Question: What should we do if we are struggling and, at the same time, losing the quality of joy in our lives?

Sri Chinmoy: We have to know whether it is a real inner struggle. It is very easy for us to use the term "struggle". Again, "struggle" is a very complicated word. If a lazy person has to budge an inch, he calls it a struggle. If we have to get up early in the morning, or if we have to tell the truth, we say that it is a struggle. If we have to face reality for a fleeting second, if we have to work, it is all a struggle.

Each individual has to realise within himself what true struggle is. The real struggle for a sincere seeker is to conquer ignorance in his own life and in the world around him. But if he is sincerely struggling to conquer himself, to be the conqueror of his own life, then his very effort is bound to give him joy. If he is sincerely struggling against falsehood, inertia, darkness, imperfection, limitation and bondage, then he is bound to feel a kind of inner joy.

We have to know how hard we are trying to realise the Highest, how many minutes of our daily life we are consecrating to the Supreme in us, how much we are struggling to see the Light within us and within others. If we have this kind of struggle, then we are bound to feel that the divine qualities which we have and which everybody has are bound to increase. It is the divine qualities within us that are looming large and inspiring us to fight against teeming darkness and ignorance. So how can these divine qualities desert us when it is they who are asking us to fight? In really sincere spiritual struggle we are not going to lose our inner qualities. On the contrary, our inner qualities will increase in boundless measure.