Qualifications of the Aspirant: Some Divine Qualities — Forbearance

As the aspirant advances on the spiritual path, he acquires, through his contact with a Perfect Master, an increasingly deeper understanding of true love. This makes him painfully sensitive to the impact from outside actions that not only do not taste of love but actually bring him into contact with cold contempt, cynical callousness, agonizing antipathy, and unabating hatred. All these encounters try his forbearance to the utmost. Even the worldly person suffers in a world he occasionally finds indifferent or hostile, but he is more thick-skinned and his suffering is less acute. He does not expect anything much better from human nature and thinks that these things are inevitable and incurable. The aspirant, who has tasted a deeper love, knows the hidden possibilities in every soul. Thus his suffering is more acute because he feels the gulf between that which is and that which might have been, if only the world had even faintly appreciated the love he has begun to understand and cherish.

-Discourses 7th Ed. p356

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