When efforts fail as they do fail sometimes it is to help us grow in strength and patience, perseverance, fortitude, even a deeper faith and surrender that looks behind appearances and the immediate consequences, that is to say, failure in our effort. As you yourself can see through this process you have ended up ‘wanting to know’ something about the Divine Will and working. If it succeeded you may have been happy with one more miraculous success. Besides when we are deprived of something we want or wish in one direction, let’s say appearances as in this situation, then, after a period of disappointment our consciousness naturally turns in another direction of effort in some other field. This goes on until we discover what we are really meant for and what should be the direction of our efforts.
When should we give up? Well generally if we undertake something, say the wish to grow tall, we should explore all natural options until we arrive at a logical conclusion that it is not possible. Otherwise we grow fickle and restless, ready to give up at the slightest obstacle. It is not always a question of Divine Will but the conditions which the Divine has accepted to operate through. For example the Divine Wills that all should be beautiful at every level but there are number of factors that operate at any given time due to which the WILL cannot be fulfilled immediately, in one life so to say. Yet our prayer and wish is written in our credit page and one returns with a better heredity and better conditions for the fulfilment. It is just that the Time factor is important as it is Time that organises the various forces and factors to fulfill the Divine Will.
Affectionately,
Alok Da
Follow up question:
 It feels great to know that no effort ever goes to waste. Now when I look at my life closely, I understand a little better how the circumstances have brought me closer to the Divine. It is also very heartwarming to know that the Divine notes our wishes, because as a child, I had prayed for a taller body in another life.
Message send by one who asked about effort
Yes, no effort is wasted even if it remains unfulfilled in one life. Here are some lines from Savitri.
‘Fate is Truth working out in Ignorance.
O King, thy fate is a transaction d one
At every hour between Nature and thy soul
With God for its foreseeing arbiter.
Fate is a balance drawn in Destiny’s book.
Man can accept his fate, he can refuse.
Even if the One maintains the unseen decree
He writes thy refusal in thy credit page:
For doom is not a close, a mystic seal.
Arisen from the tragic crash of life,
Arisen from the body’s torture and death,
The spirit rises mightier by defeat;
Its godlike wings grow wider with each fall.
Its splendid failures sum to victory.
O man, the even ts that meet the e on thy road,
Though the y smite thy body and soul with joy and grief,
Are not thy fate,— the y touch the e awhile and pass;
Even death can cut not short thy spirit’s walk:
Thy goal, the road thou choosest are thy fate.’
Affectionately,
Alok Da
