Integral Yoga
THEME/S
All depends
on the attitude
with which
you do
the work.
The Mother
The right attitude
He (Sri Aurobindo) has explained this before. The right attitude is the attitude of trust, the attitude of obedience, the attitude of consecration.
To be open to the Mother
Not only in your inward concentration, but in your outward acts and movements you must take the right attitude. If you do that and put everything under the Mother's guidance, you will find that difficulties begin to diminish or are much more easily got over and things become steadily smoother.
In your work and acts you must do the same as in your concentration. Open to the Mother, put them under her guidance, call in the peace, the supporting Power, the protection and, in order that they may work, reject all wrong influences that might come in their way by creating wrong, careless or unconscious movements.
Follow this principle and your Whole being will become one, under one rule, in the peace and sheltering Power and Light.
Sri Aurobindo
Coming closer to the Mother
All depends on the attitude with which you do the work. If done with the right attitude, it will surely bring you nearer to me.
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Inner and outer attitude
The progress in sadhana comes from the rectification of the inner and outer attitude, not from the nature of the work one does - any work, even the most humble, can lead to the Divine if it is done with the right attitude.
Work as offering
You must do the work as an offering to the Divine and take it as part of your Sadhana. In that spirit the nature of the work is of little importance and you can do any work without losing the contact with the inner presence.
Live to serve the Divine
Do not live to be happy, live to serve the Divine and the joy that you will experience will be beyond all expectations.
Bigness and smallness
Of course the idea of bigness and smallness is quite foreign to the spiritual truth... Spiritually there is nothing big or small. Such ideas are like those of the literary people who think writing a poem is a high work and making shoes or cooking the dinner is a small and low one. But all is equal in the eyes of the Spirit - and it is only the spirit within with which it is done that matters. It is the same with a particular
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kind of work, there is nothing big or small.
The ideal attitude
The ideal attitude is to belong only to the Divine, to work only for the Divine and above all to expect only from the Divine strength, peace and satisfaction. The Divine is all-merciful and gives us all that we need to lead us as quickly as possible to the goal.
The spirit in which one does
It is not what you do but the spirit in which you do it that is important for the integral Yoga.
Any work
Any work can be done as a field for the practice of the spirit of the Gita.
Damp logs
Of course, there is a kind of work which is done only for purely pecuniary and personal reasons, like the one - whatever it may be - which is done to earn a living. That attitude is exactly the one Sri Aurobindo compares with the damp logs of wood which are heaped so thick the flame cannot leap up. It has something dark and heavily dull about it.
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An inward consciousness
There are those who have done the lawyer's work with the Mother's force working in them and grown by it in inward consciousness. On the other hand religious work can be merely external and Vital in its nature or influence.
Cleaning the floor or dusting a room
You take up some work which is quite material, like cleaning the floor or dusting a room; well, it seems to me that this work can lead to a very deep consciousness if it is done with a certain feeling for perfection and progress; while other work considered of a higher kind as, for example, studies or literary and artistic work, if done with the idea of seeking fame or for the satisfaction of one's vanity or for some material gain, will not help you to progress. So this is already a kind of classification which depends more on the inner attitude than on the outer fact. But this classification can be applied to everything.
Fatigue
Yes. With the right consciousness always there, there would be no fatigue.
To give yourself
The yogic life does not depend on what one does but on how one does it; I mean it is not so much the action
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which counts as the attitude, the spirit in which one acts. To know how to give yourself entirely and without egoism while washing dishes or serving a meal brings you much nearer the Divine than doing what men call "great things" in a spirit of vanity and pride.
A mirror
And the best way to the true attitude is simply to say, "All those around me, all the Circumstances of my life, all the people near me, are a mirror held up to me by the Divine Consciousness to show me the progress I must make. Everything that shocks me in others means a work I have to do in myself."
The true spirit
Work done in the true spirit is meditation.
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