Especially when we are new to meditation, this question constantly arises. Here is Sri Chinmoy’s answer:
“We can easily know whether we are meditating well or not just by the way we feel and see and think. Right after our meditation, if we have a good feeling for the world, then we know our meditation was good. If we see the world in a loving way in spite of its imperfections, if we can love the world even while seeing its teeming imperfections, then we know that our meditation was good. And if we have a dynamic feeling right after meditation, if we feel that we came into the world to do something, to become something, this indicates that we have done a good meditation.
“But the easiest way to know if we have had a good meditation is to feel whether Peace, Light, Love and Delight are coming to the fore from within. Each time Light comes forward, or Love comes forward, or Peace or Delight comes forward, the whole body will be surcharged with that divine quality. When we have this experience, we know that we have done a very good meditation. Each time they come to the fore, we are bound to feel that we are remembering a forgotten story. It is only through meditation that we can remember our forgotten story. This story was written by the seeker himself, by the seeker in us. The story was not written by somebody else. It is our own creation, but we have forgotten it, and it is meditation that brings it back. When we remember this story we are overjoyed that we have created such a beautiful story and that this is our life story.”
– Sri Chinmoy
We know that early morning is the best time to meditate. We also know that when we do NOT meditate in the morning, our day never flows as smoothly or happily.
Never mind the obstacles and challenges of meditation itself – battling with the mind’s fears, doubts, distractions – for some, the greatest difficulty is just making it to the starting line. Sleep is a gargantuan force of nature and the delicious comfort of a warm bed can easily mesmerise our will.
Getting out of bed in the morning starts the previous night. Before you go to bed, at the close of your evening meditation, consciously visualise and eagerly anticipate your next morning’s blissful meditation. Keep this thought in mind as you go to sleep, that you are only pausing your meditation journey and will resume soon.
Keep a loud alarm on the other side of the room from your bed, so you are forced to get up when it sounds. Shake off sleep, or toss it aside. Water awakens our consciousness – take a shower or wash your face with cold water. Change your clothes before meditating, as your nightwear carries a strong vibration of sleep. Keep moving with some walking, stretching or simple calisthenics. Physical movement is like a spark plug to ignite our dynamic will. Recite aloud or sing some simple aphorism or song which gives you joy. Never meditate in, on or facing your bed.
Sri Chinmoy suggests imagining that you have already slept for 24 hours, to convince the mind that more sleep is completely unnecessary.
Imagine that the being you love more than anyone in the world is calling you urgently to be with them, and you must hurry there. This being is your soul and to heed this call, your only necessity.
In ancient times, Spiritual Masters encouraged their disciples to meditate in the early hours of the morning, at 3am, 4am or even 2am. From Vedic times, this early hour was called “Brahma Muhurta” – the Hour of God, as it was believed to be the most propitious hour to silence the mind and enter into the deepest meditation.
Most people nowadays find it impractical or impossible to meditate at what ironically, is referred to as an “ungodly hour”. Just because we do not routinely meditate at the Brahma Muhurta does not disqualify us from leading a spiritual life: whatever time we are able to get up in the morning, that is the time to meditate. Nevertheless, it is well worth experiencing the palpable benefits of a very early morning meditation whenever the opportunity arises.
Sri Chinmoy explained the practical reason why early morning is the most effective time to meditate:
“Once the day dawns, Mother Earth becomes divinely energetic or undivinely restless. Especially in the West, because of its present dynamic nature, there is some feeling of irritation in the cosmos, or in the outer nature. These restless qualities of the world do not have to enter into you, but usually they do. When people move around, immediately their vibration enters into you, no matter where you are. The air, the light, has already been corrupted by human toil, human anxieties. The world is standing in front of you like a roaring lion. How can you enter into your highest meditation in front of a roaring lion? But, if you can meditate before nature starts functioning, when the cosmos is still and the entire universe is taking rest, then you will be able to get a more powerful concentration and a deeper meditation.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Some people feel they should wait until they have less fear, doubt or impurity before entering into the spiritual life. Sri Chinmoy responds:
“It is better to make mistakes millions of times while seeking the light than to remain idle.
“You have to start your journey, no matter how imperfect you are. Even if you cannot walk properly and are only able to crawl, do not delay. You will say, ‘Let me wait until I can sprint; in fact, let me wait until I can become the world’s greatest sprinter.’ But that day will never come. You have to go the fastest, but only according to your receptivity. And your receptivity will increase only if you start. Right now you can only crawl. But if you start crawling, then God will give you the capacity to stand. You may stumble many times and fall. But, like a small child, if you keep getting up and trying to walk, eventually you will learn to walk. And then, if you aspire to go still faster — to run towards your goal — God will also give you that capacity. But if you only sit and wait until you become the world’s greatest runner, then you will never even start your journey.
“It is better to start at this very moment. Do not even think of your receptivity. Do not think of the condition of your body, mind and vital. Think only of your readiness, willingness and eagerness. Your readiness, willingness and eagerness will create receptivity. God will give you receptivity according to your readiness, willingness and eagerness.
“Each day you wait is a day of failure. But if you start your journey, then each hour and each moment adds to the success and progress of your spiritual life.”
– Sri Chinmoy
“My soul-smiles
Come from
Far beyond the horizon.”
– Sri Chinmoy
A smile is a spiritual entity manifesting in the physical realm, an ambassador from the higher worlds. With free access to our inner and outer worlds, a smile can magically transform the conditions of both at once. A smile brings forth our best inner qualities when we most need them, then reveals, spreads and shares these qualities with the world at large.
The following poems speak of the effects of a smile on our own inner consciousness:
“Soulfully give yourself
A shining smile.
Quickly your haunting nightmare
Will breathe its last.”
– Sri Chinmoy
“We can disarm
All our fears
Just by challenging them
With a smile.”
– Sri Chinmoy
“A gratitude-heart
Can smilingly illumine
A doubting mind.”
– Sri Chinmoy
“Just a smile
Makes our mind clear,
Our heart pure
And our world new.”
– Sri Chinmoy
“To smile sincerely
Is to have a heart
Of peace and bliss.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Once we have established peace, light, love and joy in our hearts, our soulful consciousness is inevitably expressed through our smile, as these poems depict:
“Man’s soulful smile
Is indeed a perfect expression
Of his inner peace.”
– Sri Chinmoy
“A blooming heart
Carries with it
A radiance-smile.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Every spiritual seeker plays two roles: both as a seeker and as a distributer of peace, light and bliss. While our smile brings us the qualities we seek inwardly, inevitably our smile also expresses and conveys these qualities to the world around us, as the following poems describe:
“There is no magical power
As beautiful, powerful and inspiring
As our smiling eyes.”
– Sri Chinmoy
“To smile
Is to offer happiness
To the world.”
– Sri Chinmoy
“Just one smile
From my gratitude-heart
Immensely increases
The beauty of the universe.”
– Sri Chinmoy
“Today
I must smile and smile
To unburden the sorrowful life
Of this world.”
– Sri Chinmoy
“If you want to smile
At the world,
Then you must smile
From deep within
And not from anywhere else.”
– Sri Chinmoy
“You will find the smile of silence
Inside your heart’s sleepless cry.
Cry is the night.
Inside the night is the day.
As the night holds the day,
So the cry holds the smile.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Our genuine smile is the most precious gift we can offer to the world. We do not need to give anything, do anything, create anything or sacrifice anything. We do not need to be a hero, a genius, martyr, saviour or saint. We need only to smile – sincerely, beautifully and wholeheartedly.
Where to find this soulful smile? From our inner cry for our own illumination, purification and perfection. As we cry from deep within, our cry uplifts us from mental confusion and vital chaos into the light, peace and poise of our silence-heart, wherein our soulful smile abides.
Our soulful smile is the beauty and fragrance of our meditation, our blossomed heart-flower. A flower does not announce itself: it simply is. Appreciating its beauty and fragrance, the world values and adores the flower. Even so our heart needs no other advertisement or interpreter: our smile is its perfect ambassador and embodiment.
Everything the world needs, is wrapped in our soulful smile: love, happiness, peace, purity, security, beauty, sweetness, encouragement, confidence, energy, enthusiasm, certainty, satisfaction. As the sun does not consciously offer its light, warmth and power, you do not have to consciously offer these qualities – your radiant smile will awaken these qualities within all who come into your orbit.
To elongate, elevate, authenticate and perpetuate your smile – meditate!
“You want to be happy? That is very easy.
Simply feel a glowing smile on your face.
Feel the glow of your smiling face.
See. You are happy.”
– Sri Chinmoy
“Every life
Is beautiful
When it smiles.”
– Sri Chinmoy
“Who is God? God is our own highest reality. If you can give a most soulful smile that will immediately illumine you and the whole world, that smile is nothing other than God.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Meditation is the most effective and lasting means to raise, illumine and transform our consciousness. But a good and deep meditation is not always guaranteed, and is sometimes seemingly elusive or unattainable.
Even without meditating, here is an extremely effective way to bring our heart to the fore and transform our consciousness.
Whatever your mood, take a moment to look in the mirror and smile. Your smile will either be spontaneous or forced. If it is spontaneous, you will see how beautiful, how luminous you are and you will appreciate and adore yourself for it; you will be energised, inspired and uplifted. If your smile is forced, you will see how ridiculous you look, you will laugh at yourself and immediately your smile becomes genuine. Your negative thoughts and feelings have been expelled, and meditation will now come more easily and readily.
The face you see in the mirror is the face you will show the world when you go outside. Surely you want the world to have the best impression of you, even if you are not trying to offer anything of particular value to the world.
Our smile is the emblem and ambassador of our better self. If you want the world to see your better self, then do only one thing – smile, smile and then again, smile.
“God’s greatest treasure is man’s smile.”
– Sri Chinmoy
“Smile, always smile!
You will be able to disarm
Even your worst foe.”
– Sri Chinmoy
A smile is pure magic. How is it that a rearrangement of our facial muscles can have such an instant and miraculous effect on our consciousness and on the world around us? As the contours on both sides of our mouth arch upwards, so our mood, our energy, our prospects, our outlook on life rises in parallel.
Our smile is the unfailing indicator of our happiness, and projector of our happiness to the world. A frown or furrowed brow is the opposite.
A smile is contagious, spreading from one heart to another faster than thought itself. When we are walking along the street and see someone coming towards us wearing a huge smile, immediately we smile in return, even though this person may be a complete stranger. Smiles are a secret code whereby our hearts communicate with each other despite our minds’ barriers and indifference, a network of deeper knowing and understanding that is independent of our minds’ awareness or control, an underground society of joy.
The smile is a language of the heart, conveying and sharing so many of our heart’s qualities – joy, light, optimism, conviction, enthusiasm, courage, power – instantly and wordlessly.
A smile radiates: it lightens us in every way. Smiles remove heaviness, hesitation, gloom and doom from our minds, hearts and lives. They lift us from hell to heaven in an instant. Doubt, fear, anxiety, anger, frustration and depression all shrivel and die in the presence of a smile.
Like sunlight, air and water, a smile belongs to everybody. No matter if it is worn on my face or your face, a smile brings Heaven to earth for all.
One of the challenges of the spiritual life is maintaining the peace, love and joy we experience during meditation, throughout our daily life. All around us we see and feel confusion, commotion, suspicion, greed and aggression. We are part of the world and live in the world: how can we not be affected by the condition of the world?
These forces are especially confronting when they are aimed at us. When we are verbally abused, how are we supposed to remain calm? When we are deceived or betrayed, how are we to retain our heart of love and joy?
It is one thing to have to deal with our own inner weaknesses, which are clearly our responsibility – what of these hostile forces which attack us from outside?
Once while the Buddha was meditating, a person came and started insulting him vehemently. This abuse went on while the Buddha continued meditating. Eventually the person became fed up and turned to leave.
Then the Buddha spoke: “Just wait, please. I have something to ask you. Tell me, when you offer gifts to a person, if he does not accept your gifts, what do you do?”
“I just take them back.”
The Buddha said, “Well, you have been trying to offer me the gifts that you brought with you. Since I have not accepted your gifts, you are taking them back with you.”
It is up to us, whether to accept any ‘gift’ which is offered to us. The moment we accept a gift, it becomes ours. When we react to anger directed at us, that same anger flows through and consumes us, as also with doubt, fear, jealousy, suspicion. Our consciousness plummets, our day is destroyed.
To maintain your poise, be very careful which gifts you accept.
We are children of Heaven, and creatures of earth; spiritual beings playing our roles in a material world, at once Heaven-free and earth-bound.
Everything in the physical realm is subject to the laws of physics. No law more characterises planet Earth, than gravity. Gravity tethers all matter to this place, dictates how it behaves, and forbids its escape.
Just as gravity holds all matter in its grasp, so desire binds humans to all that we desire – material possessions, wealth, influence, power, name and fame. The objects of desire are the equivalent of the Earth’s gravity, binding us to their sphere and forbidding our pleas for freedom. Like gravity, desire tethers us to a life of servitude, dictates how we behave, and forbids our escape.
For a rocket to defy gravity to break free from the earth’s atmosphere, requires a stupendous force of concentrated propulsion. Even so, for a human to break free from attachment to desires and desire-fulfilment, demands a stupendous concentrated force of spiritual aspiration.
This is no easy task. Gravity is indispensable to the functioning of life on earth. It cannot simply be bypassed. Gravity shapes and holds the world together, and with it, all life forms: mineral, plant, animal and human. So too, desire is essential in the maintenance of human life as we know it: without the desire to survive, to eat and reproduce, none of us would be here.
Yet we are our immortal soul, ever blissful, ever free. We know and we feel this. No matter how mighty the truth of desire-gravity, our soul’s imperative for liberation is mightier and mightiest.
Desire condemns us to our spiritual death. Aspiration is the only release from this sentence, the rocket to launch us once for all beyond desire-atmosphere into the liberation stratosphere.
“My own gratitude-heart
Is all
That matters.”
– Sri Chinmoy
When all is said about gratitude, when all is written, all is felt and experienced, this simple aphorism remains: a stark, unassailable fire-pure revelation of absolute truth.
When we feel gratitude in our heart, when gratitude grows and blossoms within our heart, when we enter into our gratitude-heart, then all else is left behind and obliterated – we become our gratitude-heart.
Our gratitude-heart is enormous, and when we become our gratitude-heart, we become enormous. Initially we do not realise how enormous – the deeper we enter into our gratitude-heart, the vaster we become, till we realise we have merged with the infinite.
Our gratitude-heart universe is brighter than the sun, deeper than the ocean, vaster than the sky. In this ever-expanding, ever-blossoming, ever-smiling, ever-dancing, ever-creating and ever-transcending infinitude, there is simply no room for darkness in any form: no doubt, no fear, insecurity, confusion or jealousy, no frustration, hatred, impurity or delusion. Here is absolute safety, perfect clarity, total certainty, utmost felicity.
Our gratitude-heart knows it is in safe hands, knows it is being guided and carried to the ultimate goal, knows all its needs are taken care of, all its aspirations fulfilled. To live in our gratitude-heart, to become our gratitude-heart is its own reward, and more.
Our gratitude-heart is ever-transcending. Our gratitude-heart alone knows it is our most precious possession, most treasured gift and highest blessing. For a gratitude-heart to be aware of itself is automatically to deepen and transcend itself, as a continually plunging, upwardly-spiralling, ever-expanding self-fulfilment. To experience our gratitude-heart is to become the beauty and fragrance of our gratitude-heart; to become our gratitude-heart is to offer our gratitude-heart; to offer our gratitude-heart is to become our ever deeper, purer, more complete and most sublime perfection-satisfaction.
One question which every spiritual seeker faces, is “Why is it sometimes so difficult to get into a meditative state?” Here is Sri Chinmoy’s answer:
“Now, how is it that every day we cannot meditate well? We cannot meditate well because we do not renew early in the morning our love, our devotion, our surrender to the eternal Pilot in us. Every day the eternal Pilot feeds our inner hunger. For an aspirant, spiritual food is more necessary than material food. Still we do not offer our deepest gratitude to the Inner Pilot even for one second.
“The divine secret is this: the very act of praying, of concentrating, of meditating is a great sign of divine Grace. So, early in the morning, before you start meditation, try to offer your gratitude in the form of love, devotion and surrender to the Guru, to the Supreme, to the Inner Pilot just because He has given you the aspiration to meditate. Aspiration comes first. Your meditation will be the result of the aspiration which the Inner Pilot has given you.
“A time will come when you will not have to meditate; meditation itself will meditate for you. That is to say, after some time you will be one with the consciousness of meditation. Now you are crying to enter into the consciousness of meditation, but a day will come when meditation will be pleased with you. It will take care of your outer life and your inner life.
“So, to come back to your question, every day before you start your meditation, offer your gratitude in the form of love, devotion and surrender to the Supreme. Then, I can assure you, not even one day will you fail to have a golden meditation.”
– Sri Chinmoy
The following is compiled from Sri Chinmoy’s answers to various questions about the art of surrender, how we can learn surrender, and how we can have grateful surrender:
“Surrender itself is an art, the supreme art. How will you learn this art of surrendering? It is through gratitude.
“The moment you have the feeling that you are chosen, you try to develop the capacity to express your gratitude to the Supreme, to the Inner Pilot, for His inner guidance. Then automatically surrender comes. You feel that with the inner guidance you are everything and without the inner guidance you are nothing…
“You can have grateful surrender to the Will of the Supreme if you can just feel that not only is He doing everything for you, but He has already done everything for you. We show our gratitude to someone who has done something for us or who is going to do us a favour in the long run. Every day, while you are offering your gratitude to the Supreme and your surrender to the Will of the Supreme, please feel that everything that is fulfilling, everything that makes you a perfect instrument of the Supreme, has already been done for you.
“When you think of grateful surrender, please feel that everything has been accomplished by the Supreme, for you and in you. When you read the book of universal knowledge, you have only to turn the pages; the book has already been read by the Supreme. It is His book and He has also given you the knowledge. The only effort you have to make is to turn the pages and feel that the Divine Supreme has already read the book. He has not read it for Himself; He has read it only for you.”
– Sri Chinmoy
