Question: How do we know if it is the proper time for us to enter into the spiritual life? Can the spiritual life help us to overcome frustration?226

Sri Chinmoy: We can begin the spiritual life only when we feel the need. When we feel hunger, we eat. Similarly, when we have the inner hunger, we feed ourselves with peace, light and bliss.

Ordinary human life is full of frustration. How many days begin with a new disappointment, a new sense of despair and total failure! We can conquer these unaspiring forces only when we consciously feel that there is something far beyond them. First we have to feel that there is something divine in us that is far beyond these forces, and then we have to cry within to bring our soul’s divinity forward. If we have the conscious cry or conscious hunger for our soul’s light, which is able to transform our frustrations and failures into radiant achievements, then our soul will eventually manifest its light and transform our lives. Our human life cannot and will not end in failure precisely because the divine in us will never accept failure.

Sooner or later everyone will aspire; it is only a matter of time. God Himself will aspire in and through each and every individual when the hour strikes. But if we consciously fight on the side of the inner truth and inner reality, if we listen to the dictates of our inner voice, then we hasten our soul’s progress and the progress of all mankind.

Frustration exists just because we do not see anything beyond it or do not consciously want to go beyond it. Let us take frustration as a thing that can be captured and offered at the Feet of God or offered at the feet of any happiness or good experience that we have had — even if it was ten or twenty years ago. The power of our happy experience will destroy the power of our frustration or transform our frustration into glowing inspiration, which is the precursor of inner awakening and outer realisation.


MUN 394. 4 January 1973.

From:Sri Chinmoy,My meditation-service at the United Nations for twenty-five years, Agni Press, 1995
Sourced from https://srichinmoylibrary.com/mun