The Holy War Within
A Jungian reading of the Bhagavad Gita—and why its battlefield still belongs to us.
At the heart of From Scratch is the question: How do we live through what undoes us and become more whole in the process? Each week, I share essays, meditations, and Yin Yoga practices that trace the quiet, sacred labor of beginning again. In this piece, I revisit the Bhagavad Gita through a Jungian lens, not as a myth about ancient warriors, but of the inner battles we all face when life demands more than we feel ready to give.
What follows is the beginning of an essay on the Bhagavad Gita (more will follow), viewed through the lens of Jungian psychology, where I see a story of shadow, self, and the terrifying grace of becoming whole.
The Self in Crisis
The story begins, as it often does, with the paralysis of crisis. On the cusp of cataclysm, Arjuna freezes.
Here stands one of the greatest warriors of his age—battle-tested, duty-bound, forged in fire—and yet, at the sight of family across the field of Kurukshetra, Arjuna’s resolve unspools like thread in the wind. There they are on the other side: cousins, mentors, elders, friends. People he’s laughed with, trained under, shared and torn roti with. To win, he’d have to kill them. And just like that, the mighty bow slips from his hands. I imagine his will went slack, his mouth went dry… that his limbs gave out.
“My mind is reeling,” Arjuna tells his charioteer. “I can’t do this.”
The charioteer, of course, is no mere wheelman. He is Krishna: the divine incarnate, the cosmic Self. And in the middle of this battlefield, amid the din of conches and war cries, Krishna does something remarkable: he doesn’t advance but holds the chariot still. And time halts.
This is the improbable setting of the Bhagavad Gita, a sprawling spiritual dialogue tucked inside the even grander epic of the Mahabharata. While the armies wait, frozen in mythic suspense, Krishna and Arjuna have a conversation—not about military strategy or conquest—but about what to do when your inner life becomes the battlefield.
Because that’s what seems to be really at stake. Arjuna’s outer paralysis conceals an inner disintegration. He is torn between the role he’s been trained to fulfill and the deeper sense of Self that is awakening within him. This is a story about dharma and doubt, a tale of the tension between inherited obligation and intuitive knowing.
And so, in this suspenseful moment, there on the battle plain, the Gita begins as a dialogue that circles the timeless question: What do we do when we no longer recognize ourselves in the story we’re supposed to be living?
Facing the Shadow
Arjuna’s collapse on the battlefield isn’t just a warrior’s failure of nerve. It’s the moment when everything he thought he was begins to fall apart. In Jungian terms, this is his first encounter with the shadow—that dark and unwanted side of the psyche we’d rather not see. And what does he see? His own capacity to harm. His ambivalence to destroy what he loves in the name of what he’s been told is right. It undoes him.
Carl Jung once wrote: “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular.” That’s exactly what’s happening here. Arjuna isn’t just stalling; he’s cracking open. The persona, the polished warrior-prince, can’t hold the contradictions anymore. He is facing a version of himself that includes grief, fear, and love… all at once. And he wants to run and disappear. That temptation—to quit the whole thing and retreat into some fantasy of neutrality—is something many of us might resonate with.
And then Krishna speaks.
He doesn’t console Arjuna with platitude and say, “It will all be fine.” There’s no strategy for winning. Instead, Krishna offers a confrontation with reality. Krishna says, among other things, “Act without attachment to the fruit of action.”
In Jung’s language, Krishna represents the Self—not the ego, but the totality of being, the unbroken, hidden wholeness that watches while we fall apart. Krishna is Arjuna’s higher center, the voice that emerges when the ego’s grip finally slips.
But Krishna doesn’t tell Arjuna to abandon the field. He tells him to stay, to look more deeply, to “act without attachment to the fruit of the action.” Arjuna wants out, and Krishna tells him that the only way is through.
What Krishna offers is not comfort, but vision. A reframing so vast it includes birth and death, action and stillness, pain and transcendence. When Krishna unveils his universal form, Arjuna sees it all: creation, destruction and eternity compressed into a single glimpse. This vision both terrifies and steadies Arjuna.
And from that moment, something shifts. Arjuna picks up his bow, not because he wants to fight, but because he understands who he is and what this moment demands. He isn’t chasing a victory, rather he’s now aligned with something deeper than ambition or revenge.
And maybe that’s the real miracle of the Gita. Not that the gods descend or that war can be sanctified, but that a broken human being can be transformed by listening to the quiet voice of the Self when all seems lost.
The Five Elements of Becoming Whole
This reflection is just a beginning, a way of circling around the edges of something larger, something still forming in me: an inchoate attempt to make sense of an ancient text that continues to speak to the strange intimacy of our modern unravelings. For me, the Gita isn’t so much a guide as a mirror I keep returning to… clouded, luminous, unsettling. But each time I do, I see a little more of what I’ve been and am becoming, as well as a little more of what still needs integrating.
In that spirit, this week’s practices (meditation and Yin Yoga) will continue the inquiry through an embodied inquiry of the Five Elements of Chinese Medicine. If Arjuna’s awakening is, in part, a movement toward wholeness, we’ll explore what that movement feels like in our own being.
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🌀 Tuesday’s Meditation Experiment #9: Elemental Wholeness
A short meditation inviting the qualities of the Five Elements to be felt not as abstractions, but as living conditions of presence: Earth to steady, Metal to clarify, Water to soften, Wood to expand, and Fire to kindle.
🧘♂️ Thursday’s Yin Practice Lab #9: Energetic Flow
A 60-minute Yin sequence designed to support the natural circulation of Qi, drawing on the Five Elements as a felt field rather than a fixed formula. We'll use grounded postures and subtle attention to invite coherence, fluidity, and quiet vitality.
This week, I invite you to practice not towards perfection, but integration. We’ll let our bodies become the field where nothing needs to be conquered—only felt and held long enough to return to wholeness.
As always, I’m grateful to share the path and welcome your reflections in dialogue.
With warmth,
Josh