Question: Guru, what can I do to please you more?

Sri Chinmoy: That is a super-excellent question! The very fact that you are eager to please me, pleases me like anything. How many people will dare to say, even in their wildest imagination, “How can I please you more?” They have lost that possibility. They will have to say, “Will I ever be able to please you again?” Do you understand my English? Hundreds and hundreds of disciples must ask this question: “Oh Guru, will I ever in this incarnation be able to please you once again the way I pleased you thirty years ago?” There are hundreds of disciples who have been with us for over twenty years who should and must ask that question: “Will you give me the capacity, will the Supreme give me the capacity to please you again the way I did twenty-five years ago, thirty years ago?” They will never dare to ask the question, “How can I please you more?” They are not pleasing me at all, so how can they ask how they can please me more? I am very cruel! Point-blank I can say, “Start from the beginning!”

I am telling you, your question is absolutely sincere. You know you have taken positive steps and you feel that you are pleasing me, which is absolutely true. Definitely you are pleasing me, and you want to please me more. But how many can ask your question, “How can I please you more?” If they are not pleasing me at all to start with, how can they dare to ask how to please me more?

Again, insincerity comes to the fore. People will say, “Yes, yes, I am pleasing my Guru.” If they want to fool themselves, who can prevent them from fooling themselves? They can ask, “How can I please you more?” to make the world feel that they are pleasing me already. They can claim that they are entitled to ask their Guru that question.

I am very, very pleased with you, good girl. Now, in the ordinary life there is something called ‘too much’. If I have the capacity to eat only one eggplant sandwich, but I eat three, then I will be in serious trouble! My capacity is to eat only one eggplant sandwich, but if I eat two or three, then I will suffer from stomach upset and all kinds of problems. With anything material or earthly, we have to know that, even if it is good, we have to be very, very careful. But with spiritual things it is not like that. If you pray to God to give you boundless peace, do not become afraid and say, “Oh no! I can hold only an iota of peace.” When He gives, He will see whether you can assimilate an iota of peace or abundant peace or infinite peace.

Your question is, “How can I please you more?” Look at the things that you are doing now, since you have come back to our path. You are doing so many good things, whereas a few years ago you were somewhere else, somewhere else! Now that you are doing so well, you know the good things that you are doing. If you are thinking of me at a particular time, see inside your mind how much sincerity, how much purity, how much closeness and oneness you are feeling, and then those very qualities increase. Then, when you get a little joy, whether I am smiling at you or you are passing by me, or your friends are saying nice things about you, just increase that joy. Everything is action and reaction. You are doing something good, and that is why you are getting a divine feeling. You are good, you are pleasing me, so you have to feel that you can take one step more.

In the outer world, if I take more than one eggplant sandwich, I am in trouble. But in the inner world if I take more peace, more light, more love, more delight from my Master, I will not fall sick. This is the difference. In the ordinary life, in the outer life, if we increase something disproportionately, if it is too much, we suffer. But spirituality is totally different. In the spiritual life if you ask for more joy or more love or more peace or more silence in order to please me more and more, then you are doing the right thing.

So, always remember not to be afraid of asking for more — more light, more peace, more bliss, more compassion, more blessings, more affection, more concern. These are all divine things. The more you can pray, the more you can prayerfully ask for these things, the more you will be able to receive. Only continue to do the right things, which you have been doing. Those very things you will continue to do, but you will do more and more and more and more and more. Early in the morning if you are praying and meditating for ten minutes, then try to meditate for twelve minutes or thirteen minutes. In the morning if you are doing something that you feel is spiritual, that very thing you will do a little more, a little more, a little more.

The best thing is to stand in front of a mirror early in the morning and smile for two or three minutes, as sincerely and soulfully as possible. While smiling, most sincerely, soulfully and prayerfully you have to imagine that I am watching, and I am giving you a mark, whether it is 60, 70, 80, 100 or zero. At that time, your heart’s sincerity and your mind’s purity will be expressed and revealed through your smile.

Then you have to feel that you are not smiling at yourself, but you are smiling at me. At that time you will not be appreciating your hair or your ears or anything else about your appearance. No! You have to feel that only to make me happy you are smiling prayerfully, soulfully and self-givingly. Early in the morning if you start with a smile, then all the rubbish forces — the previous day’s frustration or despair because somebody at your job was not nice to you — will go away. Every morning we should start with a smile so that all the mental poison we took yesterday will disappear. One smile is like the morning sun that has burst forth. When we smile, there are no more clouds in the sky. So, start your journey with a smile, a very sincere, very beautiful, very pure smile. That smile will be the golden start, the most powerful start to please me more, more, more, abundantly more, infinitely more than you are doing now.