How can I maintain my enthusiasm to meditate every day? Some days I feel no inspiration to meditate at all.
Some days you do not want to meditate because early in the morning you do not renew your love, devotion and surrender to the Eternal Pilot within you. Every day your Eternal Pilot is ready to feed your inner hunger, yet you may not offer Him your gratitude even for a second. If you can feel a flood of gratitude flowing inside you, then easily you can have a wonderful meditation every day.
What should you do if you feel no enthusiasm or inspiration to meditate on a particular day? For a fleeting second remember what you were before you entered into the spiritual life. When you see the difference between what you were and what you are now, automatically a spring of gratitude to the Supreme will well up inside you, for it is He who has inspired you and awakened your inner cry, and it is He who is fulfilling Himself in and through you.
Another thing you can do is to think of a time when you had a most sublime meditation, and consciously dive deep into that experience. Think of its essence-how you were thrilled, how you were jumping with delight. At first you will just be imagining the experience, because you are not actually having that meditation. But if you enter into the world of imagination and stay there for ten or fifteen minutes, power will automatically enter into your meditation and it will bear fruit. Then it will not be imagination at all; you will actually be deep in the world of meditation.
There is something else that you can also do. Try to feel that the dearest in you-either your soul, or your Master, or the Supreme-is very hungry, and that you are in a position to feed your dearest with your meditation. Your soul, your Master and the Supreme are eternally one, but take them as separate individuals. If the dearest in you is starving and you are in a position to feed him, will you not do so? If you really call someone your dearest, your heart will compel you to feed him. After you feed him, he will give you satisfaction, and in that satisfaction you become eternal, infinite and immortal, When the child is hungry, the mother comes running to .. feed him. After the child is fed, he gives his mother a smile. The mother sees her whole world, the entire universe, inside the smile, because the child is her universe. So, when you feed the dearest and the dearest smiles, at that time you will feel that your entire world is smiling.
Every day you cannot eat the most delicious food. In the spiritual life also, especially in the beginning, it is next to impossible to have a most successful meditation every day. Even spiritual Masters have gone through dry periods in their inner lives. But even if the food is uninspiring, still you cat in order to keep your body fit. When you meditate you are feeding your inner being, the soul. If you cannot feed the soul most delicious food each day, you must not give up trying. It is better to feed the soul something than to allow it to starve.
To maintain your inspiration, each time you sit down to meditate in the morning you have to feel that you are continuing the journey that you have already begun. You should not feel that you are beginning your journey anew. No, you should feel that you have already made considerable progress and that today you will make more progress. And each time you make progress you have to feel that you have touched a tiny portion of the goal. In this way you will feel that you arc really advancing.
Even better, you should feel that your goal is not millions of miles away, but very close, right in front of your nose. If you always feel that your goal is within easy reach, but that you don't know where it is, then you will desperately cry for it and search for it. At that time, your inner being will be flooded with dynamism. If you feel that your goal is far, you become relaxed and feel that Eternity is at your disposal. But if you feel that what you want to grow into is just beside you, and that you only have to use your conscious awareness to grasp it and claim it, then you will eagerly jump into your meditation.
Long for anything divine and it will immediately start to approach you.
Only a very advanced seeker can maintain the same level of meditation each day. In the beginning you should be happy if you have a very good meditation even occasionally. When you do not have a good meditation, do not allow yourself to become a victim to frustration, for that will affect your ability to meditate the next day as well. You have to know that God wants your realisation infinitely more than you want it, so your realisation is His responsibility and His problem. If God has not given you a good meditation today, instead of getting angry or disheartened, try to feel that He is planning to do something more important for you in some other way. If you cannot meditate one day, feel that the Supreme wanted you to have this experience, and just offer your present achievement soulfully and devotedly at His Feet. Say to Him, "These are my possessions right now-unwanted possessions-and I am offering them to You. I place them at Your Feet." If you can offer your existence to the Supreme in that way, then you will see that your daily meditations will become most fruitful.
