Question: How can we trust ourselves and our abilities?

Sri Chinmoy: If we rely on God, then whatever we receive from Him will be sufficient for us. You are saying you cannot trust yourself. This moment your mind is telling you that I am a good person. Next moment your mind says the opposite. And the moment after that, your mind will tell you, “Who am I to judge him? If he is a good person, let him be good. If he is a bad person, let him be bad. What do I gain by thinking of whether he is good or bad?”

The same thing happens with trust. This moment you trust your capacity. Next moment you do not trust it at all. All human beings suffer from trust and lack of trust.

How do we solve this problem? If we pray to God and depend on God for everything, then God gives us confidence. At that time, we do not have to worry. The confidence that we get from our reliance on God can never be taken away. If you love God, how can He deceive you? We cannot deceive our dearest ones. If you are a nice person, you will not deceive your mother or your father or your brother. Can there be anybody nicer than God? God is infinitely nicer than we are. If you trust Him, then He will never fail you. Your trust in Him, your faith in Him, will give you confidence in yourself. You will trust yourself and you are bound to trust yourself precisely because there is Someone who loves you infinitely more than you can ever imagine, and that Person is God. If you love Him, He will give you the capacity to trust in your activities.

You write poems. Try to feel that these poems are being written by God in and through you. Feel that you are only holding the pen and writing down the words that God wants you to write. If you feel, “I have done it. I have written hundreds of poems,” if that kind of pride comes forward, then you will not be able to write even one line.

Right from my childhood, I started writing poems. Now I have written thousands and thousands of poems, but I know that I can do nothing without God. Everything that I do comes from Him. It is not my false modesty. It is my sincere conviction, based on my oneness with God’s Will.

When you write poems or when you do something good, inspiring and illumining, you have to feel that it is He who has done it in and through you, according to your capacity of receptivity. If you cannot trust God, then you will never be able to trust yourself. So trust God’s Presence from now on, if possible all the time. If you cannot do it all the time, then try to trust Him for a few minutes a day. The more your faith in God increases, the stronger will be your faith and trust in yourself.