Question: What can we do if we feel that although we are inwardly struggling, spiritual qualities like joy and aspiration are abandoning us?¹⁷³

Sri Chinmoy: We have to know whether it is a real inner struggle. It is very easy to use the term ‘struggle’. If a lazy person has to budge an inch, he says it is a struggle. If we have to get up early in the morning, if we have to face reality for a fleeting second, we call it a struggle. But each individual has to realise what real struggle is. For a sincere seeker, real struggle is the struggle to conquer ignorance in his own life and in the world around him. If a seeker is really struggling to conquer himself and be the ruler of his own life, then in his very effort he is bound to get joy. While struggling against falsehood, inertia, darkness, imperfection, limitation and bondage, he is bound to feel a kind of inner joy, provided he is struggling sincerely.

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 sincerely we are struggling to see the light within ourselves and within others. If we are wholeheartedly trying, then our divine qualities are bound to increase. 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 really making a sincere spiritual struggle, then we are not going to lose our divine qualities. On the contrary, our inner qualities will increase in boundless measure.