Spiritual literature often talk about the inner war in the hearts of seekers: the war between our higher self and our lower self – between the part of us that wants to be noble, selfless, spiritual and the part of us that wants to be impulsive, selfish, materialistic.

Yet this spiritual war is not the only war that wages inside us. The Bhagavad-gita (14.10) mentions that the three modes battle for supremacy within our consciousness. During this war between the modes, we often find ourselves driven by different material desires. Sometimes, we may feel like working hard to achieve something extraordinary. At other times, we may feel like enjoying worldly pleasures here-and-now. Thus, we face a war between our inner enjoyer and our inner achiever. This inner war may not be spiritual because both warring desires are largely material. The desire to be an enjoyer may come from our mind and the desire to be an achiever, from our ego. Both the mind and the ego are parts of our subtle material body, which often acts as a smokescreen obscuring our perception of spiritual reality.

Raising our vision to that spiritual reality, Gita wisdom explains that we are meant to be cooperators. The Gita (15.07) states that we are parts of Krishna and are meant to lovingly harmonize our will with his will, as did Arjuna at the end of the Gita (18.73). Aspiring to cooperate with Krishna connects us with his omnipotence, thereby empowering our higher side to overcome our lower side. And that connectedness also gives us the inner intelligence (10.10) to harmonize with our devotional aspirations our desires to enjoy or achieve, by appropriately rejecting, purifying or channeling them.

By thus striving to be cooperators, we can win all our inner battles, both material and spiritual.

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