Question: What is the value of health or sickness in the seeker's life?

Sri Chinmoy: If the seeker can value something in his life, only then is it valuable. Everything is God’s Will. The question is whether the seeker can take everything as God’s Will. Otherwise, the seeker will be apt to curse God. He will say, “I have not told a lie for so many years, I have not done anything wrong. Why, God, do You have to give me cancer? I have not done anything wrong. Why do You have to give me ailments?” A seeker can become very, very upset when he has a serious health problem. But if the seeker can feel that God is experiencing this ailment in and through him, then he is preparing himself for a new dawn. Something most significant will take place in the seeker’s life — either in this life or in the forthcoming life.

We have to take illness as something that God is experiencing in and through us. Then it is most valuable. Otherwise, there is no value — we shall only find fault with God or blame ourselves. We shall feel that we did something wrong many years ago, and that is perhaps why God has allowed us to have this particular disease. No, no, no — we should not think that way. We have only to feel that God is having this experience in and through our life. We should say, “I am just an instrument of God’s. I shall soulfully allow God to act in and through me.”

Physical sickness can be most valuable when we take it as an experience of God in and through our life. Otherwise we shall blame ourselves. By blaming ourselves, we shall not accomplish anything. And if we blame God, it is worse. What are we gaining? We shall not blame ourselves, we shall not blame God. We have only to say, “I am so grateful that God has chosen me as His choice instrument so that He can work in and through me.”