Unnecessary Skill
From an early age we experience people losing their patience, usually with us, but it can be with anyone or anything. Using this as an example of how we are supposed to act, we grow up thinking losing our patience is normal. And yet, as adults, we are told that patience is a virtue. Where was all that virtue while we were growing up? Asking us to master the skill of patience is nothing more than busy work for the mind; a mind that created the need for patience in the first place. We don’t need patience; we need to remember the truth about ourselves.
I’ve said before that we are born a ball of light, full of love emanating from our heart center. But that light is quickly hidden from us, covered over as the ways of the mind are forced on us. Disconnected from love, the ways of the mind are based on a single untruth that says we are not good enough. We believe this untruth without question and spend our lives trying to overcome it.
The mind isn’t attached to anything real and true because its foundation is a lie. Believing in the mind’s ideas of us (because we don’t know we don’t have to) leaves us on shaky ground because the thoughts and emotions that arise from such a mind are unstable and fleeting. Lack and fear are the outcomes of this unpredictable mind made life. Anything that validates our belief that we are not being good enough can make us lose our patience.
All Control is an Illusion
Our unstable mindset does not provide us with any sense of safety and security. In fact, quite the opposite is true. In order to feel as though we have some control over our life, we manufacture conditions, or expectations, in our mind about the way things are supposed to be. For instance, we might have an expectation in our mind about how much time it takes to get ready to go to dinner with friends. If our partner doesn’t meet that expectation we lose your patience and blame our partner for it. But, what’s really happening is we are angry that the situation doesn’t match our mind created story about it. And that mind created story is only meant to feel in control of our mind, which is not possible. The mind, by design, is out of control.
Here is another example of a typical expectation many of us have. Our mind tells us that in order to be good enough we have to learn something on the first attempt. So, when we are taught a new software program at work and we don’t get it the first time around, we get frustrated and lose our patience. We might blame the instructor for being inept or the software program for being poorly designed. In that moment where we lose our patience, we will blame anything. What’s really happening, though, is that our lie is being validated. In that moment, we are what our mind tells us .¨ not good enough – and we are reacting to that. Nothing else caused this reaction no matter how much our mind wants us to believe otherwise.
All expectations are unreasonable when they are tied to lack and fear because this is nothing more than a form of control we think we need in order to feel safe and secure. As long as everyone and everything, including us, meet those expectations, we feel pretty good about our life which makes us feel in control. But, when anyone or anything doesn’t meet the expectation, we react, sometimes violently, tricked by the mind into believing the expectation is just and valid. It never is. Again, we are merely protecting ourselves from validating what our mind tells us .¨ that we are not good enough. We have to stop thinking the only way the world can work is the way we believe it has to in our mind. This is limited thinking that does not match reality. The world runs without us.
Control and expectations are illusions created by the mind to trick us into thinking we are good enough, but deep down we never really feel that way. That’s because, no matter what we do, we still believe we aren’t good enough. So, the mind tells us there is something wrong with us and then creates the antidote to make us feel better about ourselves, but the antidote doesn’t work. Safety, security and knowing we are good enough is never going to come from a mind that lies to us. It comes only from knowing the truth about who we are and who we are not.
The Truth
We have been told that people lose their patience for a number of reasons. We are told it is caused by fatigue, feeling unwell, managing too much because of all we think we have to do and more. Because of these reasons we are easily irritated and the result is we lose our patience. It sounds like a good story, and many of believe this version, but it is not the truth. The irritation doesn’t come from anywhere outside of us. The irritation comes from within. We have to wake up and realize that the mind made life is one of constant misperception and distorted points of view. It is time for us to see the truth about who we are and how life really operates.
It is not possible for us to have control over other people, events or time lines in situations like job offers or house loans. There is no reason for anything to go according to any other time line other than the time is something is actually taking. People don’t have to act the way you believe they should act, they act the way they do and there is nothing wrong with that. Your beliefs about others are not truths. They are only meant to uphold your illusion of safety, security and control. The mind doesn’t know how long things will take or how someone is supposed to act. Our mind convinces us otherwise, but that is another lie. It knows nothing.
The truth is there is nothing wrong with us and we don’t need to control anything. We are good enough and life is going to happen as it is supposed to happen. People are going to behave and we are going to live just as we are supposed to .¨ repeating something over and over, taking too long, making mistakes and waiting. Instead of embracing time and experience, the mind hates it. This goes against what is natural and real. Shining light on the origin and methods of the mind allows us to see it for what it is and no longer follow it.
Practicing patience is equivalent to taking most medications on the market today .¨ they mask symptoms rather than cure them and they have lots of undesirable side effects. Patience isn’t the answer, truth is. If we are going to practice any skills, let’s practice no longer believing we aren’t good enough. When we stop believing we aren’t good enough, being good enough is the only option for us .¨ that option has always been there .¨ it’s who we truly are. And we can practice remembering the truth about where our loss of patience really comes from and stop blaming others and situations for it. Let’s also practice allowing and accepting life as it unfolds, marveling in the time and the experience of it rather than fighting it. This is the truth about us and the truth about life. What do we do now? We live.
