Patience- A Needed Virtue for Spiritual Growth
- Jun 8
- 6 min read
Summary
This text explores the fundamental nature of patience by contrasting human expectations with the unalterable laws of the spiritual world. While modern technology has conditioned society to demand instant gratification, the blog explains that spiritual development and the harvesting of one's destiny cannot be forced or hurried. True patience is shown as a virtue of the human spirit, requiring aligning one's internal desires and actions with Divine Will rather than earthly timelines. The blogs explains how expedited results that appear as miracles are not arbitrary acts that break natural laws. Instead, they are the acceleration of lawful processes made possible through a child-like purity of heart. Ultimately, the writing encourages individuals to use periods of waiting for inner reflection and to trust in the perfection of sacred timing.
Watching water boil is a forcible experiencing of patience, for anyone who has attempted this. Most may describe this experience as frustrating. Others may see this as a valuable life lesson to be applied to other situations of life that demand patience. But there is a deeper lesson that many perhaps fail to appreciate.
This has to do with how we human beings experience time, and how this is always determined by our own expectations and the rigidity with which we hold to those expectations.
Let us now go back to the example of watching water boil, using this framework.
A person in a hurry is likely to have the wish that the water will boil faster, because they have a pressing business to attend. As a consequence, the overlap of their wish, and the natural process of water boiling, creates the effect of the expansion of time as they watch the water boil. Remove this expectation, and if their attention is occupied in the interim, the water will boil in its normal time, or perhaps faster, if they had become engaged with other tasks during the interval. The more they want to enforce their expectation on the natural process, the longer it appears it takes the water to boil.
On calmer reflection, we have to admit that this process applies to any unfolding situation in life that we watch too closely with anticipation.
Fortunately, either we human beings have over millennia learned to filter out such frustrating anticipations, or perhaps patience is actually an attribute of the human Spirit, that we have unfortunately gradually eroded over time.
If one were to choose which of the two options above was more likely, an astute observer would have to settle on the latter. Modern expectations clearly show how the attention span and demand for instantaneous gratifications have increased exponentially over the last 100 years, and correspondingly our ability or desire to wait patiently for any outcome. The internet, microwave, air travel, advances in medical science, and the multiplicity of technologies today, allow us to accomplish things in a fraction of the time it took a hundred years ago. And even then, 100 years ago, the time it took to accomplish some things was a fraction of the time it took older generations. For example, the steam engine drastically reduced the time it took to travel long distances on land. The Industrial Revolution, built on the power of steam and electricity, drastically reduced the time and output of manufacturing activities.
Today, our heightened expectations for the timing of outcomes have spread into every aspect of our lives. Including our religious and spiritual expectations.
But this is where modern man faces his greatest challenge in trying to bend life’s processes to his abilities. While we have learned to harness the powers of the natural forces towards our technological development. We are, in the main, completely ignorant of the forces that determine our fate or destiny. And, without this knowledge, we cannot harness them to influence these aspects of our lives.
We may be aware of the spiritual laws, like sowing and reaping, homogeneity, gravity, etc. But being aware of them is not the same as knowing how to tap into them to expedite or bring about drastic changes in our spiritual life, as we have in our material life.
But, already in the Grail Message, Abdrushin has given us the basic pointers on how to regain connection with the Spiritual forces. He has explicitly told us that these forces are triggered by the nature of our desires, thoughts arising from these desires, then our words and actions that manifest from the originating desire. The laws use these as the raw materials to weave our fate or destiny. He even gives glimpses of the entities that manage the activities of these spiritual laws. He tells us that these entities act only in accordance with the Will of The Supreme Authority, The Creator of all Life.
No creature can interfere with this, nor can it interfere with the time determined for each process to take. Therefore, in this area of our lives, man has no choice but to wait patiently for the process to take its turn and time. In acknowledgement of this fact, the saying "God's time is the best", is a widely embraced Christian expression of faith. It conveys the belief that God's plans are perfect, —never too early and never too late—, even when human impatience makes the wait feel difficult.
Perhaps as we struggle to exercise patience, the following words can serve as help and reminder; "Sacred time is devoted to the heart, to the self, to others, to eternity. Sacred time is not measured in minutes, hours or days." Captured in this reminder are the following pieces of wise advice,
1. Spend the time of waiting to reflect on the inner desires, thoughts, words, and actions that always bring back what we have sown with them. And also act accordingly. This is the most sacred use of our time.
2. Do not try to judge expectations of fulfillment by earthly measures of time.
The greatest danger that impatience holds is that one can interpret nonfulfillment within our expected time frame as “evidence” that the law of sowing and reaping is a myth. And thus, make us continue on the path of self-gratification. But this is the height of self-deception, as the laws always work in their own time. And the one who stops believing will only face greater and more severe consequences. Not as punishments, but as the rewards for their actions.
Before concluding, we should touch upon how miracles are accommodated within this apparently inflexible spiritual frame work.
It is an indisputable fact that miracles do occur, even if seldom.
Abdrushin explains how such miracles occur, and how their occurrence always fit perfectly into the spiritually lawful processes too. He says as follows in the lecture titled “Miracles”, in volume 2 of the Grail Message:
A miracle is a happening that sets men wondering; it is something they do not believe to be possible! But they only think it is so, for that it is possible is proved by the fact that it does happen. But miracles such as many of the believers in God imagine them to be, do not exist! They consider a miracle as something that happens outside the Laws of Nature, even something contrary to those laws, and it is just on this account that they see the hand of God in it. They think a miracle is something possible only to their God, Who thereby shows His especial Grace and uses His Omnipotence to accomplish it. Such poor creatures erroneously imagine that omnipotence implies the capability to act arbitrarily, and they regard miracles as such arbitrary acts! But they do not reflect how they thereby belittle God, for such miracles would be anything but Divine!
…. a miracle can only work itself out with flawless consistency in the course of events. Although it happens in the usual way, the only difference, is that the process of development, which according to earthly conceptions should take a longer time, occurs with such immense rapidity, either through the special power granted to some individual, or through some other channel, that it appears miraculous….!
Occasionally it may be something reaching beyond the present state of development that finds its fulfilment through concentrated power. But it will never in any circumstances occur outside or even contrary to the existing Laws of Nature!
When diseases which up till now were regarded as incurable are healed, this does not mean that the Natural Laws have been changed, but merely exposes the great deficiencies in human knowledge. All the more should it be recognised as a mercy of the Creator when here and there He endows individual human beings with special powers which they can use for the benefit of suffering humanity. But it will always be those who have kept themselves far away from every conceit of science, because earthbound knowledge quite naturally suffocates the ability to receive higher gifts.
Worldly scholarship exerts itself to achieve something, but can never receive in a pure, childlike way. The powers coming from a sphere beyond time and space may, however, only be received in simplicity, but can never be acquired by exertion. This circumstance alone shows which is the more valuable, the stronger and, therefore, the more correct.
Final Words
These words of Abdrushin give deeper meaning to Jesus’ injunction in Matthew 18:3-4 and Mark 10:14. “Become like children”, because it is only with the purity of a child that we can connect properly with the spiritual forces to humbly receive the joyful fruits of the pure desires from a child-like heart. But this child must not be an impatient child!
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