Part II

SSP 52-58. Sri Chinmoy answered these questions on 2 March 1989.

Question: How can we remember the cheerful and childlike feeling that we feel on our birthday?

Sri Chinmoy: Some people feel that each time a birthday arrives, it is a sorrowful experience instead of a happy experience. They are miserable that they are advancing in years. They feel that death is attacking them. A birthday means the fulfilment of life, but if you think of a birthday as fast-approaching death, cheerfulness automatically disappears. If you have teeming desires, you will see that not even one desire of yours is fulfilled. In that way you will become unhappy. And if you want to have aspiration in very large quantity, you may see that years are rolling by and your aspiration is not increasing. There are so many ways to make ourselves feel miserable on our birthday.

A child does not think of his future. His joy is in the present. He does not think of the outer life; he does not think of how much material wealth he has or his father has. He thinks of life as constant joy. This moment he is happy; next moment he is happy. Happiness is his life’s achievement. If you want to be happy and remain happy, you have to think of someone who is always happy: another child. Try to imagine God as a little child playing around you. All the time He is playing — He is with you, He is in you, He is for you, He is around you. You have to imagine that there is someone around you all the time, and that is the God-child in your heart-garden. Sometimes He comes and stands in front of your eyes because you are unable to enter into your heart-garden, even though it is your own. If you can think of God as an eternal child, playing all the time with you, around you, then you can maintain your childlike qualities and you will get inspiration, aspiration, joy, inner strength and the confidence that you can be another child who will be eternally happy.