Question: Guru, sometimes I feel like a stone, as if I have no aspiration at all.

Sri Chinmoy: Let us not cherish false modesty. False modesty is undivine. If you had no aspiration at all, would you be in my boat? Just because you have real, sincere, genuine aspiration, you are sailing in my boat. True, you could have been in some other spiritual Master’s boat. But many people in the world are in no boat at all.

It happens sometimes that while you are in an aeroplane you feel that the plane is not moving at all. You feel that you can defeat the plane even by walking, but it is moving at five hundred or six hundred miles per hour. When you are in the Supreme’s Boat, your capacity increases, your speed increases. Definitely you are making progress, but you may not be aware of it. If you really were not making any progress or if you had no aspiration, then some part of you would compel you to leave the Boat.

If you are aware that you are in the Boat, then you can say to yourself, “I am in the Boat. Even if I sing or dance or sleep, it will take me to my destination.” But if you are in a position to add to the Pilot’s inspiration, aspiration and illumining guidance, then naturally the Pilot will be more pleased with you. Instead of sleeping, you can look around and see the foul, inclement weather outside the Boat. If you see others who are sleeping, then you can inspire them. One day all of you will have to carry unaspiring humanity to the Golden Shore. So, if you are conscious of what you are doing right now, then you will be better able to accomplish your mission in the future.

Just because you are not conscious, you feel that you have no aspiration, that you are not in the Boat. But this is not true. Sometimes the disciples assume false modesty and tell their friends or they tell themselves inwardly that they have no aspiration. Then a part of their existence consoles them and this consolation is like nourishment. But this is very bad. To exercise false modesty is absurd. The consolation that you get either from your own inner existence or from your friends is superficial and unnecessary. You have to be extremely sincere in your approach to reality. If today you feel that you do not have aspiration, then cry more intensely. Tomorrow you are bound to feel your aspiration-flame mounting once again. The day you feel a lack of aspiration, you have to increase it by your inner cry. Feel that you are missing your own reality, your own capacity, but not that you have totally lost it. You can easily search for it and you will find it.

In your case, I can definitely say that you do have aspiration. Only try to become conscious of the aspiration-flame that is within you. No disciple of mine could remain in our boat if he had no aspiration. It is simply impossible. There are two magnets: one is pulling us towards ignorance-night, and the other is pulling us towards wisdom-light. We can’t stay in between. We have to surrender either to the magnet that pulls us towards ignorance or to the magnet that pulls us towards light.