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Opening the Door to Our Latent Capacities · Sri Aurobindo Studies

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  For the most part, we live within a framework set for us by
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  our parents, community, society, education and the individual
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  choices we make as a result of these things.
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  To some extent, these things determine where we will
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  concentrate our focus, what capacities we will practice and
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  develop, and where we will direct our lives going forward.
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  Once we get onto a specific Rd. in life, we tend to stay on that
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  road, for better or worse. While initially we may have had
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  a wide number of potential choices about direction in life,
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  as evidenced by how young children and adolescents
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  fantasize about what they will be when they grow up, eventually
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  these potentialities are narrowed down until they all
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  collapse into a specific chosen career or life direction.
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  Once chosen, we tend to stay with the direction based on,
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  first and foremost, the law of inertia.
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  In other words, we've made our decision.
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  We've focused our training, education, and line of action on
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  the choice made, and it is then the path of least resistance.
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  If we contemplate going outside the chosen path, we experience
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  feelings of fear and uncertainty and likely feelings of
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  inadequacy due to lack of experience, training, education
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  or aptitude outside the narrow focus we have developed.
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  Occasionally we are motivated to reach out beyond the
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  self-imposed boundaries we have set for our lives.
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  It may be a collapse or failure of a business, unemployment,
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  difficulties in a marriage, some experience of grief or sorrow, a
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  near death experience, influence of a friend or significant
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  other, some change in the environment, a health concern,
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  or an opening through a spiritual experience of some
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  sort. Whatever the cause may be, we
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  have a chance to try new things, take new chances, discover and
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  develop new capabilities. Of all of these powerful
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  causative forces, the opening to a spiritual direction provides
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  perhaps the most impetus, as it speaks to the force of growth
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  and development secretly at work within each individual to make
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  the life they are leading, one that can help them achieve their
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  deepest aspirations and make their lives the most meaningful
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  for themselves and others. It also has the potential to
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  reorient one's entire way of looking at life and thus
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  provides the widest menu of options for future direction we
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  can look at. An illustrative tale told by an
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  elder from the West as he reflected back on his journey
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  and his lifetime. He was attending college when he
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  experienced something of an epiphany that changed his life.
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  He had a near death experience in fact, and when he survived,
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  he suddenly knew that there was a divine intention in the world,
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  something he had not reflected on or internalized prior to that
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  time. He quickly determined that
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  following his career path of college and a job in the society
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  was not going to work and thus he left college to take up the
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  study and practice of yoga. Thereafter, he devoted his
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  entire adult life to the new direction he had identified, far
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  outside any possible realm of development he had considered
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  prior to the experience. Along the way he was tasked with
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  numerous activities which he had to understand and deal with,
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  including business development and management, publishing,
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  importing, regulatory matters, accounting, personnel training
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  and management, sales and marketing, modern technology and
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  its applications to the various project he was working on, legal
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  battles, family life and a broad field of study and reflection,
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  writing and public speaking, all without formal education,
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  training or qualifications. Each new challenge wound up
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  expanding his range of action and the development of abilities
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  he had never reflected on in his earlier dreams about college and
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  career. The central motivating factor
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  was the spiritual opening he had as a result of the near death
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  experience and its redirection of his life and focus.
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  He cited a proverb that says that the the divine can make the
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  dumb to speak and the lame to stride over the hills.
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  So felt this individual as he looked back at his life,
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  integrating spirituality into daily life, the mother notes
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  quote. Everyone has countless
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  possibilities within him of which he is unaware and which
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  develop only if he does what is to be done in the way it should
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  be done. But there are two types of
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  progress, not only one. There is the progress that
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  consists in perfecting more and more the capacities,
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  possibilities, faculties and qualities you have.
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  This is what is normally obtained by education.
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  But if you go in for a little more thorough development by
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  approaching a deeper truth, you can add to the qualities you
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  already have other new ones which seem to be asleep in your
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  being. You can multiply your
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  possibilities, enlarge and increase them.
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  You can suddenly bring up something you did not think you
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  had. I have already explained this to
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  you several times. When one discovers one's psychic
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  being within at the same time, there develop and manifest quite
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  unexpectedly things one could not do at all before and which
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  one didn't think we're in one's nature of this too.
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  I've had numerous examples. I've given you this one, but I
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  am repeating it to you once more to make myself understood.
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  I used to know a young girl who was born in a very ordinary
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  environment, who had not received much education and
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  wrote rather clumsy French, who had not developed her
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  imagination and had absolutely no literary sense.
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  That seemed to be among the possibilities she did not have.
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  Well, when she had the inner experience of contact with her
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  psychic being, and as long as the contact was living and very
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  present, she wrote admirable things.
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  When she fell back from that state into an ordinary one, she
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  could not even put two sentences together correctly.
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  And I saw examples of both kinds of her writing.
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  There is a genius within every one of us.
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  We don't know it. We must find the way to make it
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  come out. But it is there sleeping.
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  It asks for nothing better than to manifest.
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  We must open the door to it. End Quote Reference Srioro Bindu
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  and the Mother Powers within Chapter One, Latent Powers,
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  pages 5:00 to 6:00.