In order to get out of the identification with your personality, it must first be understood that the person, the individual living being (jīva) that appears to you, is a small part of īśvara. So there must be knowledge of the relationship between īśvara and jīva. Then I can offer my actions as a person (arpaṇa) to īśvara. With the knowledge that everything is īśvara (brahman with its own apparent properties) the field in which life takes place becomes sacred, and you come to live in an attitude of accommodating, contributing. Actions are done with the best intentions, according to knowledge and possibilities. This already makes you happy.

Gratefully receiving the results of actions as a gift (prasāda) from īśvara is the second part of karma yoga (īśvara-prasāda-buddhiḥ). This makes you even happier.

Arpaṇa is translated as offering, because its deeper meaning is 'giving back'. To what do I give it back? To where it belongs: All power, all knowledge, or īśvara, the auspicious lord.

Only in this attitude does one practice correct karma yoga. You give away your person, as it were, to where it belongs, and can rest as a free brahman. If you invest too much in the strategies of the personality, that can be an obstacle to freedom, because you think there is something to be gained in the world and you cling to it.

The idea that you live in an altar is of course wonderful. Devotion and surrender open your heart. The person recognizes that he/she is in situations that he/she has not consciously created (all created by the divine law that manifests prārabdha karma, karma that has already begun).

I realize that nothing really belongs to me and instead everything belongs only to īśvara, that is īśvara arpaṇa buddhi. I recognize that I live sacrificially in devotion as a person, and thus make my life sacred and in line with dharma.

Only then can I know that I, pure consciousness, am free from the whole happening, and the whole īśvara game is apparently playing out within me. As long as I am still living strategies to exploit the world, because I think I will benefit from it, I cannot be free. To be free is to enjoy being pure, without taking the game that is playing out seriously.

Why only then? As long as I claim that things are mine, I think I am a person who has something (mamakāra). I can have something in terms of property rights, but before I can be everything, I must first have nothing as a cognitive experience as a tiny jīva.

The order that governs all situations is dharma, and dharma is the lord. With this insight, the person will automatically become attuned to the divine wonder that is the world. Thus the person comes to live in the altar (arpaṇa) of the world, and regards his body and mind as an altar. This loving devotional attitude is blissful.

This divine order determines the order of life and what is expected of the person in each situation. A karma yogī acts with the realization of this fact with a mind full of gratitude for all the results that come to him as a gift from īśvara (īśvara prasāda buddhi).