Question: In my meditation and in my spiritual life, I feel that I am fighting against time because of my eagerness to reach my goal. Is this the wrong attitude?

Sri Chinmoy: If you feel that you are fighting against time, then I wish to say that you are making a deplorable mistake. This incarnation of yours is not the first and it is not the last. You have meditated, let us say, in your previous incarnations; and in this incarnation you have also meditated for a number of years. If you feel that each moment is leading you towards your destination, then this progress itself is a kind of partial goal. We cannot separate divine progress, real progress, from our goal. Rather than fighting against time, we should try our utmost to derive spiritual benefit, spiritual progress, from each second. Each time we make progress we have to feel that we have touched something of the Goal itself, a tiny portion. In this way, we feel that we are always advancing.

If we want to see or achieve the entire Goal, then we have to surrender to eternal Time, God’s Time. What does this mean? Right now we feel that it is our responsibility to realise God at this very moment, in the twinkling of an eye. This is our own sense of need. But if we feel that God needs our realisation infinitely more than we ourselves need it, then we see that our realisation becomes His responsibility. God takes this responsibility on His shoulders most sincerely. After all, it is He who wants to manifest in and through us. And if we remain unrealised, then how can He fulfil Himself in and through us? So it is God’s bounden duty to make us realise Him. But we have to know that He has His own choice time. We cannot pull this time. We cannot get it by hook or by crook. It is His time; He has to offer it to us at His choice Hour. On our part we have only to be earnest, sincere, dedicated, devoted and surrendered to His Will. That is what He expects from us — sincere aspiration and surrender.