Question: How do we reinforce our spiritual aspiration when we feel it is wavering?

Sri Chinmoy: When aspiration is wavering, there are various ways to reinforce it. When aspiration is wavering, we find it difficult to go deep within. We hate to meditate and even if we meditate, the meditation is not good. But what should we do at that time? We should read inspiring books written by God-realised souls or other seekers who are searching for God. Then we should feel that the seeker we are reading about is no one else but us. We should feel each idea, each thought or heart’s cry of aspiration as our own. The writer has used his name, but it is our feeling that he has written about our own aspiration. We will see when we read the seeker’s devoted writings that his cry is our cry. As he is going towards light, we should feel that we also want to go towards the light. Or if we read books by the Masters who are realised and who have become one with God’s Consciousness, we will try to feel all the time that Compassion is being showered on our soul, our heart, mind and vital from his writings. We will feel that Compassion-light is descending on us when we are reading his book.

We have to know that the spiritual life is neither a bed of thorns nor a bed of roses. There are always deserts in life’s journey. Everybody has to go through the desert in his aspiration; but there comes a time when there is no desert. It is light out now. The daylight is followed by night and again night by day. But the time comes in our inner aspiration when we enter into a deeper consciousness, a deeper being. We become one with our soul. When we are able to listen to the dictates of our soul, when we are in communion with God, then our consciousness is full of light. Each thought, each idea is full of light. Then there is no night. It is all light. That is the very highest state.

When we are in an ordinary state, when we are seeking and crying and weeping, the best thing is to read the books of spiritual aspirants or Masters. Or we can mix with brother or sister disciples who are not having the same difficulties. Suppose that today we find it difficult to meditate. Then we can go to our brother or sister and they will lift us up. They will say something very good about the aspiration they saw in us about two months ago. Or they may say something about God or about our Guru that will lift us up. The same thing may happen to them sometime later and then they will come to us. To have brother and sister disciples is the greatest blessing for spiritual aspirants. There are seekers whose Gurus have left the body and who do not have sister and brother disciples. When their aspiration wanes, they stay at home and cry and weep, and eventually they are consoled. But the easiest way to get aspiration is to go to another disciple and he or she will elevate our consciousness. They will enter into us and bring out our own light, which has now been covered with depression, trouble, misery and anxiety.

From:Sri Chinmoy,Flame-Waves, part 12, Agni Press, 1978
Sourced from https://srichinmoylibrary.com/fw_12