Ten days with Sri Aurobindo and the Mother
The practical core of Integral Yoga—aspiration, rejection, surrender—in ten letters and ten small practices.
Have an aim
An aimless life is always a miserable life. Every one of you should have an aim. But do not forget that on the quality of your aim will depend the quality of your life.
The Mother's educational writing begins with direction, not technique. An aimless life is always miserable; the quality of a life depends on the quality of its aim. Day one is only this.
Write your aim in one sentence. Judge it by its quality, not its size.
Two powers
There are two powers that alone can effect in their conjunction the great and difficult thing which is the aim of our endeavour, a fixed and unfailing aspiration that calls from below and a supreme Grace from above that answers.
Sri Aurobindo's opening of The Mother: aspiration from below and Grace from above, and neither alone can do it. You are responsible for the first. You are not responsible for the second.
Aspire once, deliberately, this morning; then let the day be what it is.
Aspiration is an act of will
Aspiration is an act of the will and one can always aspire.
Why “getting” aspiration? he asks. You do not receive it; you do it. This removes the excuse of not feeling ready.
Three times today, at fixed hours, stop and aspire for ten seconds. Set alarms.
Stand back
When they come, you must stand back from them in your mind, look at them and say, “I don't want this.”
The practice of rejection, in his own words: stand back in the mind, look at the movement, and say “I don't want this.” Not suppression, which only holds it down. Not indulgence. Refusal.
Catch one movement today—irritation, craving, fear—and stand back from it. Say the words.
Give yourself
The Divine gives itself to those who give themselves without reserve and in all their parts to the Divine.
Surrender is not passivity; it is a giving of oneself without reserve, in all one's parts. He says the Divine gives itself to those who give themselves. The exchange is exact.
Offer one part of yourself today that you have kept back—an ambition, a grievance, a talent.
Work is yoga
I make no difference between work and yoga. Work itself is yoga if it is done in a spirit of dedication and surrender.
The Mother makes no difference between work and yoga. Done in the spirit of dedication and surrender, the work is the practice—and, she claims, a faster one than meditation.
Do Sri Aurobindo's practice of offering the work, on his page, with one task today.
Never think of a difficulty
Never think of a difficulty—you give it strength.
You give it strength. Difficulties are for the strong and make them stronger; the danger is not the difficulty but the attention paid to it.
Each time a difficulty surfaces in thought today, turn instead to the aim from day one.
Not alone
Never forget that you are not alone. The Divine is with you helping and guiding you. He is the companion who never fails, the friend whose love comforts and strengthens.
The Divine is the companion who never fails. The Mother wrote this to a disciple in 1951; it is the ground under all the effort of the previous seven days.
Sit for ten minutes with the sentence “I am not alone,” without arguing with it.
The soul comes forward
Let the sweetness and the happy feeling increase, for they are the strongest sign of the soul, the psychic being awake.
The sign of the psychic being awake is not a vision but a growing sweetness and happy feeling. Let it increase, he says. This is what all the aspiration and rejection are for.
Do the concentration-in-the-heart practice on his page, ten minutes.
Belongs to humanity
Auroville belongs to nobody in particular. Auroville belongs to humanity as a whole.
The Auroville Charter's first sentence. The yoga was never only for the individual; the aim was a divine life on earth, and a place that belongs to nobody in particular and to everyone. Take the aim from day one and ask what it does for others.
Rewrite your aim so that it includes someone other than you.