Surrender to the Divine
is an important part of most spiritual disciplines. But it is
not easy to understand how to offer one's will to the Divine.
Is it something very passive or is it an active movement. Another
question which often arises is why one has shortcomings and defects
in one's nature and the attitude to be taken when one comes face
to face with them.
The Mother's answers
are very practical and revealing and throw an entirely new light
on both these questions.
Question: How to
offer one's will to the Divine?
"You say, 'I
give my will to the Divine. Let the divine Will work it out
for me.' Your will must continue to act steadily, not in the
way of choosing a particular action or demanding a particular
object, but as an ardent aspiration concentrated upon the end
to be achieved."
*
"You
can at every minute make the gift of your will in an aspiration
- and an aspiration which formulates itself very simply, not
just 'Lord, Thy will be done', but 'Grant that I may do as well
as I can the best thing to do.'
You may not know
at every moment what is the best thing to do or how to do it,
but you can place your will at the disposal of the Divine to
do the best possible, the best thing possible. You will see
it will have marvellous results. Do this with consciousness,
sincerity and perseverance, and you will find yourself getting
along with gigantic strides. It is like that, isn't it? One
must do things with all the ardour of one's soul, with all the
strength of one's will; do at every moment the best possible,
the best thing possible. What others do is not your concern
- this is something I shall never be able to repeat to you often
enough.
Never say, "So-and-so
does not do this", "So-and-so does something else",
"That one does what he should not do" - all this is
not your concern. You have been put upon earth, in a physical
body, with a definite aim, which is to make this body as conscious
as possible, make it the most perfect and most conscious instrument
of the Divine. He has given you a certain amount of substance
and of matter in all the domains - mental, vital and physical
- in proportion to what He expects from you, and all the circumstances
around you are also in proportion to what He expects of you,
and those who tell you, "My life is terrible, I lead the
most miserable life in the world", are very foolish! Everyone
has a life appropriate to his total development, everyone has
experiences which help him in his total development, and everyone
has difficulties which help him in his total realisation."
Question:"Why
do we have major defects in our nature? How to deal with them
in oneself and in others?
"If you look
at yourself carefully, you will see that one always carries
in oneself the opposite of the virtue one has to realise (I
use "virtue" in its widest and highest sense). You
have a special aim, a special mission, a special realisation
which is your very own, each one individually, and you carry
in yourself all the obstacles necessary to make your realisation
perfect. Always you will see that within you the shadow and
the light are equal: you have an ability, you have also the
negation of this ability. But if you discover a very black hole,
a thick shadow, be sure there is somewhere in you a great light.
It is up to you to know how to use the one to realise the other.
This is a fact very
little spoken about, but one of capital importance. And if you
observe carefully you will see that it is always thus with everyone.
This leads us to statements which are paradoxical but absolutely
true; for instance, that the greatest thief can be the most
honest man (this is not to encourage you to steal, of course!)
and the greatest liar can be the most truthful person. So, do
not despair if you find in yourself the greatest weakness, for
perhaps it is the sign of the greatest divine strength. Do not
say, "I am like that, I can't be otherwise." It is
not true. You are "like that" because, precisely,
you ought to be the opposite. And all your difficulties are
there just so that you may learn to transform them into the
truth they are hiding.
Once you have understood
this, many worries come to an end and you are very happy, very
happy. If one finds one has very black holes, one says, "This
shows I can rise very high", if the abyss is very deep,
"I can climb very high." It is the same from the universal
point of view; to use the Hindu terminology so familiar to you,
it is the greatest Asuras who are the greatest beings of Light.
And the day these Asuras are converted, they will be the supreme
beings of the creation. This is not to encourage you to be asuric,
you know, but it is like that - this will widen your minds a
little and help you to free yourself from those ideas of opposing
good and evil, for if you abide in that category, there is no
hope.
If the world was
not essentially the opposite of what it has become, there would
be no hope. For the hole is so black and so deep, and the inconscience
so complete, that if this were not the sign of the total consciousness,
well, there would be nothing more to do but pack up one's kit
and go away… it is because the world is very bad, very
dark, very ugly, very unconscious, full of misery and suffering,
that it can become the supreme Beauty, the supreme Light, the
supreme Consciousness and supreme Felicity."
- The
Mother
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