Jason Chan's Monthly Message continued
Practising the art of patience is so essential if you are to make any real progress on the spiritual path. We live in a world of instant gratification. We can instantly communicate with others all over the world, and if we need some new information, we can usually find it virtually immediately on the Web. But the spiritual path is usually a long, slow, step by step journey, as we painstakingly learn to calm our over-busy minds, open and heal our wounded hearts, and reconnect to the love and light that are our spiritual birthright.
The path home to unconditional love and light is never totally straight. It is always full of twists and turns, and most of us may even have to come to a few apparently dead ends before we finally find the way out of all our pain and suffering. I always warn my students that they will take at least one step back for every two steps forward on their spiritual journey. At times, they may even feel like giving up altogether. Sadly, I have known some very promising spiritual practitioners who have gone back to leading ordinary lives when the pain and frustration of awakening became too much for them to bear.
Committing to our spiritual awakening is rather like walking through thick fog down an unknown, rocky path whilst trusting that we are being guided by a higher power that, at first, we can neither hear nor see. Of course we are going to trip, and even fall flat on our face, from time to time. We just have to be brave and strong, and know in our heart of hearts that even when we feel as though all we are doing is stumbling around in the dark, the fog will one day part to reveal the bright sun that has been shining on us all of the time.
The really good news is that there are certainly times on our spiritual journey when our hearts just burst open with the indescribable joy of connecting to ‘the light’. Sometimes we also feel unconditional love pouring through our whole being, and this is blissful beyond anything that we can experience in this physical world. But then we temporarily lose our inner connection to the light or to love, and we are once more overwhelmed by fear and doubt.
It is at times like this, that we need to remind ourselves that even after a bitterly cold winter, the flowers of spring always reappear –eventually. We just need to wait patiently and calmly, finding joy in all the small signs that Spring is just around the corner, until one day we wake up to find warm sun pouring through our windows, and a riot of daffodils and crocuses miraculously transforming our parks and gardens once again.
