Page 44 - NAMAH-Jan-2020

Facing mental challenges on the spiritual path: reaching equanimity

Denis Capdeville

Abstract
Three main challenges are mentioned in this article: the difficulty to assess the inner progress on the
path, the persistence of ancient behaviours that could have been too rapidly assessed as definitively
removed and the fluctuations of the mood in peaks of exaltation and lows of depression. Furthermore,
from a more esoteric perspective, the author mentions the extent to which some wrong habits or
patterns could be associated with antagonist or adverse forces, which could eventually be tackled
in an innovative therapeutic way. To practise the power of observation leads to equanimity which
neutralises these forces by stopping to feed them.

“Everything pushed to its extreme is transformed Another challenge is the persistence of old
into its opposite,” says a Chinese proverb. behaviours. Sometimes we feel like we are
stagnating, especially when attitudes that
The teachings of Sri Aurobindo and Mother we thought had disappeared since long,
give us knowledge and tools to address mental reappear. In fact, nothing totally disappears
challenges on the spiritualpath in an innovative from our system. The uniqueness of our
manner. experience means that each of us keeps
a conscious or unconscious memory of
One of the important challenges on the everything that has happened, of all that we
spiritual path is the difficulty to assess our daily have done and of all that we could have done.
progress. We forget that the consciousness self- A cloud of information constantly surrounds
appropriates in real time all new information us, like a tank of memories and possibilities.
as if it had always been part of its system, and
it is therefore sometimes difficult to distinguish These old behaviours also represent those
what has just appeared from what has been antagonistic forces that battle in us, which
acquired for a long time. Daily illuminations share our energy and our subtle bodies, and
are expected, whereas progress is tenuous which are perhaps more to be considered as
and fragile. On the other hand, our progress autonomous electromagnetic forces, endowed
concerns first the psychic being, so that then with a certain power. These thought-forms
changes in our personality may appear. that we have enlivened during all these years,

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