The Attitude of the Psychic Being Helps Overcome Obstructions and Difficulties in the Sadhana

The more we focus on difficulties, they more they seem to accumulate! It is one thing to be able to quietly observe issues as they arise; it is quite another to fixate on them and expend energy trying to push through them using the normal powers of body, life and mind. The spiritual force, once it begins work in the being, continues relentlessly. Sometimes as it pushes into a new area of the consciousness it can provoke the awakening of old samskaras, memories, habits, instincts, trained responses which may seem to the seeker to be a backwards or retrogressive step in the sadhana. With the right attitude, these things are seen as part of the process, not permanent issues and thus, they can be overcome if one remains in the right psychological space.

This psychological space is the one that the psychic being naturally adopts, one of quiet observation, aspiration, confidence, patience, perseverance, faith, and reliance on the spiritual force and its action. At some point the practitioner begins to appreciate that it is not through his own human power of action that true transformation of human nature can occur, but through the action of the divine force which is the actual ‘doer’ of the sadhana.

What we do not ordinarily grasp is that the change to the outer nature and its reactions may be the result of a much more hidden internal process of change. The Mother advises not to condone, support, or fixate on the outer movements that are the result of past actions; rather, to focus on the objective, the goal, the spiritual realisation as the reality one must cling to.

Sri Aurobindo observes: “A difficulty comes or an arrest in some movement which you have begun or have been carrying on for some time. How is it to be dealt with — for such arrests are inevitably frequent enough, not only for you, but for everyone who is a seeker; one might almost say that every step forward is followed by an arrest — at least, that is a very common, if not a universal experience. It is to be dealt with by becoming always more quiet, more firm in the will to go through, by opening oneself more and more so that any obstructing non-receptivity in the nature may diminish or disappear, by an affirmation of faith even in the midst of the obscurity, faith in the presence of a Power that is working behind the cloud and the veil, in the guidance of the Guru, by an observation of oneself to find any cause of the arrest, not in a spirit of depression or discouragement but with the will to find out and remove it. This is the only right attitude and, if one is persistent in taking it, the periods of arrest are not abolished, — for that cannot be at this stage, — but greatly shortened and lightened in their incidence. Sometimes these arrests are periods, long or short, of assimilation or unseen preparation, their appearance of sterile immobility is deceptive: in that case, with the right attitude, one can after a time, by opening, by observation, by accumulated experience, begin to feel, to get some inkling of what is being prepared or done. Sometimes it is a period of true obstruction in which the Power at work has to deal with the obstacles in the way, obstacles in oneself, obstacles of the opposing cosmic forces or any other or of all together, and this kind of arrest may be long or short according to the magnitude or obstinacy or complexity of the impediments that are met. But here, too, the right attitude can alleviate or shorten and, if persistently taken, help to a more radical removal of the difficulties and greatly diminish the necessity of comoplete arrests hereafter.”

“On the contrary, an attitude of depression or unfaith in the help or the guidance or in the certitude of the victory of the guiding Power, a shutting up of yourself in the sense of the difficulties impedes the recovery, prolongs the difficulties, helps the obstructions to recur with force instead of progressively diminishing in their incidence. It is an attitude whose persistence or recurrence you must resolutely throw aside if you want to get over the obstruction which you feel so much — which the depressed attitude only makes, while it lasts, more acute.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Looking from Within, Chapter 4, Ordeals and Difficulties, pp..104-106