By remembering to offer, we let go of this ownership of stuff, we become un-involved, we begin to evolve.
People say that you remember something only if you have forgotten that thing in the first place. In our egoistic journeys through life, we do forget the Divine, we do forget that we are only instruments of the Divine who are here on earth to manifest His Divine Will, to play our part in His Lila. We forget, therefore we have to remember. We forget that this is all Hers, so we have to remember to offer it all to Her. We forget that we are only children of Hers struggling in Ignorance, so we have to remember that only Her Force and Her Grace can help us crawl out of this Ignorance and show us the Light. We forget that we are not really doing anything that we think we are doing, so we have to remember that it is the Divine Will manifesting itself through the outward actions that are being done through our hands and minds. We forget that we only have a responsibility for our actions and no claim on their outcome, and we take all the credit for the success of our actions and put all the blame on to the Divine if there is failure (or cry about our Bad Luck!). So we have to remember and offer all work to the Divine with no concern whatsoever for the outcome. We know we must do this, but still we don’t, we can’t.
We don’t do it because we forget.
Perhaps there is a deeper necessity for this forgetfulness because all is part of the Divine Plan. As Sri Aurobindo writes in Savitri:
A conscious power has drawn the plan of life,
There is meaning in each curve and line.
(CWSA 34, p. 460)
We are perhaps led by the Divine Plan to this forgetfulness so we may focus on the external world and all the actions that we must pursue. It is this action in the outer world that allows us to manifest and express outwardly what we may have experienced as part of an inward growth, whatever little that may be. Without the outward action we may not be able to translate any inner change into a concrete and sustained transformation. Without a reasonable dose of forgetfulness we may not be fully immersed in the outward action; without such an immersion an identification with the task may not be there and without which the task may not become a natural expression or outpouring of whatever part in us that has begun the journey of transformation. In the ultimate analysis, this simultaneous inner and outer journey is what leads to the transformation of Matter which seems to be the end of all evolutionary process. And for the purpose of our individual growth, this ‘back and forth’ between the outward external action and an inward redirecting of energies is what keeps us ‘testing’ for ourselves whether we are really changing. And for that we are given this experience of forgetfulness.
But we must remember that we ARE also given the ability to remember. We are given this because we must remember what we forget. It is this remembrance that takes us back inward. To the inner chambers where all journey is supposed to take us.
And yet we forget to remember, we forget to offer. We forget and we keep forgetting it more and more in our forgetfulness. It is as if we are lost in our own forgetfulness. Thej ourney is long, but it begins as all journeys begin, with the first step. And that first step is remembrance.
“Always behave as if the Mother was looking at you; because she is, indeed, always present.” (SABCL 25, p. 105) Sri Aurobindo gives this simple advice.
