The Bhagavad Gita seeks to understand who we are.
One of the biggest problems in this world is that we don't understand who we truly are.
Are we even the same person that we were when we first started to listen to this talk?
Are we the same person that we were ten years ago?
Will we be the same person twenty years from now?
Not only will our physical body change and is constantly changing,
But how we view the world changes,
Our mental habits and patterns change,
Our likes and dislikes are constantly changing.
So the question becomes who are we?
Are we these individual identities that we are displaying on a daily basis?
Or are we something eternal?
This is the main issue that Arjuna had on the battlefield.
He had a misunderstanding of his true nature.
He identified himself as this warrior fighting this battle.
But Krishna reminds him that in fact he is the Atma or the eternal self,
Which has found itself in this particular situation.
And so all Arjuna has to do is remember that he is this eternal Atma.
And in that remembrance,
Peace and clarity and guidance will come to him about how to do his duty properly.
We're all bound by our duty.
We all have things that we must do in this world.
Nobody can escape from it.
But the Bhagavad Gita teaches us to realize our true natures.
We can find more clarity about the duty that we have been given.
Krishna starts to speak about the nature of the soul.
And he says in chapter 2,
Verse 20,
The self is never born and it never dies.
It has always existed and will never cease to exist.
It is unborn,
Eternal,
Everlasting and most ancient.
It is not killed when the body is slain.
And he continues in chapter 2,
Verse 22,
As a person casts off worn out garments and puts on new ones,
So does the embodied self cast off its worn out bodies and enter into new ones.
Krishna here is reminding Arjuna that the soul remains untouched.
The soul goes from body to body,
Life after life,
Seeking experiences.
But the soul itself never is born and never dies.
It is always eternal and will never cease to exist.
One of the main reasons why we don't understand our true nature is because we give all of the value to the ego.
And the ego makes us attach ourselves to this world.
It makes us attach to things of this world.
It makes us operate from the mind.
And the mind is constantly running.
That's why we call it the monkey mind.
It is constantly running after the pleasures of the world.
But when we make that internal journey from the mind to the heart,
In that state we can truly find this peace and this purpose.
And the state of the heart is where we realize our true self.
So every day we must strive to do our meditation practices,
Strive to analyze ourselves,
Strive to cultivate this higher consciousness.
And the more and more we drop into the heart and the more and more we realize our true nature,
Which is the Atma,
We will find peace and happiness in this life.
So with that,
Much love,
Take care.
