Patience is trusting God's timing. It is the ability to trust the inherent goodness of life. Once we have done all there is for us to do, it’s our capacity to wait with confidence and faith until more is revealed. Patience, with a foundation of spiritual awareness, can be distinguished from a couple of its close cousins. One of those cousins is resignation. Sometimes people believe they are waiting patiently but instead, they are resigned that things are hopeless, believing there is nothing more that can be done to bring about a positive outcome. Resignation has a sense of defeat that patience does not have. Another close cousin of patience is forbearance. This has a quality of putting up with something and not really liking it, but exercising restraint. These are both to be distinguished from patience, which is our capacity to calmly endure with understanding. But even more importantly, patience is capable of bearing with delay while maintaining a positive outlook. This positive outlook facilitates waiting for the right moment and the right action to come to us. Patience is pregnant with possibility. Lao Tzu says it beautifully in the Tao de Ching:
Do you have the patience to wait 'til your mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving 'til the right action arises by itself? The master doesn't seek fulfillment, not seeking, not expecting, he is present and can welcome all things. –Ch 15, Stephen Mitchell, trans.
The Qualities of Patience
Patience reflects our true nature. It is free of the grasping and sense of urgency that we often find accompanying ego and self-will. The sense of urgency coming from the ego says it has to be "my way" and it must be now. The wisdom of the soul, even when indicating the necessity to take immediate action, rarely has that tinge of urgency that is characteristic of self-will.
As a spiritual practice, patience is the ability to wait with faith, knowing that there is a divine plan and all is in divine order. We may not see that plan and we may not perceive that order, but we know it in our hearts as we wait. We wait with calm anticipation for the unfoldment of divine will. True patience relies on faith and expresses confidence in life, confidence in the Self. It indicates a belief in the fundamental goodness of life. Patience has a quality of mindfulness too—of being awake and open, aware of what is. Not pushing away, not trying to hold on, but open, waiting, awake and aware.
Patience also includes surrender and willingness. When we surrender the illusional sense of being separate from the Source of all life, we are then able to trust life completely. When we trust life, we can wait to take the right action when it is revealed to us. Patience is not passive. Like faith, it is something that facilitates right action. Like meditation, patience is an active kind of non-doing. It's a way in which we are in a state of readiness, waiting, but all the while making ourselves available to Spirit as grace moves through us. Sylvia Boorstein, a contemporary meditation teacher, said, "Don't just do something, sit there!" referring to our ability to sit with full awareness instead of mindlessly being busy. Patience has that quality, that state of readiness and wakefulness.
Think About It: We live in an impatient age, wanting and trying to make everything and everyone around us move faster at a pace we dictate. But as I have learned (and instinctively knew), impatience is not good for us mentally or physically. It causes stress, which weakens the immune system, irritates the stomach, raises blood pressure, strains the heart and strains relationships…Hurrying increases the risk of errors and accidents, which can end up costing more time than the rush saved. Patience allows you to remain cool and rational—to think clearly—under stress, to take the foibles and annoying behaviors of others in stride and perhaps even find them amusing.
–Jane E. Brody on Practicing Patience, The New York Times
Be Inspired: And let us not grow weary in well doing for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart. —The Holy Bible
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