Exploring Mind - Body - Spirit

Topics Covered

• Patience
• Reducing hurry

Patience as a spiritual practice

When we think about patience and how to develop patience, it can be helpful to explore impatience. When we think about impatience, it doesn't really seem to benefit us much, and it certainly takes more energy to be impatient than it does to be patient.
Exploring impatience further it usually occurs when our mind is looking ahead in time and making assumptions about what will happen if things don't change NOW. The fact is that we usually don't know what is going to happen or what the consequences of a delay will be. In this case we can remind ourselves that we can simply accept the not knowing state while we continue to work for things to change. Note that is "work for things to change" and not "wait for things to change". Patience is not about being passive.
We can become more effective at working patiently for things to change by focusing more on the processes we are engaged in rather than just the results. If we focus only on the results then we can be disappointed when they are not as large as we would like. However, when we are aware of both the processes and the results then we can notice that what we are doing has its own benefit, which enables us to trust that it will have positive results in the long run.
One health example of this is losing weight. If we just focus on our weight we will be disappointed because all healthy ways of losing weight cause a rather slow weight loss. However, if we stay somewhat aware of our weight, but also notice how we are being more physically active and enjoying that and learning to enjoy smaller amounts of healthy food, then we are more likely to stay with the program and lose weight and keep it off.
Another activity that helps us develop patience is listening. In a conversation we can feel the urge to speak and often if we act on it we wish we hadn't. This reminds me of a Quaker saying in which before we speak we ask ourselves "Is what I am about to say an improvement upon silence?" When we practice listening and making sure we give the other person time to speak fully before we respond we both develop patience and speak with more wisdom.

Reducing hurry

Hurry, or a sense of being rushed, is a patience-killer. Unfortunately, because the sense of hurry is visceral, i.e. felt, if we try to simply tell ourselves to stop hurrying it can have little effect.
An awareness technique to change the feeling of hurry is to receive the present. We allow what is in our field of view to arrive at our eyes. We allow sounds to come to our ears. We allow touch to arrive at our skin. We allow the breath to fall into our lungs. When we practice this we notice much more through our senses. We have to slow down in order to observe
Once we are sensing more completely by receiving the present, we allow ourselves to receive the future. We allow the future to come to us rather than racing off toward it.