Slow Progress

"You are still in the same state with which you were born: you have not taken one step forward.
You are still like the unbaked dough in a pot of clay: though you have been a whole lifetime in a fiery oven.
You are like an herb on a hill: your foot is fixed immovably on the earth, though your head is tossed to and fro by the winds of passion.
Like the people of Moses wandering in the heat of the desert, you have remained forty years in the same place, O foolish one.
Daily, you march rapidly until nightfall and find yourself, still in the first stage of your journey.
You will never traverse this three hundred year's distance, so long as you have love for the golden calf...
While praying, a pauper would at times become distrustful on account of the postponement of the recompense and reward.
And then again, the gracious Lord's deferment of his hopes would bring a message of joy to his heart,
For whenever, in his earnest supplication, weariness caused him to despair, he would hear from the presence of God, the call, "Come!"
This Divine Maker is the One who abases and exalts: without these two attributes no work is accomplished.
One half is day, the other, night...now health, and now sickness...
By means of these two wings this world is kept up like a bird in the air: by means of these two, all souls are inhabiting fear and hope."

Rumi (Vol.6 1784-1853)

Commentary: The way Rumi describes it, the spiritual journey is very long, and takes us up and down, high and low, from hope to despair and then back to hope. No wonder we are confused!