Inspiring Quotes

I am grateful to many friends, family members, co-workers and colleagues whose use of quotes shared at the right moment have been a continual reminder of practical wisdom and enlightening or relaxing humor.

- Advice quotes:

"What you do not use yourself, do not give to others. For example, advice. "Excerpt from Meditations: Food For The Soul by Sri Chinmoy. ...www.srichinmoylibrary.com/books/0001/5/11

"Earth has only one piece of advice for me: "TRY."
Heaven has only one piece of advice for me: "CRY."
God has only one piece of advice for me: "SMILE."
I have only one piece of advice for myself: "ACCEPT."  -  Excerpt from My Lord's Secrets Revealed by Sri Chinmoy. http://www.srichinmoylibrary.com/books/0008/1/30

 20 ADVICE OF A GOD REALISED SOUL  - Only one word of advice from a truly God-realised soul: "O disciples of mine, In stupidity I have surpassed all donkeys In God's creation put together By becoming A Guru. I pray to you Do not play this role of stupidity-sea." - Excerpt from Transcendence-Perfection by Sri Chinmoy. http://www.srichinmoylibrary.com/books/0241/1/20/

 - Making Promises - short story excerpt

"This world is full of misunderstanding. So the best thing is not to make any promises. Only try to see the situation. Don't have any specific hard and fast rules. When necessity demands, do something spontaneously, but don't make it a law that you will do it. Wait for the inner command." "So my advice is not to make promises. Fulfilling your promises brings in pride, and the failure to fulfil your promises unnecessarily brings in sadness and frustration. Keep only one promise, and that is your promise to achieve God-realisation. And then modify that promise also."..." it is up to God whether He will make you realise Him in this incarnation or in some other incarnation. So when you make this promise, add, 'This is my wish. If Your Wish is otherwise, then please fulfil Yourself in and through me in Your own Way.' That is the best promise: 'I will fulfil my Beloved Supreme in His own Way, and for that only I shall pray to Him.' That promise is the only promise which at every moment all seekers must treasure." - 13 January 1979 Excerpt from Great Indian Meals: Divinely Delicious and Supremely Nourishing, Part 2 by Sri Chinmoy.  http://www.srichinmoylibrary.com/books/0376/1/20

Awaken Others and/or Justification of Practice.

"When we try to convince others that what we are doing is right, in a certain sense we unconsciously try to convert them. If we know that we are doing the right thing, then we should simply do it. For us we know that the right thing to do early in the morning is to pray and meditate. But we will not go to our neighbour, who is fast asleep at the time of our meditation, and tell him to get up just because we feel it is the right thing to do. We will not say, "Look, I am praying and meditating; I am doing the right thing. You must not sleep at this hour; you also must get up!" If we say that kind of thing, then our neighbour will simply say, "Mind your own business!" In the spiritual life we do not try to justify ourselves; we just live for the God within us. God has told us to pray and meditate on Him. When the time comes for others to pray and meditate, then God will illumine and awaken them. But if we go to them prematurely and try to awaken or illumine them before they are ready, we will not be helping their spiritual progress in any way. Justification is not illumination. The mind is so tricky; it can never be convinced. But the heart never has any need for justification, for the heart is all illumination. If we know that we are doing the right thing, then we do not have to justify ourselves or our actions to anyone. Let us become like the sun. The sun does not have to justify its light because light is its own justification. -April 1978 - Excerpt from My Meditation-Service At The United Nations For 25 Years by Sri Chinmoy. http://www.srichinmoylibrary.com/books/1094/16/24

help others - barrier?.  (edit further to concise excerpt

"... At times unconsciously, if not consciously, the world takes away some divine qualities from us. ... So there are times when we have to be careful. ...let us say, our ..searching mind has found some truth inside the heart, and it wants to offer this truth to others. .... But just because most people are not ready to receive, we feel that there is a strong, solid barrier between our realisation and our self-giving.

When we see a partition in ourselves, it means that we are not always one hundred per cent consciously one with our Source. ... even though we are very sincere and devoted, when we give we expect something in return: either recognition or progress in the persons we have served. ... We are giving, giving, giving; but if we do not notice the world receiving, then at times we are frustrated. ...We may wonder if we are doing the right thing ... We may even doubt our own sincerity.

... If the Supreme tells us that someone needs more sleep, that we shouldn't awaken him, then we shall not approach that particular person. But if the Supreme within us tells us that we have to serve the Supreme in someone even though that person is sleeping, even though he is unwilling and reluctant to receive our light, then we shall do that too, because we are His instruments. Every day we have to think of ourselves as a little child five or six years old. If we are asked by our Eternal Father to offer something, then He Himself will tell us whom to offer it to.

The human heart sometimes makes us feel that it is so big that it is ready to help everyone. But this is absurd. There is something called God's Hour. God's Hour need not and cannot be the same for each and every person. Today it is my Hour, tomorrow it is yours, the day after it is time for somebody else. It is not that some people are bad, or that God does not like them. No! He loves all equally, but for some the hour has not yet dawned.

God is progressing in and through us. On the one hand He is Transcendental; He is all Divine and absolutely Supreme. On the other hand, He is progressing in and through each particular moment and through each individual life during that moment. In the finite, He is singing the song of Infinity, His own infinity.

In the process of evolution, He is trying to perfect everybody. But He knows His own development best; He knows how much He wants to achieve in and through you today and how much He wants to achieve in and through me today. We cannot expect the same kind of treatment or same kind of light for each individual, because God Himself has not created the same capacity and receptivity for everyone.

God is trying to enjoy Himself divinely and supremely. But if we try to increase somebody's capacity or receptivity by virtue of our own will, we are doing the wrong thing. Let us become God's Will; let His Will flow through us. Then He Himself will tell us who is the right person to help. In this way we shall go to the right person today and go tomorrow to someone else who will be the right person then. If we approach the right person timely, then we will see that there can be no barrier or partition, because the right person is always ready to receive us and welcome us. But if we go to the wrong person, he will not welcome us and there will be confusion; and in this confusion frustration will loom large. So let us try to approach the right person at God's choice Hour, and then we will see that God is fulfilled, we are fulfilled and the world of aspiration is fulfilled in and through us.

Again, sometimes we feel a barrier or a wall in ourselves because at one moment we are identified with the soul and the next moment we are identified with the mind and vital. It is like this. The soul and the heart are one side, and the mind, vital and physical are the other side. Between them there is all the time a barrier. At this moment we call the mind the sole reality, the next moment we call the vital the only reality, and the following moment we regard the heart as the only reality. These are all realities, but the only real reality is God, and the direct representative of God's Reality is the soul.

Now, just as the soul is the representative of God, the heart is the representative of the soul. The heart and the soul are trying to perfect the mind so that it can represent the psychic being. Then, when the mind becomes illumined, the mind will have the vital as its representative. Similarly, the vital will have the body as its representative, and when the body becomes pure and the physical consciousness is aspiring, then the body also will become a perfect instrument.

Reality is a most complicated experience in ordinary earth-life, but in the higher planes it is most simple and most fulfilling. When we enter into the lower plane, or the physical plane, there the reality is very uncertain. There the reality is just what we see with our own eyes. Let us say that we are seeing a flower, and that this flower is the reality for us. But as soon as we go a little deeper within, or come into a higher level of consciousness, we do not see the flower as such. The reality is no longer the flower, but the fragrance of the flower or the beauty of the flower. Here on the physical plane, the flower is the reality and the fragrance, which is the inner reality, we can't appreciate. And the beauty, which is still higher, we do not notice at all. So the thing that is reality on the physical plane need not and cannot be the same kind of reality on the inner plane.

Again, there are many things which we see on the physical plane as real which are absolutely unreal. When a thought comes from the mental world, in our everyday life it is absolutely real and concrete for us. But when we go deep within, immediately the thought vanishes; like a drop, it melts into the ocean of the will. So what is a reality on the physical plane, such as a thought, is not at all a reality on the inner plane. On the inner plane, the reality is Divinity, Immortality and Perfection. On the outer plane, things that are real to us may not or need not be eternal. But on the inner plane, only what is eternal and fulfilling is real. So there is a great difference between reality on the physical plane and reality on the inner plane..

Now when we feel a barrier between one reality and another reality, between our mind-reality and our heart-reality or between what we have to offer and what we try to give, our spiritual life becomes a barren desert. Not only seekers, but almost all spiritual Masters have gone through this barren desert. Even spiritual Masters of a very high order, like Vivekananda and others, used to confess that they went through periods when they could not meditate at all. They entered into the world arena and offered their peace, love, light and everything they could. But then they felt a kind of frustration because their light was not accepted and the progress they expected from humanity was not achieved.

Here we are all seekers. If we find ourselves in a barren desert, if we find that multifarious thoughts or ideas are entering into us and making it impossible for us to meditate, we can do one thing. We can offer our gratitude to the Supreme, to the Inner Pilot. We can offer one minute of soulful gratitude that the Supreme has given us the divine aspiration to be of service to mankind, to the Supreme in mankind. If, even for a fleeting minute, we can offer Him our soulful gratitude, then immediately the barrier that exists between the mind and the heart in our inner being disappears. For the power of our gratitude immediately makes us one with God's Reality. And there is no power either on earth or in our inner existence which can ever be as powerful as our soulful gratitude.

When we look for the word 'gratitude' in the mind, it is something dry, silly and unnecessary. ... But if we live in the aspiring heart and can become one with the Supreme on the strength of our gratitude, then 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, and its fragrance constantly illumines, energises and fulfils the human in us, the divine in us and the Supreme in us.

When our gratitude-flower blossoms, the dormant, sleeping humanity also begins to blossom, because our gratitude will have entered into God's choice Hour. When we enter into God's Heart with our gratitude, He expedites His own Hour for His children, for He feels that some of His children are more than ready to serve and please Him in His other children who are still sleeping.

Everybody cannot be a chosen instrument.... When God has given someone the capacity to illumine others, to serve Him in others in abundant measure, it is that person's duty to clear the way if there is any obstruction, if there is any thorn on the road. And we can easily free the rose from the thorn when we see gratitude growing inside our heart.
Excerpt from Life-Enquiry And Self-Discovery by Sri Chinmoy -http://www.srichinmoylibrary.com/books/0136/1/8

Inspiring Poem - song

My birthday song:
I plan to soar,
I plan to roar.
The bird in me
Will teach me how to soar.
The lion in me
Will teach me how to roar.
I plan to love,
Below, above.
The lover in me will teach me
How to love
Within,
Without,
Below, above.

soul breathes in the secret heart -song

here is link to lsten to a favorite song I first heard when I came back to ny in 1973
http://media.radiosrichinmoy.org/radio/272/272-3-1.m4a

ONLY S U P R E M E -- -- INFINITY'S D R E A M" - song

" Good Friend!

Is there a continuum of seekers, the solemn loving wise ones standing shoulder to shoulder,

The joyful dancing mystery makers bridging the generations,

And how do we know our place among them,

Know when we are home?"   - CR in note to AK pre-1993.

19474 Adhiratha

-from : Sri Chinmoy, Seventy-Seven Thousand Service-Trees, Part 20, Agni Press, 2001