| Dear Friends, This week's quote is from spiritual awareness class CC 78, which was published in Volume 4 of The Living Light Dialogue, and it begins with a question from a student. The annual drawing commemorating Mr. Goodwin has closed, and the winners will soon be notified.
"What's the difference between tolerating something and accepting it? Because if you're tolerating it, aren't you basically accepting it and changing the whole thing and saying, "Well, everything's fine"?
There's a vast difference, my dear student, between tolerate and tolerance. To tolerate a person is to take control of yourself, not approving, nor accepting what they are doing, but to put up with them, for you have other desire priorities that you want to support. Therefore you tolerate a person or a condition. Do you understand? Now, tolerating has no understanding, because, in truth, it has no acceptance. What you are accepting, when you tolerate a person, you are accepting a higher desire priority in your own mind that dictates, "By tolerating this person, I will be able to fulfill my own desire." Is that clear? You have not accepted the individual. You have not understood the individual. That is not what we are teaching at all. We're not teaching to tolerate the world or anything. But we are teaching tolerance. Tolerance—to have tolerance simply means that you have made the effort inside of yourself to educate the level of consciousness that exists within you that you have been lacking in understanding for what that individual over there is expressing."
It may not seem that there is much difference in meaning between the words tolerate and tolerance, but in the context of the philosophy, there is great difference. The expression of tolerance is the expression of a soul faculty, one facet of the first soul faculty of duty, gratitude, and tolerance. Tolerance is not possible without an understanding and an acceptance of our own levels. As we grow in tolerance and understanding, the experiences in our lives that we previously found distressing, no longer have such a great impact for us and we live with greater poise and harmony. But it is up to us to make the effort to expand our soul faculties.
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Sincerely yours, Russell Fitzgerald Vice President | 
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