III: 35

[Krishna Jaya]

Chapter 3, Verse 35

 

"Do your duty,

Even if it be humble,

Rather than another's,

Even if it be great.

To die in one's duty is life.

To live in another's is death."

 

Swami Satchidananda:

 

"No two snowflakes are the same.  You are also unique.  You have been created unique with certain abilities that no other person has.  That's your Swadharma, your individual path, the inner law of your being.  Find out what your Swadharma is.  Take stock of your natural inclinations and your capabilities.  With some things it's so natural, like a fish in the water.  You just know, 'Ahh, that's what I'm meant to do.'  Remember that there is nothing to gain and nothing to lose.  Feel the unseen hand directing your every moment, taking you along from one thing to another.  Know that it's always unplanned by you and for the good of everybody.  That's Swadharma.  It's the tendency of the mind to think that maybe some other person's work would be better.  The grass seems greener over there.  Nip that tendency in the bud."

 

James Hillman:

 

“Each life is formed by a unique image, which is the essence of that life and calls it to a destiny.  As the force of fate, this image acts as an accompanying guide, remembering your calling.  It motivates.  It protects.  It suggests.  It persists with stubborn faithfulness.  It has much to do with feelings of uniqueness and the yearnings of the heart.  It calls for its share of beauty.  Metaphorical promptings comprise its language.

 

In Plato’s Myth of Er from the last chapter of his Republic, souls are all hanging around in a mythical world, having arrived there from previous lives, and each has a lot to fulfill.  This lot is also called fate, which is somehow representative of the character of that particular soul.  The ‘lot’ is the image that is your inheritance, your soul’s place in the world order, and your place on Earth, all compacted into a pattern that has been selected by your soul before you ever got here, or, that is always and continually being selected by your soul, because time does not enter the equations of myth.

 

Since ancient psychology associated the soul with the heart, your heart holds the image of your destiny and calls you to it.  Unpacking the image takes a lifetime.  Before souls enter human life, however, they pass through a plain of oblivion, so that on arrival here, all of the previous activity of choosing a lot is wiped out.  We have forgotten the story, though the inescapable and necessary patterns of our lots remain and our guides remember.

 

Judy Garland wanted to enter the regular world, to live with a man and kids in a stable marriage.  What kept her going was none of these normalcies, but her calling, which opposed them.

 

The Platonic myth of growing down says the soul descends in four modes – via the body, parents, place and circumstance.  These four ways can be instructions for completing the image you brought with you into this incarnation.  First, your body:  growing down means going with the sag of gravity that accompanies aging.  Second, admitting yourself to be one among your people and a member of a family tree, including its twisted and rotten branches.  Third, living in a place that suits your soul and grounds you with duties and customs.  Last, giving back what circumstances gave you by means of gestures that declare your full immersion in this world. 

 

Judy Garland stands among the few who could never fully grow down because it was her acorn not only to sing and dance in the spotlight, but also to be a representative of exile and its longings.”  (“The Soul’s Code,” pp. 39, 40 44-46, 52, 57, 62)