Perseverance

O Thou of whom I am the instrument,

O Secret Spirit and Nature housed in me,

Let all my mortal being now be blent

In Thy still glory of divinity.

I have given my mind to be dug Thy channel mind,

I have offered up my will to be Thy will:

Let nothing of myself be left behind

In our union mystic and unutterable.

My heart shall throb with the world-beats of Thy love,

My body become Thy engine for earth-use;

In my nerves and veins Thy rapture’s streams shall move;

My thoughts shall be hounds of Light for Thy power to loose.

Leave only my soul to adore eternally

And meet Thee in each form and soul of Thee.

Sri Aurobindo, “Surrender”

How many blows are needed in life for one to know to the very depths that one is nothing, that one can do nothing, that one does not exist, that one is nothing, that there is no entity without the divine Consciousness and the Grace. From the moment one knows it, it is over; all the difficulties have gone. When one knows it integrally and there is nothing which resists…

but till that moment…

And it takes very long…

Till then you must will and will with persistence, and above all never lose patience or courage. If necessary, repeat the same thing a thousand times, knowing that perhaps the thousandth time you will realize the result….

The most material form of this is perseverance. Unless you are resolved to begin the same thing over again a thousand times if need be…You take one step forward and think you are secure, but there will always be something to bring back the same difficulty a little father on. You think you have solved the problem, you must solve it yet once again; it will turn up again looking just a little different, but it will be the same problem, and if you are not determined that: “Even if it comes back million times, I shall do it million times, but I shall go through with it”, well, you won’t be able to do the yoga. This is absolutely indispensable.

Perseverance is an active patience, a patience that marches on.

And you mustn’t be impatient – impatience leads to imitation: and unwittingly, in all sincerity, you imitate things within yourself, within your own experience, you imitate the realization – that’s what impatience does.

Perseverance is patience in action…

A kind of inner good humour  can help you not to get discouraged, not to become sad, and to face all difficulties with a smile. There is an English word which expresses this very well – cheerfulness. If you can keep this within you, you resist much better, you fight much better, in the light, these bad influences which try to hinder you from progressing.

And so, after all, one doesn’t care a rap for obstacles and difficulties. What can that do to you?… It doesn’t count. One laughs at time also. What does it matter to you if it takes long? For a much longer time you will have the joy of aspiration, of consecration, of self-giving.

For this is the one true joy. And this joy fades away when there is something egoistic, and because there is a demand — which one calls a need — which is mixed in the consecration. Otherwise the joy never disappears.

So long as you can’t be in joy, a constant, calm, peaceful, luminous, invariable joy, well, it means that you have still to work to purify yourself, and sometimes work hard. But this is the sign…

Persevere in your aspiration and effort, do not allow yourself to be discouraged by setbacks. This always happens in the beginning. But if you continue to fight without paying any attention to them, a day will come when the resistances give way and the difficulties vanish. My help is always with you, but you must learn to use it and to rely on it rather than on your own resources…

The Mother