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What is most important for all of us who are sitting here is to continue our practices. For many, it is not easy to continue. This includes many yoga teachers. They are teaching, thinking it is their obligation, yet they themselves do not practice. That is very sad. Many, many yoga teachers do not practice and are busy with different things. So, what is more important for us is continuity. To begin anything in life is easier; to build a house is easy. But it is very hard to maintain the house. Similarly, your spiritual sādhana or your physical sādhana needs a great deal of inner effort. We know that it does not matter what you are doing, whether just for physical health or for spiritual development—both need practice. And it must be practice with a very harmonious relation to your practices. If you lose your aim, it means you have lost your motivation. If you are aware of your aim, there will be motivation. An ill person knows he wants to become healthy and goes to search for a doctor. It does not matter how—walking, by car, by bus, by train—because the aim is to come to the doctor. Similarly, our aim is to achieve higher consciousness, and that needs constant motivation. Imagine there is a water well. Many do not know what a water well is because when you have it at home, you turn a little piece of iron and water comes. But it was not always like that, and in many countries now they have electric pumps. In old times, they used to take water from the well with a bucket and a string. Now, this bucket is your sādhana. It will bring water to quench your thirst. Between the water bucket and yourself is a string, and that rope is motivation or willpower. You pull water out from the 20-meter deep well. Before you could reach the bucket in your hand, the bucket was still at 18 meters; it had already come out, with only 2 meters left, and the rope broke. What happened? The bucket will fall into the water well, and the water will also fall in. Now you are standing there with this 20-meter long rope which broke near the bucket. No water. And this is it: our aim is to get that water through the bucket of our sādhana. That sādhana needs positive thinking. You are doing your prayer and mantra, but inwardly you have negative thinking. It means your rope is very frazzled; it is rotten, and it will break. So it depends on you whether you will be successful or not. Whatever you are searching, you will only find it if the intensity of your search remains as it was in the beginning. You know, that is why Gurujī said in one bhajan, "O Lord, day by day, my love should increase." And what is happening with you? Day by day your love is decreasing. How will you achieve your goal? And that is it. When the love is gone, everything is gone. Then comes disharmony in life—either with a partner, or children, or colleagues, or neighbors, or in your study or your profession. When you lose this love, then it is finished. It is dying day by day. And when it is dying day by day, it is very cruel—the cruelty is within you, not outside. So, your negative thinking towards your aim is very bad. You should not have this thinking. But when you think selfishly to fulfill some material desires and wishes, and after some time when they are not fulfilled, then you are in doubt. Doubt is the first bacterium which will slowly, slowly kill your motivation. The bacteria are so fine you do not even see them in the air; they are so small. But these small bacteria can pull down or throw down a mighty elephant. There is one bacterium you need to see with a magnified glass, and there is an elephant you can touch and see with closed eyes. So how does this very tiny bacterium pull down the elephant to the ground? And so is your love, like a mighty mountain for an elephant. But your negative thinking—you are questioning why and how and when, and "if not, then finished"—these are our negative questions. That is why it is very important to have continuity of our sādhana. There was one yogī like you, sitting under a tree and meditating, having a mālā in his hand. After two hours of meditation, he suddenly got inside restlessness, disappointment—a midlife crisis. A spiritual midlife crisis. "Oh God. Now I am practicing 40 years; I didn't get even one little spark of light, enlightenment. I didn't even see the small toes of God. I think everything is senseless. I wish I could at least have enjoyed the material life—no yama and niyama, 'don't do this, don't do that.' I did my mālā and sitting here without nothing." These are the thoughts which come. Many people then give up meditation and practicing mantras. They begin with alcohol; they begin to eat meat again. They begin to quarrel with family members. This is not good. So that man who was sitting near the tree said, "More than half of my life is gone and I didn't achieve anything. I finished practice." He put the mālā down and began to think. "How many years I lost. But even if I give up, I can't become young again; you can't go back. And it has no sense to practice anymore. If I didn't achieve anything in 40 years of practice—and I began when I was 30, now I'm 70—and in 40 years I didn't realize ... how long will I live now? Ten years, five years, maximum twenty years. Do you think I will achieve in these twenty years what I couldn't achieve in forty years?" Doubt, desperation, anger at his master—luckily the master was not there. And what he sees suddenly: one ant is climbing on the tree, having in its mouth a rice grain. After climbing half a meter, it lost the grain, and the ant went down. It searched for the grain, found the grain, and again began to climb 30 centimeters and lost the grain. Again it began to climb up. And it climbed one meter—that was a very high achievement—and again lost the grain, went down, searched, and found it. And it began to climb again, three meters, and again it was lost. Again the ant was going down and found a corn. This time, this man tried to put the corn a little nearer to the tree to help her, and she found the corn and finally climbed between two branches. There was a small hole, and it walked backwards into the hole and pulled the corn inside. And the yogī who was sitting there like you, astonished, said, "That's it! That's it, my God! This ant is my Gurū now." Never give up. Try, practice, practice, practice. Never give up, and finally you will be able to bring your corn to the nest. So finally you will come to your aim. The biggest obstacle is our motivation, if we do not have motivation. And then you go towards worldly thinking. And be sure, this worldly thinking will not help you to achieve your goals. But it does not mean that you should not work. It is not that you should not start a family. It does not mean that you will no longer live with your family. But it is that you lead your normal life and practice. Do not stop practicing. Yesterday I came from Prague and I was a little bit tired and went to sleep, and there was a constant noise, a sound, a humming sound. This morning we found it was a water pump running; then we turned it off. It was peaceful, but there was no water. And we started the pump again and there was noise, but water was there. So it doesn't matter how it is. If you want to have water, there is noise. And if you don't want noise, there is no water. So this is like the story of that horseman. And now in this civilization where people have many, many cars, many have not even seen a horse in reality, so you don't know what it means that the horse is thirsty. So now this sound of the pipe is a good example. So the problem is there. The problem is life. Without problems, life is 85% boring. The best university, the school of life, is the problem. And problems are there to be solved. Since humanity was created, problems began to exist, and every human is very busy working day and night. Some people have no time to eat. But still the problems of the world are not solved. How many wars were in the past? How many humans were killed cruelly? Humans were thrown to the tigers and the lions alive. You know that? Unfortunately, religion was involved in it. The politicians, the kings, for their selfishness, they involved religion in it. And if you have a different belief, it means you don't follow my politics—and very cruelly killed. And it's still happening, and this is not good. So many wars to correct something, to protect something, but still they are not successful. Problems are like bacteria, and you can't block the bacteria. There was one man with a bacterium who had some influence, and with this influence he went to the airport to go to Singapore. He took the flight from Prague to London, and from London it flew to India, and from India to Singapore. When he came to Singapore, the bacterium was already there greeting him. How? Because when he came to the airport, he brought the bacteria to the airport with his breath, and the person who got this took a direct flight to Singapore. And the person who had the bacterium, the influencer, went the complicated way to London, to India, and then to Singapore. So the bacterium was seven hours earlier than him in Singapore. So the most intelligent creature is the bacterium. They know how to maintain. Therefore, the problems of life will never be solved. And this is why you should find time in between to have your sādhana. And have this love. If love is lost, everything is lost. Then you have no motivation. Okay, you practice mantra because you came here, and everyone is doing it. But you are making mantra and looking at your watch. Looking at your watch. It means I see there is no motivation. So we need love. Then you will see that everything is changed in your life. A dry plant gets regular water, and after a few weeks there are new branches growing. New leaves are growing. A new life is coming out of the dying plant because of the water, light, and fertilizer. And so you need this inside: the water, light, and fertilizer. The water of love, the fertilizer of care, and the light of wisdom. This is very important for your happy life. That's why we say yoga is harmony for body, mind, and soul. And that is possible if you do it. So I wish you all the best and to keep your motivation. Make a saṅkalpa today: from today onwards, I will begin again my new yoga life. And do it. It will be very good for you. Recording location: Czech Republic, Strilky, Weekend seminar