Message of the day: If you surrender you have to give up effort, but ....

You have said: “If you surrender you have to give up effort, but that does not mean that you have to abandon also all willed action.” But if one wants to do something, it means personal effort, doesn’t it? What then is the will? *There is a difference between the will and this feeling of tension, effort, of counting only on oneself, having recourse to oneself alone which personal effort means;this kind of tension,of something very acute and at times very painful; you count only on yourself and you have the feeling that if you do not make an effort every minute, all will be lost. That is personal effort. But the will is something altogether different.It is the capacity to concentrate on everything one does, do it as best one can and not stop doing it unless one receives a very precise intimation that it is finished. It is difficult to explain it to you. But suppose, for example, through a concurrence of circumstances, a work comes into your hands. Take an artist who has in one way or another got an inspiration and resolved to paint a picture. He knows very well that if he has no inspiration and is not sustained by forces other than his own, he will do nothing much. It will look more like a daub than a painting. He knows this. But it has been settled, the painting is to be done; there may be many reasons for that, but the painting has to be done. Then if he had the passive attitude,well,he would place his palette,his colours, his brushes, his canvas and then sit down in front of it and say to the Divine: “Now you are going to paint.” But the Divine does not do things this way. The painter himself must take up everything and arrange everything, concentrate on his subject, find the forms, the colours that will express it and put his whole will for a more and more perfect execution. His will must be there all the time. But he has to keep the sense that he must be open to the inspiration, he will not forget that in spite of all his knowledge of the technique, in spite of the care he takes to arrange, organise and prepare his colours, his forms, his design, in spite of all that, if he has no inspiration, it will be one picture among a million others and it will not be very interesting. He does not forget. He attempts,he tries to see,to feel what he wants his painting to express and in what way it should be expressed. He has his colours, he has his brushes, he has his model, he has made his sketch which he will enlarge and make into a picture, hecallshisinspiration.Thereareevensomewhomanagetohave a clear, precise vision of what is to be done. But then, day after day, hour after hour, they have this will to work, to study, to do with care all that must be done until they reproduce as perfectly as they can the first inspiration.... That person has worked for the Divine, in communion with Him, but not in a passive way, not with a passive surrender; it is with an active surrender, a dynamic will. The resultgenerally is something very good. Well, the example of the painter is interesting, because a painter who istrulyanartistisabletoseewhatheisgoingtodo,heisableto connecthimselftothedivinePowerthatisbeyondallexpression andinspiresallexpression.Forthepoet,thewriter,itisthesame thing and for all people who do something, it is the same. - From  'Questions and Answers'

Message of the day - The Divine is everywhere and in all

The Divine is everywhere and in all—but this is a world of Ignorance in which each one is separated from the Divine within him by his ego and he acts according to thee go and not according to the Divine. When he sees the Divine in all, then he begins to have the right consciousness and be free.  * All things are the Divine because the Divine is there, but hidden not manifest; when the mind goes out to things, it is not with the sense of the Divine in them, but for the appearances only which conceal the Divine. It is necessary therefore for you as a sadhak to turn entirely to the Mother in whom the Divine is manifest and not run after the appearances, the desire of which or the interest in which prevents you from meeting the Divine. Once the being is consecrated, then it can see the Divine everywhere — and then it can include all things in the one consciousness without a separate interest or desire. - From  'Letters on Yoga'

Message of the day: The highest consciousness must be the ruler of the life

In each and every one, the highest consciousness must be the ruler of the life. Blessings. Our life ought to be governed by the Love for Truth and the thirst for Light. Blessings. The whole of our life should be a prayer offered to the Divine. * Integral prayer:the whole being is concentrated in a single prayer to the Divine. * When coming out of sleep you must keep quiet for a few moments and consecrate the coming day to the Divine, praying to remember Him always and in all circumstances. Before going to sleep you must concentrate for a few minutes, look into the day that has passed, remember when and where you have forgotten the Divine, and pray that such forgettings should not happen again.  - From the 'Words of the Mother'

Message of the Day - Does He always forgive us?

When we ask forgiveness of the Divine, does He always forgive us? Sri Aurobindo himself gives us the Divine's answer: "Forgive whom and what?" The Lord knows that all is Himself and therefore that all actions are His and all things are Himself. To forgive, one must be other than the one who is forgiven and the thing to be forgiven must have been done by someone other than oneself. The truth is that when you ask forgiveness you hope that the dire consequences of what you have done will be wiped away. But that is possible only if the causes of the error you have committed have themselves disappeared. If you have made a mistake through ignorance, the ignorance must disappear. If you have made a mistake through bad will, the bad will must disappear and be replaced by goodwill. Mere regret will not do, it must be accompanied by a step forward. For the universe is constantly evolving; nothing is at a standstill. Everything is perpetually changing, moving forward or backward. Things or acts that set us back seem bad to us, and cause confusion and disorder. The only remedy for them is a radical forward movement, a progress. This new orientation alone can annul the consequences of the backward movement. Therefore it is not a vague and abstract forgiveness that one should ask of the Divine, but the power to make the necessary progress. For only an inner transformation can wipe out the consequences of the act. - From the 'Words of the Mother'

Message of the Day - Wealth

* The true fortune is to spend in the right way. You become truly rich when you dispose of your wealth in the best possible way. *Give all you are, all you have; nothing more is asked of you but also nothing less. *True wealth is that which one offers to the Divine. *You are rich only by the money that you give to the Divine Cause. *You are richer with the wealth you give than with the wealth you keep in your possession. *A day shall come when all the wealth of this world, freed at last from the enslavement to the antidivine forces, offers itself  spontaneously and fully to the service of the Divine’s Work upon earth. - From the 'Words of the Mother'