You set before me the book of Nature; and I understood how all the flowers created by You are beautiful, how the splendor of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not lessen the perfume of the little violet or the delightful simplicity of the daisy. I understood that if all flowers wanted to be roses, Nature would lose her springtime beauty, and the fields would no longer be decked out with little wild flowers... It is the same in the world of souls, Your living garden.
"A man once saw a butterfly
struggling to emerge from
its cocoon, too slowly
for his taste, so he began
to blow on it gently. The
warmth of his breath speeded
up the process all right. But
what emerged was not a butterfly
but a creature with mangled
wings.
"In growth," the Master concluded, "you cannot speed the process up. All you can do is abort it."