Achieving Confidence About the Spiritual Path and the Spiritual Destiny

When we see things from the viewpoint of our ego-personality, with our limited life-span, and our insecurities based on the limitations of our knowledge and power we frequently experience bouts of anxiety or at least uncertainty about the reality of what we are doing, about the truth of the spiritual path, and about our ability to face all the obstacles and overcome them to obtain the objective we have set before ourselves. The magnitude of the task, the attempt to change human nature through the development of a new, higher formation of consciousness, is overwhelming to the individual who can feel very small when confronted with the vast expanse of time and space and the forces that are at work to shape the universal manifestation, including all of the complexity of life on our planet. At some point, just about everyone taking up the spiritual path will suffer from a crisis of confidence, particularly if they feel like everything is dark and the experiences which had fueled the initial enthusiasm have retreated, and one is faced with the phenomenon called ‘the dark night of the soul.’

To become serene and confident in the spiritual path, we can either try to retreat into some rigid dogma and refuse to let in other perceptions, thoughts or ideas, which is the way in which many, including religious zealots, try to reduce the complexity and uncertainty of existence; or else, we need to gain, not just an intellectual understanding of the reality of our universal existence, but a faith based on our deeper psychic sense, the knowledge of the soul, or based on experiential confirmation of our intellectual viewpoint. The path of zealotry has serious limitations as it tends to block out much of the reality, with an attempt to shape inconvenient facts or new forms of knowledge into preconceived formulations. Frequently this approach becomes harsh and narrow, judgmental and concerned more with adherence to a set form of understanding than to an openness that embraces the wideness and complexity of existence.

Once an individual has the experience of a shift of consciousness to what we may call the ‘divine standpoint’, even briefly, it becomes possible for that person to recognise, in a very real sense, that true confidence does not reside in the ego or the ego-personality, but in the divine reality exists independent of the ego, that transcends it both in time and space, and which has its own significance, purpose and direction in the manifestation. As one begins to identify with this wider view, it becomes easier to maintain confidence in spite of the setbacks, obstacles or difficulties that are faced by the human being during his short lifetime.

What does any human failing signify when looked at over the course of billions of years, or even just millennia, over the span of millions of galaxies in the universe, or over the timeframes that are needed just to achieve a next stage of evolution on our planet! To the extent the seeker can shift his identification to the divine viewpoint, he can go forward with an absolute confidence that the spiritual destiny will be fulfilled, in its own way, in its own time and with its own methods.

The Mother observes: “The best way of meeting difficulties is a quiet and calim confidence in the Grace.”

“Keep faith and confidence and remain cheerful.”

“Be confident, you will become waht you have to be and achieve what you have to do.”

“One must have entire confidence in the Victory of the Divine — and this general Victory will include in itself the personal victory of all who will have remained faithful and confident.”

“With confidence we shall advance; with certitude we shall wait.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Looking from Within, Chapter 5, Attitudes on the Path, pp. 127-128