Question: How can we develop patience?¹⁹³

Sri Chinmoy: In order to develop patience, we have to feel that we have launched into a spiritual journey, an inner journey, which has a Goal, and that this Goal wants us and needs us as much as we want and need it. This Goal is ready to accept us and give us what it has, but it will do this in its own way at the choice Hour of God. God is definitely going to give His Wealth to us, but only when the time is right.

Patience will never tell us that spirituality is a hopeless task. Patience will tell us either that we are not ready or that the time is not yet ripe. Although we may feel that we are ready, we have to know that our integral being, our whole being, may still be unprepared. Our soul may be ready, our heart may be ready, our mind may be ready, but our vital and physical may not be ready to reach the Goal, which is Light and Truth. Only when our whole being is ready will the Goal itself dawn inside our aspiring consciousness. When the hour strikes, the Goal will draw us towards itself like a magnet.

In the spiritual life we have to feel that patience is not something passive. On the contrary, it is something dynamic. In patience we develop our inner strength and will-power. It is true that if we have will-power, we can easily acquire patience. But it is equally true that when we have patience, our inner will-power develops itself in a special way.