Suffering a Degenerate Life

Appraising One's Debasing (Degenerate) Traits:

We all have traces of these bad traits.

(a) Rate yourself 1-9 (see sample scale) at each of the 27 traits

below to the extent, if any, they apply to you now. (The lower your scores, the better.)

1--------2--------3--------4--------5--------6--------7--------8--------9

Rarely Seldom Sometimes Often Always

(b) Mark the 2 or 3 you most want to reduce or eliminate, and then

make a plan. (Note what you intend to do or stop doing, and when.)

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In the Bhagavad Gita Krishna says:

“These are the degenerate (‘demonic’) traits, the distinctive qualities and behavior of beings with degenerate tendencies:

___ 1) pride

___ 2) pompousness

___ 3) vanity

___ 4) desire

___ 5) greed

___ 6) anger

___ 7) harshness

___ 8) absence of discrimination (good-bad, Truth-not Truth, and so forth)

Look more closely. People with these qualities…

___ 9) have no sense of truth or right conduct

___10) have no purity

___11) have distorted views; they argue: ‘the scriptures are a lie; there is no God and no moral basis; the universe is just the result of lust or accident’

___12) become dangerous enemies of humanity; if left alone to their self-indulgence, would heedlessly destroy the world

___13) are stuffed with insatiable desires

___14) are arrogant, vain, and prideful

___15) are beset with dreads, and do not realize that the same fearful mind will be reborn into a like situation

___16) are blindly certain that to satisfy lust is all there is

___17) are bound by scheming and anger, and thus attract similarly hurtful people to themselves

___18) amass and hoard wealth; grabbing for riches governs their every thought and move

___19) arrogantly proclaim their might and power

___20) declare, ‘I will buy my way.’

___21) are bewildered, trapped in their addiction to sense gratification.

___22) are stuck in the spider web of delusion, and spiral downward

___23) are stuffed until choking with pride and conceit

___24) are drunk with their own wealth

___25) pay mere lip service to Divinity

___26) have fully given themselves to the dark forces of ego, insolence, desire, and wrath

___27) loathe Me, the Divine who dwells in their own bodies, and deny My presence in others.

Life after life they take birth in similar degradation without reaching Me.”

– Krishna

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