Do you see how you do not make a tree grow? All your knowledge of botany does not make a tree grow. You can be the greatest expert in the growing of plants, and yet you are not capable of making trees grow. You may nourish them. You may love them, and all your influence is good, and yet you do not make trees grow. You have an influence, and yet it is by an Unseen Hand that trees grow. You accept this, do you not?

You do not whip a tree to grow. You do not demand nor command a tree to grow. You do not browbeat it. You do not throw it away because it does not grow so fast as you would like. You do not disdain a tree because it grows slowly. You do not talk roughly to the tree. You do not say: “You are a failure if you do not sprout leaves now.” You don’t say, “Grow now, or you never will.” You don’t say, “What is the matter with you, you dumb tree.” Nor do you say, “What is wrong with me that my tree does not grow?” You do not become desperate when your tree takes its own sweet time. You don’t think something is terribly the matter, and you do not affix blame.

Beloved seekers, will you consider your God-awareness as a tree that grows? Sometimes you are impatient with your growth of consciousness. How do you know that your spiritual evolution is not growing fast enough?

This may be hard for you to accept, but it is your ego that berates you for not evolving faster than you think you are.

If you trust in Me to grow trees, keep the stars in place, keep the sun happy, if you trust in Me to create miracles, can you not trust in Me to raise your consciousness? It is not a miracle for your consciousness to grow. Your consciousness is a growing natural thing. It does not have to grow faster. And you do not need to be dissatisfied with it. Nor do you need to put so much attention on it. Sometimes too much attention is too much attention, and too much attention hinders rather than helps. You do not want to become self-conscious about your consciousness. You do not have to focus on it all the time. Do not breathe down its neck.

Consider your consciousness as your child. Your child will grow with or without your say so. You may well measure your child’s physical growth but not every day.

You want your child to do well in school, and you want to support your child in doing well, yet you cannot make your child’s grades in school the focus of your life. If you bother your child too much, he will become tense and may, therefore, not be able to do well. Remember there is that which belongs to your child and to Me, and is not for you to become too involved in and try to control.

So it is with your growth of consciousness. Desire your consciousness to grow, and then leave it alone. You don’t have to supervise it. You don’t have to watch its every move. You don’t have to chart it. You have to let it be.

Will you love your consciousness? Will you trust it to grow? Will you trust Me that I am the Gardener of your growth of consciousness and that I well know when there should be a spurt of growth and when your consciousness should rest? Let go, beloveds. Growth of consciousness is nothing for you to work hard at. It is for you to relax about.