacred. At first, maybe Krishna is somewhere special. In a temple. In a murti. In prayer. In a bhajan. In a story. In scripture.

But then slowly, something begins to happen. You start seeing Krishna everywhere. In someone’s kindness. In a friend who makes you laugh. In the smell of rain. In music. In a tree moving in the wind. In a child who is completely absorbed in play. In your own laughter. In a difficult experience that teaches you something. In the person who challenges you. In a moment of beauty that suddenly opens your heart.

And then the sacred is no longer confined to a temple, a prayer or a spiritual moment. Life itself begins to feel sacred.

That is what I find so beautiful about Krishna. He does not ask me to become less human in order to become spiritual. He asks me to become more fully alive; to love without owning, to enjoy without clinging, to act when action is needed, to let go when holding on becomes suffering, to stay playful without becoming careless, and wise without becoming heavy.

Perhaps that is why Krishna feels so close to me. He is not only someone I deeply respect. He is something I recognize within myself: the child, the lover, the laughter, the mischief, the courage, the wisdom, the music, the part of me that still wants to dance with life.

And perhaps Krishna Consciousness is simply this: to become more awake to all of that within us, and to let it enter the way we live. To meet life with an open heart. To keep some wonder alive. To care deeply without gripping too tightly. To do what is ours to do, and still leave room for life to surprise us.

Because perhaps life was never meant only to be managed, endured or understood.

Perhaps it was also meant to be loved.

And lived.