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The Spiritual Aspirant Has the Potential to Overcome the Limits of His Birth and Social Circumstances · Sri Aurobindo Studies

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  We are born into a family, a culture, a society, a given
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  economic and political system, an educational process and a
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  vast number of social habits, customs and predilections which
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  create for us a framework within which we are expected to take up
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  our destined place in society and carry it forward.
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  Meeting the expectations of the society within which we are born
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  and responding to the pressures from family, friends, peers and
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  Co workers to conform with the norms of our social environment,
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  we can easily see that such a situation seems to create for us
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  a fixed destiny that we either blessed or doomed to follow.
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  We tend to put our predicament in celestial terms where we
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  consider the astrological framework that somehow maps our
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  destiny. For us, and for most people,
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  these conditions apply and they follow their destiny from birth
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  to death, even if, as we see in many cases, quite unhappily and
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  dissatisfied with the direction and outcome of their living
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  circumstances. We can trace the arc of life for
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  most people as having a predetermined trajectory,
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  momentum and endpoint. And yet we see people who seem
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  not to be bound by such a destiny, who for one reason or
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  another, find themselves ready to abandon or leave behind the
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  life so carefully set before them and try to achieve
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  something different. These people tread the road less
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  taken, so to speak, whether it be an art, science, invention,
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  exploration or in taking up of a spiritual life.
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  To the extent that they focus on achievement in the external
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  world, they are still bound by many of the habits, customs and
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  expectations of the society around them.
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  Those few, however, who take up the inner quest, the spiritual
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  quest, soon learn to extricate themselves progressively more
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  and more from the web of social customs, mores and expectations.
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  As they begin to actively evolve and change internally, they link
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  themselves to the Divine and through aspiration, prayer,
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  meditation, contemplation, concentration, or through
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  selfless action dedicated to the Supreme, they forge the links
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  that helped them become receptive and responsive to the
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  divine evolutionary purpose and the forces active to bring that
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  about. This link of the aspiration and
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  the corresponding responsive energy can eventually bring
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  about, over time and against all obstacles, a divine fulfillment,
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  Sri Orobindo observes. Quote Destiny in the rigid sense
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  applies only to the outer being so long as it lives in the
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  ignorance. What we call destiny is only in
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  fact the result of the present condition of the being and the
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  nature and energies it has accumulated in the past, acting
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  on each other and determining the present attempts and their
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  future results. But as soon as one enters the
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  path of spiritual life, this old predetermined destiny begins to
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  recede. There comes in a new factor the
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  divine grace, the help of a higher divine force other than
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  the force of karma, which can lift the sodic beyond the
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  present possibilities of his nature.
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  One spiritual destiny is then the divine election which
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  ensures the future. The only doubt is about the
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  vicissitudes of the path and the time to be taken by the passage.
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  End Quote. Reference Sri Aurobindo and the
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  Mother, The Hidden forces of Life, Chapter 7.
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  Spiritual Forces of Help and Succor, page 170.