The Way of Repulsion and the Way of Attraction in the Path of Inner Growth

What makes us move in one direction or another? How do we choose, decide, set forth in one direction as opposed to another? There is the inner readiness that creates a sense of incompleteness, dissatisfaction or a view of something better, more perfect, more beautiful, more essential than what we experience now.

We move generally first through the force of repulsion. We become dissatisfied, unable to accept our lives the way they are. We may be discouraged, depressed, isolated or lonely, and we determine that we have to escape this life and try something new, go someplace else, learn some new skill, or otherwise make a change in our lives. This we may call the ‘negative’ impetus to change, as it steps from a repulsion from what is our current situation, either individually, or in the world around us. This path generally starts from an exercise of our vital force, our will power and our effort to change. This path may involve active rejection, opposition, and a struggle to rid ourselves of the vestiges of the past that represent the old ways.

There is also the positive approach, the way of attraction. We experience something which shows us that there is a way of beauty, harmony, goodness, filled with life and joy and growth, and we yearn to reach that and establish it in our lives. Devotion, love, consecration, all develop from the path of attraction. This path also leads to abandonment of the status quo, but not through a sense of rejection or active renunciation, but through a natural change of focus based on a new all-attractive goal we see in front of us.

Whichever force moves us first, eventually they can reach the same end-point. The old ways that bind humanity down to habits and restrictions that hold us back are left behind and we take up a new life. In doing so, we can observe the inner changes in our way of seeing the world, evaluating our lives and framing our actions. One we start on the path, the main factor becomes how effectively and completely we can concentrate the focus, and how consistently and patiently we continue that focus without distraction.

The Mother notes: “At the basis of this collaboration there is necessarily the will to change, no longer to be what one is, for things to be no longer what they are. There are several ways of reaching it, and all the methods are good when they succeed! One may be deeply disgusted with what exists and wish ardently to come out of all this and attain something else; one may — and this is a more positive way — one may feel within oneself the touch, the approach of something positively beautiful and true, and willingly drop all the rest so that nothing may burden the journey to this new beauty and truth.”

“What is indispensable in every case is the ardent will for progress, the willing and joyful renunciation of all that hampers the advance: to throw far away from oneself all that prevents one from going forward, and to set out into the unknown with the ardent faith that this is the truth of tomorrow, inevitable, which must necessarily come, which nothing, nobody, no bad will, even that of Nature, can prevent from becoming a reality — perhaps of a not too distant future — a reality which is being worked out now and which those who know how to change, how not to be weighed down by old habits, will surely have the good fortune not only to see but to realise.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, The Hidden Forces of Life, Ch.6 Hidden Worlds and Evolutionary Forces, pp.155-156