Suppose we are confronting someone. To face them effectively, we need to know our friends and our enemies. If someone we had overlooked turns out to be an enemy, we feel discouraged. Conversely, if someone we had overlooked turns out to be a friend, we feel encouraged. 

Life is like a battle wherein we confront many problems. During life’s battles, we often overlook or underestimate the enemies inside us, especially our own mind and the many impurities it contains. These inner enemies distract and delude us. At best, they prevent us from doing justice to our God-given potentials. At worst, they impel us to stupid, self-defeating actions. When we see that we are sabotaging ourselves, we may start beating ourselves and feel that we are hopeless. Instead of succumbing to such negative emotions, we need to realize that we have hidden inner enemies and learn to alertly guard ourselves against them. 

Encouraging us in our inner battle, Gita wisdom stresses that we have hidden inner friends. These include our intelligence and, most importantly, the source of all intelligence, God, Krishna. He is present in his indwelling Supersoul manifestation as our perennial friend (Bhagavad-gita 05.29). 

Gita wisdom trains us to turn toward Krishna and connect with him by practicing bhakti-yoga. When we reenvision our whole life as a service to him and stay connected with him by our service attitude, he becomes our divine gamechanger in our inner world. By his grace, our connection with him becomes the gateway for sublime wisdom to stream from him to us (10.10). That wisdom empowers us to resist the mind’s machinations and choose wisely. 

When we focus on connecting with our inner friend, not on worrying about being sabotaged by our inner enemy, we become internally encouraged, not discouraged. 

Think it over:

  • How do we have more enemies than we realize?
  • How do we have more friends than we realize?
  • How can we become internally encouraged, not discouraged? 

***

10.10: To those who are constantly devoted to serving Me with love, I give the understanding by which they can come to Me.

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