While exploring another spiritual practice years ago, I was encouraged to “choose a mantra” and begin repeating it silently whenever I had the chance. Many options from Hinduism, Buddhism and Christianity were presented, but I chose the maha-mantra (though I didn’t know that was what it was called at the time). Although it was quite long compared to some of the others, I had already been acquainted with it through the song “My Sweet Lord”, which played on the radio quite often while I was growing up. So for several years, whenever I had a free moment, I would repeat “hare krishna hare krishna krishna krishna hare hare hare rama hare rama rama rama” to myself all through the day.
Although I wasn’t ever saying it out loud, it really did get me through some difficult times. I particularly remember being hospitalized one night (the only night I’ve ever spent in a hospital so far, thank goodness), unable to sleep, surrounded by strangers, and just repeating the maha-mantra over and over again to keep myself from focusing on the pain. Years later, after I had given up the practice, I was very ill on a boat and the words just suddenly came back to me. So I repeated them over and over until I finally managed to get to a doctor.
So I’m pleased (but not very surprised) to learn in this lesson that Krishna was with me that whole time. 🙂