When we strive for inner change through purification, it can be a long and laborious journey with many twists, turns, and even u-turns. Sometimes negative impressions within our mind may induce and seduce us, beguiling us so thoroughly that we may not even realize we have stopped moving forward and may have even started backsliding. That’s why we need to hold ourselves accountable.
If we have a close friend, guide, or relative who can act as an accountability partner, that’s excellent. But in the absence of, or in addition to, such external accountability, we need to become our own accountability partner. This is the implication of Bhagavad-Gita (06.05), which urges us to elevate ourselves with ourselves and not degrade ourselves with ourselves.
However, inner accountability can be quite challenging because neither the terrain nor the journey in the inner world are tangibly measurable. That’s why it’s helpful, possibly even essential, to begin the journey toward accountability with external countability. For example, we may want to become absorbed in the higher values and purposes of our life and not be diverted by the trivial or the sensational. It’s difficult to measure inner absorption, but we can start by measuring our outer distractions, which would naturally decrease if our inner absorption were higher. If our default distractions are surfing sports news, celebrity gossip, or politics, we could keep track of how often we visit those particular portals.
Does abstaining from those portals indicate that we have been absorbed? Not necessarily, but indulging in them is a reasonably reliable indicator that we were not absorbed. When we thus start with tangible measurables and work on changing them in a healthy direction, we can have an accessible progress chart to regularly examine. This will, at least, prevent us from the common human fallibility of presuming the positive about ourselves and assuming that we are improving when we may not be.
However, we can’t stop with just the countable. By keeping track of the countable, as we become more perceptive and more self-aware, we can then keep track of the uncountables. Some uncountable parameters that indicate our absorption may include how much we space out even without distractions from a particular device and how often we simmer with resentment or indulge in self-pity — or on a more positive note, how much we dwell on wisdom-thoughts that we may have recently encountered and how soon we redirect our thoughts toward service and devotion whenever they wander off. Self-observation centered on those parameters can reveal our subtle progress toward spiritual absorption and divine satisfaction.
By starting our self-awareness with countable parameters and then progressing towards uncountable parameters, we can develop a healthy habit of inner accountability.
Summary:
To become internally accountable, begin with what is countable before focusing on what is uncountable.
Think it over:
- Why is internal accountability important?
- What is a feasible first step in developing inner accountability, and why?
- Why is this first step not enough? How can we progress to the next step?
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06.05: One must deliver himself with the help of his mind, and not degrade himself. The mind is the friend of the conditioned soul, and his enemy as well.
Audio explanation: https://gitadaily.substack.com/p/two-steps-to-develop-inner-accountability
To know more about this verse, please click on the image
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