The Wisdom of Waiting

Wisdom Teachings
The Journey Inside

All spiritual exercises appear at first to be very simple and little once you have started with them. But if we try to adapt ourselves to them and to carry them out, gradually more and more is given. There will never be an end. The program will keep on increasing until our personality forgets that there is an increasing program and the personality is finally transformed. This gradual transformation into the light needs very much time and patience. Everything we pick up as an exercise we should do slowly and step-by-step, we should work with it continuously and steadily. There is no hast on the path, enlightenment does not happen within the next 5 minutes.

Progress seems to happen at a snail’s pace. Those who are a bit ahead of others have to serve those who are behind them and who proceed very slowly. It is just like with the journey of the turtle and the rabbit: The rabbit is very fast and learns to be slower for the benefit of the turtle. The slow turtle is made to walk a bit faster. The Plan includes all, and it intends to lift up the whole of humanity.

Impatience is an obstacle on the spiritual path, it brings irritation. We easily criticise and become annoyed. Overactive people cannot wait and just do what has to be done. Thus there is no receptivity for the soul. Even in meditation our mind remains busy and keeps on thinking. We don’t leave a door open for the Divine to come in. It is just as if we phone with a person and keep on talking and then we complain that the other hasn’t answered at all. Meditation means to wait until all thoughts have settled down.

When we are vigilant to let the thoughts pass by, we enter from the state of doing into the state of being. Thus meditation is not doing, but letting happen, a be-ness in order to be receptive for the divinity. We make a proposal to the be-ness that it may enter into us. If we lose the being in doing, we cling excessively to the mind.

Prayers are like a conversation with the deity, but then we should become silent and remain silent in order to be able to receive the answer to our prayers. The ability of receiving is related to the ability of waiting. People who cannot wait also cannot receive. Waiting is a pause giving us balance. Many initiates accomplish very much by their strength of patience and ability to wait.

When we invoke the names of the masters, the idea behind is that we ask for their help, so that we become receptive for the energy of the soul, and we wait for its arrival. We never can establish the relation ourselves, but it is HE who opens the doors and closes them again. We can only wait for His grace, through correct actions and through right prayer. Through waiting we open up to the grace. We cannot demand grace, we can only pray that it might come to us and wait, while we fulfill our daily duties.

The wisdom consists in being able to wait and to do what has to be done just now. Things and people will come to us, if we always devote ourselves to the right next duty. Because of our overactivity we tend to run after things and thus often miss the right thing. Master CVV says: “Learn to accept and wait. What is due to you, will come to you. Don’t go up crazy and search for things.”

Things don’t come to us, because a master gives us something, but because of what we have done. When we reap fruits, it is because we have tended the garden well. When we don’t reap fruits, this means that we haven’t tended the garden in the way we ought to have done it. Only the anxious ones run around crazily looking for good businesses, a partner or a spiritual teacher. The teacher comes, not because we have run for him, but because the time is ripe. If we search, we easily fall into the wrong hands. If we trust in nature and the divinity, things and situations will come to us. However, we should not be lazy to respond to them. The spiritual path requires to cultivate our attention and not to lose time.

A man of the 1st ray decides from out of his inner certainty what he wants to do and implements it. Thus he can manifest works of good will in a very effective way. A man of the 2nd ray is also guided by his inner perception, but he waits for a hint coming from the outside. He doesn’t act by himself, but leaves it to nature to chose the right moment and the proper persons in order to pick up a work, so that the activity doesn’t come from him. One approach is not better than the other, it is the quality of the soul which decides.

There are times of inner restlessness which lead us to activities that cause failures. Sometimes our first impressions then are wrong, and we should not act out of our first spur or invite others to action, but wait a certain time until things develop. With all we experience during a dream or a meditation we have the feeling that it is something intuitive. If it is really intuitive, the corresponding incident will also come to us from the outside.

Some, however, have the tendency to postpone things and work in the last hour under high tension. When we try to keep punctuality and a plan in our routine, these defects will be neutralized. There are also people who think that they don’t have to do anything and leave all to God, since all is fate. This is a fatalist philosophy of laziness: “God will come and put the bread into my mouth.” “God will care for my children. I don’t have to do anything.” It is up to us to act. To wait without doing what is appropriate doesn’t bring results.

To prepare rice for eating, we first need to collect the grains, clean them and put the rice on the stove. Cooking needs time. If we don’t wait properly, we will not have good rice to eat. So it is the right attitude to act and then to wait. There is a point up to which we can do something. If we do more than needed, this is, however, waste of energy.

When we do something, we mostly do it with a view to a result. We write an exam and then wait for the outcome. We apply for an employment and wait for the answer. Our attitude to wait for the fruits of our actions causes many expectations and the related disappointments. Disappointment is the “not-achieving” what is expected by us. The obstacles seem for us to be an external agency preventing us from “how it should be” and what we regard as progress.

When we are balanced, a change of program doesn’t matter to us. It gives us an experience; we take events as they come and thus react on them. When we live in the experience, there is not sense of time and thus no waiting. It is only for our mind that time sometimes seems to pass by fast and sometimes slowly. There are yogis in the Himalayas who just have pushed away time and live in contemplation for months.

When we enter into the subtle world and are deeply engaged with the inner movement, the mind gathers in the lotus of the heart. There we have to wait for a long time at the pulsating golden door of the inner chamber. We cannot do anything from the outside in order to get into the inner; the door opens from the other side. Just sitting there we take in the golden light. Its rays transform all the layers of our body, so that we get a radiant etheric body and become an instrument of light. Then we can meet the Master in the heart.

K.P. Kumar: Saturn / notes from seminars / E. Krishnamacharya: Spiritual Astrology. The World Teacher Trust - Dhanishta, Visakhapatnam, India.