Changes

The accomplished sense of Unity is not that in which all are regarded as parts of one whole, waves of one sea, but that in which each as well as the All is regarded wholly as the Divine, wholly as our Self in a supreme identity. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-modes-of-the-self#p2</ref>

...one should look at all that [difficulties, bad habits] with the smile of someone who says, "I am not that. Oh, this was put on me!... Oh, that was added...." And you know, it was added...because it's one of the victories you must win. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/04/november-20-1963#p89</ref>

The nervous being in us, indeed, is accustomed to a certain fixedness, a false impression of absoluteness…to it victory, success, honour, good fortune of all kinds are pleasant things in themselves, absolutely, and must produce joy as sugar must taste sweet; defeat, failure, disappointment, disgrace, evil fortune of all kinds are unpleasant things in themselves, absolutely, and must produce grief as wormwood must taste bitter. To vary these responses is to it a departure from fact, abnormal and morbid; for the nervous being is a thing enslaved to habit and in itself the means devised by Nature for fixing constancy of reaction, sameness of experience, the settled scheme of man's relations to life. The mental being on the other hand is free, for it is the means she has devised for flexibility and variation, for change and progress; it is subject only so long as it chooses to remain subject, to dwell in one mental habit rather than in another or so long as it allows itself to be dominated by its nervous instrument. It is not bound to be grieved by defeat, disgrace, loss: it can meet these things and all things with a perfect indifference; it can even meet them with a perfect gladness.Therefore man finds that the more he refuses to be dominated by his nerves and body, the more he draws back from implication of himself in his physical and vital parts, the greater is his freedom. He becomes the master of his own responses to the world's contacts, no longer the slave of external touches. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/delight-of-existence-the-solution#p11</ref>

The psychic being is the representative of the Divine in the human being...The Divine is in you but you are not fully conscious of it... it acts now as an influence rather than as a Presence. It should be a conscious Presence; you should be able at each moment to ask yourself what is... how... how the Divine sees. It is like that: first how the Divine sees, and then how the Divine wills, and then how the Divine acts. And it is not to go away into inaccessible regions, it is right here. Only, for the moment, all the old habits and the general unconsciousness put a kind of covering which prevents us from seeing and feeling. You must... you must lift, you must lift that up. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/8-february-1973#p3</ref>

…one must go deep within oneself and make a very important discovery…that one does not exist. There is one thing which exists, that is the Divine, and so long as you have not made that discovery, you cannot advance on the path … even if one loses one's memory, one would be oneself….there comes a moment when everything disappears and one single thing exists, that is the Divine, the divine Presence. Everything disappears, dissolves, everything melts away like butter in the sunlight.... When one has made this discovery, one becomes aware that one was nothing but a bundle of habits. It is always that which does not know the Divine and is not conscious of the Divine which speaks. In everyone there are these hundreds and hundreds of "selves" who speak and in hundreds of completely different ways—"selves" unconscious, changing, fluid. The self which speaks today is not the same as yesterday's; and if you look further, the self has disappeared. There is only one who remains. That is the Divine. It is the only one that may be seen always the same. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/8-april-1953#p23</ref>

The natural mind of man follows its own ideas, the vital clings to its own desires, the physical follows its own habits—these divide from the Divine. It is only when the psychic being grows and comes forward and governs the mind and vital and physical and changes them that this veil of personal ideas, desires and habits can fall—then the direct relation and nearness grows in the being till the whole consciousness is united with the Divine. When you go deep into the psychic, then you begin to feel the Mother near—when the mind or vital is under the influence of the psychic this sense grows in them also. That is the way in which it must come. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/the-emergence-or-coming-forward-of-the-psychic#p19</ref>

What prevents it [psychic being] from coming out in its full power is the crust of past habits, formations, active vibrations of the mind-stuff and vital stuff which come from a mind and life which have been more creative and outgoing and expansive than indrawn and introspective. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/the-emergence-or-coming-forward-of-the-psychic#p47</ref>