| Living Consciously: Outgrowing the Traps of Lust, Anger, and Ego | | |  Lord Krishna said, “The pleasures which are born of sense-contacts are certainly a source of suffering only. They have a beginning and an end. Arjuna, it is for this reason that a wise man does not indulge in them”.
What is Lord Krishna trying to say? What message does He wants us to take from this to navigate and improve our lives, to attain true bliss, to move closer toward our ultimate goal - the God Home where all the God’s are live today, including Rama, Krishna, Buddha, Mahavira, Jesus, Muhammad, Kabir, Farid, Guru Nanak Dev, Ramakrishna Paramhamsa, Sai Baba, Meera Bai, Sehjo Bai, Lalla Bai, Lao Tzu, Socrates, Bulleh Shah, Rumi and so many others?
His message to us is to uplift our life toward God, and not toward the temporary physical body. God never tells us about this physical body. Because in a physical body, the senses and their operations are automatic.However, reaching the God Home, and returning to the soul is not automatic. It requires conscious, manual effort - our own dedication - and those efforts bring blessings from God. The more you walk toward God, the more God moves toward you. Along the way, you will inevitably meet God. You cannot get to the destination on your own; rather, it is the destination which will reach out to you when you have love - a deep, profound love, which is called bhakti, or total devotion towards the One, the Creator, the God who made you, who sustains you and who will ultimately destroy you. If you do not return to the God Home, your true origin, then life in the human form will be life lived like an animal, for animals also give birth and die.
It is far better to make this life successful by achieving your objective, the God. It is only in human birth we have been given the rare opportunity to realise God. If you continue to indulge in worldly things - relying only on what you can see, hear, taste, touch or speak - these five senses will never lead you to God. The eyes merely see , the ears hear , the tongue tastes , and the nose smells. All these five senses are connected to the outer, materialistic, the mortal world. which are automatically generated by the physical body itself. You do not need to do any conscious effort to create them. No one in the world can claim that they created lust through their own efforts. Lust arises on its own, generated automatically by the body. You do not have to do anything to produce it. Similarly, you do not actively create anger - it too surfaces automatically. You do not create greed; it surfaces automatically by looking at external things, other people. Attachment grows automatically through your relationships and family. And when you have all of these, ego naturally follows. These five inner adversaries - lust, anger, greed, attachment and ego - arise automatically, connected with your eyes, ears, nose, tongue and hands.
These five senses are designed to pull you toward the outside world, to experience and enjoy nature, the creation of the Creator. In fact, if you are not enjoying the external creation, it means that something within is misaligned. It is just like a car displaying a warning light when the engine has a problem; it requires immediate attention at the workshop. Similarly, when you feel sadness, disturbance, shock, or tension, it is a warning signal that your inner ‘engine’ is faulty. This means you have brought the senses, the external materialistic world, and those faces inside your mind. You must immediately rid your inner consciousness of all these five adversaries, for pure consciousness is God. Play outside, but do not bring the play inside. Using the senses to play in the external world, is the beauty of the outside nature. Enjoy the beauty of nature, the colors of the wo… |
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