Common steps and sub-activities
Patience
We may have eliminated our desires in order to help the process of spiritual experience, but I’m sure most of us will still probably harbour some sneaking hope that, for example, they get to see the garden of Eden [they will], or the palaces in the air [they will] or the rivers of gold, the seas of emerald and the palaces of crystal and glass [they will] – but not for quite some time.
How to Know Higher Worlds – Rudolf Steiner
We must strive especially to train our capacity for patience. Every stirring of impatience paralyses, even destroys, the higher faculties latent within us. We should not desire or expect to achieve boundless insights into the higher worlds overnight, for then as a rule they will certainly not come to us. Instead, contentment with even our smallest achievement, along with calm and detachment, should certainly fill our souls.
Certainly, as students, we are understandably impatient to see the results of our efforts. Yet we can achieve nothing until we can master our impatience. On the other hand, merely to fight against impatience in the ordinary ways does no good. It strengthens it. We would only be deceiving ourselves and our impatience would sink its roots deeper into our souls. Only if we surrender ourselves repeatedly to a particular thought, making it completely our own, can we achieve anything. This thought is ‘I must do everything I can for the education of my soul and spirit; but I will wait calmly until the higher powers consider me worthy of illumination…
Patience has the effect of attracting the treasures of higher knowledge. Impatience repels them. Haste and unrest achieve nothing in the higher realms of existence. Above all, longing and craving must be silenced. These are soul qualities in the face of which all higher knowledge shyly retreats. Precious as higher knowledge is, if it is to come to us, we must not long for it. Moreover, if we wish it only for our own ends, we will never attain it.
The composer always gives us what we need at the time and for many many months or even years we never see these things, because we need something else. If we haven’t cottoned on to why we need these other things and ignore them, they will just keep on coming in other formats. The composer loves to hammer the point home, sometimes one gets the feeling there is just a dash of frustration with us when we don’t get the message.
How to Know Higher Worlds – Rudolf Steiner
It is no good saying ‘I really want to know about my past life and – for this – I will even study and practise!’
Rather, we must be ready to give up all such desires and must renounce them completely. We must learn without ulterior motive. We must be able to rejoice in and be devoted to what we learn for its own sake. Only in this way can we have an aspiration that brings about its realisation.
So, we have to be patient, content with what we are given and we have to understand what we are told and learn from it.
Patience is a key technique in numerous religions and cultures. ‘Patience is a virtue’
In the I Ching it is covered by both GEN and XU. Note that the I Ching explores various aspects of patience. GEN for example, means knowing when to stop and also don’t go too far. If you have made progress in something - taken action, built on it and achieved a certain level of success, then stop at this point to rest and reflect. So Caution followed by Patience. XU on the other hand means using the time of Patience to build up strength and nourish the body.
When nothing appears to be happening, you just need faith and patience.
Remember it worked for the Buddha – who of all the people that this technique was used by probably had the most patience of all.
Observations
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- Alice in Wonderland - Ch 09 - 2 The Mock Turtle and the Gryphon
- Bayard Taylor - Poems of the Orient – The Angel of Patience
- Buddha - Diamond sutra - 14 Perfect Peace Lies in Freedom from Characteristic Distinctions
- Coleridge, Samuel Taylor - Love, Hope and Patience
- Dr Seuss - Green Eggs and Ham
- Dr Seuss - Horton Hatches the Egg 01
- Dr Seuss - Horton Hatches the Egg 02
- Dr Seuss - If I ran the Circus
- Dr Seuss - One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish
- Dr Seuss - The value of Home schooling, Knowing your Destiny and Patience
- Epictetus - The Enchiridion - 10
- Epictetus - The Enchiridion - 12
- Haig, Matt - Reasons to stay alive - 01 The need for patience and trust
- Holderlin, Johann - Once Gods walked
- Ibn El-Arabi - The Tarjuman al-Ashwaq - They left me at al-Uthayl and an-Naqá shedding tears
- Jacolliot, Louis - Occult Science in India - The Law of the Lotus
- James - James 1 verses 1 to 27
- James - James 5 verses 1 to 20
- Jesus - Matthew 5 : 38 - Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you
- Khan, Hazrat Inayat - The Art of Being and Becoming - On the ego
- Khan, Hazrat Inayat - The Mysticism of Sound and Music - The diagreeable vibrations of some people
- Louis Jacolliot - The Bible in India - The Thoughts and maxims of Krishna
- Nietzsche - Twilight of the Idols - Learning to see, habituating the eye to repose
- Peckover, Priscilla Hannah – quote from Peace and Goodwill, A sequel to the Olive leaf
- Sangomas, Shamans and New Age healing in South Africa - 04 Agnieszka Podolecka - The training and the initiation of a sangoma
- Sikhism – Japji 38
- Steiner, Rudolf - How to Know Higher Worlds - Patience
- Tarot - 07 Minor Arcana - 03s Love, Kindness and compassion [Intuition]
- The Lotus Sutra - 04 Belief and understanding - 1 Charity and the use of similes
- The Lotus Sutra - 13 Peaceful practises - 4 Compassion and patience
- The Lotus Sutra - 13 Peaceful practises - 5 The Thus Come One acts as king of the doctrines
- The Lotus Sutra - 16 Distinctions in benefits - 2 His blessings will be such as this
- The Lotus Sutra - 16 Distinctions in benefits - 4 In the evil age of the Latter Day of the Law
- The Lotus Sutra - 19 The Bodhisattva Never Disparaging - 1 The bodhisattva Never Disparaging bore all this with patience
- van Ruysbroeck, Jan - Commentary on Matthew 9:15
- van Ruysbroeck, Jan - Taught in a dream by their guardian angels
- van Ruysbroeck, Jan - The Adornment of the Spiritual marriage - For the Father incessantly begets his Son
- van Ruysbroeck, Jan - The Adornment of the Spiritual marriage - God may touch a man from without and from within
- van Ruysbroeck, Jan - The Adornment of the Spiritual marriage - The sun, moon and the four elements
- van Ruysbroeck, Jan - The Adornment of the Spiritual marriage - Whosoever would know God would go mad
- van Ruysbroeck, Jan - The Three Worlds
- van Ruysbroeck, Jan - To be wounded by love is the sweetest feeling