_Question:_ How can I increase my aspiration so that I can feel it all day?

Sri Chinmoy: There are quite a few ways to increase one’s aspiration. One way is to meditate for at least ten minutes a day early in the morning. When you take exercise, if you have been doing 50 pushups, then you try to do 60 or 70. This is how you increase your outer muscles. If you have been meditating well, then try to meditate longer — fifteen minutes or more. If you read 20 pages of my books every day, then please read 25 pages. If you listen to my songs for half an hour, try to increase it to 40 minutes. This is one easy way — by gradually increasing the inner muscles.

The inner muscles are faith, love, devotion, oneness and so on. These you can increase by doing two things: by increasing your purity and by increasing your gratitude. If you want to increase your aspiration, then you have to increase your purity and your gratitude. With purity you can increase everything, and with gratitude you can increase everything. You should offer gratitude to the Supreme every day because he has brought you to the right path, and He has given you a Master who sincerely and wholeheartedly loves you. For these things if you offer your gratitude to the Supreme, then your aspiration will increase.

Every day you can meditate on purity. Just repeat the word ‘purity’ devotedly and soulfully. In one of our Centres many years ago I spoke on how to increase or develop inner purity. Today you repeat ‘purity’ 100 times, tomorrow 200 times, the next day 300 times and so on up to 700 times. Then you come down day by day back to 100. You can say ‘purity’, or you can say ‘Aum’, or you can say ‘Supreme’. Like on a ladder, you climb up to reach the fruits, then you climb down and bring the fruits down with you. In order to increase aspiration, purity has to be increased and gratitude has to he increased. If gratitude increases, aspiration immediately increases. If purity increases, immediately aspiration increases.

Purity and gratitude are two excellent friends of yours, so you try to mix with them all the time. If you have a really good friend, you mix with that friend as much as you can. In the inner world, purity and gratitude are your two most intimate friends. If you can stay with them all the time, you are bound to feel your aspiration increasing at every moment. If you are fighting against something, if these friends of yours come to your aid, naturally your strength will increase, and you will be able to defeat your inner enemies.

From:Sri Chinmoy,AUM — Vol.II-5, No. 1, 27 January 1978, Vishma Press, 1978
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