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Developing Qualities For Each Person’s Unique Dharma
In the mid 1980s, a retired Wall Street financier felt moved to devote his life to providing the widest array of contemplative/spiritual practices to the public. He started the “New York Open Center” as his main effort in this aim.
Gradually, the Open Center developed programs in Vedanta, Sufism, contemplative Christianity, mystical Judaism, a wide variety of Buddhist programs, various kinds of meditation teachings, presentations on Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Rudolf Steiner, Ayurveda, Western and Vedic Astrology, creative writing, creative dance and painting, a variety of chanting, Kirtan, etc.
I left NY City for 2 years and returned in 1992. I started the “Compassionate Action Meditation Group” (an offshoot of a political/spiritual dialog program) and ran it for 4 years there. It included discussion, meditation, Kirtan and much more.
I met many people during this time who were sampling a wide variety of offerings at the center. My sense was, almost to a person, these people started out with a simple aim and as they continued learning more and more, their minds became more filled with ideas and practices and techniques and desires.
Around 1993, I first proposed a new program at the center – design something that helps each person find their own unique approach, and once they become more centered and more integrated, they’ll know just what to choose to learn that will deepen that integration rather than making them more fragmented.
For a number of years, my proposal met with the basic response, “We don’t do that at the Open Center. We’re “open.” We want to allow people complete freedom to choose whatever they want.
Jan and I left NY in 2001, and I think it was about 2003 – some 10 years after I first proposed this program – that I happened to glance at the Open Center online catalogue. I saw, featured as a main component of their offerings, a program very close to what I proposed.
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I’m telling this story because it’s my sense, the more we tune into what Mother wants for each of us, uniquely, that we naturally gravitate toward those activities which “take us to our ‘edge.” That is, our maximum growth point.
So for example, I’ve been interested in learning to draw my whole life. I felt the pull toward this more and more strongly over the past 10 years, as Jan has been creating such beautiful videos. We both feel drawn to create computer animation at some point to illustrate much of what we’re teaching.
But it wasn’t until April 2022 that the inner Voice became clear. One day I just knew, “It’s time.” I started drawing stick figures, did this for a few months, graduated on to various kinds of art books, and have been drawing nightly for now almost a year.
What has developed?
Peace and equanimity, as I fail again and again and again to draw what I see. Sincerity, in the constant remembrance this is not merely an intensely enjoyable personal activity – which it is – but to “take pleasure in what I do without doing it for the sake of pleasure,” as the Mother put it.
Humility, as I see gains in skill that simply come online, and do not seem proportionate to my small, egoic effort. Tremendous gratitude for the experience of joy and beauty and the opportunity for giving.
I could go on, but clearly, all the qualities are being spontaneously developed without my consciously trying to develop them.
Similarly, if you consider the faculties of consciousness, without going into much detail, this activity – which Mother has guided me toward without any personal planning or desire, is developing the faculties of seeing, hearing, thinking, feeling, etc.
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Finally, I’m NOT saying DO NOT use techniques. This was not my intention at the Open Center either.
But I think, at the heart of any program of practice must be a conscious effort to open, surrender, listen to inner guidance, find those activities (inner and outer) which are most conducive to the development of our “swadharma” – which Swami Ramananda translates as “our line of evolution” or, as I put it above – the very EDGE of our development, which may even be the place our ego most resists.
As we become more and more centered in this way of living, then the widest array possible of techniques offered by LaGrace can contribute to the further purification, awakening and integration of our soul, our spirit, our minds, lives and bodies, all in service of the completest surrender to the Divine Mother possible.
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1 Reply
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And, just as is the case with the Open Center, this approach can be modified to reach anybody, whether or not they’ve ever heard of Mother and Sri Aurobindo. People come to the Open Center who are primarily interested in ordinary self development. Others come sincerely for awakening in the classic sense. Still others are moved by the evolutionary Force and are awakening to the possibility of being Divine Servants of the coming subjective and spiritual ages.
In 1970, the Mother predicted that in about 50 years or so (which takes us pretty much to today) many in the world will know of Sri Aurobindo’s teaching, without necessarily having heard of Sri Aurobindo.
I see the integral yoga taking form in countless ways, sometimes more intensely in unknown forms than in the forms we tend to recognize. I think the more we open our eyes to this, the more easily we’ll find new invigorating forms to offer through LaGrace.
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