The first step toward patience is to become aware of when your internal dialog is running wild and dragging you with it.
If you are not aware of this when it is happening, which is probably most of the time, you are not in control. Your imagination takes you from one circumstance to another, and your different emotions just fire off inside of you as you react to each problem it visits.To free yourself from this endless and exhausting cycle, you must step back and notice the real you, the observer that just quietly watches all of this as it is happening. As you practice staying in the present, you will become more aware of the difference between the real you and the ego’s internal dialog, without trying to do so. It happens automatically for you. Staying in the present and in the process is the first part of the equation that creates the patience that leads to a change in perspective.
The second part is understanding and accepting that there is no such thing as reaching a point of perfection in anything. True perfection is both always evolving and at the same time always present within you, just like the flower. What you perceive as perfect is always relative to where you are in any area of your life. Consider a sailor trying to reach the horizon. It is unreachable.
If the sailor sees the horizon as the point he must reach to achieve happiness, he is destined to experience eternal frustration. He works all day at running the boat, navigating, and trimming the sails, and yet by nightfall he is no closer to the horizon than he was at dawn’s first light. The only reference he has to forward motion is the wake left behind by the boat. Unseen to him are the vast distances he is really traveling just by keeping the wind in the sails and applying the moment-by-moment effort of running the ship.
Look at the things you feel you need to create the perfect life, and carry them through in your mind. Perhaps it is more money. That’s the biggest falsehood ever perpetrated by humans. When does anyone ever have enough money? The wealthiest people in the world only want more and worry about losing what they have. There is absolutely no peace in this way of thinking. The feeling of “I’ll be happy when” will never bring you anything but discontentment.
There is an endless nature to life. There is always more to be experienced. Deep down we know this and are glad for it. The problem is that everyday life steals this from us. It pulls us away from this perspective with a constant bombardment of advertisements all promising to fulfill us, but none of it ever works: “Get this, do that and life will be perfect.” We need to let go of this futile idea that happiness is out there somewhere, and embrace the infinite growth available to us as a treasure, not something that we are impatient to overcome.
People involved in the arts understand this endless nature through direct experience. It is part of all the arts.(Daily Guru)
