Tests remain the primary means by which fitness is measured or one’s progress from one level of awareness, maturity or competency to another. These tests come in innumerable forms and varieties suitable to the exigencies of the times and situations.
Among Webster’s many definitions of the word test we find: “a critical examination, observation or evaluation; a process leading to proof or disproof, acceptance or rejection of any given thing or theory; a means of measuring skill, knowledge, intellect, etc.” You might say that one cannot pass from one level of intellect or accomplishment to a higher one without tests. Neither can one pass from one level of spirituality to another without tests–including the Holy Figures Themselves.
The evidence of progressive tests becomes more apparent with time and technology as more people are being adversely affected on an ever-broadening scale by bad choices made by people with misplaced priorities in highly influential places. Becoming lost in the materialistic process is the fact that we all have two predominant natures, the lower (animal) that ends with the grave, and the higher (spiritual) nature that is eternal. (Our inability to understand or accept truth does not change truth–only our lives).
Likewise, only through tests can our progress (or lack of it) toward any desired goal be made known to us as God (and probably others) are already well aware of it.
A determining factor in whether tests make or break us is this: if we turn to our lower nature in response they will eventually destroy us. If instead we turn to God and work through our Higher nature “the test will be a source of spiritual strength,” we are assured in the Baha’i Holy Writings.
It is a natural tendency to think that our “problems” are in, or caused by others rather than by our own actions and/or attitudes toward any given situation. Considering how difficult it is to change our own thinking and subsequent actions and reactions, imagine how slim the possibility of actually changing those of others.
As many of our severest tests come in the form of grief and sorrow we are assured in the Baha’i Holy Writings for this new maturity of mankind and New Day of God: “Grief and sorrow do not come to us by chance, they are sent to us by the Divine Mercy for our own perfecting. While a man is happy he may forget his God; but when grief comes and sorrows overwhelm him, then will he remember his Father who is in Heaven and who is able to deliver him from his humiliation.”
Putting tests into proper perspective is crucial to gaining spiritual altitude, the greatest venture any soul will ever embark, upon it’s final journey home-–from whatever launching post. (Investigate! 1-800-22-UNITE)
