My occupation

My occupation is at once my delightful responsibility and my soulful necessity.

My only responsibility is to fulfil the Will of God. God has given me the love needed to love the world. God has given me the wisdom needed to become the world. God has given me the surrender needed to obey Him in the night of the finite and in the Light of the Infinite.

My only necessity is to fulfil all God's promises to the world. He has made four promises: the perfection of human nature, the extinction of human death, the divinisation of the human body and the manifestation of His own realisation on earth.

My God does not force me to do anything, but He instructs me privately on how to do everything divinely.

My earthly occupation is to be far above the mire of ignorance. My heavenly occupation is to enter into the breath of ignorance and transform its very life.

I want the atmosphere of my outer occupation to be surcharged with God's thoughts. I want the conscience of my inner occupation to be formed by God's influence.

God's secret thirst is the embodiment of my aspiring life's occupation. God's sacred hunger is the realisation of my fulfilling soul's occupation.

My inner occupation is silence. My outer occupation is surrender. In my silence I see God, the eternal Gift. In my surrender I become God, the infinite Gift.

I think of God. This is my immortalising duty. God thinks of me. This is His self-chosen duty.

Sri Chinmoy, Songs of the Soul, Herder and Herder, 1971