Cultivate the dance of mindful patience and change your inner atmosphere

“Am I patient with others? Am I patient with the way life unfolds, Am I patient with nature, my health, my body and the way its aging?” 

Could I be more patient with myself, with my mistakes and how would that look and feel?” 

The more patient I am with myself and with the thoughts, feelings and emotions that arise in me 

the more compassionate, patient and skilled I become towards others and towards life in general: 

we seem to hold this idea that something is wrong with us, there’s this version of me that could be better. We think this way about other people and think about life this way. Life is not right, because it’s too noisy, or it’s too quiet, or it’s too hot, or too cold, too windy, or not windy enough. We’re always comparing the way things are to the way we think things should be. So, we find ourselves continually trying to be the right way, the correct version the right combination so we crack the code of life for ourselves or for others. convinced that configuration is the one that will finally make everything better or at least more bearable.

So I'm not implying that you need to be more patient with yourself, with others, and with life in general. This is not that:

Instead, this it’s meant to be an invitation to be more aware of ourselves 

and to understand ourselves a little more. 

So let’s dive in and swim for a while in the ocean of patience and find out what we can discover

The wonderful thing about patience is the more we use it, the more we offer it, the more we have; Patience creates a spaciousness that alters our relationship to time giving us the impression we have more time than we've ever had: Patience can alter our everyday experience from anxiety and deficiency to peace and plenitude; 

However, some of us experience so much impatience that we assume who we are and that we are "hardwired" a certain way and cannot change: We are so quick to label ourselves and others but these labels do not define us: Impatience with yourself is a very cruel form of self bullying because it does not allow for a natural unfolding;

Dare we define patience. Why not, What is it? If you Google it, according to Google, patience has the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset. that's starting to define it. But to really understand that, I feel we need to do a little bit more digging, So, other definitions remain steadfast despite opposition, difficulty, or adversity. I think that’s getting closer to the mark with how I understand patience in the context of mindfulness practice. Because couldn’t that be the very definition of meditation as a practice? Could it be that meditation is the heart of practicing patience? It’s remaining steadfast despite the difficulty because if you sit there long enough, at some point, you experience difficulty. Your legs start to fall asleep, your lower back starts to hurt, you may start thinking about all the millions of other things you could be doing; All these things start to arise. what do I do with that? Do I remain steadfast in my intent to sit with it? 

Or, do I succumb to the discomfort and say, “Well, I don’t want to be uncomfortable, so I’m going to get up and be done with this.”

If you think of patience as the art of not being angry when difficulties arise, I don’t think that quite hits it. Because you can be angry and sit there and not act on that anger. And are you really being patient or are you just putting on the image of being patient, Can I sit here with this emotion or with this difficulty in my life, and not be annoyed? I can’t fake that, if I’m annoyed I may not act on the feeling of being annoyed, but I cannot fake whether or not I’m annoyed. That gives us something to work with. See patience as the antidote, an antidote to reactive conditioning, an antidote to anger, anxiety, and the stresses of everyday life; a way to learn to love and care for whatever we meet on the path. By patience, I do not mean resigned, a kind of grin and bear it no, it's opening ourselves to seeing what’s there.

The opposite of patience is aggression, the desire to jump and move to push against our lives to try to fill up space. The journey of patience involves relaxing and opening to what’s happening; 

 Resigned stuff, is often a form of habitual "non-reactivity reactivity" your reaction is 'no-reaction' Yet don't mistake this for patience, not addressing a situation may cause confrontation to arise even escalate simply because we are not patient enough to skillfully work with whatever discomfort arises regarding that situation. So what if we flip the script and realize patients might not be what we think it is? Experiencing the repeated pressure of meeting life with impatience most likely indicates a level of fear, dissatisfaction and unhappiness, it is unpleasant but does not signify a fixed permanent position, everything is workable; The root cause of our impatience is not outside our self and while ultimately patience is practiced in the company of others, the starting place is within your own mind;

 Patience is motivated by our desire or sometimes desperation for sincere inner and outer peace and by faith in our ability to accept things as they are. Patience has three essential aspects: tolerance, calm easeful endurance and acceptance of the truth

So what is patience? It is unconditionally accepting what is happening right now in the present moment. When you lack patience you are in some way rejecting the present moment and substituting some future moment from your imagination,

thinking that this future moment will help solve the imagined problem with the present moment.
So we can only have patience when we are fully present in the moment.

Summary Patience and Impatience it all a dance; Patience is motivated through the mercy of our inward and outward desire for peace Patience is unconditionally accepting what is happening right now in this moment: We may feel unhappy or anxious and not even know its impatience; When you lack patience you are rejecting this moment for some future moment in your imagination Impatience is thinking the future moment will help solve your imagined problem today Impatience is a form of bullying because it does not allow for a natural unfolding; Impatience is our reaction to things not being the way we want them to be, not getting our way, things not under our control, Impatience rises when we tend to expect the environment to conform to our expectation and  Impatience is our expectations of the moment out of sync with reality expect others to conform and expectations are often unrealistic when mastering new skills or facing the unknown  patience is an ongoing act of mercy towards our self leading to well being and a peacefully encounter with 'NOW'  meeting the moment that is not of your choosing free of reactivity 

Experiencing the repeated presence of impatience indicates a disowned pattern and you may want to sit quietly  and examine the root cause, here's a hint don't look outside yourself:  We can only know patience when we are present in the moment We think impatience is external, it's not it rises from within  When you catch yourself being impatience over something quite small you can choose to see it and ask Is this worth flooding my body with stress hormones:

What would patience do ❤️

How would  patience connect with this moment:

How would patience feel, speak, act; 

We never reach the perfect configuration we are constantly learning, unlearning becoming, and going with the flow