[2:45] Seek help in patience and prayer. For it is grievous, except to the humble,
Patience weans the soul from familiar things and prayer is turning one's attention to obtaining intimate communications. Patience indicates fleeing from any other [than God] and prayer indicates perpetual standing in the presence of the Unseen. Seeking help by the two of them takes a great deal of rigor unless the Real self-discloses to the heart of someone, for in the transmitted tradition [it says], 'Truly when God Most High self-discloses to something, it becomes humble to Him'. When the Real self-discloses He lightens and makes easy what creatures must take on. This is because continual acts of obedience cause burdens which must be endured, whereas the self-disclosure by witnessings through realization brings about the perfection of communion (tamām al-wuṣla) and perpetual nearness (dawām al-zulfa).
It is said, 'Seek help through Me for patience with Me, and seek help in My preserving for you your prayer for Me so that the incomings (wāridāt) of unveiling and awe will not overwhelm you so much that you will be unable to perform service'. Surely it is a great blessing from the Real when there is a lessening of the onslaughts of ecstatic finding (sa?awāt al-wujūd) upon the heart at the time of unveiling, so that the servant is able to perform the precepts of separation.
There are several kinds of patience, all of them praiseworthy. There is patience in God, patience for God, patience through God, and patience with God. There is only one type of patience which is not praiseworthy and that is the type of patience which keeps one from God.
Patience is beautiful
in all abodes
except in resisting you,
for then it is blameworthy.