the mighty trio

Verse 4.10: Being freed from attachment, fear and anger, being fully absorbed in Me and taking refuge in Me, many, many persons in the past became purified by knowledge of Me — and thus they all attained transcendental love for Me.

Attachment, fear and anger - or as I call them - the mighty trio. These three emotions and characteristics have the capacity to steal away all reason and intelligence. In fact, as readers might remember, two of these three characteristics (attachment and anger) are also members of "the attachment trap".

It's not so much that these qualities or emotions are good or bad in and of themselves. It's the fact that one emotion leads to another which can ultimately lead to stress and complete frustration.

The cycle tends to go as such:

As was previous explained, attachment arises due to the contemplation of objects which we believe will satisfy and make us happy. Once attachment takes root, that's when the chaos can start to manifest. Take for example a small child. They might be perfectly happy playing in their corner when they see a ball across the room. Looking at the ball, they start to make their way towards it when another child picks it up. At this point in time, some children, may start to cry and get upset.

This is actually very illustrative of what we all go through if we just seek to look a little deeper and analyze what is motivating the child's behaviour. Many might think the child is crying because they didn't get to play with the ball, but one could suggest that it's even more than that. It's the fact that the other child got to play with it.

That's where fear and anger step in because...

Attachment often instills a sense of possessiveness in an individual.

In other words, it's the mentality of "I've contemplated the object and therefore it is mine." What the bhakti texts teach us is that the moment we identify ourselves with something then fear is often a side dish that comes along, even though we haven't asked for it. We fear losing whatever we've become attached to and if anything appears to impede our enjoyment of that object then anger rears its ugly head.

The path of bhakti yoga reminds us that nothing in this world is ours to keep. This body and the world we live in is all on loan. Trying to exert ownership and control doesn't really help us.

For those who truly want to practice yoga, this is such an integral point. Yoga is about connection but almost more important than understanding that fundamental truth is understanding what it is that we should be trying to connect to.

Attachment is just one facet of connection but it's not the whole thing.

An attachment can be broken, but a connection, as per the definition of yoga, is rooted in permanency. That permanent connection that all souls are longing for is eternal love and the only person who can give it to us is the Divine. All of these other objects that we form attachments to can get in the way of our search for that love if we aren't careful.

So the next time you catch yourself falling into this trap of this mighty trio, take a step back and observe. Is this attachment helping you to become a selfless, compassionate and positive individual or is it serving to bring out the opposite in you?

fear

Verse 1.29: My whole body is trembling, my hair is standing on end, my bow Gāṇḍīva is slipping from my hand, and my skin is burning.

Your pulse starts to race, your mind starts to spin and your gripped in it's clutches. Fear.

The Gita is so invaluable because it teaches one to become fearless. The reason fear arises is due to our identification with the material. Namely, the material body. That's right, that prized possession of yours which you decorate everyday and identify your "self" with is the cause of fear. It actually makes sense if you stop and think about it. Every single thing we are afraid has some connection with our body. Whether it be direct physical harm to our bodies, a wrongful perception of our body, the bodies of those who are close to our body etc etc...

As a result of that fear, different symptoms start to manifest outwardly. And, as most of us have experienced, there's no way to prevent that from happening. Just like the the presence of heat in the body results in redness, similarly fear results in our body exhibiting that condition in multifarious ways.

Although many self-help "experts" and persons claim to have tricks for overcoming fear, they can't claim to eradicate it completely. Why? Because they are all presenting material solutions. Albert Einstein once said, "“We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” Similarly, fear is a problem we have due to our identification with the material - our bodies. Hence, trying to overcome fear while identifying with the body is an futile attempt to solve a material problem on the material platform. Guess what? It can't be done!

Only spiritual intelligence and knowledge can present the solution. This is the gift that the Gita bestows upon the eager and sincere reader. It gives us the knowledge and evidence that we are not this body. We are spiritual beings having a material experience. Part of that material experience is having a material body which is a cause of so many of our problems.

Instead if we can actually realize that we are spiritual, it pulls us out of our illusion. It gives us a new perspective and more importantly, reveals to us our true identity.

Material identification is what binds us and now we'll find out how to break free.