My heart can never understand
Why my mind, vital and body
Are so attached
To the fleeting finite.
Sri Chinmoy, Seventy-Seven Thousand Service-Trees, part 9, Agni Press, 1998
Just for today, I shall pray to God. My prayer is my inner, climbing cry. I know this cry will reach God's Palace. My snow-white prayer will knock at God's Door. God will open His Door and ask me what I need. I shall tell God that I need His infinite Compassion to awaken me from my slumbering life. God will grant my prayer.
Just for today, I shall meditate on God. I know that when I meditate on God, I empty my heart. When my heart is empty, my Eternal Friend, my Eternal Divine Guest comes in and sits on His Throne inside the very depth of my heart. In the inmost recesses of my heart His Life of infinite Concern, Compassion, Love and Blessings abides.
When I pray, my Eternal Friend listens to my prayer and fulfils my prayer. When I meditate, my Eternal Friend comes in and fulfils my inner need. When I pray, I talk and He listens to me. When I meditate, He talks and I listen to Him. This is how we converse. My prayer and my meditation are of paramount importance in my life of aspiration, dedication and surrender to the Will of my Inner Pilot.
Just for today, I shall love my God, my Supreme. I shall not love anybody else, not even my own existence. I shall love only God, God alone. Has He not loved me from time immemorial? Will He not love me throughout Eternity? Since He is all love for me, it is my bounden duty to love Him, at least for this day. I shall love Him, and my love for Him will immortalise my earthly reality and my heavenly dream.
Just for today, I shall become the divine lover and call my Lord the Supreme Beloved. In human love there is constant demand, constant expectation and constant disappointment. In love divine there is no demand, no expectation and no frustration; there is only self giving. This self giving is eventually transformed into God becoming.
Just for today, I shall love God unconditionally. I shall feel His infinite Compassion, His blessingful Love in and through my life of aspiration. I shall feel that God loves me infinitely more than I love myself. When fear, doubt, anxiety and jealousy assail my life of aspiration, when I cherish and treasure limitation, bondage, ignorance and death, at that time, I hate my life. But my Eternal Friend, my Pilot Supreme, loves me still. Just for today, I shall serve God. I have come to realise that there is nothing and there can be nothing as sweet and as fulfilling as service. When I serve God, I feel that my life of frustration is transformed into a life of illumination. My service to God makes me feel that my existence on earth is meaningful and fruitful. When I serve God I feel that I have expanded my earth bound consciousness into the Heaven free consciousness.
Just for today, I shall surrender my will to God's Will, His all loving, all pervading, universal Will. Yesterday God surrendered compassionately and unconditionally to my animal greed. Today God surrenders lovingly and compassionately to my human wants. Tomorrow God shall surrender joyfully and proudly to my divine needs. Just because He has surrendered to my animal greed, just because He surrenders to my human wants, just because He will surrender to my divine needs, I feel it is obligatory on my part to surrender my earthly life just for a day to His Will, so that His Will can be done on earth in and through my life of aspiration and dedication.
Just for today, I wish to share my supreme secret with my Supreme Pilot. My secret is this: that I shall no longer call ignorance my friend. My friendship with ignorance terminates today. From today on I shall have God as my only friend, my sempiternal Friend. I shall have Him not only as my Friend, but also as my All.
Just for today, I wish to have peace of mind. In order to have peace of mind I must feel that I am not indispensable at all. I must end my song of self importance and realise that the world does not need me. The world existed before I was born: the world shall exist long after I pass behind the curtain of Eternity. Who is needed? Only the Supreme Pilot in me is needed. When I feel that I am not indispensable I receive an iota of light and achieve peace of mind.
Just for today, I shall be the all loving child to the Supreme Pilot. Just for today, I shall be the hero warrior walking along the path of Eternity. Just for today, I shall feel that I need God and God needs me, and ultimately I have to feel that God needs me more than I need Him. At times, because of my ignorance, I feel that I do not need Him. But God, being perfect, sees me always with His all illumining Light. He knows that I am destined to be His seeker, His lover, His instrument for manifestation. He knows my potentiality and my capacity. He knows that I am an exact prototype of His ultimate transcendental Reality; therefore, He needs me more than I need Him.
I need myself this moment to fulfil my countless, teeming desires. But when my desires are not fulfilled and when I realise that I do not have the capacity to fulfil them, I feel that I do not need this earthly existence. I want to discard this body-consciousness, for this body consciousness does not give me an iota of satisfaction. Since I am a failure, I feel that this life is of no avail. But God knows that there is no such thing as failure. There is only experience. We work, we serve, we pray, we meditate each moment in conscious dedication, and the result of this dedication takes the outer form of either success or failure. But when we go deep within, we feel that there is no such thing as success or failure. We see everything as an experience that has come to us in the march of evolution. Finally, we realise that even this experience is not our possession. It is actually God's experience, for He is the doer, He is the action and He is the fruit thereof.
Just for today, I wish to be a conscious garland of gratitude to be placed at the Feet of my Inner Pilot.
Just for today . . .
April 22nd, 1974
4:00 p.m.
Gonzaga University
Hughes Auditorium
Spokane, Washington