Question: In our daily life, are we supposed to suppress our emotions?

Sri Chinmoy: No, in our daily life we have not to suppress anything. Suppression is very bad. If we suppress something today, then tomorrow there will be an inner revolt. We must not suppress our emotion but try to illumine it. While we are illumining it, we get real joy. But by suppressing, what are we doing? We are only forcing ourselves beyond our inner willingness. When we try to suppress something, we have to know that our inner will has not yet become adamantine will-power. It is just a kind of desire that we have. As we have a desire to enjoy the pleasure-life, so also we have a desire to suppress it because we feel that it is something bad. We have to come to realise that the life of pleasure is followed by frustration. But suppressing the life of pleasure is the wrong method. If our aim is light, then let us think more of light than of night.

Emotion as such is not bad, but human emotion is unfortunately bad. With our human emotion we possess and are possessed. But divine emotion says, "I am God's child. It is beneath my dignity to surrender myself to ignorance. My Father is all-Light, all-Perfection, all-Love." This emotion comes directly from the inmost recesses of our heart. But the human emotion which we observe or which we are subject to is only lower vital emotion. That emotion we have to transform and illumine. As night has to be transformed into light, so also human emotion has to be transformed into divine emotion.

If we meditate on the positive side, that is to say, on light, then light is going to enter into us. But if we think of night and are always afraid of night, then we are unconsciously entering into the domain of night. Let us all the time think of light, which is, after all, our saviour. Then we are running towards our destined Goal.

So whenever emotion comes to the fore, do not try to suppress it. Just try to think of divine emotion. When we can expand ourselves totally, when we can remain in Infinity, in the Vast, then there is no necessity to possess anything or to get limited pleasure. If we meditate on joy, divine joy, then automatically we will grow into that joy. So let us not try to suppress anything. Let us try only to meditate on the right thing, and the right thing is light.

From:Sri Chinmoy,Four intimate friends: insincerity, impurity, doubt and self-indulgence, Agni Press, 1977
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