Changes

…the Divine Force…has to take up an immense mass of conflicting forces, conditions, habits and movements of Nature and out of it arrive at the result of a higher consciousness on earth and a higher state…The powers that held the field up to now have to be given their chance to oppose, so that the problem may be solved and not evaded or turned into a sham fight or unreal game without significance. Therefore there is a sadhana to be done, there is a resistance to be overcome, a choice made between the higher and the lower state. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/the-divine-force#p12</ref>

...one must have a great clear-sightedness to become aware that one is enclosed in all these knots which hold one in bondage. And then, when one is aware that there's something altogether tightly closed in there— one imagines his will to be a very sharp sword-blade, and with all one's force one strikes a blow on this knot, and this produces a result. … the whole set of resistances, habits, preferences, of all that holds you narrowly closed in. So when you grow aware of this, you can concentrate and call the divine Force and the Grace and strike a good blow on this formation…. And at that moment you must resolve that you will no longer listen to these things, that you will listen only to the divine Consciousness and will do no other work except the divine work without worrying about personal results, free from all attachment, free from all preference, free from all wish for success, power, satisfaction, vanity, all this... All this must disappear and you must see only the divine Will incarnated in your will and making you act. Then, in this way, you are cured. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/3-november-1954#p15</ref>

There are many different parts in the being which sometimes are quite independent of one another and take hold of the consciousness almost in turn and sometimes even in an altogether regular order. So, when part of the being has goodwill and already a kind of perception of what the divine force is, you see, this opens the being and puts it into contact with this force. But it is not always there. There are other parts which come to the front, which have defects, bad habits, and which can veil the consciousness completely. But if one keeps the memory of the part which was open, one can keep the opening all the same, though outwardly the part that is active is not particularly interested and not even able to understand. But the other part can continue to be open and receive the force. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/10-november-1954#p6</ref>

All sincere effort to progress and get rid of dangerous habits is answered and supported by an active help from the Grace―but the effort must be steady and the aspiration must be sincere. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/steady-effort#p18</ref>

…if one generously makes an offering of one's defect, vice or bad habit, then one has the joy of making an offering and one receives in exchange the force to replace what has been given, by a better and truer vibration. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/13-june-1960-1#p4</ref>

The divine life and the transformation of the lower human into the higher divine nature must be made the sole aim of all the life. No attachments, desires or habits of the mind, heart, vital being or body should be clung to which come in the way of this one aspiration and one object of the life. One must be ready to renounce all these completely as soon as the demand comes from above and from the divine Shakti. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/qualities-needed-for-sadhana#p6</ref>

The method of detachment from the insistence of all mental and vital and physical claims and calls and impulsions, a concentration in the heart, austerity, self-purification and rejection of the old mind movements and life movements, rejection of the ego of desire, rejection of false needs and false habits, are all useful aids to this difficult passage: but the strongest, most central way is to found all such or other methods on a self-offering and surrender of ourselves and of our parts of nature to the Divine Being, the Ishwara. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/22/the-triple-transformation#p19</ref>

Surrender means to consecrate everything in oneself to the Divine, to offer all one is and has, not to insist on one's ideas, desires, habits etc., but to allow the divine Truth to replace them by its knowledge, will and action everywhere. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/surrender#p4</ref>

It is obvious that things which are a long habit cannot go at once. Especially the speech is a thing which in most people is largely automatic and not under their control. It is the vigilance that establishes the control, so one must be on guard against the danger of which you speak, the slacking of the vigilance. Only the more it can be a quiet and unmixed, not an anxious vigilance, the better. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/speech-and-yoga#p35</ref>

You may get the habit or faculty of watching your movements in such a way that you see the impulse to action coming and can see too its nature, <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/becoming-conscious-in-work#p32</ref>

…when the condition is good, the lower movements have a habit of subsiding and become quiescent, hiding as it were,—or they go out of the nature and remain at a distance. But if they see that the sadhak is losing his vigilance, then they slowly begin to rise or draw near, most often unseen, and when he is quite off his guard, surge up suddenly or make a sudden irruption. This continues until the whole nature, mental, vital, physical down to the very subconscient is enlightened, conscious, full of the Divine. Till that happens, one must always remain watchful in a sleepless vigilance.

The disabilities of your past character and mind and vital habits need not discourage you...It may not be easy to get rid of them altogether and it may take time; but if you persist and refuse all justification and all possibility of return to these things, you are bound in the end to conquer. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/vigilance-resolution-will-and-the-divine-help#p11</ref>

…when one begins, one has no reason to stop, one begins with one hour a day, but this becomes a kind of necessity, a habit and one continues quite naturally. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/impurity#p22</ref>

It is difficult to get rid of all habits. They must be faced with a steady determination.

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/determination#p1</ref>

Habits are difficult to overcome. If any have to be got rid of, one must be very persistent and vigilant and not yield or let them have their way. It is only when one does that for a very long time that they go. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/difficulties-of-the-physical-nature#p75</ref>

Even when it all becomes clear... the habit stays on and it keeps coming back. So you push it back: it rises again from the subconscient; you chase it away: it comes back from outside. So if for one minute you aren't on your guard, it shows up again— Sri Aurobindo…said that he who has purified his mind and so on and so forth, who is ready to work towards Perfection …"He is ready and patient for lapses and the recurrence of old errors, and he works quietly, waiting patiently till the time comes for them to leave."

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/04/november-20-1963#p76</ref>

…if you are inattentive, you lose the benefit of vigilance, and that if you do not continue in the good habits that you acquire, they are useless—that is to say, you must persevere.

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/impurity#p24</ref>

One must control bad habits, the old habits, for a very long time for them to drop off and the character to change. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/21-april-1951#p5</ref>

When one wants to change something of the material life, whether the character or the functioning of the organs or habits, one must have an unfaltering perseverance, be ready to begin again a hundred times the same thing with the same intensity with which one did it the first time and as though one had never done it before. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/30-march-1955#p22</ref>

...the later one begins, the more one must be prepared to meet bad habits that have to be corrected, rigidities to be made supple, malformations to be rectified. And this preparatory work will require much patience and perseverance before one can start on a constructive programme for the harmonisation of the form and its movements. But if you keep alive within you the ideal of beauty that is to be realised, sooner or later you are sure to reach the goal you have set yourself. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/physical-education#p13</ref>

To cling to what you think you know, to cling to what you feel, to cling to what you like, to cling to your habits, to cling to your so-called needs, to cling to the world as it is, that's what binds you hand and foot. You must undo all that, one thing after the other. Undo all the bonds. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/05/october-7-1964#p44</ref>

Detach means that the Witness in oneself has to stand back and refuse to look on the movement as his own (the soul's own) and look on it as a habit of past nature or an invasion of general Nature. Then to deal with it as such. It may seem difficult, but it comes perfectly well by trying persistently. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/inner-detachment-and-the-witness-attitude#p6</ref>

…when we cease to reason and go deep into ourselves, into that secrecy where the activity of mind is stilled, that this other consciousness becomes really manifest to us—however imperfectly owing to our long habit of mental reaction and mental limitation. Then we can know surely in an increasing illumination that which we had uncertainly conceived by the pale and flickering light of Reason. Knowledge waits seated beyond mind and intellectual reasoning, throned in the luminous vast of illimitable self-vision.

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/the-divine-maya#p19</ref>

Higher Mind is one of the planes of the spiritual mind, the first and lowest of them; it is above the normal mental level. Inner mind is that which lies behind the surface mind (our ordinary mentality) and can only be directly experienced (apart from its vrittis in the surface mind such as philosophy, poetry, idealism etc.) by sadhana, by breaking down the habit of being on the surface and by going deeper within. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/classification-of-the-parts-of-the-being#p12</ref>