I am participating in the Bhagavad-gita online course being offered here at Krishna.com. At each stage of the course we write a story to indicate our understanding along the way.

The following is one I submitted recently. I thought you might be interested to read it.

Even though in the course I am only half way through chapter two I feel like the Gita is opening in a whole new way. Things I have previously read about and heard about are beginning to clarify in new ways.

Like Arjuna I am bewildered by material nature. That is why I am here, living this life. As with Arjuna my bewilderment causes me to suffer. To ease my suffering I rationalise my situation and to distract myself I participate in any number of activities all which serve to compound my situation.

I am learning that we are all initially bewildered due to out attraction for, and attachment to, material nature. I have read that the spirit soul has some weakness for this, some predisposition to falling into material nature. Eventually in our effort to rationalise our fears and in our attempts to dull the suffering we dig our hole deeper. We consider erroneous philosophies and we participate in various activities which act to produce hellish conditions, increasing our bewilderment and our struggle. We hold tighter and tighter to the thing we should let go of.

What seems true to us is a result of our ‘poor fund of knowledge.’ What seems logical is a result of our bewilderment. To give us relief and to turn our attention back to reality Krishna tells us what we have forgotten, that we are eternal like Him. We are not born, nor do we die. We are not the body.

This is a fundamental principle that will allow us to begin to recognise what is true. It will allow is to become a ‘sober person’ who is ‘not bewildered.’ This information will allow us to consider that there is more to ‘reality’ than our senses can perceive. We might not be able to see past the clouds, but we can begin to appreciate that there is something producing the sunlight. We can begin to see that material happiness and distress are both disturbing and distressing in the long term, and that they are both.

We learn with Arjuna that the first step is to accept that Krishna is the Supreme Personality of Godhead and that if we surrender to Him and inquire humbly he will reveal the science of the soul, he will reveal the most confidential knowledge.

Our bewilderment and subsequent suffering seems to produce a veil of fear which distracts us and prevents us from being able to realise and accept what is true. Like the honey jar analogy, when we open the jar and taste the honey then a whole new world of experience is opened to us, reality becomes available to us.

If we accept Krishna as Lord, and his first teaching that we are eternal, then reality begins to open and we're able to taste the truth and realize that something has been missing in our experience. Now I have tasted the honey I can’t wait to taste the rest of the meal.

How are you going at reading through the Bhagavad-gita