Work - an offering
|
There is only one solution, to find your psychic being... The Mother |
The Solution
Method,
order, and care
With method, order, and care there is no difficulty that cannot be solved.
The Mother
Gita's solution
To live inwardly calm, detached, silent in the silence of the impersonal and universal Self and yet do dynamically the works of dynamic Nature, and more largely, to be one with the Eternal within us and to do all the will of the Eternal in the world expressed through a sublimated force, a divine height of the personal nature uplifted, liberated, universalised, made one with God-nature, - this is the Gita's solution.
Sri Aurobindo
Blessings
Difficulties are always blessings if we know how to face them.
The Mother
Pausing
Yes, it is very good to learn the habit of pausing a few seconds before acting in order to ask oneself whether the action is truly helpful from the standpoint of spiritual life.
The Mother
The best help
To want unwaveringly the welfare of another both in
Page 79
the head and the heart, is the best help one can give.
Sri Aurobindo
Lack of control
Most of the difficulties that people have are due to a lack of control over their actions, and their reactions to the actions of others.
The Mother
Power and need
Do not worry about anything: power comes with the need.
The Mother
Find your psychic being
There is only one solution, to find your psychic being and once it is found to cling to it desperately, to let it guide you step by step whatever be the obstacle. That is the only solution.
The Mother
What He decides
You might have, for example, worked very hard to do a certain thing, so that something might happen, you might have given much time, much of your energy, much of your will, and all that not for your own sake, but, say, for the divine work (that is the offering); now suppose that after having taken all this trouble, done all this work, made all these efforts, it all goes just the other way round, it does not succeed. If you are truly surrendered, you say: "It is good, it is all good, it is all right; I did what I could, as well as I
Page 80
could, now it is not my decision, it is the decision of the Divine, I accept entirely what He decides." On the other hand, if you do not have this deep and spontaneous surrender, you tell yourself: "How is it? I took so much trouble to do a thing which is not for a selfish purpose, which is for the Divine Work, and this is the result, it is not successful!" Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it is like that.
The Mother
Looking sincerely into oneself
If in the work you meet with some difficulties, look sincerely into yourself and there you will discover their origin.
The Mother
Psychic gladness
Vital joy has to be replaced by a quiet settled psychic gladness with the mind and Vital very clear and very peaceful. When one works on this basis, then everything becomes glad and easy, in touch with the Mother's force and fatigue or depression do not come.
Sri Aurobindo
Developing a double consciousness
It is because the energy is put forward in the work. But as the peace and contact grow, a double consciousness can develop - one engaged in the work, an- other behind, silent and observing or turned towards the Divine - in this consciousness the aspiration can
Page 81
be maintained even while the external consciousness is turned towards the work.
Sri Aurobindo
Inner opening
All change must come from within with the felt or the secret support of the Divine Power; it is only by one's own inner opening to that that one can receive help, not by mental, vital or physical contact with others.
Sri Aurobindo
He alone
Never seek a support elsewhere than in the Divine. Never seek satisfaction elsewhere than in the Divine. Never seek the satisfaction of your needs in anyone else except the Divine - never, for anything at all. All your needs can be satisfied only by the Divine. All your weaknesses can be borne and healed only by the Divine. He alone is capable of giving you what you need in everything, always, and if you try to find any satisfaction or support or help or joy or... Heaven knows what, in anyone else, you will always fall on your nose one day, and that always hurts, sometimes even hurts very much.
The Mother
Receptivity to the Light
But if, when you have to face anguish, suffering, revolt, pain or a feeling of helplessness - whatever it may be, all the things that come to you on the path and which precisely are your difficulties - if physically,
Page 82
that is to say, in your body-consciousness, you can have the feeling of widening yourself, one could say of unfolding yourself - you feel as it were all folded up, one fold on another like a piece of cloth which is folded and refolded and folded again - so if you have this feeling that what is holding and strangling you and making you suffer or paralysing your movement, is like a too closely, too tightly folded piece of cloth or like a parcel that is too well-tied, too well-packed, and that slowly, gradually, you undo all the folds and stretch yourself out exactly as one unfolds a piece of cloth or a sheet of paper and spreads it out flat, and you lie flat and make yourself very wide, as wide as possible, spreading yourself out as far as you can, opening yourself and stretching out in an attitude of complete passivity with what I could call "the face to the light": not curling back upon your difficulty, doubling up on it, shutting it in, so to say, into yourself, but, on the contrary, unfurling yourself as much as you can, as perfectly as you can, putting the difficulty before the Light - the Light which comes from above - if you do that in all the domains, and even if mentally you don't succeed in doing it - for it is sometimes difficult - if you can imagine yourself doing this physically, almost materially, well, when you have finished unfolding yourself and stretching yourself out, you will find that more than three-quarters of the difficulty is gone. And then just a little work of receptivity to the Light and the last quarter will disappear.
The Mother
Page 83
A reversal of consciousness
Do not try to correct your faults one by one, to overcome your weaknesses one by one, it does not take you very far. The entire consciousness must be changed, a reversal of consciousness must be achieved, a springing up out of the state in which one is towards a higher state from which one dominates all the weaknesses one wants to heal, and from which one has a full vision of the work to be accomplished.
The Mother
Being frank and open
You must not regret. It is always better to be frank and open; that is the best way to correct one's mistakes.
The Mother
Being modest
If you want to learn to work really well, you must be modest, become aware of your imperfections and always maintain the will to progress.
One does not progress through boasting.
The Mother
Endurance
Nothing great is ever accomplished without endurance.
The Mother
Page 84
