_Question:_ How can I light the fire of aspiration?

Sri Chinmoy: The easiest way to kindle the flame of your aspiration is through dedicated selfless-service. This selfless-service has to be constant and spontaneous. When you are doing something for yourself or for someone else, you have to feel that you are serving the Supreme. When you are doing something for yourself, you have to feel that you are serving the better part, the higher part, the nobler part, the more fulfilling part, the more illumining part inside you. At each moment you have to feel that you are a dedicated server. In this way your flame of aspiration will go higher.

Who aspires? He who feels that there is something higher, deeper, vaster, more profound than what he has right now. Who serves? If you say that the inferior serves the superior, that is only true in the outer world. A slave or a servant, you may say, serves the master because the master is superior. That may be true in the ordinary human world. But in the inner world we see a different thing. We see that the aspirant is serving his own best part inside himself. He is trying to serve the highest portion within himself. When you, as an aspirant, serve your highest, your best part, it is not only for the sake of inner Peace, Light and Bliss, but it is in order to become totally one with that highest part. The earthly servant’s role is over when he gets his money. He never dares to think of becoming the master one day. It is beyond his imagination. But when you are serving your highest part as an aspirant, you have to feel at every moment that you are growing into that highest part inside you and that you will ultimately become consciously one with your own highest part.

So in order to kindle the flame of your aspiration, try to feel that your life is a life of dedication. If one has a Master, it should be dedicated to the Master. Now that you have a Master, you have to feel that each moment of yours has to be consciously dedicated to your Master, and then to your spiritual family. Your heart’s temple is here. So in every way — through thought, through action, through your own service, mentally, vitally and physically you have to feel that you are an object of dedication to be used by God and by God’s children. If you can feel at every moment that you are ready to serve the aspiring ones, the ones who are seated in the same Boat as you are, in the Boat of the Supreme, only then will you be able to feel that your aspiration-flame is at every moment burning bright, brighter, brightest.

From:Sri Chinmoy,AUM — Vol.II-6, No. 8, August 1980, Vishma Press, 1980
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