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The Difficulty and Time Required for the Transformation of the Nature · Sri Aurobindo Studies

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  We make New Year's resolutions with the idea that we will start
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  the new year with a fresh dedication to undertaking some
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  kind of change to our lives. This may be a mental change,
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  such as a willingness to listen and try to understand what
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  others say and think, rather than jumping in our minds to our
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  own ideas and engaging in arguments to convince others.
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  It may be a vital change where we determine to not become angry
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  or jealous or envious of others in various situations.
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  It may be a physical change, such as deciding to carry out
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  regular exercise or moderate one's eating, or change one's
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  diet altogether. The human willpower is generally
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  insufficient to overcome the embedded habits, traits,
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  instinctive and learned behaviours.
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  Receptivity to a higher force and shifting the focus and
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  attention to a wider and higher pursuit is perhaps the only
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  permanent method available. Yet each of us starts with our
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  human instruments, and we usually begin by trying to
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  assert our minds and willpower to the process.
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  What we find is that the more highly evolved parts of our
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  being are more easily modified than those that partake of a
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  more solid and material framework.
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  The three gunas of nature tend to have their strongest action
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  in alignment with the part of the being that most easily
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  adapts itself to their action. Thus, satwa is generally more at
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  home in the mind, rajas in the vital nature, and tamas in the
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  physical. This corresponds to the level of
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  flexibility found in each of these parts of the being.
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  A change in the physical parts of the being takes longer and
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  involves more difficulty due to the predominance of the Temasek
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  element and the embedded habits or grooves built into that part
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  through millennia of evolution, Sviorobindo writes quote.
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  Each part of the nature wants to go on with its old movements and
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  refuses, so far as it can, to admit a radical change and
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  progress, because that would subject it to something higher
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  than itself and deprive it of its sovereignty in its own
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  field, its separate empire. It is this that makes
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  transformation so long and difficult a process.
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  Mind gets dulled because at its lower basis is the physical mind
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  with its principle of Thomas or inertia.
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  For in matter inertia is the fundamental principle.
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  A constant or long continuity of higher experiences produces in
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  this part of mind a sense of exhaustion or reaction, of
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  unease or dullness. Trance or samati is a way of
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  escape, but Mahdi is made quiet. The physical mind is in a state
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  of torpor. The inner consciousness is left
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  free to go on with its experiences.
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  The disadvantage is that trance becomes indispensable and the
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  problem of the waking consciousness is not solved.
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  It remains imperfect. End Quote.
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  Reference Sri Aurobindo, Bases of Yoga, Chapter 3 in
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  difficulty, pages 39 to 40.