It’s not enough to have the “aha” moment of awareness come upon you in order to effect instant change within you.  In fact, the “aha” moment is only the beginning of the journey.  All life processes need a gestation period; they need time to mature and to take root: whether it’s the growth of a fetus, or the sapling growing into a tree, or a teenager interested in politics having to wait to exercise the right to vote at the legal voting age, or your car accelerating from zero to a hundred kilometres; or the traditional fruitcake needing time to “age” before it’s ready to eat.

The key is to remain committed to putting the “aha” moments of your life into action.  Time is needed to both learn and practice replacing old patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving with the new “aha” awareness.  Ultimately, what you are doing during the healing process is replacing ingrained habits with new ones, and getting to the place where the new ones become automatic - your default approach.  And that, needs its proper time, focus and resolve in order to successfully heal.

All this is expressed beautifully in the extracts below.

Why Healing Takes So Long

Healing is always present in its fullness, yet growth into healing is incremental.  It almost seems unfair that we don’t realize instantaneous healing, but the fact is we usually don’t.  Let’s take a look at this situation and see if we can understand what is occurring and why.

Our physical being adapts to its environment in stages, or layers.  This gradual process ultimately enables us to fully integrate the unseen into the seen.  If our wounds were to be blasted with massive Light energy beyond our ability to absorb this amount of energy, then we would experience all kinds of problems.  In this situation, our unresolved issues would be activated, flooded, and fueled by the Light, and we would surprise ourselves and everyone around us with a surge of bad behaviour.  Radical change can be traumatic even when we are impatient for it or it is greatly needed.

Source, Linda Howe, Healing Through The Akashic Records

We’re Making Progress Even Though We May Not Always Be Fully Aware Of It

All true spiritual development takes place little by little.  From day to day you seem to make no progress, but when you glance back to the year before, though you have vastly farther to go, you realize that your nervous system is more resilient, your will stronger, your senses more responsive, your mind and relationships more secure; your goal is that much clearer before your eyes.

It is not very helpful to ask, “Why am I not making much progress?  Why are there still so many difficulties in my way?  Why can’t I surmount them?”  It takes time and labor, but the tree will bear fruit.

Source: Eknath Easwaran, from “Words to Live By”.