#21 - Importance of Self Awareness

Grandad on Self Awareness and taking things not for granted -

Chapter 9 -

If you empathize with everything (living or even non living) around you, then you will automatically not take anyone & anything for granted, because everything & every person around us is Brahman. Brahman or Consciousness pervades the whole Universe. Non-living things too have consciousness pervading them, even if they do not show it. One must also handle non-living things, gently.

    Your daily practice of self awareness will never let you take anything or person for granted. Afterall, what is involved in the process of taking everyone & everything for granted - it is one's ego, which is making that person go blind & insensitive. Chapter 9 of the Gita is to be read with a lot of attention, to understand the fine points.

Chapter 9, Shloka 10 -

If you practice self awareness, you will not fall into the trap of self importance, which can be assumed by you or which could be projected on you by others, for their purposes.

Chapter 13

Since everyone around us is Brahman, the problem of identifying the nature of one living person from another, is to be figured out. Living persons are to be categorized whether good or evil, not by what they look like, but how they behave & act. That is why Varna is not by birth, but by vocation. Whatever exists is Brahman.

Shloka 8 to 12 -

Mudit,

    Your first question is about what has been mentioned as 'evil of birth'. Moksh being the object of one's life, getting born again, would amount to missing Moksh, & hence the writer has called it 'evil of birth'. But, my own view is that those of us who are bent on serving the Lord, would like to be born again to do more service to the Lord.

    "Your comment - "Brahma is real, universe an illusion and brahman and jiva are inseparable ... but isnt universe also brahman ?" - 'Universe is an illusion' does not mean it does not exist, it only means that it is not what it appears to be. The whole Universe is nothing but Brahman.