The Attitude of a Child

It is a child, not an old person, who makes progress in life. Old people do not care for progress. But mere years do not make a person old. Somebody who is sixty or seventy years of age may have the enthusiasm, inner joy and inspiration of a child. Again, there will be people seventeen, eighteen or nineteen years old who have no aspiration, no inspiration, no dynamism. If a boy of nineteen does not have the capacity to draw something from the world or to offer something to the world, if he does not care for the world and feels that he does not need anything from the world, then he is ninety-nine years old in spirit. On the other hand, if somebody of ninety-nine wants to learn the inner language—the language of divine love, the language of divine peace, the language of divine wisdom, the language of divine light—then he is a child in spirit. In the spiritual life we are not concerned with earthly years but with an individual's inner eagerness to do something and to become something—to become a child of God.

If you really want to become a child, then you have to feel that there is always something to learn and that God is there to teach you. In the spiritual life you are learning something every day, every hour, every minute, every second from our divine Father. If you constantly have the feeling that you are learning in the inner world, there is no end to the God-divinity that you can receive and achieve.

It is especially the parents who have to see their children in this way. If the parents feel that their children are flowers of God, then the parents will make the children not only feel this but also grow into this. It is the parents who, right from the beginning, have to see the divinity in their children and make their children see the divinity within themselves. That is the parents' supreme role. It is not enough for the parents to feed and clothe their children and send them to school. No, the parents must take responsibility for bringing out their children's divine qualities.

All children can and must be reached spiritually. It is infinitely easier to reach children spiritually than to reach them any other way. For children are nothing but fresh and beautiful flowers ready to be placed on the altar of God the Truth, God the Light and God the Delight. ~ Sri Chinmoy

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