The seed of greatness is sown in an instant, but in this world of ours everything great takes time to grow. This means that patience, mingled with persistence, is the special nutriment that sustains all things great. Therefore, should we wish to win the great life, we need only add equal measures of quiet watchfulness to our spiritual willingness and a great goodness cannot help but flourish within us.
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To be persistent is to work after its "cause" has gone underground and goes unseen for a while. Then, for our efforts to rise above ourselves -- though they may feel pointless when all seems well -- we ascend to a new and unshakable interior ground that doesn't give way when our conditions change once again.
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It is what we are willing to learn in the unfolding moment, and not what we think we already know, that finally turns the tide of any trial in our favor. This is why the wise ones have always taught that knowledge is the seed of wisdom, but its flowering is in conscious action.
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To do those works required of us, to act from what we know is right and true -- even when we don't want to -- is the first step of giving birth to something in ourselves that gradually gives us, effortlessly, everything that we need to be right and true.
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Just as we can't toss a pebble into a pond without making small waves that spread out to touch its banks, so is it true that our sincere spiritual effort makes ripples in unseen realities, waves that touch and transform the shores of the soul.
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Any weakness we may harbor in our present character persists only because we have yet to see how its presence compromises our happiness, but a growing awareness of this interior shakiness changes everything. Our awakening stirs within us a Celestial Character created for the purpose of transforming the soul's stumbling stones into the building blocks of a whole new unshakable Self.
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We must choose whether to live our lives in the endless struggle of trying to fit ourselves into life as this world has given it to us -- or to work to give ourselves that Life that all else is created to fit into.
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We cannot hope to enter into that life larger than our own as long as we continue to look at our own life through a set of limited ideas that preclude that possibility.
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We must love God more than we long to have the experience of His love, for real Love does not fit into the mortal heart: it surrounds and envelops it as does the sweet apple its seed, keeping it safe, sustaining its presence until it can be released to glorify that greater life that gives it birth.
