Maude Smith's Correspondence with The Mother

13 October 1957

Gracious Divine Mother,

I am so grateful for your letter, for your touch, and for the warm, sweet feeling that I belong to you again.

I'm sorry to bother you again, but I'm still con fused about the matter of persistence; the question has troubled me for so long that I feel I must get it straight this time. Here is an example of what 1 mean:

Just now I'm interested in concentrating in the heart; I also feel the need of a change in my attitudes. Should I continue to work on these two things²¹ persistently until the inner doors open or until I see that my attitudes have changed? Or if my interest wanes and something I read or something you speak of in class awakens an urge in me in another direction—such as remembering the New World, stepping back, controlling my thoughts, etc.—should I drop what I’m working on now and take up the new direction?

The best is to keep all these aspirations living in your heart simultaneously, ready in the background and insist on this one or that one or several at a time when they become prominent in the consciousness. The idea is to be able to follow all without rejecting any, in an all-embracing movement.

At the Playground the evening before I received your letter, thoughts came to me which I felt must be your answer:

“When there is not sufficient support in the will or the nature for a certain movement to continue, it is dropped and the work is shifted to another angle. But your mistake has been in feeling failure and discouragement because of it. You should just keep aspiring and wait until another urge comes. Trying to force yourself is the wrong thing.

“It is like growing plants: you cultivate them a little, fertilize them a little, water them a little, each activity in turn. You can’t give a whole season’s water at one time. Or it is like climbing a steep mountain. You grab at bushes, stones, anything to help you climb. And if the next time a stone gives way under your hand, that is no sign that the first use of the stone was a mistake. Everything you try, even once, is a help, a step forward, a progress. But if a thing doesn’t continue to help you, you mustn’t give up or get discouraged—try something else. ”

Indeed this is a mental translation of what I tried to make you feel and can be used until a better one comes to replace it.

This of course means to persist, but not at any one particular thing. Was this from you?

Yes, in its essence.

Should I do this way?

Yes, but to understand truly you must as far as possible avoid the cut and dry mental rigidity.

With my love and blessings

13 October 1957