Spiritual perseverance

Spiritual perseverance means renewing every day one's gratitude to the Supreme. Every day a new petal is opening; the flower is blossoming more fully. When you enter the spiritual life, you are supposed to be drinking nectar, immortalising, energising food, God's Food. But every day you do not get most delicious food. Yesterday you ate most delicious food, but today you may be eating most ordinary food. But even if it is ordinary, you do eat. If you think, "Oh, yesterday I ate such delicious food! Today's food is not good," then you will only think of yesterday's food, and today you will not eat anything. Then you will become weak. You have to eat something, just to keep your body fit. Tomorrow, again you can try to get that most delicious food.

Yesterday you had money; therefore you went to an Indian restaurant and ate samosa and pappadam. Today you do not have money, so you have to go to a coffee shop and have a sandwich. Your aspiration is like money-power. Yesterday you had tremendous aspiration; therefore, you got divine peace, divine bliss. Today you do not have much aspiration-power, so you do not get this delicious inner food. If you are surcharged with aspiration every day, then you will always get the same inspiration and joy from your spiritual discipline.

Some people are of the opinion that every seeker at times has to go through a spiritual desert. But this is not at all necessary. There are many roads that lead to the goal. If you can soulfully offer your soul's gratitude to the Supreme early in the morning before you meditate, then your road will be most beautiful, sunlit and short. But gratitude has to come first. How can you feel this gratitude? Just remember every day that your friends, the members of your family and others are still wallowing in the pleasures of ignorance. Out of billions of people, you are one of the very few who has been chosen by the Supreme to serve Him. Naturally, you can offer Him gratitude for this boon. If you look around, immediately you will see that hundreds of people you know are not aspiring. How is it that you are aspiring? You cannot bribe God; nobody can bribe Him. Just because He has chosen you to be His divine soldier, He has given you more capacity.

If you get up early in the morning one day, full of energy, and do a good meditation, then immediately offer Him your gratitude. The following day say that it was so kind of Him to grant you joy yesterday and again offer Him your gratitude. Peace, light, bliss and all the divine qualities dawn in gratitude. Again, our gratitude should be unconditional since God is giving us everything unconditionally.

It is not because you meditated for six hours that God gave you some divine quality. First, you have to ask, "Who gave me the capacity to meditate for six hours? Ten years ago, even one year ago, I could not meditate for even one fleeting minute, and today I was able to meditate for six hours. Who gave me that capacity?" God did. But that part you forget. You feel that you have done something yourself. You say, "I did it yesterday; then how is it that I cannot do it today?" If you feel that one day you are the doer, then the next day you will be the sufferer. Yesterday Somebody acted in and through you. Today also that Person can act in and through you provided you are grateful to Him.

We have to sow the seed of gratitude every day in our life of aspiration. Then we will see that every day our meditation will be most fruitful. In the meantime, if it is not fruitful every day, we have to realise that we cannot have most delicious food every day. But we do eat something every day. It is necessary for our health.