The Spiritual Seeker Should Focus on the Aspiration and Recognize Weaknesses Without Obsessing About Them

Obsessing about failures, weaknesses, lapses, and obstructions can turn into a full-time occupation! All of human nature has to be taken up and modified, transformed or outright rejected for the next evolutionary manifestation to fully take up its role in the life of the planet. All seekers carry with them this entirety of the embedded physical, vital and mental instincts, habits, grooves of reaction and patterns of action, whether they have come from the historical and underlying framework of life, or human patterns conditioned by long practice and socialization by the society within which we live and act. Thus, there is no doubt that there are countless areas where failure is inevitable. Failure, however, if taken in the right spirit, a spirit of recognition that we are working on these very failures to sort out the issues, fix those issues and prepare the ground for the next stage of conscious evolution, is a stepping stone to ultimate success.
Instead of focusing therefore on the failures and being upset or depressed about them, Sri Aurobindo suggests that the most effective approach is to focus on the aspiration and the objective that stands before the seeker. Thus, the seeker is essentially tuning his awareness to those very forces of transformation that can actually unravel the knots in human nature and effectuate, over time, the necessary changes. The role of the seeker then is to aspire, to be conscious of the limitations of body, life and mind, and to offer their weakness, limitations and deformations to be changed, upgraded, transformed.
Sri Aurobindo notes: “It is necessary to observe and know the wrong movements in you, for they are the source of your trouble and have to be persistently rejected if you are to be free.”
“But do not be always thinking of your defects and wrong movements. Concentrate more upon what you are to be, on the ideal with the faith that, since it is the goal before you, it must and will come.”
“To be always observing faults and wrong movements brings depression and discourages the faith. Turn your eyes more to the coming light and less to any immediate darkness. Faith, cheerfulness, confidence in the ultimate victory are the things that help, — they make the progress easier and swifter.”
“Make more of the good experiences that come to you; one experience of the kind is more important than the lapses and failures. When it ceases, do not repine or allow yourself to be discouraged, but be quiet within and aspire for its renewal in a stronger form leading to still deeper and fuller experience.”
“Aspire always, but with more quietude, opening yourself to the Divine simply and wholly.”
Sri Aurobindo, Bases of Yoga, Chapter 3, In Difficulty, pp. 41-42rnâ