Imperfection – In Gita 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.
Arjuna is looking at himself with more alertness and intensity. He is now giving details of where and what symptoms he has in his body.
This shows that first he wants to reconnect himself with his subjectivity. As after looking at all his friends and family members who are right now divided. It was a very painful and emotional moment for him. If some die it can be understood but if someone is not ready for any kind of mutual understanding, this moment is very painful.
Mutual understanding is the foundation of all relationships. Everyone has their different thinking, desires, goals, but there is always a way by which everyone can come to a common platform by mutual understanding and support each other. As every one of us is incomplete and imperfect. Unless we work to support each other no one can grow either in the objective world or subjective world.
‘Imperfection’ is not a derogatory word, it is almost synonymous with a living flow. Complete, where will you be going? What will you be doing? Complete means growth has stopped, you have come to your very end. All that was potential has become actual – that’s what completion means. Now there is nothing else but to die.
Imperfection means there is more still awaiting, much is going to happen. If you accept your imperfection, and you live it in totality. These are two different things. To believe that your imperfection is perfect is utterly wrong. But be total in each moment – when you are imperfect be TOTALLY imperfect. And then out of that totality you start growing.
The day you become perfect you are no more needed – the perfect ones are discarded immediately. So life never becomes perfect; it goes on moving. From one totality to another totality, from one imperfection to another imperfection, it goes on, it goes on. Imperfection is simply life, aliveness, growth, evolution. So why go on condemning imperfection?
The Vedas say: AMRITASYA PUTRAH – YOU are the sons of immortality, deathlessness. You come out of nectar, you are made of the stuff of which nectar is made – AMRITASYA PUTRAH. YOU are sons of God, daughters of God – it simply means your potential is infinite, it can never be exhausted. Whatsoever you become, you will again find new doors opening, new peaks challenging, new adventures waiting for you, new dimensions calling you forth, invoking, provoking. One never comes to the dead end.
God does not mean perfection, god simply means the energy that goes on moving. Each moment, you can be total. And from one totality you can slip into another totality; one totality helps you to be total in another moment. If you were angry totally, then you will be loving totally – the totality in anger helped you to be totally in love.
But you are incomplete; everything is incomplete. That’s why things are growing, that’s why there is so much evolution. God is an evolving concept.
God, to be at all, has to be as imperfect as you are. Then what is the difference between you and God? He is total and you are not total. He accepts his imperfections; you don’t accept, you go on rejecting. That is the difference. The difference is not in perfection, the difference is in acceptance. You deny, you reject, you hide, you defend, you remain closed, you are afraid. You never go into anything really, you remain out of it – afraid, fearful, scared, ready to escape if sometimes things become too much. You go only so far.
The difference between you and God is only one: he goes UTTERLY into everything. When God dances, there is no dancer, there is only dance – he is so utterly in it. When God loves, there is no lover, there is only love he is so utterly in it. You are never total. Imperfect you are, imperfect is everything – these trees, these birds, these skies, everything is imperfect. But remember, by ‘imperfection’ is not condemnatory, it is praising life.
When our focus is on us physically, mentally and emotionally shows that we are not trying to change the objective world but want to live in that moment of the objective world becoming alert about our emotions and mental limitation is willingness to work on that. Arjuna when he says that “My whole body is trembling, my hair is standing on end, my bow Gāṇḍīva is slipping from my hand, and my skin is burning” he is not saying from weakness he is courageous to work on his unconsciousness without condemning it. If he will not work on that he will not be able to fight the war and deliver his assignment given by the Universe. He turns to Krishna not as a weak human being but as a courageous Individual.
Tags: Imperfection
