Question: Sir, there seems to be inside me a dark meanness which appears more spontaneous than my love and kindness. How can I combat this dark power?

Sri Chinmoy: I fully sympathise with you. But now that you are aware of this meanness, you are already half way to curing yourself. There are many people who are not aware of their shortcomings, but in your case you are aware of your shortcomings. Now, how do you cure meanness? Not by thinking of meanness all the time. From now on, kindly take the positive side. Meanness is self-centred. By always thinking of night, by always looking at night, you cannot go into light; whereas if you all the time consciously think of vastness, the sympathetic heart or oneness-heart, then automatically meanness disappears from you.

There are two rooms: one is the room of meanness, the other is the room of vastness. If you always remain inside the meanness-room and say, "How did I get this meanness? How am I going to combat this?" then you are scared to death. The best thing is to take the positive side and remain in the other room, which is vastness, oneness. If you stay there for a couple of years, then your entire being will become surcharged with vastness and oneness. Then if you enter into the room of meanness, that room will be changed into vastness and oneness.

Both the rooms belong to you, but you have been staying in the dark room which is meanness. You are trying desperately to come out of this room, but there is a subtle resistance in your life. You don't like it, but at the same time you do like it. Unconsciously you may treasure it, although consciously you do not. If you consciously treasured meanness, then the question of getting rid of it would not arise at all. But unconsciously we do quite a few things. So if you can consciously remain in the room that is vastness and oneness, there comes a time when your entire being will be surcharged with illumination-light. Then you can enter into the meanness room, which is dark, obscure and impure, and illumine it.

From:Sri Chinmoy,My Heart's Salutation to Australia, part 1, Agni Press, 1976
Sourced from https://srichinmoylibrary.com/hsa_1