The Difficulties of Changing Human Nature and the Need for Patience and Perseverance

When a seeker awakens to the deformations of the body-life-mind complex, the distorted feelings, the misdirected emotions, the incomplete and misguided thoughts, the entire complex focused on and rooted in the idea of the aggrandisement of the ego-personality at the expense of everything else, he can easily become depressed with the magnitude of the work to be done, the difficulty of implementing the needed changes, the inter-relationship between the different parts of the being, all of which impact one another and increase the complexity of the actions required to accomplish those changes.

When even a small progress is made, and the seeker sees a glimmer of home, it often comes crashing down when the progress is overwhelmed at some future time under some circumstance or other. It is no wonder that religious devotees and spiritual seekers have sought to abandon the life of the world with all its pressures, temptations and interactions, by escaping to the monastery or the cloister, or the cave, the desert or the mountain retreats. At some point, seekers have even resorted to steps to minimize their life-interaction even under these restricted circumstances, by adding fasting, vows of silence, and even self-flagellation to their methodologies of trying to effectuate change in human nature.

Human nature has been formed and solidified through many millennia. Any expectation of easy or quick change is bound to be disappointed. It is therefore essential that the seeker arm himself with endless amounts of patience, unflagging perseverance, and at the same time, create a separation of the witness consciousness from the active nature to not identify with all the movements that eventually need to be seen clearly and changed over time.

Sri Aurobindo observes: “To become conscious of what is to be changed in the nature is the first step towards changing it. But one must observe these things without being despondent or thinking ‘it is hopeless’ or ‘i cannot change’.

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Our Many Selves: Practical Yogic Psychology, Chapter 4, Becoming Conscious, pg. 115