Question: What is the meaning of struggle in the spiritual life? Will it lead to the destruction of our divine qualities?

Sri Chinmoy: Each individual has to realise what real struggle is. Real struggle, for a sincere spiritual seeker, is the struggle to conquer ignorance in his own life and in the world around him. If he is sincerely struggling to conquer himself, to be the ruler of his own life, then in his very effort he is bound to get 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.

Again, “struggle” is a very complicated word. If a lazy person has to budge an inch, then he feels that it is a great struggle. When we use the term “struggle”, we have to know how hard we are trying to realise the Highest; we have to know how many minutes a day we are consecrating to the Supreme in us, how hard we are struggling to see the light within us and within others. If we are making a sincere struggle, then our divine qualities are bound to increase, for it is the divine qualities within us that are inspiring us to fight against teeming ignorance. So how can they desert us when it is they who have asked us to fight? If we are sincerely struggling to conquer the dark forces in our lives, then we are not going to lose our inner divine qualities. On the contrary, our inner qualities will increase in boundless measure.