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— Confidence —

 

1. What is confidence? Confidence is the combination of God-Compassion and self-reliance. Confidence is the expression and revelation of the divine will through the human heart, mind, vital and body. Confidence. Confidence is God-beauty in us. Confidence is truth-unity and truth-multiplicity in us. Confidence is life-acceptance, life-transcendence, earth-transformation and God-manifestation by us.

 

2. Confidence is not pride. Confidence is not hyperbole. Confidence is not the precursor of destruction. Confidence is the conscious awareness [of] one’s heights and depths. Confidence

  
     

is actually where we stand in the battlefield of life. Confidence is the harbinger of achievement, a plethora of achievements.

 

3. Confidence is the contentment of knowing what to enjoy, whom to enjoy, how to enjoy, when to enjoy, where to enjoy, why to enjoy. What to enjoy? God’s Smile. How to enjoy? Through self-giving. When to enjoy? When our body, vital, mind and heart are pure. Where to enjoy? In the depth of our devoted hearts. Why to enjoy? Precisely because God the Supreme Enjoyer wants us to enjoy like Him. Needless to say, we are talking about divine enjoyment and not about human enjoyment. What is the difference between human enjoyment and divine enjoyment? Human enjoyment is self-indulgence. Self-indulgence is vital pleasure

  
     

of the lower self. Divine enjoyment is the taste of divine ecstasy in the higher self. The lower self binds us, incarcerates us. The [higher self] liberates us, illumines and offers us the message of Infinity’s bliss, Eternity’s light and Immortality’s life.

 

4. Confidence can be developed like muscles with regular spiritual discipline. If you do not have confidence right now, do not be doomed to disappoint[ment]. Slowly, steadily and unerringly you can develop confidence by uniting your will consciously and soulfully with the will of the Supreme during your meditation.

 

5. We have two giant friends: confidence and faith.

  
     

 

Faith can and will read the silence-message of God. Confidence can read and hear the sound-message of God. With the help of the silence-message we can reach our Source, the Goal of all goals. With the help of the sound-message we divinely and soulfully perform our God-ordained task on earth, we supremely manifest God on earth.

 

 

 

6. Confidence is a superior and supernal form of belief. It lives in the soul-light of the heart. Confidence is not a mental belief. Mental beliefs can easily be battered and shattered by the tornado of undivine doubt and

  
     

 

suspicion forces. Confidence is the heart’s spontaneous claim of dynamic truth and light. Confidence is the hero-warrior in us to fight against teeming undivine and hostile forces in the battlefield of life and establish God’s light, God’s beauty, God’s perfection on earth so that today’s crying and bleeding earth can turn into smiling and dancing heaven for the liberated souls and the Cosmic Gods to perform their divine roles on earth.

  
     

 

7. Finally confidence is Truth-cognition in us, Heaven-vision with us and God-decision for us while marching along Eternity’s Road.

  
 

Note:

The above draft formed the basis of Sri Chinmoy’s lecture, entitled ‘Confidence’, which he delivered at the University of Oxford in England on 25 June 1974. The lecture was subsequently published in My Rose Petals, Part 3, by Agni Press in 1974.