The world contains many power-hungry people who ruthlessly pursue their selfish, even devilish, agendas. To serve their own ends, they have no compunctions about manipulating others. For instance, politicians may use ideology, be it religious or secular, as a tool to incite fear, resentment or hatred in people. Being this incited, even normal, decent people can do terrible things especially when they are infected by mob mania.
Is there a way to protect people, ourselves included, from the machinations of those who seek to incite? Yes, there is: by developing insight. Broadly, insight refers to the vision that comes by seeing beyond what is visible to what is essential. Specifically, in the context under discussion, insight refers to our ability to see beyond the emotions that arise within us to the primary source of those emotions: are they coming primarily from inside or from outside? That is, are those emotions authentic expressions of our needs, interests and concerns? Or are they simply our unprocessed default reactions to the provocative, and often deceptive, stimuli bombarded upon us by people?
For aiding us in developing such insight, the Bhagavad-gita is a time-honored guidebook. It helps us realize our core spiritual identity as souls who exist beyond the world’s situations and the mind’s emotions (13.30). When we ground ourselves in our spirituality, we become empowered to not act solely by the impelling of our emotions, but rather to act with non-attachment and discernment, even in provocative situations.
Summary:
Those who lack insight are easy to incite — seek the insight to know whether our emotions arise from inside or from outside.
Think it over:
- Why may some people want to incite others?
- What is insight?
- How can insight help us protect ourselves from manipulative people?
Audio explanation of the article is here:
https://gitadaily.substack.com/p/no-to-incite-yes-to-insight
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13.30 One who can see that all activities are performed by the body, which is created of material nature, and sees that the self does nothing, actually sees.
To know more about this verse, please click on the image
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