Life is putting me through a certificate in Patience Studies right now. This is a 6 month intensive curriculum that involves exploring and experiencing the dynamics and energetics of the phenomenon of patience.
Much like a wreckless (shouldn't it be "wreck-full" not "-less" by the way?) driver is ordered to driving school, I have more or less been ordered to complete this certificate in Patience Studies. At the end of the 6 months, I will receive my certificate and will have mastered the following:
- the ability to sit still for 5 minutes without thinking of anything I should
do- the ability to start and finish a project, especially one I am not keen on doing
- the capacity to listen to another intently while maintaining an inflow and outflow of unconditional love and acceptance
- and whilst engaging in the above to be able to maintain vital eye contact and not be the first to break the eye contact
- the ability to meditate in my heart energy for at least one hour without straying into other thises and thatses of life on earth
- the ability to forego reactivity as a direct response to feeling threatened or hurt by anyone, and instead to find my calm center in my heart energy and allow the response to flow from the love and wisdom within me. Response, not reaction, in love.
- lastly and not leastly, I am learning in these classes to have patience with myself, to forgive myself for what I sometimes perceive as my failures and shortcomings and not let my immediate reaction or longterm reaction to be one of closing off to potential future good simply because "it didn't work in the past, and I sure as hades don't want to go through that muck ever again." That's the one where I lose patience with myself and my life and like a harsh and restrictive parent I limit my future options. A big one for me is "I'm never going to have kids because I wanted them for the longest time and that desire just caused me great pain, so I don't even want to think about children or ever having children."
Ah, patience classes. My teachers are quite the experts too. I am currently going through a unit on learning patience from water. I like water, I like watching water in streams and waterfalls, I love to see how it runs across stones and branches, how the fish meander in it, how the sun plays off it. Sometimes it moves so swiftly it takes my breath away. Right now, the water has stopped. It is giving me a lesson in patience. Two days ago, it fell from the sky in big drops that froze as they hit the pavement and trees and anything on the ground they fell on. Ice is the stillness of water. We know it must still be moving, but barely, it moves so slowly. Like a monk meditating. Sometimes you wonder if he still has vital signs and you are tempted to go feel for a pulse or listen for a heartbeat. Everything slows down. The water slowed down, and so did I. I walked to work the first morning after the ice began falling. It was a 5 mile walk. It took two hours. I had to step carefully, sometimes slowly, I had to slow down. It was a beautiful two-hour class in the out-of-doors. I thoroughly enjoyed my walk though many people I mentioned it to thought it sounded horrible. I was warm the whole time, even smiling and laughing at times, like when I skated across that icy sloped footbridge like a giddy kid, and, when I finally arrived at work, I felt great, like my blood was flowing and my muscles were super-happy. Sometimes the way of patience creates amazingly feel-good side-effects.
Slowing down also involves removal of clutter. Removal of clutter from the four bodies: mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual. A great way to remove the unnecessary clutter from these places is to focus on the most important thing in each and let everything else naturally fall away. Sometimes when we go into focusing on all the cluttery stuff we just get caught up and distracted in it and it ends up taking us so much longer to get through it all. Or, maybe it's not a matter so much of it being the longer route, but moreso the "unpleasant" route. I've come to find we can learn our lessons one of two ways basically, on a path of suffering or on a path of joy. I used to go through the path of suffering, not even thinking I had another choice! I can say that since choosing to learn via the path of joy, life's become a lot more exciting and free. That's a blog for another day though. Let's get back to "clutter" for now. Let's look at some examples of clutter in the four bodies of a person and some simple ways of beginning to look into your four bodies to see what's there (picture me writing the following on the chalkboard... we're in Patience Class remember!):
Mental Clutter: this has to do with thoughts. Our thoughts. Every thought we've ever had, have, or will have, actually. Try not to get overwhelmed. It will be okay. Picture every one of your thoughts as a "thing" that you now have in your immediate surroundings, your home for instance. In fact, looking at your home, your vehicle, your office, is a good way to reflect on your own personal collection of thoughts that you've accumulated over the years. What's the state of those surroundings? Excessively tidy? You need Hoarders Anonymous? Not too messy, comfy, lived-in, maybe with some family photos or mementos from your travels? Chances are, when you investigate your thoughts, your mental body, you are going to find you've kept it much the same as your surroundings. I know someone whose wife does all the decorating, if he so much as moves one of her precious faux flower arrangements to put his feet up on the coffee table, it's over. He might as well have asked for a divorce. So, he just doesn't touch anything or move anything. He's like a mouse in his own house. And it's been that way for over 30 years. So, you know what, this means that he allows his wife to control his thoughts, his mental body is basically owned by her with his full permission. Granted, he might feel he doesn't have a choice, or maybe this feels okay to him since this is how it always was with his mother growing up. He's never known anything different perhaps. Isn't it sad to think of a man tip-toeing like a mouse around in his own head, he doesn't even feel like he has any of his own thoughts, but they are still his, he's just chosen to let someone else have the run of his house.
Emotional clutter: emotions. To me, these are perhaps the most elusive elements of my being human. I had the hots for Spock on Star Trek, and later for Data on Star Trek The Next Generation. That is pretty indicative of my comfort level with emotions. I've spent a third of my life not paying attention to emotions, another third stuffing them down, sweeping them under rugs, and trying to pretend like they don't exist, and now I'm spending the current third of my life letting the emotions out of their cages, and boy is that both a liberating and frightening experience. "I'm going to tell this person exactly how I feel about this situation..." in the past I would have edited some of my true feelings out of whatever I told someone, or I would have simply told them only what I thought they could handle. Well, that implies that I somehow know what someone else can handle. I don't know what someone else can handle! But I do know what my own personal limits are, and when I keep things stuffed down or deny my true feelings, I start to feel like a teapot that's been left on the stove too long. Eventually I'm going to whistle, and if I ignore the whistle and leave it on the stove still, all the water will evaporate, the teapot may start to overheat, burn, and if I
still continue to ignore it, it might just catch fire and burn the whole house down! So, the trick to the whole emotional clutter scene has to do with releasing those emotions in a healthy and loving way, which means being honest with how I feel and communicating that to others as needed so that they can understand who I am and what my boundaries and needs are.
Physical clutter: Oh boy! We eat, we poo, oh, so many great things... we exercise, we touch, we feel physical sensations, we care for, we abuse... our physical bodies. Just because our physical body is somewhat the most visible of our bodies, thus vibrating at the lowest frequency more or less in the physics of the equation, doesn't mean it is the lowest of the low. We are able to do so many great things with our physical bodies. We can accomplish so much goodness. We can express so much love. Hugs, kisses, smiles, shiny eyes with love pouring out. Tears, laughter. It's really quite remarkable. Our physical body usually ends up reflecting a lot of what's going on in the other three bodies. So, giving those three bodies a bit more attention is often the best strategy for cleaning up your physical body. This is why you see a lot of folks who try to shape up or "clean up" their physical body by embarking on expensive, tedious, or otherwise difficult diets and exercise regimes only to find that they "can't lose those pounds", or reach whatever goal they have set. But then you have the rare one who starts being more honest in her emotions, who starts choosing to order her thoughts with love and confidence in herself, and then suddenly she starts shaping up physcially too. Her physical body starts reflecting this new level of emotional and mental health. All health starts with healthy thoughts and healthy emotions. And over all of it is your great wise spirit, who we'll touch on next!
Spritual clutter: Really there's no clutter at this level of your being, your spiritual body is you in your pure state of being divinely you. You might not always have a great connection with this part of you however, you may push it away because you refuse to believe you are good, you are loved, and you are divine. The mental and emotional clutter can also cloud or skew your view of your spirit. This infinitely wise, loving, and eternal you is always there however, guiding these other three parts of you with utmost love and care through your whole life. You can't shut her down, you can't stuff her away. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. It's like your shadow, you can't lose it-- only you're the shadow and she's the real you.
I'm going to wrap up this blog entry for today. But this series in Patience Classes is not over. I still have 6 months to go after all until I'm a Certified Patient Being. :-)) Part of me wants to hurry up and get it over with this week. There's no fast-tract in this certification process though. The slower I go, actually, the faster I get certified. Of course, it's not about getting anything done fast or slow, it's about being in patience, loving and honoring patience and all the blessings, which I call "side-effects", that it renders. The sunrise I watched this morning was billions of years in the making, after all, surely I can be patient enough to allow the needed time for the creative processes in my relative drop-in-the-bucket lifetime to develop in the most beautiful and perfect way as well.
Much love!
-Annie
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