Question: Guru, whenever I do something well, my ego always tries to claim it and whenever something is not going well I find it very difficult, almost impossible, to offer that to you.

Sri Chinmoy: When you do well, you feel that you are the doer; you try to take the credit. But you have to feel that if you are the doer, then how is it that there are occasions when you do something well that you previously could not do well? If you are the doer, then the action is at your command. If this time you can do something perfectly, then the next time you should again be able to make it perfect because you have the capacity. But since it is not always perfect, you have to know that some other force is operating in and through you. That force is the Force of the Supreme. So who should get the credit when you do something perfect? The Supreme Himself.

Then, when you feel that you have done something wrong and you are embarrassed to offer the result to the Supreme in me, again you have to know that this is a false, pious feeling towards your own life activities. It is a kind of pretence. You have to feel at that time that you are a child of the Supreme. A child is not embarrassed to come to his mother with mud and sand all over his body. He feels that he is coming to the right place. So when you do something wrong, feel that you are a child whose whole body is smeared with sand, filth and dirt; but you are coming to the mother, to the right place.

Both good experiences and bad experiences you have to give to the Supreme in me. Then only can you go beyond good and bad. It is not that you will do everything bad and then say, “Oh, good and bad we have to take on the same level.” There will always be a sense of separativity: this is good, this is bad. But a time comes when you have to transcend both good and bad.

A bad thought is like a thorn. A thorn enters into your foot, and you take help of another thorn to remove the first thorn. Then you throw away both the thorns because you don’t need them. So you take out the bad thought from your mind with the help of a good thought. But just because they are thoughts, they are binding you. Thoughts can only bind you, no matter how good they are. So you have to go far beyond the domain of thoughts. You have to enter into the world of will-power, where you really create and become one with the Divine Will.

So good thoughts, bad thoughts, everything, everything, has to be offered to the Supreme, because you know that you are not the doer. If you think that you are the doer, then naturally you shall claim your good thoughts. And if you have bad thoughts, then you will be embarrassed because you have identified yourself to such an extent with them. You will feel that to expose your bad thoughts means to expose yourself, your whole existence-reality, so the best thing is to hide yourself along with the bad thoughts. But this is all wrong. The best thing is to offer anything that you do, good or bad, to the Supreme and to feel that it is He who is operating in and through you according to your achievement and according to your present stage of consciousness.