“Dejection occurs when the soul, the consciousness, the core quality that we are, wakes up to its state of bondage. This event can happen suddenly or slowly over time. It strips away all that separates us from the glory that it heralds. This is in essence a spiritual awakening.”
The Bhagavad Gita is a very human story about a warrior, Arjuna, at the start of battle. His charioteer, Krishna, is at his side. Arjuna is the seeker. Krishna is the divine guidance that exists within each of us. The scene opens upon a battlefield in which the mighty forces of the Kaurava family are arrayed against the equally imposing forces of the Pandava family.
Dhritarashtra, the blind king of the Kauravas, is asking Sanjaya, who has the ability to see all, to tell him how the war is proceeding. The Pandavas include Arjuna and his brothers, who have come to take back the kingdom from Dhritarashtra, who would bequeath it to his son Duryodhana, even though the crown rightfully belongs to Arjuna’s brother Yudhishthira.
The Epic Battle
This epic battle that is described in this part of the Gita is an allegory between the dark and light forces within each of us. The dark forces—the Kauravas—are those associated with what I call the error of evolution. Evolution is a process of trial and error in which material vehicles evolve to sustain consciousness. Many species came and went in the eons in which a human body and a human system developed. So we are born into a human body that is a byproduct of an evolutionary process, a process that was part of the Original Intent of creation.
When we wake up in a body we are very much identified as a body, with emotions, thoughts, memories, experiences, preferences, attractions, and repulsions. When consciousness begins to awaken, it has to move beyond this identification. Consciousness either returns to itself in a movement toward light, truth, goodness, and love, or moves counter to that, in a movement toward darkness and ignorance, comfort and pleasure, following the habits of the body and the mechanisms of survival and success. These are the two forces the Bhagavad Gita is pointing to.
Although described as an outer battle, the struggle is really between our old habits of who we thought we were and a new state of being that has yet to become fully conscious. It can be a very torturous battle, especially at first. The awakening process described in the first chapter is not merely occurring on the mental plane, the emotional plane, or even the physical plane. It is occurring at the soul level, the level of consciousness. The soul can no longer remain held down in matter. Spirit can no longer believe in matter or tolerate being bound to it.
Dejection
Dejection occurs when the soul, the consciousness, the core quality that we are, wakes up to its state of bondage. This event can happen suddenly or slowly over time. It strips away all that separates us from the glory that it heralds. This is in essence a spiritual awakening. It starts for some with a glimpse of something glorious that leaves us in a wonderful state for as long as it lasts, while in others it is their worst nightmare. It can be like a tsunami rising from the hidden depths of the ocean as it comes to the surface or it can be a destructive crashing on the shore.
It depends on our nature and the maturity of the inner being. But in either case the dejection must come in order to bring about the true establishment of the inner reality that lives us, in ourselves as divine human beings. This process is evidence of a spiritual transition point. Often repeating itself as one transitions the different stages of the spiritual journey back to the source of what we are in truth. When it comes, dejection causes a fundamental disturbance in the very fabric of us both as a human being and a developing spiritual being.
The Anguish
As the soul comes more and more forward we become more and more of our limitations, our buried unmet structures of past pain and trauma. These rise up in our surface awareness causing experiences that have us to loosen hold on our identity as we know it. Our outer behavior is often over taken, often causing consequences that add to this undoing, impacting all aspects of our lives, mentally, emotionally and physically. Things start collapsing, we lose hold on our life and this creates experiences of suffering. At this point an anguish comes. This peak of pain I call, “the Cry of the Soul” as it births itself in us.
It longs for something else, something truer, greater, higher, even though the mind, emotions, and body may not be aware of it. This longing can create a shift in consciousness, a glimpse of a new level of consciousness, a new level of awakening, a shift that is evidence that the next shift in our return journey has begun. Like a caterpillar ready to become a butterfly, dejection is the beginning of a natural process.
Dejection is a Yoga
Dejection is not a one-time deal. It happens again and again on the spiritual path. Arising in fits and starts, it tries to awaken and then collapses. Like waking up from a deep sleep, one is so torpid and taken over by slumber that waking up can be a struggle. Coming out of dejection is a similar process.
Dejection is an emerging from a lesser state of consciousness to a higher one. It happens even for non-seekers. Many people are in dejection and don’t know it. They think it is just a bad mood or a bad day. That is pretty much how dejection shows up: You can’t keep the harmony with your outer personality that you previously knew. There is a disturbance and you don’t know why and you don’t know how to fix it. Old ways don’t seem to work. That is the clue.
In my experience dejection is much more pervasive than people realize. On the spiritual path it is your constant companion. It is coming and going. Your deep dissatisfaction is not due to an outward cause. There is an endless sense that something is missing, and it is not due to desire. We don’t know what’s wrong, just that something is wrong. We just know we want to get out of it. We don’t know we are in a process of awakening. This process continues until the soul comes to the Self. When dejection occurs beyond that point it is of a different order.
The first part of the Bhagavad Gita is about this initial emerging. The caterpillar inside the cocoon, having reached sufficient readiness, begins to dissolve in order to become a butterfly. Dejection is the beginning of dissolving. Ask the caterpillar how it feels in the cocoon and it would probably say it’s miserable. “This hurts. I don’t want to do this. How can I make it stop? Give me some pills. Let’s get drunk. Give me some friends, another project, another job, another relationship, anything but this!”
It is a state of dis-ease. Ignorance does not like to wake up. It is a state of not knowing you don’t know. Waking up from ignorance is the beginning of learning that you don’t know, usually by thinking you know and then finding out that you don’t. This process disengages consciousness from its previous state. It can be very stressful.
The Bhagavad Gita can bring a context, a way of recognizing and holding this ultimately transformational process which allows you to collaborate with it. Understanding the Gita, even just intellectually, will assist you in working with this process that has already started. Everyone reading this has gone or is going through this. It is evidence of the true spiritual awakening.