The Mother was once asked this very
question. Here is her answer:
"Not to be discouraged!
Despondency leads nowhere.
To begin with, the first thing
to tell yourself is that you are almost entirely
incapable of knowing whether you are making
progress or not, for very often what seems to us
to be a state of stagnation is a long --
sometimes long, but in any case not endless --
preparation for a leap forward. We sometimes seem
to be marking time for weeks or months, and then
suddenly something that was being prepared makes
its appearance, and we see that there is quite a
considerable change and no several points at a
time.
As with everything in yoga, the
effort for progress must be made for the love of
the effort for progress. The joy of effort, the
aspiration for progress must be enough in
themselves, quite independent of the result.
Everything one does in yoga must be done for the
joy of doing it, and not in view of the result
one wants to obtain... Indeed, in life, always,
in all things, the result does not belong to us.
And if we want to keep the right attitude, we
must act, feel, think, strive spontaneously, for
that is what we must do, and not in view of the
result to be obtained.
As soon as we think of the
result we begin to bargain and that takes away
all sincerity from the effort. You make an effort
to progress because you feel within you the need,
the imperative need to make an effort and
progress; and this effort is the gift you offer
to the Divine Consciousness in you, the Divine
Consciousness in the Universe, it is your way of
expressing your gratitude, offering your self;
and whether this results in progress or not is of
no importance. You will progress when it is
decided that the time has come to progress and
not because you desire it.
If you wish to progress, if you
make an effort to control yourself for instance,
to overcome certain defects, weaknesses,
imperfection, and if you expect to get a more or
less immediate result from your effort, your
effort loses all sincerity, it becomes a
bargaining. You say, "See! I am going to
make an effort, but that's because I want this in
exchange for my effort." You are no longer
spontaneous, no longer natural. "
Two Things to Remember
"So there are two things
to remember. First, we are incapable of judging
what the result ought to be. If we put our trust
in the Divine, if we say... if we say, "Well
now, I am going to give everything, everything,
all I can give, effort, concentration, and He
will judge what has to be given in exchange or
even whether anything should be given in exchange,
and I do not know what the result should be."
Before we transform anything in ourselves, are we
quite sure of the direction, the way, the form
that this transformation should take -- Not at
all. So, it is only our imagination and usually
we greatly limit the result to be obtained and
make it altogether petty, mean, superficial,
relative. We do not know what the result can
truly be, what it ought to be. We know it later.
When it comes, when the change takes place, then
if we look back, we say, "Ah! that's it,
that is what I was moving towards" -- but we
know it only later. Before that we only have
vague imaginations which are quite superficial
and childish in comparison with the true progress,
the true transformation.
So we say, first point: we have
an aspiration but we don't really know the true
result we ought to obtain. Only the Divine can
know that.
And secondly, if we tell the
Divine, "I am giving you my effort, but you
know, in exchange I must make progress, otherwise
I won't give you anything at all!" that is
bargaining. That's all.
A spontaneous act, done because
one cannot do otherwise, and done as an offering
of goodwill, is the only one which truly has any
value. "
- The Mother
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