“The drunkard, learning his alphabet of the suffering caused by the dominance of the lower nature, is doing as usefully in his own stage as is the saint in his, completing his last lesson in earth’s school, and no more can justly be demanded from either than he is able to perform.
One is in the kindergarten stage, learning by object-lessons, while the other is graduating, ready to leave his university; both are right for their age and their place, and should be helped and sympathized with ‘in their place’. This is one of the lessons of what is known in occultism as “tolerance”.
Fourthly must be developed endurance, the endurance that cheerfully bears all and resents nothing, going straight onwards unswervingly to the goal.
Nothing can come to him but by the Law, and he knows the Law is good. He understands that the rocky pathway that leads up the mountain-side straight to the summit cannot be as easy to his feet as the well-beaten winding highway. He realizes that he is paying in a few short lives all the karmic obligations accumulated during his past, and that the payments must be correspondingly heavy.
The very struggle into which he is plunged developed in him the fifth attribute, faith – faith in his Master and in himself, a serene strong confidence that is unshakable.
He learns to trust in the wisdom, the love, the power of his Master, and he is beginning to realize – not only to say he believes in – the Divinity within his own heart, able to subdue all things to Himself.
The last mental requisite, balance, equilibrium, grows up to some extent without conscious effort during the striving after the preceding five.
The very setting of the will to tread the Path is a sign that the higher nature is opening out, and that the external world is definitely relegated to a lower place.”
Annie Besant
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 