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Life requires vigour!

For my friends who run their old farm house as an "agriturismo", which is a kind of country restaurant, I take care of their social activity. They also offer cultural, artistic and musical events, and are a quite known and appreciated reality in their environment. Therefore my posts for them do not only present their vegetarian/vegan food but also include points to reflect upon. Once a week, usually on Monday, I choose an Italian saying to propose some wise suggestions. I found different sites with Italian "proverbi" (sayings) and it was astonishing to see the number of them! Some are quite scurrilous: I don't know exactly why, but they evoke in me the Pieter Bruegel (the elder) paintings. They have the same "vibration"... In any case, always sharply wise. Today I chose this one "A farmer without vigour, the land defeats him without any rigour!" The image I asked AI to create for me was to depict an exhausted farmer almost swalle...

Never ending challenges

Sometimes with big, sometimes with just annoyances, life is a constant struggle. And often you aren't done yet with one big issue that suddenly a new one pops in. Yes, it's heavy and it doesn't get easier. The positive thing is that through the intense training we become quicker and better in copeing with it.

I found the following passage in one of Mère writings. 
"How many times in life does one meet people who become pacifists because they are afraid to fight, who long for rest before they have earned it, who are satisfied with a little progress and in their imagination and desires make it into a marvellous realisation so as to justify their stopping half-way.
 
In ordinary life, already, this happens so much. Indeed, this is the bourgeois ideal, which has deadened mankind and made man into what he is now: “Work while you are young, accumulate wealth, honour, position; be provident, have a little foresight, put something by, lay up a capital, become an official—so that later when you are forty you “can sit down”, enjoy your income and later your pension and, as they say, enjoy a well-earned rest.”—To sit down, to stop on the way, not to move forward, to go to sleep, to go downhill towards the grave before one’s time, cease to live the purpose of life-to sit down!
 
The minute one stops going forward, one falls back. The moment one is satisfied and no longer aspires, one begins to die. Life is movement, it is effort, it is a march forward, the scaling of a mountain, the climb towards new revelations, towards future realisations. Nothing is more dangerous than wanting to rest. It is in action, in effort, in the march forward that repose must be found, the true repose of complete trust in the divine Grace, of the absence of desires, of victory over egoism.
 
True repose comes from the widening, the universalisation of the consciousness. In the thick of action, in the very midst of the battle, the effort, you will know the repose of infinity and eternity."
The Mother [Collected Works of the Mother 1, 9:65] Mirra Alfassa, usually known as Mère was the spiritual companion of Sri Aurobindo. (Both present in the image) 

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