If our partner is someone we can’t live with, that would make our life miserable. How much greater would be our misery if we had to live with someone much longer than we live with our partner! That person is: we ourselves. While we can sometimes get some space from our partner through our professional and social lives, we can never get any space from ourselves. It’s vital, therefore, that we transform ourselves into someone we would like to be with.
Unfortunately, we all have within us many things that we don’t like about ourselves — if those things become so prominent as to define us, we will end up not liking ourselves, thereby making our life unlivable. That’s why no project in our life can be more important for our happiness and welfare than our own self-transformation.
For bringing about such self-transformation, it’s helpful to see ourselves from a perspective outside of ourselves. From such a perspective, we can treat the person we observe as someone important to us, as someone we are responsible for, and as someone who can be made responsive to us. Urging us to thus take responsibility for ourselves, the Bhagavad-gita (06.05) urges us to elevate ourselves with ourselves, not degrade ourselves with ourselves.
To further aid us in our self-transformation project, we can divide our inner world into two parts: the mind, which is the part that needs to be transformed; and the soul, which is the part that can take up the responsibility for bringing about the transformation. When we thus learn to differentiate the soul from the mind, we can situate ourselves in our spiritual identity as souls and from there, monitor and moderate our mind’s tendencies. Thus, we can note the things about our mind that we like — and strive to utilize and enhance those likable things. And we can note the things we dislike about our mind — and strive to marginalize and reduce those unlikable things.
When we persistently practice becoming a better version of ourselves, we will gradually find within ourselves a person whose association we can look forward to.
One-sentence summary:
You have to live with yourself lifelong – practice being someone you would want to live with.
Think it over:
- Why is transforming ourselves vital?
- What perspective of ourselves can help us in self-transformation? How?
- How can dividing our inner world aid in self-transformation?
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06.05: One must deliver himself with the help of his mind, and not degrade himself. The mind is the friend of the conditioned soul, and his enemy as well.
To know more about this verse, please click on the image
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