Suppose a patient loses faith in the potential of any treatment to cure them. They will become sicker, suffer more and soon die.

What applies to our physical health applies much more to our moral and spiritual health. Why much more? Because when we become morally and spiritually sick, we can hurt not just ourselves but also others.  

Let’s backtrack to better understand this inner dynamic. 

Suppose we resolve to improve ourselves. Unfortunately, some inner self-destructive force thwarts our resolutions. Being repeatedly frustrated, we give up and start justifying our status quo: “This is just the way I am.”

However, even if we stop trying to improve, the inner self-destructive force won’t let us stay where we are; it will increase its attack and drag us down to actions of depravity and even brutality. The Bhagavad-gita (03.37) states that the inner self-destructive force is voracious: it devours everything we hold sacred. 

Giving in to this force, when we lose faith in our potential to improve, we unwittingly embrace cowardice and malice. Cowardice because we are chickening out of an inner war just because we have been bruised and battered earlier. Malice because this inner enemy will make us deride, even destroy, anyone who triggers our resentment: “When my life is so bad, why should their life be so good?”

To avoid becoming cowardly or malicious, we need to unsentimentally understand that in our inner war, we can’t stay on neutral ground. Thankfully, Gita wisdom assures that our potential to improve is never lost. It is intrinsic to who we are: pure souls, parts of the all-pure source of everything. 

When we resolve to resist our inner enemy and seek to connect with the all-pure divine, he empowers us to improve ourselves. 

 

Think it over:

  • Why can’t we maintain the status quo in the inner war?
  • How does losing faith in our potential lead to cowardice and malice?
  • Why is our potential to improve never lost?

 

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03.37  The Supreme Personality of Godhead said: It is lust only, Arjuna, which is born of contact with the material mode of passion and later transformed into wrath, and which is the all-devouring sinful enemy of this world.


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