Question: What is the best way to find good spiritual qualities that have become lost?

Sri Chinmoy: When you lose something, you have to search for it in the right place. You have lost something, so try to remember where you have lost it. Have you lost it in the living room, the bedroom, the porch, or somewhere else? if you remember where you have lost it, then it will be easier for you to get it back.

We each have several rooms which we call the body-room, vital-room, mind-room, heart-room and soul-room. Let us say that you have lost a particular quality inside the heart-room. Since you feel you have lost something in the heart-room, please try to search for it in that particular room. You have to feel that you are searching for it at every moment. But while you are searching, do not cherish depression or a sense of loss. You have to feel that what you have lost is only misplaced, and that it is definitely there. If you feel that something has been stolen from inside the heart-room, then you will never find it. If something is stolen, how can you find it again? But if you feel that it is definitely there, that you have only misplaced it, then your search will eventually be fruitful. Today you may not find it. Tomorrow if you search for it again, again you may not find it. But the day after tomorrow you will definitely find it, as long as you know where you have misplaced it.

If you feel that you have misplaced your heart inside your vital, or misplaced your vital inside your hesitating mind, then again you have to go and search for them in the proper place. Sometimes you may lose your heart inside the doubting or intellectual mind. This doubting, sophisticated and intellectual mind very nicely grabs your heart and possesses it. Then you are totally devoured by the mind. If you have lost your heart in your mind, then go there and bring it back. If you have lost it in the emotional world, the lower vital world, then from there you have to bring it back. But if it is lost because you have not used it so you have forgotten where it is, then you will not find it so easily. You have to know whether you have lost it for this reason or whether some other member of your family, such as the mind or the vital, has grabbed it.