Patience Is The Goldsmith
When gold is thrown
into the furnace, one has to exercise great patience. He who is
impatient fails; he who is patient is successful. If you hurry,
become impatient, it means you have not accepted suffering and are
eager to be done with it. In that case you have not understood the
glory of suffering. You do not know that as you suffer you are being
cleansed and purified and absolved from all that is worthless and
useless. You have not recognized suffering as a friend yet. It is
only at that point that you attain to self-restraint. He who
recognizes suffering as a friend is in no hurry. He can maintain his
patience, and God is attained only through patience - infinite
patience. To attain God is not a paltry thing to be instantly
attained.
You plant a seed. Seeds of seasonal plants take two to three weeks
to sprout. By the sixth week they begin to flower, and at the end of
twelve weeks their life cycle is over. When you plant a cedar tree
it lives for one hundred years, or perhaps two, three, or even four
hundred years. There are trees in America thousands of years old.
They take such a long time to grow that the seed remains under the
soil for years before it sprouts.
The baser pleasures of this life are quickly attainable, but they
vanish as quickly. Remember the equation: the quicker attained, the
earlier lost. If you want to attain God you will have to practice
infinite patience.