Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

12. Difficulties of the Path (2)

Fragment ID: 3823

You should realise that these periods of clouding are not due to any special incapacity or perversity in you – even the best sadhaks have them. It is the difficulty of the human nature in getting transformed. This difficulty sometimes takes the form of a bad will in the vital somewhere or a tendency in the physical to cling to old mistakes and old habits or to shrink from the trouble of transformation – but in these respects you have made a great progress. What is there, is the mechanical habit of the lower nature in general – mechanical, not voluntary – to repeat the old movements to which it has been or was quite recently accustomed when any strong wave of them comes in from the surrounding universal Nature. This creates a kind of recurrence of relapse into the states which the spiritual progress is pushing out and it is not easy to get rid of this recurrence altogether. The one thing when they come is not to get distressed or upset, to realise what it is and to remain very quiet calling for the Mother’s Force to push it away. In this way the habit of these recurrences diminishes, the strength and intensity also, and on the other side one is able to recall the true consciousness and the true force, the bright happy peaceful open condition more and more easily and quicker. One can then proceed on an assured basis to a more and more positive progress.