Spiritual conversation (sohbet) with Shaikh Kabir and Camille Helminski on 08/09/08
“Again and again, in so many ways, the Qur’an is reminding us of how faith itself is part of patience and patience is part of faith. I know I am a very impatient person. I’m impatient with all sorts of things; everything we don’t do to perfection is a lack of patience. In this process of spiritual education, there is really no part of our lives that should be untouched and unaffected. Once the Prophet was at a grave site, a companion had just been buried, and the person who put in the final shovel full of earth had done kind of a slap-dash job of it and the Prophet said to him—here he was in this moment and he was very merciful—he said, ‘My brother, whenever you do anything in this world, do it beautifully.’ That is, don’t do it half-ass. That’s ihsan; that’s patience. Patience is also bearing suffering, bearing loss, bearing grief, bearing scarcity. So, it is really one of the central virtues, a virtue that depends on consciousness. A lack of patience is usually a lack or presence, isn’t it? It’s part of it. Haste is from Iblis. So, this is a good reminder for this month’s work (on patience).”
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