Question: How can we make our prayer most intense?

Sri Chinmoy: You can make your prayer most intense through your gratitude-heart. While you are praying, prayer is coming from your heart. You have to feed the prayer with gratitude. Gratitude is the nourishment. If somebody is going to run a race, he needs to be fed — not just before he runs, but a few hours before that. If anybody is going to do something great or good, he needs nourishment. Similarly, if you don’t nourish the prayer with your gratitude-fruit, then your prayer will not be intense.

Nothing divine will be intense unless and until you are grateful to the Supreme. You want intense love for God, intense devotion to God and intense surrender to God’s Will. But you will not have these divine qualities unless gratitude comes to the fore for what God has given you and for what God has not given you. The good things that you prayed for, He has given you, and the bad things that you prayed for, He has not given you. You have to be grateful for the things that He didn’t give you and for the things that He did give you. If He had fulfilled your desires, then He would have proved to be your worst enemy. But instead of asking Him to fulfil your desires, if you asked Him for aspiration, then that He has granted you.

At every moment during the day you are energised by good thoughts or assailed by bad thoughts. You have to know that the good thoughts which you get are coming directly from the Supreme, and the will to fight and destroy or illumine the bad thoughts is also coming from the Supreme. He is inside you as a Warrior when wrong thoughts come to attack you, and He is inside you as the Heavenly Father, the Supreme Beloved, when good thoughts come to illumine you. So, naturally you are grateful.

So use your gratitude-heart to feed your prayer. Early in the morning, if you don’t renew your gratitude-heart during your meditation or prayer, then nothing will be intense. At every moment your gratitude-heart must feed your intense inner cry and aspiration. Then you can intensify your prayer, your aspiration, your dedication and everything.

From:Sri Chinmoy,Flame-Waves, part 12, Agni Press, 1978
Sourced from https://srichinmoylibrary.com/fw_12