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→Various Ways to Cultivate Sincerity in Yoga
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''Q. Sweet Mother, what does “sincerity” mean, exactly?''
''A.'' There are several degrees of sincerity.
The most elementary degree is not to say one thing and think another, claim one thing and want another. For example, what happens quite often: to say, "I want to make progress, and I want to get rid of my defects" and, at the same time, to cherish one's defects in the consciousness and take great care to hide them so that nobody intervenes and sends them off. This indeed is a very common phenomenon. This is already the second degree. The first degree, you see, is when someone claims, for example, to have a very great aspiration and to want the spiritual life and, at the same time, does completely... how to put it?... shamelessly, things which are most contradictory to the spiritual life. This is indeed a degree of sincerity, rather of insincerity, which is most obvious.
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''A: '' It is a literary image, my child, an imaged, figurative, literary way of expressing the fact that with sincerity one can attain everything, even the Divine. If one wants to open a door, a key is necessary, isn’t it? Well, for the door separating you from the Divine, sincerity works as a key and opens the door and lets you in, that’s all. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/5-may-1954#p41</ref>
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When one springs up into the higher sphere, into the world of Truth, one will be able to see things as they truly are, and seeing them as they are, one will be able to live them in their truth. Then all falsehoods will naturally crumble. And since the favourable explanations will no longer have any purpose, they will disappear, for there will be nothing left to explain. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/21-may-1958#p13,p14</ref>
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Only those who are already very sincere know that they are not completely sincere. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/insincerity-pretension-and-self-deception#p14</ref>
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''Q. How can one hasten the day when the whole being will be able to say, ‘I am Yours—Yours alone’?'' ''A.'' There are two actions which in practice merge into one.
(1) Never forget the goal that one wants to attain.
(2) Never allow any part of the being or any of its movements to contradict one’s aspiration.
This also makes it necessary to become conscious of one’s nights, because the activities of the night often contradict the aspiration of the day and undo its work.
Vigilance, sincerity, continuity of effort, and the Grace will do the rest.
<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/20-may-1968#p1,p2,p3,p4,p5,p6</ref>
To the Divine Vision, all sincere human aspirations are acceptable, whatever diversity or even apparent contradiction there may be in their forms.
[Based on Aphorism 473 — The Lord of Love has said, "They who follow after the Unknowable and Indefinable, follow after Me and I accept them." He has justified by His word the Illusionist and the Agnostic. Why then, O devotee, dost thou rail at him whom thy Master has accepted?] <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-473#p2</ref>
When I say, ‘If you are sincere, you are sure of victory’, I mean true sincerity: to be constantly the true flame that burns like an offering. That intense joy of existing only by the Divine and for the Divine and feeling that without Him nothing exists, that life has no longer any meaning, nothing has any purpose, nothing has any value, nothing has any interest, unless it is this call, this aspiration, this opening to the supreme Truth, to all that we call the Divine (because you must use some word or other), the only reason for the existence of the universe. Remove that and everything disappears. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/25-march-1953#p11,p12,p14,p15</ref>
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''Q. Sweet Mother, how can we make our submission gladly?''
''A.'' It must be sincere. If it is truly sincere, it becomes happy. So long as it is not—you may reverse the thing—so long as it is not happy, you may be sure it is not perfectly sincere; for if it is perfectly sincere, it is always happy. If it is not happy, it means that there is something which holds back, something which would like things to be otherwise, something that has a will of its own, a desire of its own, its own purpose and is not satisfied, and therefore is not completely surrendered, not sincere in its surrender. But if one is sincere in one's surrender, one is perfectly happy, automatically; rather, one automatically enjoys an ineffable happiness. Therefore, as long as this ineffable happiness is not there, it is a sure indication that you are not sincere, that there is something, some part of the being, larger or smaller, which is not sincere. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/7-july-1954#p61</ref>
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It is perfectly true also that if a man is sincere, he will reach the Divine. But it does not follow that he will reach immediately, easily and without delay. Your error is there, to fix for God a term, five years, six years, and doubt because the effect is not yet there. A man may be centrally sincere and yet there may be many things that have to be changed in him before realisation can begin. His sincerity must enable him to persevere always—for it is a longing for the Divine that nothing can quench, neither delay nor disappointment nor difficulty nor anything else.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/patience-and-perseverance#p23</ref>
'''Curated by Prema'''
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