And because I lack it, I've been studying this quality. My feeling about patience has always been that it means waiting for other people, as in:
"Be patient; when you leave home you can do what you want."
"Please allow 6-8 weeks for delivery."
"Be patient; I'll be right there (after I find my keys, change my outfit, check my email . . .)."
"The doctor will be right with you."
The other thing I notice about this quality is that the moment someone tells me to be patient, I become even more impatient.
In search of an impartial source to define this word, I visited my favorite online dictionary. I highly recommend this site, especially if you, like me, are too impatient to look through thousands of books for a print dictionary.
Here's how my source defined patience:
1: bearing pains or trials calmly or without complaint
2: manifesting forbearance under provocation or strain
3: not hasty or impetuous
4: steadfast despite opposition, difficulty, or adversity
These definitions made it even more clear that I wasn't patient and, at first reading, justified my impatience.
"Bearing pains or trials calmly or without complaint?" You can't imagine how impatient that makes me.
Provocation and strain bring out the worst in me.
Hasty and impetuous are my middle names.
Only the fourth definition gave me hope. I am definitely steadfast, and that quality drove me to search for a deeper understanding of patience.
My inspiration for taking a new look at patience came from my cats. Like big cats stalking their prey, they know when to wait and when to leap.
In this spirit, I put aside my usual definition of patience as trying not to suffer over the inconvenience of others' timetables. Instead, I began to look at it as a condition of being receptive to and choosing my own best time for action.
This concept challenged my chronic impatience. I tend to believe that the best time to act is the soonest. Yesterday would be ideal, but since I didn't manage that, I'll often exhaust myself trying to make up for lost time.
This is like people being so anxious to swim that they don't wait until the water is warm enough. Blue-lipped and shivering, they plunge into the icy waves. They come out, half-frozen, but at least they've gone swimming.
When we're receptive to timing, we're like perceptive surfers or swimmers. As they study the waves in order to catch the best one (and keep oneself from being knocked down), so the patient person learns to sense vibrations and patterns of change.
Success in business often depends on anticipating trends and act when intuition urges. Understanding in human relationships deepens when one person is aware of another's vulnerabilities and needs.
Impatient people not only fails to pay attention to external signs that may help or hinder success (like icy water). They also don't pay attention to the inner guidance that tells them whether they are in mental and emotional harmony with the goal they seek to fulfill.
This alignment can be even more important than checking out external signals. If you want better health but spend a lot of time worrying or complaining about how bad your health is, your visit to a new and widely praised holistic practitioner may not give you the results you want.
Your work for now is to bring yourself up to speed by having more hope that your condition can be improved. At that point, positive action can benefit you.
It's amazing how quickly things begin to happen on the outer plane when you're tuned in on the inner plane. Maybe you've been thinking of an old friend with some ambivalence. Maybe you'd like to get in touch, maybe not. Then you wake up one morning, having dreamt about the friend, and you're sure you want to contact her. You open your email, and there's a message from her.
After being torn between two houses for sale, you make a firm decision about one. That day the owners' asking price goes down.
When I need inspiration and get desperate about it, I find that the harder I try to force it out of hiding, the better its concealment getsÑbecause my impatient attempts serve only to resist the natural unfolding of the idea I want.
I've learned to tell myself, "The idea will come" and do something else. By the time I'm ready to write again, I know what I want to say.
1: bearing pains or trials calmly or without complaint
Try this instead: "The time isn't right for me to act. If I relax about this, knowing that the right time will come, I don't have to suffer.
2: manifesting forbearance under provocation or strain
We may not be able to prevent others' acts of provocation, but we can determine how we respond. If your child tells you he's never, never, never going to clean his room, you have choices ranging from losing your temper and saying things you will regret later to asking your son to have a discussion on the subject. These approaches avoid strain all around.
3: not hasty or impetuous
The phrase "Haste makes waste" comes to mind. I know from sad experience that hasty actions often take a lot of time to correct. Impetuousness that stems from impatience yields similar results. However, an impulse to act that is based on inner knowing may be the best way to go.
4: steadfast despite opposition, difficulty, or adversity
In its deepest form, being steadfast means being true to one's deepest self. That kind of consistency dissolves opposition, difficulty, and adversity as a warm sun melts ice.
The most helpful essence (and the easiest to learn) is Impatiens (Bach). It's one of the essences in Rescue Remedy, but if you have a severe case of impatience, I recommend taking this as a single essence.
Since acting impatiently can be the kind of mistake people make over and over again, I also recommend Chestnut Bud (Bach), used by those who don't manage to learn from previous mistakes.
The voice of inner wisdom is hard to hear when other thoughts and worries are drowning it out. White Chestnut (Bach) helps to quiet those voices.
Lotus (FES) is an all-purpose meditative essence that helps to calm the mind. This also allows inner wisdom to speak.
Tiger's Eye teaches us the patience demonstrated by cats: knowing when to rest and when to leap. In meditation, you can place it at the base of the spine or feet, on the navel-solar plexus area, or on the crown.
Rhodonite relates more to patience with others. Keep this crystal by your telephone; carry it to the bank or any place with lines; and hold or wear it if you anticipate a conversation that will go more smoothly if you're patient. In meditation, place this stone on the heart center.
We call carnelian the "Be Here Now" crystal. It helps us get a sense of the outer and inner currents operating in the present time. In meditation, it belongs on the pelvic area.
I include smoky quartz in this list because it is a grounding stone that also helps us to manifest what we want. Thus, it can help prevent one from acting in haste. When we meditate with it, we have a feeling of confidence that our dreams will come true.
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