PATIENCE IS THE GOLDSMITH...

When gold is thrown into the furnace, one has to exercise great patience. He who is impatient fails; he who is patient is successful. If you hurry, become impatient, it means you have not accepted suffering and are eager to be done with it. In that case you have not understood the glory of suffering. You do not know that as you suffer you are being cleansed and purified and absolved from all that is worthless and useless. You have not recognized suffering as a friend yet. It is only at that point that you attain to self-restraint. He who recognizes suffering as a friend is in no hurry. He can maintain his patience, and God is attained only through patience – infinite patience. To attain God is not a paltry thing to be instantly attained. You plant a seed. Seeds of seasonal plants take two to three weeks to sprout. By the sixth week they begin to flower, and at the end of twelve weeks their life cycle is over. When you plant a cedar tree it lives for one hundred years, or perhaps two, three, or even four hundred years. There are trees in America thousands of years old. They take such a long time to grow that the seed remains under the soil for years before it sprouts. The baser pleasures of this life are quickly attainable, but they vanish as quickly. Remember the equation: the quicker attained, the earlier lost. If you want to attain God you will have to practice infinite patience.

And remember another fact: the more patiently you observe, the earlier you attain. The more you rush the later you attain. You are the cause of the delay. Why does this happen? Because the more patient you are, the deeper inside you go. Impatience is characteristic of a shallow person; it is a sign of childishness. When little children plant a mango seed, after an hour they take it out to see whether it has sprouted yet. Then they put it back in the soil. Again they remove it to see whether it has sprouted, and again they return it to the soil. That seed will never sprout. You must have noticed the patience and tranquillity of the villager. The city shopkeeper has little patience. The further into the countryside you go, the more peaceful and tranquil they are, because they have learned to be very patient with nature. You plant the seeds today, but you can’t gather the harvest tomorrow. Long association with nature and observing the law of patience, and they become tranquil. But he who wishes to reap the harvest of the infinite must sow and toil in the field of God.

Osho: The True Name