- Chapter 07, Text 01
- Transforming Mindset: Focusing on Krishna Not Just Mind Control
- Gita 07.01 explained
- Krishna’s change of emphasis from detachment to attachment
- What intelligence can and can’t do in bhakti
- Our attachments are like a rented house that we don't usually leave unless we are evicted
- Our mind is influential, but it is also influenceable
- Renunciation is meant to help us look up at Krishna, not look down at the world
- Our entanglement is caused not by our attachment, but by our detachment
- Doubts are not the problem – believing them is
- To fix the mind, fix it on Krishna
- Don’t let desire delude with the Trojan Horse of doubt
- The propellant of spirituality is not detachment but attachment
- Chapter 07, Text 02
- Chapter 07, Text 03
- Let my heart seek you and stop at nothing else (7.03)
- Why the mind automates repeated actions
- Gita 07.03 explained
- One soul inspired is better than a thousand souls impressed
- Don’t underestimate the difficulty of the spiritual journey, but don’t underestimate the opportunity either
- Do the extraordinary for the extraordinary, not the ordinary
- Focus on how close you are, not how far you are
- Accepting that we are ordinary is extraordinary
- Our spirituality is a specialty, not an abnormality
- To know Krishna is to relish a thrilling, fulfilling, unifying awareness of reality
- Chapter 07, Text 04
- Let me see the material as divine, not as mundane or profane (7.04)
- Changing emotions unchanging actions
- Gita 07.04 explained
- Can spirituality address all mental health problems? (Mental health series 7)
- To have ability is a gift to realize that we have ability is a greater gift to realize that our ability is a gift is the greatest gift
- Spiritualism is the shadow of spirituality
- See the differences in the subtle functionally more than structurally
- Perceive the mind to better perceive Krishna
- Anahankara = an + aham + car (I am not my car)
- Chapter 07, Text 05
- Help me realize I am yours and help me desire to be yours (7.05)
- Changing emotions unchanging actions
- Gita 07.05 explained
- How change happens — and how it doesn’t
- We are in illusion but we are not an illusion
- We are the world’s purpose, but the world is not our purpose
- Chapter 07, Text 06
- Beneath the world’s deluding diversity is your uplifting unity (7.06)
- Gita 07.06 explained
- Everything is not relative – everything is related
- God is the ultimate source and the ultimate resource
- All things are from Krishna, through Krishna and in Krishna
- Be conscious that what you are conscious of is Krishna
- From the reality of nature to the nature of reality
- Chapter 07, Text 07
- Let me cast far away the illusion that you are far away (7.07)
- From visible to invisible — challenges in meditation on Krishna
- Gita 07.07 explained
- Reason can't reach beyond reason, but it can give us reason to reach beyond reason
- God underlies, overlies and outlies the world
- Krishna does not stand for the Absolute – he is the Absolute
- Personality is neither a pointer to nor a portion of the Absolute Truth – it is the pinnacle
- Balanced bhakti brings bliss
- Chapter 07, Text 08
- Let my ability not steal my humility (7.08)
- How to maintain humility while also having ability
- Gita 07.08 explained
- Does inequality always arise from discrimination?
- Faith in yourself vs faith in God
- If we are grateful when ability manifests through us, we can be graceful when it doesn’t
- To take sole credit for our abilities is to put too much burden on ourselves
- Our abilities are our endowments not our entitlements
- Don’t let the mind show you what you are missing – show the mind what it is missing
- Slave not to get worldly recognition; strive to give Krishna recognition
- Rumble, Grumble, Tumble? Or Humble?
- Chapter 07, Text 09
- Chapter 07, Text 10
- Power is your gift, not my right (7.10)
- Gita 07.10 explained
- Trust not just Krishna’s omnipotence – trust also his omniscience
- Chapter 07, Text 11
- Let my desire be guided and guarded by dharma (7.11)
- Gita 07.11 explained
- Can devotion and ambition go together?
- To divorce the personal from the professional is to be blind to the essential
- The culture may give a license to lust, but nature doesn’t
- Might we be devaluing sex by glamorizing it?
- Chapter 07, Text 12
- Free me from the illusion that you are not free (7.12)
- Gita 07.12 explained
- The whole is far greater than the sum of its parts
- The net of material knowledge can’t net God
- Chapter 07, Text 13
- Please make me immune to the illusion that I am immune to illusion (7.13)
- Gita 07.13 explained
- The modes make Krishna seem irrelevant and the world seem irresistible
- The freedom offered by ignorance of freedom is the tightest bondage
- Krishna is concealed, but not contained, by the modes
- Chapter 07, Text 14
- Understanding addiction through the underworld metaphor
- Focus on our Lord not on our demons
- Gita 07.14 explained
- What Krishna’s warning about the power of the illusory energy means for Arjuna
- Evil has no independent power, yet it is incredibly powerful
- Those who think they aren't prone to evil are the most prone to evil
- As long as we revolve around sense objects we can’t evolve towards Krishna
- To claim that everything is an illusion is to be in illusion
- To think that the illusions tempting us are new is an old illusion
- Channel the spirit of devotion, not the ghost of illusion
- Spiritual surrender is not an admission of defeat – it is a vehicle to victory
- Use self-control to commit the self to the control of the supreme self
- Unawareness in transcendence is different from blindness in ignorance
- Maya is not just illusion – it is also the agency that brings about illusion
- The commonality of the source doesn’t imply the similarity of the effect
- We become free by choosing what controls us
- See nature not as the inflictor of misery, but as the instructor of incompatibility
- The Merciless Microscope of Maya
- See in the potency of illusion the glory of its master
- We help ourselves best by remembering that we are helpless without Krishna
- To get on the way to Krishna, get out of Krishna’s way
- Our vulnerability points to our opportunity
- We are our own devils
- Chapter 07, Text 15
- Free me from the four anti-devotional mentalities (7.15)
- Does God come from our imagination
- Gita 07.15 explained
- Great gifts don’t guarantee greatness
- Are needles determining our needs?
- Those who make donkeys the Gita’s role models sentence themselves to donkey-like roles
- Those who dismiss the invisible as insubstantial dissipate their lives in the insubstantial
- By living for animal pleasures, we violate our human rights
- The Bhagavad-gita is open-minded, not empty-minded
- Chapter 07, Text 16
- Whatever my driving desire, let it drive me toward you (7.16)
- Gita 07.16 explained
- The God we grasp is different from the God who grasps us
- Culture is meant to channel our curiosity constructively, not destructively
- God’s presence is his greatest present
- Direct your curiosity radar towards Krishna
- We can’t become pure devotees without becoming devotees
- Be spiritually curious – and become spiritually serious
- Raise the curiosity radar from the how questions to the why questions
- Dig the grave of materialism, functional and fanatical
- Devotional spirituality offers breaks that are much more than brakes
- Chapter 07, Text 17
- The secret of effective devotion
- Gita 07.17 explained
- Devotion is sustained not by tribulation or emotion but by conviction
- Turn to God not to get something, but to be with Someone
- Let intelligence be a tool for spiritual resurrection, not spiritual insurrection
- Chapter 07, Text 18
- Gita 07.18 explained
- Why does Krishna call those who approach him charitable?
- Don’t just bring Krishna into your life; let Krishna bring you into his life
- Cultivate devotion not for its survival value but for the value it brings to survival
- Chapter 07, Text 19
- Is God concerned about the things that concern us?
- Our waiting is God's vetting
- Understanding Krishna's Supreme Attractiveness
- Turn to God not just for answers; turn to God as the answer
- Gita 07.19 explained
- Seeing Krishna’s love for us and showing our love for him
- Is God our problem-solver?
- When we say no to God, it's mostly because we don't know God
- If Krishna takes away the things that can take us away from him don't go away from him
- Devotion commences when God becomes our guide and culminates when he becomes our goal
- To be dissatisfied with the material is ordinary, to be so dissatisfied as to look beyond the material is extraordinary
- Knowledge about Krishna protects and propels
- See Krishna not just as a shock-absorber, but also as a goal-transformer
- To see Krishna’s love through the filter of our desires is to blind ourselves to his love
- Between the extremes of pantheism and deism lies the holism of panentheism
- Don’t raise your eyes alone – raise your heart too
- To sweeten your devotion, heighten your conception and motivation
- Don’t use a gold slab as a shade against sunburn
- See beyond the provision to the provider
- Krishna is not just a solace from the world – he is the substance of the world
- Life’s supreme success is not to conquer everyone but to be conquered by the lover of everyone
- It takes great intelligence to recognize that intelligence is not great enough
- Krishna is not a dispensable filler; he is an indispensable shelter
- Have the intelligence to doubt the supremacy of the intelligence
- Bhakti is characterized by simple-heartedness, not simple-mindedness
- Cultivate the love that goes as far as the head goes – and also goes beyond it
- Krishna is everything, but everything is not Krishna
- Chapter 07, Text 20
- Whatever my desires, may they take me toward you, never away from you. (7.20)
- Gita 07.20 explained
- The heart unguided by revelation revels in imagination
- Chapter 07, Text 21
- Gita 07.21 explained
- Don’t reduce scripture to your conceptions of what scripture should be teaching, expand your conceptions to understand what scripture is actually teaching
- The demigods are not in competition with Krishna but are in a progression to him
- Chapter 07, Text 22
- Chapter 07, Text 23
- Gita 07.23 explained
- Was Arjuna less intelligent in worshiping the devatas?
- Be not fanatical – be fanatically focused
- Chapter 07, Text 24
- Your form is not limiting for you but is liberating for me (7.24)
- Gita 07.24 explained
- Excess makes a good thing worse than bad
- Those who desire to be fused are confused
- Chapter 07, Text 25
- Chapter 07, Text 26
- Three personally empowering affirmations of divine omniscience
- When our prayers are unanswered
- Gita 07.26 explained
- Monism puts the head and heart at war with each other; devotion harmonizes them
- We see the present and plan the future - Krishna sees the future and plans the present
- We can’t know what the future holds, but we can know who holds the future
- Might we be blocking the progress of a work in progress?
- The trans-logical logic of love resolves seeming scriptural contradictions
- Chapter 07, Text 27
- Chapter 07, Text 28
- Gita 07.28 explained
- Why ethics matter in devotion? (Ethics & devotion series 2)
- Bhakti requires a radical re-assessment of our deepest desires
- Determination is the fruit of purification – and its root too
- Healing requires not just the expelling of germs, but primarily the boosting of immunity
- Determination is a function of not just intention but also purification
- Chapter 07, Text 29
- Gita 07.29 explained
- How Krishna tests Arjuna in the Gita
- Don’t reduce the spiritual to the practical; let the spiritual expand the practical
- Chapter 07, Text 30
Bhagavad Gita Chapter 07Chaitanya Charan2025-10-16T16:30:20+05:30