Question: How do we know if it is the proper time for us to enter into the spiritual life? Can the spiritual life help us to overcome frustration?
Sri Chinmoy: We can begin the spiritual life only when we feel the need. When we feel hunger we eat. Similarly, when we have the inner hunger we have to feed ourselves with Peace, Light and Bliss.Now human beings are full of frustration. Every day begins with a new frustration, disappointment and sense of total failure. How can we conquer frustration, despair and other unaspiring and negative forces? We can do so only when we consciously feel that there is something beyond, far beyond these frustrations and so-called failures. Our human life cannot and does not end with failure precisely because the divine in us will never accept failure. The divine in us will eventually manifest the soul’s Light and Truth on earth if we have the conscious cry, or conscious hunger for the Light that can transform our frustrations into radiant achievements.
He who does not aspire is a total failure in God’s Eyes. But his aspiration is only a matter of time. God Himself will aspire in him and through him when the hour strikes. But if we consciously fight on the side of the inner Truth and inner Reality, if we listen to the dictates of the inner voice, then we hasten the progress of our own life and the progress of all mankind.
Frustration exists just because we do not see anything beyond frustration or do not consciously want to go beyond frustration. Let us take frustration as a thing that can be captured and offered at the feet of God or offered at the feet of any happiness or good experience we have had — even if it was ten or twenty years ago. The power of the happy experience will destroy the power of frustration or transform frustration into glowing inspiration at the feet of inner awakening and outer realisation.
