The positive approach towards progress

It is unnecessary to go through the negative aspects of life: doubt, fear, anxiety, jealousy. If I have to go to light and if my aim is to arrive at light, why is it necessary for me to go through darkness? If my goal is situated to the north, why should I go to the south first and then come back towards the north? It is absurd. But the only thing is that in the spiritual life very often it is not always sunlit. If you follow the path of surrender, constant surrender, divine surrender to the Will of God, then it becomes a sunlit path. But since we cannot make constant and conscious surrender to the Will of God, very often we run into difficulties. Our mental sky is overcast with clouds, with fear, doubt, anxiety, worries and so forth. When these undivine forces threaten us or delay our progress, we fight them with our inner faith, our inner determination, our courage and mounting aspiration. If we feel that we have to go through the negative forces and feed them in order to go beyond them, we are mistaken. If we feed the snake within us and feel that one day the snake will leave us, we are making a deplorable mistake. The snake will bite us and kill us. Undivine forces are nothing but snakes or ferocious tigers within us. So if we feed the tiger within us, do you think the tiger will be pleased with us and say, “Since you have fed me for a long time, let me give you freedom. You go.”? No, it is not like that.

So always we have to run towards light, if light is our goal. If perfection is our goal, then we have to run towards perfection. By staying in imperfection and waiting for imperfection to release us from its prison, we will never reach our goal. For a sincere seeker, it is always advisable to accept the positive aspect of life, to feel, “I am God’s child. I shall aspire. I shall try to grow into the very image of God.” This is the positive approach.

God is in everything. God is in light; God is in darkness, too. But we are trying to transform darkness into light. God is in filthy water; God is also in pure water. So we have to use the power of discrimination. If we drink filthy water, poisonous water, we shall die. Then again, if we drink pure water, we shall quench our thirst.

In the spiritual life, always we are trying to discriminate good from bad and stay only with good. Then there comes a time when we don’t want to leave bad aside; we want to transform bad into good, darkness into light. But by staying with darkness, we won’t be able to change darkness into light. If we stay in light, we not only have the possibility, but the assurance, the guarantee, that eventually we will be able to transform darkness into light. If I stay for many years in an illumined room, then my whole being will be illumined and flooded with light. At that time, when I enter into the unlit room, that room will automatically be lit by my very presence.

So we try to go to light first and then from light we come into darkness. Otherwise, no matter how many years we stay in darkness, we will not be able to see the face of light. True, God is in everything; in darkness also there is a little light. But God’s living Presence is more vivid, more encouraging, more inspiring, more illumining in certain things. God is in animals. And once upon a time, if we believe in reincarnation, we must say that we were all animals. But right now consciously we are aspiring. In the animal life we were not aspiring consciously, so we will not go back into the animal kingdom, even though God is also there. No. We are now in the human world. Here we are trying to go one step ahead; that is to say, we would like to establish the divine world, the Kingdom of Heaven. If we can bring down light from above, then only is there every possibility and assurance that, in the long run, we will be able to transform our human life, which is half animal, into the divine life, and the negative aspects of life into higher and more fulfilling realities.

From:Sri Chinmoy,Sri Chinmoy speaks, part 5, Agni Press, 1976
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