From Oxford English Dictionary:
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/u...
tolerance
Pronunciation: /ˈtäl(ə)rəns
Noun
- The ability or willingness to tolerate something, in particular the existence of opinions or behavior that one does not necessarily agree with.
'the tolerance of corruption'
'an advocate of religious tolerance'
1.1 The capacity to endure continued subjection to something, especially a drug, transplant, antigen, or environmental conditions, without adverse reaction:
'the desert camel shows the greatest tolerance to dehydration'
'species were grouped according to pollution tolerance'
'various species of diatoms display different tolerances to acid'
1.2 Diminution in the body's response to a drug after continued use.
'The fact that our body can develop a tolerance to alcohol complicates how we judge alcohol's effect on our bodies.'
'You can't build up a tolerance to any asthma or allergy medications.'
- An allowable amount of variation of a specified quantity, especially in the dimensions of a machine or part:
'250 parts in his cars were made to tolerances of one thousandth of an inch'
Tolerance, a quality of Love, is a thing that can be hard to find in today's world. It is a thing that is seemingly nonexistent among the skeptics of religions, regardless of which religion it may be. Wherever there is a difference of opinion about any piece of a religion's history, one will also find said skeptics to have no tolerance for the beliefs, opinions and views of another that does not agree with them.
He or she who is capable of tolerance of the beliefs and opinions of others will find an ever widening understanding of and presence of humility present within themselves, and this is of course another aspect of Love in the Universal sense. The ECK Masters speak of its necessity often.
Tolerance is a thing that is often coupled with any of the other qualities of Love, which is to say that the Law of Love works easily in tandem with Itself. Times arise to he that possesses and uses tolerance, that he will also have need of using forgiveness, detachment, patience, understanding and always always, humility. Which of these must be used in a given circumstance depends on the habits and character traits of the individual one is working with or addressing. Some will have the personality that makes using patience quite a challenge. For others it might require forgiveness. Detachment is a quality that must remain constant and is best if never turned off because this quality sets that person apart from everyone else as one of the things along the way to tolerance.
If they are able to remain detached regardless of the quirks or traits another might have, that might easily anger another person, the detached one is free of the poor attitudes and negative reactions that another might have a hard time avoiding or exercising control over. Remaining free of attachment allows the individual to arrive at yet another aspect of love, that which we call understanding, perhaps the greatest quality of Love.
He who is capable of understanding concerning others is not only in a very good place where negative reactions can be removed before they occur, but also is able to use that understanding to help other Souls out while they are learning the lessons that they have to go through in this life. And this is what we know as service, which is a product of so many other aspects of Love, that it becomes impossible to consider service anything other than an outer manifestation of the Law of Love. Service born of Love is the very reason that the ECK Masters live their lives in the highest degree of service, helping those who are ready attain the True Home of Soul as well as the states of being that lie beyond it. Even where the individual does not see an ECK Master speaking specifically of service, it is always very apparent in their words and actions which serves as an example of the importance and the direct application of tolerance as well as detachment. There is a very god reason they are called the Vairagi Order, the Masters of Detachment.
It can be easily seen that these various aspects of Love work with and through each other in a great many incidences. In Eckankar, much is said about attaining and keeping a balance. The balance of the outer and inner lives, as well as a balance between receiving information from the ECK that simply cannot be held within the Self for too long because It simply must be given as it was received which keeps a balance ever present. When this is done he can easily take what was given to him and then pay it forward, free of charge. Doing this not only allows balance to exist, it also brings an individual into ever greater spiritual states that are continually challenged to cause that individual to develop this quality further so they will continue to climb ever higher up the ladder of Love, which is the Ladder of God.
If one looks around, they might notice a lack of tolerance that happens in many different places and on different levels. One form often noted is the strife and disagreement between religions. If any were capable of transcending that particular religion, they would undoubtedly find that the person that began their religion was teaching many of the same things as the one who was responsible for the creation of another religion. Standing back and looking at it and seeing the bigger picture tends to make the various religions look much the same, and in such a case, that Universal viewpoint makes a religious war seem like a needless waste, costing many lives for no good reason. Only when it is karma being played out can that to be considered something of a re-balancing created by an earlier cause.
The viewpoint I am speaking of is one that has been spoken about by many of the word's mystics, all of whom realize that God has no religion nor accepts or denies any. No single religion is able to have the only way to attain the higher states of consciousness, so why is it that some feel threatened by another with a different spiritual path? A situation like that shows a clear lack of tolerance as well as a lack of most of the other aspects of love. If there were detachment, patience, forgiveness, humility, and gratitude, it stands to reason that understanding would soon follow, and when that occurs it tends to make religious wars seem extremely self-serving.
Perhaps those lower states of mind and being are what makes one unable to see the lesson in it for themselves. As Hazrat Inayat Khan states, "Tolerance does not come by learning, but by insight; by understanding that each one should be allowed to travel along the path which is suited to his temperament." I want to explain my interpretation of this quote just a bit. "Learning," in this case is book learning, as opposed to life learning by direct experience which tends to be a very harsh teacher. So as one is given the experience by which to learn tolerance, it is the personal experiences in life that beat a person's limited self down, a thing that they have literally chosen to have happen by the thoughts, words or actions they have issued against another. Eventually a person gets tired of having to go through such experiences in life. This is when the "insight" begins to show up. The outer life circumstances happen to get our attention, and as we go through the lesson we eventually arrive at a place where we have become willing to make changes to ourselves and our habitual behaviors and actions so as to not have to repeat the experiences.
When insight arrives from the inner, it tends to bring changes with it. Changes to the way the problem and the apparent enemy are seen and looked at, as well as changes to the way one's responses are looked at. This means that the changes needed were always ones needing to be instituted by the individual for themselves. Each such step takes a person continually ever closer to attaining the state of Self-Realization, from which all other life forms are seen as Soul, and when this is seen, the individual has to change their habits and institute newer and better behaviors that not only allow them to tolerate things that had angered them previously, but also causes them to utilize all of those other facets of love until the entire array is working in harmony with itself, and with all of life, both inside the Self and in the world outside.
Now we arrive at a synonym for tolerance known as forbearance. This word is also a legal term used to denote when a person chooses not to pursue legal actions against a perpetrator that they could take legal action against. The point has more to do with exercising self-control and surrendering to the ECK, so as to allow things to take their natural course rather than exercising any legal right which can often be motivated by the ego. Utilizing forbearance allows the ECK to do with a situation what IT sees fit to do. It is also a quality that has much use in the relationships between people, whether purely platonic or concerned with the romantic and/or married life. People, being so different, will not always agree on all things, and because of this there can be times when a significant other is doing, saying or acting in a way that is less than liked, in which case forbearance becomes a necessity because when one loves another individual, it stands to reason that it would be pointless to always allow it to annoy to the extent that a breakup was the only foreseeable solution.
This is where other aspects of Love can come into play. Detachment when used in harmony with forbearance helps to not allow a given thing to be so important that any degree of dissatisfaction would cause a split. And the same can be applied to friends and business partners as well. Often a situation along these lines will require the other aspects of Love, such as patience, understanding and forgiveness. Forbearance is a necessity in nearly all relationships, and especially in romantic ones and marriages because no one is so perfectly suited to another that there won't ever be a set of habits or circumstances that one or the other has a problem with. Where there is love, patience and forbearance must also be present. Forbearance is that thing that causes a person to not necessarily do or say a thing that they may well have a right to say, so that instead patience, detachment and humility can be exercised so as to bring people through the harder times .
One thing I hope to have made extremely apparent is the way that Love with its several characteristics is able to guide people through the harder spots whereby they can learn and come to understand all of the reasons that brought bad or annoying habits into being in the first place, and also how each characteristic of Love can reach around back upon itself to assist bringing the individual through the series of experiences, many of which are karmic, to the point of resolution and understanding. The more of such experiences a person deals with successfully, the better they are able to teach others how to do the same, and this is another example of taking in a lesson from the ECK, and using it to navigate the personal circumstances one must deal with and find solutions to the problems that arise in the personal sense, but then also to give the lesson away to others who might have need of it, thereby keeping the balance and allowing the ECK as Divine Will to carry through and touch the hearts of many.
There are always folks who want only to oppose a person and attack all that they care for, or the activities that they enjoy, and of course this includes any religion and/or spiritual path. Such things are the reason that this topic is so important, as the idea of tolerance is one that ought to always be building and expanding for the true spiritual student, and most definitely for a chela of Eckankar. As I stated previously, it is merely a part of Love, and the Law of Love, and it is an idea that one needs to recognize and consider both when they are being attacked by others regardless of the reason, and when they are interacting with others in life. There is no area of life in which tolerance has no place and no application. Just one more facet of life that has plenty of room for a person to be creative in using, applying, and learning from, as well as the many other facets of Love. By learning the best ways to apply it, and doing so in every aspect of life, a person remains open-hearted and a channel for the ECK that is able to learn ever newer lessons, and doing so can easily remove anger from being one of the habitual choices made when speaking with others about things they disagree about.
Regardless of the religion or spiritual path that you are on, even if it is not Eckankar, consider the whole of the interpretations of tolerance as you go forward, but always being willing to learn and to expand your awareness of it. In this way this piece of writing may serve each of you a benefit, and an ever widening ability to Love, and to be loved while also learning and developing forward into new areas of consciousness that you hadn't previously explored.