The assumption of responsibility in our inner life begins with challenging our assumption about our inner life

Our spiritual advancement centers on our taking greater responsibility for our inner life. This assumption of responsibility begins with challenging a core assumption about our inner life – the assumption that the feelings inside us are our feelings.

As long as this assumption stays unchallenged, we act on shortsighted feelings and end up doing unworthy things.

But challenging this assumption is not easy. After all, if the feelings inside us are not our feelings, then what are our feelings? Phrased more provocatively, if what is inside me is not me, then what is me?

Gita wisdom answers that the me is surely inside me, but someone else is there too – someone who’s running the show; someone who has usurped our rightful position in our inner world, relegating us to a minor and largely passive role of acquiescing to its actions. That usurper is the mind. It is like an auto-run software program that uses as default settings our past choices for worldly enjoyment.

The mind keeps us under its spell by making us misidentify with it. Due to this misidentification, we become like a novice operating a computer running a virus-infected software. The naïve user not understanding what is happening clicks yes whenever prompted, and the computer charges towards self-destruction.

Gita wisdom breaks the mind’s spell by explaining how we are different from it. The Gita's philosophical insights educate us to view the mind with suspicion, not submission. And its meditational techniques empower us to reject the mind’s harmful promptings and accept only its helpful promptings. The Bhagavad-gita (06.05) issues a clarion call to inner activism by urging us to elevate ourselves, not degrade ourselves, with the mind. By thus becoming spiritual activists, we can gradually realize our eternal blissful nature.

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