Question: How can one tell the difference between the Will of God and wishful thinking?

Sri Chinmoy: In order to know God’s Will, one need not be a great spiritual Master or a highly advanced spiritual soul. There are very few of these on earth, very few. But one has to be at least a seeker in order to know God’s Will. And how can one be a real seeker? One can be a true seeker, an aspirant, if he feels that he is not only helpless, but also hopeless, meaningless and useless in every way without God. Without God he is nothing but with God he is everything. He is aspiration. He is Realisation. He is Revelation. He is Manifestation. If one has that kind of inner feeling about oneself, then one can be a true seeker overnight.

How can a seeker know whether something is God’s Will or just his own fanciful or wishful thinking? A real aspirant, a sincere seeker, tries to meditate devotedly each day. And one who meditates devotedly each day will soon have a free access to God’s inner realm and be able to hear the message of God.

Of course, it is easy to say that you have to meditate devotedly, but actually to meditate devotedly may seem like climbing up Mount Everest. When you start meditating you have to feel that your very life, your very existence, your very breath, is an offering to the Inner Pilot within you. Each time you breathe in, try to offer your life-breath consciously to the Inner Pilot within you. Only in this way can you meditate devotedly and have a devoted feeling towards God.

Now, how to feel God’s Will. During your meditation there comes a time when your mind is totally blank, absolutely calm and quiet. There is only purity, serenity and profundity in your mind. All this purity, serenity and profundity have one common face, which is called tranquillity. When tranquillity is with them, they are perfect. When the mind has become calm, quiet, tranquil and vacant, here inside your heart you will feel a twinge, or you will feel something very tiny, like a soft bubble. It is a tiny thing, but there in golden letters is written a message. Even if you keep your eyes closed, no harm. Sometimes the message is transferred from the heart to the head, and with your mind you can see that the message has come. But if you have the capacity to go deep within, you will see that the message has already been inscribed in the heart. Just because you cannot see the message there, it has to come to the physical mind to convince you.

Inside the heart’s inmost recesses, where everything is flooded with purity, a message cannot be written by anybody other than God. There no hostile force, no undivine force, can enter. But this is not true about the mind. In the mind there can always be a mental hallucination, a fabrication, or some self-imposed truth that we have created. But in the very inmost recesses of our heart, no disturbing thought, no struggling thought, no strangling thought will ever dare to enter. For there it is well protected, well shielded by God Himself, because God’s own wealth and treasure is there. He Himself is there as a soldier, a gatekeeper, guarding His treasure. If you get a message from the head, it does not mean that the message will be wrong. No! Sometimes you may get a genuine message which has come directly up from the heart, and sometimes you may get a message from elsewhere. It enters into your mind and you feel that it has come from God, but this is not the case.

When you meditate, please try to feel the necessity of opening your heart fully and closing your mind fully. What mind? The physical mind, which thinks of your near and dear ones, your friends, the rest of the world. When you bolt the door of your physical mind and open the door of your heart, at that time the mind becomes calm and quiet and the heart becomes all receptivity. When your concentration and meditation are focused on the heart and the heart is receptive, then naturally what the heart treasures — the message from God — will come to the fore and you will be able to read it and utilise it in your day-to-day life.

Now, it is one thing to hear the message of God correctly and another thing to listen to it and fulfil it. There are quite a few who hear God’s message, but in their outer life they cannot execute it. For that, you need faith in yourself — faith that you are not just a child of God but a chosen child of God. Everybody is God’s child, but everybody cannot be God’s chosen child because everybody is not consciously aspiring. The chosen are those who really want God here and now, those who feel that they do not exist, cannot exist, without God. Just because you aspire sincerely, you can claim yourself as a chosen child of God. But please try to feel that it is not your own capacity, but God’s capacity, God’s Grace, that has enabled you to become His chosen child. There are millions of people on earth who are not aspiring. Why are you aspiring? It is because God wants you to aspire. When we say that God is most pleased with those who consciously aspire, it is true. But, at the same time, we have to know that this aspiration which they have has come and is coming from God. From the beginning to the end we have to feel the necessity of expressing our deepest gratitude to God, for He is our aspiration, He is our realisation. He is the aspiration in us and He is the realisation for us.

The soul’s will is God’s Will. The soul, which is the representative of God, is inside the heart. God’s Concern is offered to the heart, and the heart offers it to the entire being. When we are aware of God’s constant Concern, we will not make any mistake. When God’s Concern becomes ours, we feel that God is the doer, God is the player, and we are the instrument. And God, being the Supreme Musician, will naturally play most divinely and supremely on us.

From:Sri Chinmoy,Flame-Waves, part 3, Agni Press, 1975
Sourced from https://srichinmoylibrary.com/fw_3