Changes

=How to Cure Laziness?=

...they are afraid to fight, who long for rest before they have earned it, who are satisfied with a little progress and in their imagination and desires make it into a marvellous realisation so as to justify their stopping half-way. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/20-march-1957#p9</ref>

The minute one stops going forward, one falls back. The moment one is satisfied and no longer aspires, one begins to die. Life is movement, it is effort, it is a march forward, the scaling of a mountain, the climb towards new revelations, towards future realisations. Nothing is more dangerous than wanting to rest. It is in action, in effort, in the march forward that repose must be found, the true repose of complete trust in the divine Grace, of the absence of desires, of victory over egoism.

True repose comes from the widening, the universalisation of the consciousness. Become as vast as the world and you will always be at rest. In the thick of action, in the very midst of the battle, the effort, you will know the repose of infinity and eternity.

For the inner flame to burn, one must feed it; one must watch over the fire, throw into it the fuel of all the errors one wants to get rid of, all that delays the progress, all that darkens the path. If one doesn't feed the fire, it smoulders under the ashes of one's unconsciousness and inertia, and then, not years but lives, centuries will pass before one reaches the goal. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/9-july-1958#p10 </ref>

If it is laziness that keeps you back from, say, doing the vaulting, you must immediately do something much more tiring and say: "Well, you don't want to do that? All right, you are going to do 1500 metres running!" Or else: "I don't want to do the weight-lifting today, I don't feel like doing it: good, I shall do skipping 4000 times at a stretch."<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/24-june-1953#p22</ref>

When one has decided to get up, one gets up." No, the body was there, like that, and it was necessary to put a will into it, to push this body for it to get up and act. It is like that, this is tamas. Tamas is a purely material thing; it is very rare to have a vital or mental tamas (it may occur but through contagion), I believe it is more a tamas of the nerves or the brain than vital or mental tamas. But laziness is everywhere, in the physical, the vital, the mind. Generally lazy people are not always lazy, not in all things. If you propose something that pleases them, amuses them, they are quite ready to make an effort. There is much ill-will in laziness. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/28-april-1951#p9</ref>

It is good to repeat a mantra, a word, a prayer before going into sleep. But there must be a life in the words; I do not mean an intellectual significance, nothing of that kind, but a vibration. And quietly you let yourself go, as though you wanted to go to sleep. The body vibrates more and more, more and more, more and more, and away you go. That is the cure for tamas. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/4-june-1960#p6</ref>

Become more and more conscious.Certainly tamas is not good, but it is only through surrender to the Divine Consciousness that tamas can be changed. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/laziness-tiredness-fatigue-tamas#p12</ref>

==Through Developing Consciousness==

For the inner flame to burn, one must feed it; one must watch over the fire, throw into it the fuel of all the errors one wants to get rid of, all that delays the progress, all that darkens the path. If one doesn't feed the fire, it smoulders under the ashes of one's unconsciousness and inertia, and then, not years but lives, centuries will pass before one reaches the goal. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/9-july-1958#p10</ref>

There is a lot to do, a whole lot. But it may go relatively fast. When you observe, you realize that what takes the most time is becoming conscious of what must be changed, having a conscious contact that enables it to change. That's what takes the most time. The change itself... There are recurrences, but it's growing much less intense. It all depends on the amount of unconsciousness and tamas in the being; as it grows less, the experience grows stronger. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/06/july-24-1965#p30</ref>

The accordance of conscious mind and conscious will with a form and a life in themselves not overtly self-conscious and capable at best of a mechanical or subconscious will is another problem of opposites in which she has produced astonishing results and aims always at higher marvels; for there her ultimate miracle would be an animal consciousness no longer seeking but possessed of Truth and Light, with the practical omnipotence which would result from the possession of a direct and perfected knowledge. Not only, then, is the upward impulse of man towards the accordance of yet higher opposites rational in itself, but it is the only logical completion of a rule and an effort that seem to be a fundamental method of Nature and the very sense of her universal strivings. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/the-human-aspiration#p3</ref>

==Through Transformation==

...for everyone all is as well as it can be. It's always the old movements that get impatient.... Of course, when you see the whole, impatience was certainly created to counteract inertia—but it's over, that time is past. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/10/october-18-1969#p100</ref>

We do not fight against any creed, any religion. We do not fight against any form of government. We do not fight against any caste, any social class. We do not fight against any nation or civilisation. We are fighting division, unconsciousness, ignorance, inertia and falsehood. We are endeavouring to establish upon earth union, knowledge, consciousness, truth; and we fight whatever opposes the advent of this new creation of Light, Peace, Truth and Love."1 February 16, 1965.) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/06/february-27-1965#p7</ref>

It was the idea of the original Stability (if we may say so) which, in Manifestation, is expressed as inertia. And the unfolding is expressed as change. All right. Then came:

Eternity and progress <ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/10/november-19-1969#p32</ref>

It is the quickest and most effective method of pulling the creation out of its inertia and leading it on to its blossoming. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/04/may-15-1963#p13</ref>

When I lie down to rest my body and work without moving (work with an activity that doesn't force the body to move), as soon as there is the slightest... not exactly "fall," but the slightest descent towards the Inconscient, something in the body immediately gives a start—instantly. It has been like that for a long time, two years, but now it's instantaneous, and it very rarely happens—there is true rest, which is an expansion and immensity of the being in full Light. It's magnificent. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/07/march-26-1966#p12</ref>

That's how it is. Day after day, almost hour after hour, as the Power comes back ... You remember, I once said it had gone completely, and that was true, it had gone completely in order to leave the body absolutely to itself, for its conversion, we could say; but once there had been in this body consciousness the same aspiration and the same ardour of consciousness (with a far greater steadiness than in any other part of the being; there are no fluctuations as there are in the vital and mind, it's very steady), once that was established (through kinds of pulsations, not distant from one another, first on one detail, then spreading out and becoming generalized), since then the Power has been ... I can say it has been coming back.

all the old difficulties appear to be waking up again, they seem to spring up again (they had completely fallen asleep, you understand), and each time, this body consciousness feels a sort of surprise, at once astonished and distressed that the presence of the divine Power, the divine Consciousness, the Truth-Consciousness, should give rise to all those difficulties, which are essentially difficulties of ignorance and inertia—the incapacity to receive. And it comes back as memories, like that (gesture from below), like a snake rearing its head. And every time, everything in the physical consciousness has the same call, "Why? How can these things be when You are there!" That's the astonishing thing: "Since You are there, how can these things be?" <ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/08/august-2-1967#p59</ref>

Only because it's difficult for us to feel that way can we imagine that by our entering certain states of consciousness things would not change. Even if we entered into an apparently total inertia, things would continue to change and we along with them! <ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/02/january-12-1961#p11</ref>

And once you've lived That... you become so irrevocably conscious that everything depends on the individual perception, entirely; and naturally, that individual perception [of divine Love] depends on the inadequacy, the inertia, the incomprehension, the incapacity, the cells' inability to hold and keep the Vibration, anyway all that man calls his "character" and which comes from his animal evolution. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/05/july-22-1964#p20</ref>