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===Attitude and Progress===
The inner spiritual progress does not depend on outer conditions so much as on the way we react to them from within—that has always been the ultimate verdict of spiritual experience. It is why we insist on taking the right attitude and persisting in it, on an inner state not dependent on outer circumstances, a state of equality and calm, if it cannot be at once of inner happiness, on going more and more within and looking from within outwards instead of living in the surface mind which is always at the mercy of the shocks and blows of life. It is only from that inner state that one can be stronger than life and its disturbing forces and hope to conquer. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/quiet-and-calm#p27</ref> <center>~</center> 
The first thing is to have the right inner attitude—you have that; the rest is the will to transform oneself and the vigilance to perceive and reject all that belongs to the ego and the tamasic persistence of the lower nature. Finally, to keep oneself always open to the Mother in every part of the being so that the process of transformation may find no hindrance. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/ego-and-its-forms#p26</ref>
 
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...you must aspire with a great ardour to do the best possible, at every moment the best thing possible, ...If you take this attitude with sincerity, you will know at each moment what you have to do, and it is this which is so wonderful! According to your sincerity, the inspiration is more and more precise, more and more exact. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/17-february-1951#p29</ref>
 
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...you must aspire with a great ardour to do the best possible, at every moment the best thing possible, ...If you take this attitude with sincerity, you will know at each moment what you have to do, and it is this which is so wonderful! According to your sincerity, the inspiration is more and more precise, more and more exact. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/17-february-1951#p29</ref>
The progress in sadhana comes from the rectification of the inner and outer attitude, not from the nature of the work one does—any work, even the most humble, can lead to the Divine if it is done with the right attitude. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/work-as-on-offering-to-the-divine#p30</ref>
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...there are experiences, hundreds of them, that the very minute you take the right attitude, the thing is done. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/11/8-march-1972#p31</ref>
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... It is as though all the while you had the feeling that you were hovering between life and death, and the moment you take the right attitude—when the part concerned takes the right attitude—it goes all right . Quite naturally and easily it goes all right… <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/11/8-march-1972#p24</ref>
 
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... whatever the circumstances, even those that appear the worst, if you keep the true attitude and have the true consciousness, they will have no importance at all for your inner progress, no importance—I say this and I include even death. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/11/10-december-1969#p6</ref>
... whatever the circumstances, even those that appear the worst, if you keep the true attitude and have the true consciousness, they will have no importance at all for your inner progress, no importance—I say this and I include even death. <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/11/10-december-1969#p6~</refcenter>
…no matter what, the least little circumstance in life, becomes a teacher who can teach you something, teach you how to think and act. Even—I think I said this precisely—even the reflections of an ignorant child can help you to understand something you didn't understand before. Your attitude is so different. It is always an attitude which is awaiting a discovery, an opportunity for progress, a rectification of a wrong movement, a step ahead, and so it is like a magnet that attracts from all around you opportunities to make this progress… <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/2-june-1954#p17</ref> <center>~</center>
As with everything in yoga, the effort for progress must be made for the love of the effort for progress. The joy of effort, the aspiration for progress must be enough in themselves, quite independent of the result. Everything one does in yoga must be done for the joy of doing it, and not in view of the result one wants to obtain.... Indeed, in life, always, in all things, the result does not belong to us. And if we want to keep the right attitude, we must act, feel, think, strive spontaneously, for that is what we must do, and not in view of the result to be obtained. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/23-april-1958#p4</ref>
 
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...it is only when one understands that all external things, all mental constructions, all material efforts are vain, futile, if they are not entirely consecrated to this Light and Force from above, to this Truth which is trying to express itself, that one is ready to make decisive progress. So the only truly effective attitude is a perfect, total, fervent giving of our being to That which is above us and which alone has the power to change everything. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/29-october-1958#p13</ref>