Question: I would like to know why I have many times seen that when a person comes into profound practice of the spiritual or inner life, so many difficulties arise, many times discouraging the aspirant to go on in his practice?

Sri Chinmoy: You want to practise the spiritual life, you want to see God, realise God, become God. You want to achieve the highest, the greatest, the most fulfilling thing on earth. To do that, you also have to pay the price. Now the first thing is this: if we are sincere to ourselves, we will know that it is not God who is testing us. God never tests the sincere seekers. He never does. He knows how much capacity His daughter has and has no need to test her. But what actually happens is this: there are many hurdles right in front, between the seeker and his goal. When the seeker sincerely prays to God to see and to realise Him, very often it happens that by God’s own Grace he is able to encounter most of the difficulties that otherwise he would have met and gone through all his life, or even in some future incarnations. Suppose you have hundreds of difficulties when you accept the spiritual life. These difficulties you had before. Under ordinary circumstances they would come to you – one, two, three, four, like this up to the last moment of your life. But if you accept the spiritual life, the inner life, God is most gracious in bringing all these difficulties right in front of you at the same time. At the same time He showers His special Grace on you so that all the difficulties may be overcome sooner. It is His Grace. And what actually happens to our limitations, imperfections, and ignorance? These are lions and tigers within us that we have been feeding. These tigers and lions are our desires, our wants that we have been feeding all the time. With God’s Grace, they disappear.