This blog post is an edited excerpt from YSS/SRF President Swami Chidananda Giri’s satsanga at the 2025 Self-Realization Fellowship World Convocation. The full talk, “How-to-Live Skills to Survive, Thrive, and Be Victorious in the Material World,” can be viewed on the SRF YouTube channel.
I would like to share a story from Paramahansa Yogananda, in order to focus on an important aspect of resilience, enthusiasm, and really the meaning of discipleship. Paramahansaji told this story back in 1941 in his talk “Man’s Eternal Quest.”
He said: “Last summer, I stopped at a monastery where I met one of the priests. He was a wonderful soul. I asked him how long he had been on the spiritual path as a monk.
‘About twenty-five years,’ he replied.
Then I asked, ‘Do you see Christ?’
‘I don’t deserve it,’ he answered. ‘Maybe after death he will visit me.’
‘No,’ I assured him, ‘you can see him from tonight if you make up your mind.’”
And Paramahansaji said, “Tears were in his eyes, and he remained silent.”
“You can see him from tonight if you make up your mind.” He wasn’t just talking about “making up your mind” in the sense of a supreme effort of will power or trying harder. Of course, making more of an intense effort is part of it; but most importantly, for many of us, it means making up our minds that we are worthy, that we can have that blessing, that we can have that spiritual consciousness.
How many blessings in meditation and in our spiritual lives become unavailable to us simply because we think of ourselves as not being worthy? You are worthy. “Make up your mind,” our Guru said, “from tonight.”
Just picture: Suppose somebody is softly whispering in a room how much they love you, how much and highly they think of you, how much they esteem you and admire you. But you are simultaneously saying, “No, no, I’m no good; no, no, I’m no good.” And you drown out completely that other voice. Can you relate to that? That is what we mistakenly all too often do in our relationship with God and Guru.
I have mentioned before how much I rely on and benefit from Paramahansaji’s “Cosmic Chants,” as I am sure all of you do as well. From the time when I was just beginning on the spiritual path, one that spoke very powerfully to me — because I needed it so much and it was really filling a great gap in my temperament up to that point — is that beautiful chant “Door of My Heart”:
“Door of my heart, open wide I keep for Thee.
Wilt Thou come, wilt Thou come? Just for once, come to me?
Will my days fly away without seeing Thee, my Lord?
Night and day, night and day, I look for Thee night and day.”
That chant carried me through many years of my early journey on the path.
But here is what I want to point out to you in connection with this idea of being worthy. There came a time when I realized, “You know, I have only gotten half of the meaning of that chant.” Because as powerful as it is to use that chant to increase our devotion, our longing, our yearning, our persistence — “Wilt thou come, wilt thou come? Just for once, come to me?” — the other half of it is when we realize that actually Divine Mother is also singing that song to us.
You can put this into practice. Turn it around, and instead of you calling to Her, think that She’s calling to you. Think of that! She’s saying to each one of us, “My dear children, the door of My heart, open wide I keep for you. Wilt thou come, wilt thou come? Just for once, come to Me?” Because She knows if we just come to Her once, we will never want to leave.
And then, our soul answers back and says, “Will my days, Mother, fly away without seeing You?” And She doesn’t directly answer, but She just repeats, “Night and day, night and day, I look for you night and day.”
Take that into your practice of meditation, and see what that does to the delusion that you are unworthy.
You can listen below to the SRF sannyasinis’ kirtan group performing the chant “Door of My Heart,” from the recording Light the Lamp of Thy Love (available, with many other chanting recordings from YSS and SRF, on the YSS Bookstore).
