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Overcoming the Power of External Circumstances on the Inner Life · Sri Aurobindo Studies

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  Most people have very little, if any, real control over
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  circumstances that arise in their lives.
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  They are born into a family, a community, a society, a
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  religious background, an ethnic background, an economic system,
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  an educational system, and a raft of customs, traditions,
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  habits and lifeways that they breathe in with every breath as
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  they grow, learn and take their place within the social
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  structure. This structure focuses attention
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  on the outward existence and builds up the persistence of the
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  ego personality. The practice of yoga undertaking
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  conscious spiritual growth necessarily involves separating
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  oneself from all these fixed habitual patterns so that new
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  understanding, new powers of consciousness, new powers of
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  action can actually manifest. There needs to be a reversal of
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  consciousness whereby the yogic practitioner actually responds
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  in an opposite way to the normal external reaction patterns.
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  A first step in this process is to begin to observe the
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  reactions and understand the patterns that are embedded.
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  A second and further step is to shift the attention to the inner
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  consciousness and away from the external focus.
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  A third step then is to simply stop attending to the
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  impressions of the external nature.
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  A fourth step is to have the ability to act in the outer
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  world without being swallowed up because of the new inner
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  directed standpoint and focus. Sri Orobindo frequently advised
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  people to live within, be not shaken by outward happenings.
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  If we try this, if we work at it, we begin to see a new
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  pattern emerge whereby those outer circumstances bother us
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  less and less, and we can remain calm, concentrated and focused
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  in the inner status even while acting forcefully in the world,
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  Triorbindo notes quote. You should not be so dependent
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  on outward things. It is this attitude that makes
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  you give so excessive an importance to circumstances.
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  I do not say that circumstances cannot help or hinder, but they
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  are circumstances, not the fundamental thing which is in
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  ourselves, and their help or their hindrance ought not to be
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  of primary importance. In Yoga, as in every great or
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  serious human effort, there is always bound to be an abundance
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  of adverse interventions and unfavourable circumstances which
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  have to be overcome. To give them too great an
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  importance increases their importance, and their power to
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  multiply themselves gives them, as it were, confidence in
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  themselves, and the habit of coming to face them with
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  equanimity. If one cannot manage a cheerful
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  persistence against them, of confident and resolute will,
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  diminishes, On the contrary, their importance and effect, and
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  in the end, though not at once, gets rid of their persistence
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  and recurrence. It is therefore a principle in
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  Yoga to recognize the determining power of what is
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  within us, for that is the deeper truth, to set that right
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  and establish the inward strength as against the power of
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  outward circumstances. The strength is there even in
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  the weakest. One has to find it, to unveil
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  it, and to keep it in front throughout the journey and the
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  battle. End Quote.
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  Reference Sri Aurobindo and the Mother looking from within.
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  Chapter 1. Looking at life and
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  Circumstances, pages six to seven.