Question: How can we know if it is lack of desire or lack of energy that prevents us from meditating?

Sri Chinmoy: You want to meditate but enthusiasm is lacking. Every day you do something, so it becomes tedious and monotonous. If you go to the track and you want to run, you do it but inner enthusiasm is not there. That is why you don’t run the fastest every day. You are ready on the physical plane. You are punctual, you have your sports clothes, everything is ready, but inside you there is no inspiration, there is no aspiration. You feel that you want to wave your magic wand and then you will instantly go and run the fastest. But to run the fastest, a real inner urge, inner inspiration is needed.

So if you really want to be successful, this inner urge is one thing that you need, but in order to fulfil the demands of this urge, something else is necessary and that is enthusiasm. Every day we must feel sincerely, devotedly and soulfully, that today is the last chance we have to realise the Supreme. On the one hand we are dealing with Infinity and Eternity, but on the other hand we are racing against the Eternal Time. We have to feel that this is the last day for us, absolutely the last day — that tomorrow we will not be given another chance. If we don’t realise God today, then we are finished. Somebody else will be given our chance. If somebody has aspired more than we have, then he will get the chance and we will not. But if we have aspired more, then we will get the chance.

So every day when you meditate, if at that time you can feel that this is your last day, your last opportunity to realise God, then you will try to do your best meditation. You have to accept failure if you fail, but if you sincerely try your hardest to meditate and you don’t get realisation, then you will not be depressed because you will know that you have tried.

When you start your day, feel that if you don’t realise God today, then you have lost everything and there is nothing else on earth to live for. In the evening, when you come to realise that you have not yet realised God, then console yourself. Think that tomorrow morning you will be given another chance. But when tomorrow morning dawns, at that time again the same problem will arise. Again you will think, “Today is my last chance. Today let me realise God, for I will not be given any other chance.”

In this way we acquire spiritual wisdom. Intensity will never come, sincerity will never come, if we feel that we can delay our God-realisation. Every day we must feel that it is our last day to realise God. Then sincerity will dawn. Otherwise, for Eternity we will walk along our path and we will never reach our destination.