Suppose firefighters rush to a disaster site and start fighting a huge fire. But among their ranks is an untrained firefighter who panics, comes in everyone’s way and unwittingly spreads the fire. The firefighters will need to calm or stop their bungling colleague before they can douse the fire.

Sometimes, problems break out in our life, akin to a sudden fire. For solving serious problems, all our resources, especially our body, mind and intelligence, need to work cooperatively. But our mind overreacts, becoming like a panic-stricken firefighter. Its ham-handed ideas, nervous breakdowns and foolish flights make bad things worse.

At the Bhagavad-gita’s start, when Arjuna was faced with his life’s biggest battle, his mind started reeling (01.30). He recognized that as long as his mind was fomenting trouble within, whatever he did would only worsen things without. So, even though the war was about to begin, he took time out to pacify his troubled mind by seeking Gita wisdom. Only then did he fight – and fought heroically and victoriously.

We too may face problems that make our mind reel. Firefighters can take a bungling colleague out of the way, but we can’t do that with the mind. Why not? Because the mind is the essential channel for our consciousness to flow towards external things, including the things that need fixing. We need to take the mind along the way, by calming it with spiritual wisdom.

What if we feel we don’t have time for any spiritual stuff? We can change that feeling by contemplating that we are actually saving time. If we rush into the problem without a clear mind, we will only worsen things, eventually needing more time to fix them.

By investing quality time to straighten our mind, we will be better equipped to solve problems.

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