Patience

Normally, I am a fairly patient person.  Like most people, I have things that trip my impatience triggers but I am not the sort of person who fidgets in lines or drives like the proverbial bat out of Hades simply to get to the next red light first.  Oftentimes, people describe me as very calm (usually because they can not see what is going on in my head) so it was something of a revelation to me to realize there is one place where I am VERY impatient: spiritual practice. 

 

I think that part of this impatience stems from my ongoing struggle with the spiritual exhaustion of depression and with some of the other things that rise to bite me from my past.  When I am plagued by the dark cloud, I want something that will fix it . . . now!!  In meditation this morning I realized that throughout the course of my life, I have been involved with a laundry list of spiritual practices and that I have had a tendency to move on when they did not fix my problem/s.

 

It is only in the last little while that I have come to the strong realization that no practice is going to be the panacea that makes my life one of fullness, acceptance and calm joy.  In order to live that full life that I long for, I have to stay with something long enough for it to take root, to sink those roots into the depths of my being and for something to grow from those roots.  It is not a matter of waving a wand or saying a mantra and *poof* I am all better.  It is a matter of being able to sit with myself, in the happy times and the painful times, and understand that all of this is life, that all of this has potential.

 

Some of those potentials I would like to drop from an aircraft at 35,000 feet but many of those glimpses of life are exciting and just might open up new paths to walk . . . if I am willing to wait long enough for the door to open instead of hammering on it and trying to knock it down.