Sri Chinmoy offered these words of advice, for when we encounter barriers in our spiritual life:
“If we find ourselves in a barren desert, we can do one thing. We can offer our gratitude to the Supreme, our Inner Pilot, for giving us the divine aspiration to be of service to Him in mankind. There is no power either in the outer world or in the inner world that can ever be as strong as our soulful gratitude. If even for a fleeting minute we can offer God our soulful gratitude, then immediately the barrier that exists between our mind and our heart will dissolve. For the power of our gratitude immediately makes us one with God’s Reality.
“When we look for gratitude in the mind, it seems like something dry, silly and unnecessary. When we look for gratitude in the vital, we see that it does not even exist. And in the physical, gratitude is all the time dormant. But if we live in the aspiring heart, we not only discover gratitude but see it as the most powerful reality. If we can become one with the Supreme on the strength of our gratitude, there can be no dry periods; there can be no wall, no barrier, no undivine forces that delay our progress.
“When we have gratitude, we are like a flower that is blossoming petal by petal in the Heart of the Supreme. This flower is full of fragrance, which constantly illumines, energises and fulfils the human in us, the Divine in us and the Supreme in us.
“When you and the rest of humanity have become one, and when you enjoy this oneness divinely, there can be no partition, no barrier, no desert, but only ever-increasing bliss and ever-transcending freedom.”
– Sri Chinmoy