The Middle Path

This week we really began to see that the wisdom of the Gita can have a real practical effect on our everyday consciousness. Consider this: everyday we have some kind of success, and some kind of failure. That's not news to any of us, but we considered something perhaps new and fresh; a different kind of reaction to the waves and oscillations of our daily experiences. The Gita teaches us to abandon all attachment to success and failure, and to remain equipoised. We discusses how this seemingly complex instruction from Krishna is something we can perhaps easily grasp. We don't want to dive into our failures of course, but we also don't want to dive too far into our successes. There is no doubt success and failure will come, and there's no doubt we'll have some definite feelings to these experiences, but the wisdom of the Gita helps us to find a deeper perspective on it all. To begin to live as a spiritual person, we have to learn to see the deeper side of things, and keeping an equal mentality, knowing that our successes and failures aren't permanent, is a wonderful initial way to begin to see yourself as something more than just a temporary body and mind.

Ultimately, dwelling too much on success and failure creates a selfish mentality, which prevents us from finding the selfless mentality that leads to a real spiritual sense of who we are. Actually, by working towards the spiritual platform, we find real success, and transcend mundane failure, by beginning to work on the deeper, eternal platform.