Keys Five & Six – Persistence and Limitation
This Key seems obvious, but there is more to it than meets the eye.
Plant it in your mind as a seed thought and share what comes forth.
A person can never be a disciple without the quality of persistence. Many failed disciples just give up when a few obstacles get in the way.
A common excuse given when some problem appears is:
“This must be a sign from God that I am not supposed to do this.”
I personally find this to be a most annoying excuse and when I hear someone say this I often reply with something like:
“You’ve got it upside down. When you are headed in a right direction that will produce positive results, a negative force follows to fill the vacuum. This has the effect of bringing things into your life that makes it more difficult to accomplish the goal. It may seem like a sign from God that you are not supposed to do this thing, but the opposite is true. If it is a sign if anything, that you are supposed to forge ahead, not quit.”
Nothing important ever gets done without persistence. If the seeker wants to accomplish the difficult he must persist.
One of the greatest examples of persistence was told by Napoleon Hill in his book, “Think and Grow Rich.” Here is the account:
A Fifty-Cent Lesson In Persistence
“Shortly after Mr. Darby received his degree from the ‘University of Hard Knocks,’ and had decided to profit by his experience in the gold mining business, he had the good fortune to be present on an occasion that proved to him that ‘No’ does not necessarily mean no. One afternoon he was helping his uncle grind wheat in an old fashioned mill. The uncle operated a large farm on which a number of colored sharecrop farmers lived. Quietly, the door was opened, and a small colored child, the daughter of a tenant, walked in and took her place near the door. The uncle looked up, saw the child, and barked at her roughly, ‘what do you want?’ Meekly, the child replied, ‘My mammy say send her fifty cents.’
“‘I’ll not do it,’ the uncle retorted, ‘Now you run on home.’
“‘Yas sah,’ the child replied. But she did not move. The uncle went ahead with his work, so busily engaged that he did not pay enough attention to the child to observe that she did not leave. When he looked up and saw her still standing there, he yelled at her, ‘I told you to go on home! Now go, or I’ll take a switch to you.’
“The little girl said ‘yas sah,’ but she did not budge an inch. The uncle dropped a sack of grain he was about to pour into the mill hopper, picked up a barrel stave, and started toward the child with an expression on his face that indicated trouble. Darby held his breath. He was certain he was about to witness a murder. He knew his uncle had a fierce temper. He knew that colored children were not supposed to defy white people in that part of the country.
“When the uncle reached the spot where the child was standing, she quickly stepped forward one step, looked up into his eyes, and screamed at the top of her shrill voice, ‘MY MAMMY’S GOTTA HAVE THAT FIFTY CENTS!’
“The uncle stopped, looked at her for a minute, then slowly laid the barrel stave on the floor, put his hand in his pocket, took out half a dollar, and gave it to her. The child took the money and slowly backed toward the door, never taking her eyes off the man whom she had just conquered. After she had gone, the uncle sat down on a box and looked out the window into space for more than ten minutes. He was pondering, with awe, over the whipping he had just taken. Mr. Darby, too, was doing some thinking. That was the first time in all his experience that he had seen a colored child deliberately master an adult white person. How did she do it? What happened to his uncle that caused him to lose his fierceness and become as docile as a lamb? What strange power did this child use that made her master over her superior? These and other similar questions flashed into Darby’s mind, but he did not find the answer until years later, when he told me the story.”
(End Of Quoted Material)
JJ: The answer of course was the child had her mind made up that she was going home with that 50 cents and was going to persist with determination until she got it.
Even so, must the disciple persist with fierce power of will until the goal is achieved.
Key Six — Know Your Limitations & Your Strengths
Aren’t we supposed to be unlimited?
From an eternal perspective this is true but from within any framework of time it is not. Time itself is the great limitation in this universe.
Take away time and anything can happen in the “Eternal Now,” but jump into time and we immediately suffer many limitations.
As we grow in intelligence, we lean to master time and many of our limitations are removed, but as long as we dwell in time and space we will have the limitations of time and space. These limitations must be a part of any equation that is used to create, expand or grow in consciousness.
What the value of knowing limitations?
There is a law or principle called the Law of Contraction & Expansion. Before consciousness can be expanded the entity must subject himself to the Law of Contraction and suffer limitations. He learns that one must contract and suffer limitation before he can expand.
The seeker thus enters into the world of limitations. The important thing he must then learn is what his limitations are and the extent thereof. Once he correctly learns this, he can begin to remove them and enter into the Law of Expansion.
How do we discover our limitations and how do we remove them?
The ego gets in the way of fulfilling this law for it directs the seeker away from discovering his limitations that he has no limitations and thus the ego keeps the pilgrim trapped in the world of limitation for it allows not for true vision.
True vision is only granted when the seeker is true to himself and sees his weaknesses as they really are and starts progressing at the true point of beginning.
It takes courage to see oneself correctly, warts and all, but the honest in heart are those who finally make true progress upon the path.
What do the initiations have to do with limitations?
Each initiation is a point of recognized expansion where some major form of limitation is removed.
How is removal of limitation important to making persistence effective?
If a person lets his ego talk him out of working on removing limitations because the ego wants to keep them, so it keeps true perception away from the seeker, then the seeker will suffer failure after failure and become frustrated. In his frustration he will cease being persistent on the path of expansion and move from path to path with dead end after dead end until the ego is mastered and limitations are found and worked through. Then he can enter the true path.
“Create a definite plan for carrying out your desire and begin at once, whether you are ready or not, to put this plan into action.” — Napoleon Hill
May 13, 2009
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