Question: Would you please say something about self-discipline?

Sri Chinmoy: Self-discipline is a most important thing in our spiritual life. Even in the ordinary life it is necessary. If a student is not disciplined, then he will not do well in school. And in the spiritual life, if one is not self-disciplined, then God-realisation will remain a far cry.

How can you discipline yourself? Through concentration on the things you want most in life. There are very few things on earth we should feel we really need, but unfortunately we are cherishing everything and everyone around us. What we must cherish is truth, light, peace and bliss. If you concentrate on truth, inner truth, then it is truth that will come to the fore in you. Truth can come to you in the form of divine peace or divine light or divine power, but if you really concentrate on the inner truth, automatically and spontaneously truth will come to you.

If you feel the necessity right now of having thousands and millions of things from life, try to minimise your needs. You will see that, while you are in the process of minimising your needs, your life will automatically become disciplined. When you don't give countless outer things your attention, you will see that truth is looking right at you and giving you the strength to discipline your life. The best way to discipline oneself is to pay attention only to the things that are of real need, that are of importance in the inner life. In the outer life we cry for name, fame and many things. Then immediately we are besieged by worries, anxieties and fears. But in the inner life we cry only for God's Concern and God's Compassion. If we will try to feel God's Concern and God's Compassion, then we will see that our life is becoming disciplined.

Right now we do not feel God's Concern for us. We feel that God is in Heaven or somewhere else. But we should feel that God's abode is inside us. The presence of ego is the absence of God; the absence of ego is the presence of God. The sooner we give up ego, the sooner we can feel the presence of God. If we feel God in our day-to-day existence, if we think of God constantly, if we give God utmost importance in our life, then our life is bound to be disciplined.