At once she was the stillness and the word,
A continent of self-diffusing peace,
An ocean of untrembling virgin fire;
The strength, the silence of the gods were hers.
In her he found a vastness like his own,
His high warm subtle ether he refound
And moved in her as in his natural home.
In her he met his own eternity.
Sri Aurobindo
Savitri, Book I, Canto II, page 16.
What does this sentence mean: “Look life in the face from the soul’s inner strength and become master of circumstances”?
That is precisely the opposite of the method which consists in rejecting the whole of the physical consciousness and all physical events. “Look life in the face”, this means: don’t turn your back on it! It means: face life as it is instead of running away from it and call to your aid the inner psychic force — this is what Sri Aurobindo says: “the soul’s inner strength”, the inner psychic force — and with the help of this psychic consciousness rise above circumstances and master them. That is to say, instead of submitting to all that comes and suffering all its consequences, one rises above circumstances and lets them pass like things that do not touch you and do not impair your consciousness. That is what it means.
The Mother,
Questions and Answers 1956, CWM volume 8, page 300.