Manifesting Our Individuality Should Fill Our Heart Not Empty Our Pocket Gita 16.16

Transcript

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Manifesting our individuality should fill our heart and not empty our pocket. We live in an individualistic age where everybody wants to be myself, to be and this desire, this contemporary cultural desire is also fueled and fanned by the corporate driven ad industry which markets a number of consumer products that are supposed to help people express themselves.
Wear this, wear these clothes, buy this car, use this phone and in this way you will be able to express yourself. However, when people believe such things and start doing, start buying the necessary, buying the products being advertised, the result is that their pockets become empty and you may try one hairstyle, another shoe style, another dress style and in that way you may think that our individuality is something that is to be discovered by trying on various things. However, our individuality is centrally not what we look like, but it is who we are internally and of course sometimes we may have to adjust our appearance so that it is in harmony with our substance.
But the most important thing is that we understand and express the substance of who we are and that requires more an inner search than an outer search. Not that we search in shopping malls and on Amazon shops and various advertisements to find out what it is that will express who we are, but rather we withdraw from the world by some time-honored spiritual processes that help us not only turn inward but to see inward. The Bhagavad Gita gives us spiritual knowledge that introduces us to the topology of our inner world and then it gives the processes of yoga by which we can get in a torchlight and explore that inner territory and ultimately thereafter when we understand who we are, what our strengths are, what our interests are, what our talents are and conversely what our weaknesses or limitations are, then self-understanding can be the foundation of authentic self-expression and thus for example if somebody is a painter and then when they understand themselves and then they do things which are in harmony with their basic nature, that’s when they feel fulfilled, their heart feels full, otherwise they may just try on a dozen things or a million things to try to see what makes them feel who they are and Krishna says this simply puts us in illusion.
The Bhagavad Gita, 1616, it is said that अनेक चित्त विभ्रान्त, मोह जाल समावृतः प्रसप्तः काम भोगेशु, पतंति नरकेशु जवु, अनेक चित्त विभ्रान्त, that our consciousness gets pulled in various directions, मोह जाल समावृतः, and one becomes consumed by mohajal, by the force of, one becomes trapped in the net of illusion, प्रसप्तः काम भोगेशु, and our desires get fueled and we become dragged by those desires and life becomes hellish, पतंति नरकेशु जवु, So if we don’t want this to happen, then it is our responsibility to not get carried away by outer propaganda, but to work internally for self-understanding and self-expression. Ultimately, at innermost level, beyond the particular interests, abilities, limitations that we have, we are souls who are parts of God, and when we try to use our particular resources to serve our source, serve God, then that harmony with our nature and harmony with our source is the source of the fullest expression of our individuality and the source of the highest contentment. Thank you.