Patience

“Patience is power.  Patience is not an absence of action; 

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rather it is 'timing' it waits on the right time to act, for the right principles and in the right way.” ― Fulton J. Sheen

Whether you are waiting for a toddler to grow up, body tension to let go in a meditation, an ancient one to get to their destination three feet away, a "presenting" other to drop into a part of themselves a little more real or the paradigm to shift significantly in healthcare or the economy, patience (in good measure) is required.  Patience.  That virtue probably hardest to come by.

"Genius is eternal patience". --- Michelangelo 

In the moment of patience, my ego, identity, my natural rhythm is challenged.  Something or someone else comes first besides my wants and even needs.  This is valuable.  There is a suffering, a sacrifice, a payment made.  And this is unusual.  Rarely do I let discomfort in so willingly.  Behind that moment is a true feeling which merits recognition, an attention.

“Make your ego porous. Will is of little importance, complaining is nothing, fame is nothing. Openness, patience, receptivity, solitude is everything.” ― Rainer Maria Rilke

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Energetically, patience is slowwwww.  A consistent, sustained attempt at patience requires a conscious return to my norm.  My normal rhythm, my usual ego self, putting myself first.  This is an important piece of the patience experience.  Otherwise, masochism and a wrong self-sacrifice evolve.  Patience needs to become part of the self-care piece, not the antithesis.  From this perspective, patience becomes fluid.  It is the water on the stone, the river that finds its own way around the rocks and the bank.

“He that can have patience can have what he will.” ― Benjamin Franklin

To be in the state of patience, is to be in the moment.  To have an attention that is taking in the Now.  The slippery irritations, the held breath, the railing mind screaming 'boredom!', as well as the curiosity and interest of what is before me which is so other.  In patience there is an allowance of this co-existence and the fluid experience of moving in and out and back again with no set range.

“A waiting person is a patient person. The word patience means the willingness to stay where we are and live the situation out to the full in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself to us.” ― Henri J.M. Noun

What Henri Noun says above is not entirely true.  In patience, there is no belief, agenda or gift guaranteed.  There can't be.  Otherwise, we would be hanging on for the payoff and the state of patience would not be Free(ing).  Patience, like attention, is free in its most true form.  It's the moving breath that may or may not loosen the tensions or irritations from the interior channel.  It's a practice to return to, a renewable flow available to engage.

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