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The Psychic Being Brings Cheerful Focus to the Spiritual Sadhana · Sri Aurobindo Studies

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  In his novel Martin Chuzzlewit, Charles Dickens exposes us to a
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  character who is perpetually cheerful, Mark Tapley.
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  We meet him in a comfortable situation, working at an inn
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  with a warm relationship with the proprietor of the inn with
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  whom he is in love and who is in love with him.
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  He recognizes that this cheerful attitude may be conditioned by
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  his favourable circumstances and posits that he will only know
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  the steadfastness and character of himself and his cheerful
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  responses to life if he can maintain that attitude in
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  difficult circumstances. He purposely chooses to give up
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  the comfortable situation and place himself in life
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  circumstances that will challenge his ability to be
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  cheerful. He passes the tests he set for
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  himself and prove that he is able to face everything that
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  life confronts him with while maintaining his basic and
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  characteristic positive attitude.
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  Poverty, life and death circumstances, being cheated by
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  con men and facing all kinds of adversity did not shake him.
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  What Charles Dickens illuminates here is an important lesson not
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  only for life in the external world, but also for the way we
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  confront obstacles, setbacks, difficulties, delays, and
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  diversions that can come up during the spiritual practice.
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  Srioro Bindu and the Mother remind us that the basic element
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  of cheerfulness comes from the opening of the psychic being,
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  and it's shifting the attention away from the external ego
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  personality to the spiritual purpose and focus.
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  It is the vital ego that suffers under the blows of the world.
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  The psychic being can appreciate and understand that when there
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  are issues or obstacles, they are part of the process of the
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  transformation process and need to be taken in stride.
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  The psychic naturally turns its focus towards the divine and
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  thus attracts the support and energy that comes from the
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  divine, just as the sunflower turns its face towards the sun.
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  Srioro Bindu observes quote Cheerfulness is the salt of
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  sadhna. It is 1000 times better than
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  gloominess. It cheerfulness puts you in the
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  right condition for the psychic to work, and without knowing it,
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  you grow in just the right perceptions and right feelings
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  for the spiritual attitude. The mother adds quote.
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  All depression and gloom is created by the hostile forces,
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  who are never so pleased as when throwing on you a melancholy
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  mood. Therefore face your troubles
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  joyously opposed with invariable cheerfulness the obstacles that
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  beset the road to transformation.
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  The best means of routing the enemy is to laugh in his face.
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  You may grapple and tussle for days and he may still show an
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  undiminished vigor, but just once laugh at him and lo, he
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  takes to his heels. A laugh of self-confidence and
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  of faith in the divine is the most shattering strength
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  possible. It disrupts the enemy's front,
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  spreads havoc in his ranks, and carries you triumphantly
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  onwards. The converted vital feels a joy
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  in the process of realization. All the difficulties implied in
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  that process it accepts with gusto.
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  It never feels happier than when the truth is shown it and the
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  play of falsehood in its lower nature laid bare.
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  It does not do the yoga as if carrying a burden on its back,
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  but as if it were a very pleasurable occupation.
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  It is willing to endure the utmost with a smile if it is a
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  condition of the transformation, neither complaining nor
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  grumbling, it endures happily because it is for the sake of
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  the divine that it does so. It has the unshakable conviction
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  that the victory will be won. End Quote.
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  Reference Sviro, Bindu and the Mother Looking from Within,
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  Chapter 5, Attitudes on the Path, pages 141 to 142.