Becoming who you already are...

"It is so good to be simple, simply goodwilled, to do the best one can, and in the best way possible; not to build anything very considerable but only to aspire for progress, for light, a peace full of goodwill, and let That which knows in the world decide for you what you will become and what you will have to do." The Mother, July 21, 1954, from The Mother, Collected Works, Vol. 6 Questions and Answers 1954, p.248.

We have all heard the dictum "become who you already are." Once the question was put to me, "why don't you let people see who you really are?" That was decades ago. I was flummoxed by the question then, but knowing what I know now, I would have answered, "because I don't know who I am."

Becoming who we already are seems simple on the face of it, yet the recognition of that "who" requires, at least for most of us, a lifetime of relentless self-evaluations, assessments and recognitions. The above quote from The Mother is on my refrigerator because I recognized in her words something profound that I needed to come to terms with. Particularly, I wrestled with the words, ..."let That which knows in the world decide for you what you will become and what you will have to do."

How could that surrender be accomplished? Didn't I have to do something by way of collaboration? These questions brought out the executive in me. Where's the plan, the strategy, the goals, and the to-do list? I've travelled down a million rabbit paths, some of them so bizarre as to boggle the mind. I've longed for a deeply spiritual, connected life, and it has usually seemed to me that to live in this material world is to live entirely contrary to what I longed for. I've resented the material world and all its demands and I've rebelled against it.

Then there was a period of simply letting go of all my executive plans and there was an effort to "just be" - be goodwilled, do the best I could and in the best way possible. After some time of these efforts, what began to emerge was a growing awareness that the one part of the being that I had actively and fiercely rejected was the passion for reading and writing.

Even with this growing awareness, however, there was the desire to "take control, to make a plan." Finally, I simply began to read and write again, without struggle and without any desire to "build anything very great." I just did it with an intense awareness that for whatever reason, these things are a core part of my heart and soul and who I am. There has been a peace that has descended, a peace that I have never known before, and the writing happens without rancour or struggle. There is a becoming of who I already am.

There are no answers to questions of why, or what does the future hold. There is only this moment, which by the Grace of the Divine feels deeply connected.

Namaste.

Passion as Being

I did not write yesterday. Didn't feel like it. Rather, I enjoyed my morning tea, reading the newspaper, and working the crossword puzzle before heading out to work. It was lovely, peaceful, and I felt guilty as hell for the rest of the day!

In the previous blog, I quoted Sri Aurobindo's admonition about wandering at the call of one's Soul and this morning I woke thinking about a quote from his collaborator, The Mother, born Mirra Alfassa in Paris to an Egyptian mother and a Turkish father, "When you do anything with a sense of compression of one's being, you can be sure you are doing it in the wrong way." This teaching brought an awareness that passion is about being and not about being driven. A passion that primarily has a driven force behind it easily looses sight of itself. A passion that is the driving force finds its fullest and most complete expression. Discipline is required in either case. Driven discipline causes the spirit of passion to become dry, depleted. Lived passion waters and nourishes the Spirit and being and doing are merged. Its opposite is what, to me, is meant by the "sense of a compression of one's being."

Like most writers, I too, have had my vision of the great work of fiction that would stand alongside War and Peace. I'm quite certain that is not to be, because despite my love of great fiction, I have been painfully aware of my own pathetic attempts at it. I am meant to write differently.

The Mother also instructs:

"The first thing to do then is to find out what it is that you are meant to realise, what is the role you have to play, your particular mission, and the capacity or quality you have to express. You have to discover that and also the thing or things that oppose and do not allow it to flower or come to full manifestation. In other words, you have to know yourself, recognise your soul or psychic being." (from the Collected Works of The Mother - Centenary Edition,Volume 15, page. 257, copyright Sri Aurobindo Ashram Pres, Pondicherry, India, 1978)

I have always had the fantastical illusion that somehow the expression of my passion would be an event. I understand now that it is not an event. Rather, it is a process of removing those things that oppose it. If constancy to the process is maintained, being and doing will gradually merge and be manifested by effortless discipline, and hesitancy will disappear.

Namaste.