Question: What can we do if we feel we are struggling and, at the same time, spiritual qualities like joy and aspiration are abandoning us?

Sri Chinmoy: We have to know whether it is a real inner struggle. It is very easy to use the term “struggle”. If we have to budge an inch, we say it is a struggle. If we have to get up early in the morning, if we have to tell the truth, it is a struggle. If we have to face reality for a fleeting second, it is a struggle. But each individual has to realise what real struggle is. Real struggle, for a sincere seeker, is to conquer ignorance in his own life and in the world around him. If the seeker is sincerely struggling to conquer himself, to be the ruler of his own life, then in his very effort he is bound to get joy. While struggling against falsehood, inertia, darkness, imperfections, limitations and bondage, he is bound to feel a kind of inner joy, provided he is sincerely struggling. We have to know how hard we are trying to realise the Highest, how many minutes of our daily life we are consecrating to the Supreme in us, how hard we are struggling to see the light within us and others. If we have this kind of struggle, then the divine qualities which we have are bound to increase, because it is the divine qualities within us that are inspiring us to fight against teeming ignorance. So how can they desert us when it is they who have asked us to fight against darkness and ignorance? If we are really making an inner, sincere spiritual struggle, then we are not going to lose our divine qualities. On the contrary, our inner qualities will increase in boundless measure.

From:Sri Chinmoy,Flame-Waves, part 12, Agni Press, 1978
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