The Yoga of the Division between the Divine and the Demoniacal

In the 16th discourse of the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna speaks of the connection between ethics and spirituality. Krishna says that if we are devoid of purity, good conduct and truth we sink into darkness and become the destroyer of not only our own, but others happiness.

"Caught in countless desires and cravings, a slave of sensual

enjoyments and beset by a thousand cares, his life ultimately ends in misery and degradation."

Passion, anger and greed are the three qualities that lead down this path according to this piece of the Gita.

Those qualities that are mentioned in the Gita as being pure and good are harmlessness, truth, absence of anger, renunciation, peacefulness, absence of crookedness, compassion towards beings, uncovetousness, gentleness, modesty, absence of fickleness, vigour, forgiveness, fortitude, purity, absence of hatred, absence of pride.

This is a tall list and not easy to achieve on an everyday basis. But, like everything spiritual, we practice every day. The more we practice the more we cultivate those qualities we wish to embody.

The more we reverse our thinking away from anger, harshness, hypocrisy, arrogance and other qualities we associate with ego, the better we get at taming those responses.

Often times, I think, we react out of habit. When we become more mindful of our reactions we can get hold of them before they get hold of us. That's what I take from this discourse. What about you? What are your thoughts?