Identifying and Addressing Obstacles Through Inner Development for Spiritual Progress

It is a somewhat natural tendency in human nature to blame others, or circumstances, or fate, when obstacles arise. We tend to bemoan how ‘unfair’ life can be. We see conspiracies and power structures that are preventing us from accomplishing what it is that we believe we are meant to accomplish. Few people look at what happens in their lives, and in their inner struggles, as a window to their own condition. The idea that the obstacle is within us, not something external, does not easily find favor in anyone’s mind.

This standpoint also occurs for many who take up the spiritual path, particularly in early stages. We then hear people say that if only they had more time, they would meditate or study more; or if they did not have to work at some job to earn money, they would be free to follow their spiritual pursuits, or, or, or, ad infinitum.

There is always a mixture of forces at work, a concatenation of events that crystallise around us at all times. These forces are larger and more powerful than our individuality as a separate ego-consciousness, and speak to general trends, directions and developments that we will experience one way or the other. The issue then is not that these forces impinge upon us, but lies in the way that we respond to them.

For the spiritual seeker, every circumstance is an opportunity for reinforcing the aspiration, the dedication, the consecration, the faith. Every challenge acts as something of a mirror that exposes for us the inward psychological reality that we are meant to work on to create a new psychological standpoint, to align with the evolutionary intention in the divine manifestation, to carry out, what Sri Aurobindo has termed yoga to be, ‘applied psychology’. This psychology is for the inner work, the exploration of inner space, the change of human nature from within, one element, one movement, one reaction at a time, what Sri Aurobindo calls “the adventure of consciousness and joy” in his epic poem, Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol.

Sri Aurobindo notes: “These obstacles are usual in the first stages of the sadhana. They are due to the nature being not yet sufficiently receptive. You should find out where the obstacle is, in the mind or the vital, and try to widen the consciousness there, call in more purity and peace and in that purity and peace offer that part of your being sincerely and wholly to the Divine Power.”

Sri Aurobindo, Bases of Yoga, Chapter 3, In Difficulty, pg. 39