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Inner Peace Is the Foundation and Basis for Spiritual Growth · Sri Aurobindo Studies

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  When the spiritual seeker begins to recognize all of the
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  difficulties and obstacles in his own external being and
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  understands the need to reduce and remove these obstacles if
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  there is to be any permanent and major progress, he may begin by
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  struggling with the desires, the movements that arise, the
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  thoughts that harass his mind. There is no end to these
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  difficulties, so if he becomes fixated on them, he can distract
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  himself from the transformational work of
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  shifting his focus to the spiritual realms and the energy
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  that they make available. At some point he comes to
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  recognize that this is a thankless task that does not
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  bring any finality to the process.
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  It is something like the 5th labor of Hercules when he was
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  required to clean out the Augean stables.
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  The story goes, the King Ogios had a stable that had housed
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  3000 oxen for a period of 30 years and it had never been
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  cleaned out. Reminds us of our vital nature.
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  Having picked up many bad habitual practices over the
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  course of millennia, he said Hercules the task of cleaning
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  out this stable. Of course, if he started at one
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  end and worked at it systematically, by the time he
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  completed one round the 30,000 oxen would have recreated the
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  mess and he would have to start over again.
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  We see here the issue of trying to clean up the vital nature
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  through detailed attention and action, as it never actually
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  gets clean. Hercules had another approach to
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  what was deemed to be an impossible task.
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  He redirected the flow of a couple of rivers through the
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  stables and quickly cleaned out the entire stables.
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  This is a reminder to the spiritual seeker that it is the
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  higher spiritual force that has the true purifying power and
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  that reliance on our own mental, vital physical being and its
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  limited capabilities does not work.
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  Rather, if we turn our focus to the spiritual force and become
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  receptive to its action, it alone has the power to cleanse
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  and purify the vital nature, whereas the focus on the
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  physical, vital and mental obstacles can cause considerable
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  disruption and consternation. The opening to the spiritual
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  force brings with it the inner peace, which becomes the true
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  foundation of the yogic practice, Srioro Bindo writes.
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  Quote The Spire, concentrate in the right spirit, and whatever
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  the difficulties you are sure to attain, the aim you have put
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  before you. It is in the peace behind that
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  you must learn to live and feel it, to be yourself.
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  You must regard the rest as not your real self, but only a flux
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  of changing or recurring movements on the surface which
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  are sure to go as the true self emerges.
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  Peace is the true remedy. Distraction by hard work is only
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  a temporary relief, although a certain amount of work is
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  necessary for the proper balance of the different parts of the
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  being. If you get peace, then to clean
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  the vital becomes easy. If you simply clean and clean
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  and do nothing else, you go very slowly, for the vital gets dirty
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  again and has to be cleaned 100 times.
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  The peace is something that is clean in itself, so to get it is
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  a positive way of securing your object to look for dirt only and
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  clean is the negative way. End Quote Reference Shriya
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  Robindo and the Mother looking from within, Chapter 5.
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  Attitudes on the Path, page 116.