TOPIC
Cultivating patience in an impatient climate.
In a society that demands perfection from the first incremental step our movement forward is rendered motionless.
We want everything now.
But just as a tree grows slowly before it can gift its multidimensional contributions we need patience to grow ourselves, our communities and the greater society.
How do we cultivate patience?
What is our relationship with patience?
Where do you have patience?
Are you patient with yourself, with your own steps, are you more patient with others?
Is there room for patience?
REFLECTION
Patience is a virtue, a tool, a portal into the internal world, an activator of listening and much more.
We discovered in our circle that patience is something we activate regularly in the face of impatience. Perhaps we have already been triggered and we witness our impatience play out before us or we catch our reaction and activate our patience.
What is patience?
Is it waiting patiently for something, are there conditions applied to our patience, is it a listening? What is your process of patience?
Turning inward, surrendering and accepting the external variables, allowing things to move at their own pace.
There is an intentional slowing down from a reactive and potentially sympathetic state of being. Slowing down the rapid burning of our mortal coils. Easy to say that if we remain in a state of impatience we are putting ourselves and others at risk; rushing to get to an appointment on time, being aggressive, short tempered, irritable and frustrated.
Impatience comes at a moment of strong feeling that can have a practiced meaning. This practiced meaning can blind our objective capacity so how do we catch our impatience?
Meditation is a tool that can enable us to observe our reactions and begin to rewrite the practiced neural pathways.
As we progress upon the path we start to see the reactive 100 lane highway we are upon. And we begin to see that there is a different path to walk that is not this paved road and if we are brave we step away while dealing with the grief of witnessing our family and friends progress along the highway at rapid speed.
We need patience to walk our own path. Especially if the path has never been walked before.
So, we are off the highway moving through the thick scrub not able to see very far ahead but staying with a trust that we will discover something beautiful; a view, clearing, river, or perhaps something ineffable. This is the path of the living, for what we call anxiety upon the highway is channelled into a heightened awareness and activation of the totality of being. Have you ever wondered why time is so slow as a child?
Perhaps its the overwhelming phenomena that is unfolding before us of which we have little knowledge therefore we are struck in a time slowing state of wonder and awe. Walking off the highway delivers us into the unknown in which our habits of knowing have no place. We listen with our whole being. So how does patience fit into this metaphor?
Patience strengthens the portal, the looking glass from which we can see, hear and feel the reality of things as they are. From that place we witness the world around us, the influence, the habits, the momentum of culture and we are presented with the uncomfortable truth of our incongruence and oppression of our nature. Some may just discover that the highway is their path and they continue along it. Others may leave and return, using the highway consciously to the advantage of their soul.
Patience is a virtue that can shape us into a masterful being who walks their natural path, creates relationships with suffering and pain that can transform the meaning into pure joy of the wonder of existence.
Patience is a portal.
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