We become better at something in ourselves—more skilled, more creative, more effective—when we work. We discover that, indeed, we are good for something. Good work is, at the time, its own kind of asceticism. It needs no symbolic rituals or contrived penances.
The very act of continuing something until we succeed at it is soul-searing, life-changing enough... It makes us equal partners with the rest of the human race in this one common endeavor to grow the globe to wholeness. Good work is our gift to the future. It is what we leave behind—our persistence, our precision, our commitment, our fidelity to the smallest and meanest of tasks that will change the mind of generations to come about our sacred obligation to bear our share of the holy-making enterprise that is work.
The experience of transcendence occurs within the nature of things -- our nature. A small mustard-seed grows into a tree big enough for birds to come and roost in its branches. To try to make it grow faster or slower would be absurd and counterproductive. It is the same when we experience the growth of Divine Love in our hearts as we let the husk of the ego drop away and like seed we die to self that we may fulfill the destiny that is our true meaning, that the potential of life within us may come to fruition.