Question: Can you help me overcome my physical fear?

Sri Chinmoy: You are now entering into the spiritual life. When you enter the spiritual life, the first thing you see is the inner sun. This inner sun is infinitely brighter and more powerful than the physical sun. Your inner being is bringing your physical mind the message that, as you have commenced the spiritual life, you will soon dare to enter into the effulgence of the inner sun. This is a positive message. There is also a negative message, a message that comes from your physical being. Your outer being looks backwards to where it came from and sees the ignorance-night. When you look at the past, you are terribly afraid. God alone knows how long you were in the ignorance-night. Yet when you look at the golden future you are also afraid. You are afraid of going backward and you are afraid of going forward. Your fear is coming from both the light and the night. The past is pulling you backward and the golden future is pulling you forward.

You must know that the light in front of you can never disappoint you. It is the night that disappoints. If you bathe in the sea of light you will not be lost. But if you swim in the sea of night, you will be destroyed, because the very existence of night is destruction. During your meditation and during your waking hours, you must consciously feel that you are marching forward and that the light ahead of you is the inner light. That light you have to bring to the fore. When you see the inner light, you become more aware of the light that is around you, and your feeling of fear is bound to disappear. You have to feel that you came into existence from that inner light and that you are now becoming more conscious of it.

Your physical being is afraid of the dark night of the past. You must always look forward, look ahead. The past is dust. If the past comes and tortures your mind with what you did two weeks ago or two hours ago, and if this past is not inspiring or encouraging, throw it into the dust again. The past is to be buried. Your spiritual existence has to grow from where we now stand. Your existence is in aspiration, and only aspiration can lead you to realisation, which is infinite Light. When you can think of what you were, and what you are growing into, and consciously want to become the infinite Light, there will be no fear. If you cry for light, light will guide you because that is its very nature. The purpose of your life is to become the Light itself. If you wholeheartedly and spontaneously cry for Light, then there can be no fear.