A birthday is a day of joy and happiness. It is the day of the soul’s promise to the earth-consciousness or your own body, vital and mind. It is a mutual promise. Your soul has promised God that it will manifest God’s Light in and through your body, vital, mind and heart. Again, your heart, your mind, your vital and your body have promised to become perfect instruments to please your soul or to please God in His own Way.
Once you have played your role, once you have prayed and meditated early in the morning and received inner wealth, then during the day you will be able to share your inner and outer joy with your friends. Otherwise, if you do not get these divine things before you start mixing with people, your promise to your soul or to God and your soul’s promise to you will never be fulfilled. First things first: first comes your inner life and then you will talk with your friends, have a party and do other things. First comes your promise to the Supreme and the Supreme’s Promise to you. Then, once you feel that you have received from Above the things that you need, you can mix with the rest of the world.
Again, you can meditate not only once, but several times. Suppose in the morning you have meditated and you have received something and you are very happy. Then you can go to work or mix with people. After two or three hours, again you can meditate. On your birthday at least three or four times you can be in absolute silence. Let us say in the morning you have earned ten thousand dollars’ worth of inner wealth. Then, when you are talking with your friends, you may offer them one hundred or two hundred dollars’ worth. As you have a pocket in your garment, in your heart-pocket you can deposit inner wealth when you meditate.
On your birthday, if you can meditate three or four times, it will be good. In the morning you have to start with utmost gratitude because you are following the spiritual life. You know people who have not accepted the spiritual life, your friends, your colleagues, your classmates and others. Only once look around in your mind and say, “O God, I am so grateful to You that I am not like him, I am not like her. Out of Your infinite Compassion, You made me a seeker, a spiritual person. Otherwise I would have been like him or her.” Then again in the evening or at night, before you go to sleep, just pray, “My Supreme, I am so grateful to You that You have kept me in a high consciousness throughout the entire day. Again and again I was able to think of You, to think of the promise that I have made to You and to be worthy of the promise that You have made to me.”
This is how you have to utilise your day — by balancing the inner and the outer life. If you remain only in the inner world, you will neglect your friends. That will not be at all good because you have come into the world to be one with them, to be part and parcel of God the creation. You have to manifest God inside your friends and your dear ones on earth. The same thing they are also going to do. They are going to manifest God’s Light in you and around the world.From:Sri Chinmoy,The soul's special promise, part 2, Agni Press, 1999
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