Patience

When asked about patience, most people will say it is the ability to wait without getting flustered. Patients in hospitals, whether they are there for an operation or convalescence, know they need to give the healing process its time. After a procedure a doctor might say, “You will not be able to use your hand (run, exercise…) for six weeks,” and we accept his verdict with stoicism and patience, mentally projecting ourselves beyond the healing period.

Herbalists and Ayurveda medicine practitioners know that the treatment needs to continue even after the symptoms have disappeared. Often people assume that because the symptoms have ceased, they are cured, but this is often not the case; sometimes if a patient discontinues taking the prescribed herbal or homeopathic remedies too soon, the symptoms will recur.

The ability to wait successfully depends on the person’s knowledge and their understanding that everything takes time. Just as one has to wait to the fall to pick the apples growing in an orchard, so does everything have its season. A baby cannot learn to run before it has leaned to walk; a girl cannot become pregnant before she goes through puberty.

Young children mostly do not understand the concept of “tomorrow” or when an adult says, “Wait until you are older to understand.” They live in the present and do not worry about the future. A four-year-old son of the author’s friend threw his handful of coins out the car window because he was told that the toy shop was closed, but would re-open the next day. For him, “tomorrow” simply did not exist.

Any process takes time. Change takes time. Growing up takes time. Patience is a useful quality to have when one is attempting to implement change. Have you noticed how some days everything seems difficult and nothing goes right, whereas on another day, the most difficult tasks are completed with ease? Sometimes it is best to wait until the energy of the day is conducive to sorting through the jobs that need to be done; because sometimes trying to get through the day feels like a struggle with no results to show for it. In olden days people used to consult an astrologer to find the most auspicious time for a ceremony, to set out on a trip or to initiate a business venture. Sometimes it is possible to “go with the flow” and let the energy current of the day carry you. Going “against the flow” can be very costly both in terms of energy and time expenditure. However, sometimes it is not possible to wait for the right time because a job or task needs to be completed on time. Other times going with the nature of the day allows a person to find connections to original and unusual energies which other people are perhaps not connecting to. The wisdom is to know when to go with the flow and when to go against the flow.

Here on planet Earth construction takes time. Introducing a new endeavor or business requires patience. However, destruction can happen in the blink of an eye. Destruction does not require patience, but to rebuild and start again does. Perhaps elsewhere there are planets where construction is fast but destruction is slow. But we are here on planet Earth where we are subject to her laws, her seasons and her timings.

Learning patience involves reading the energetic trends of the day or detecting the energy within a relationship as it evolves and changes with each encounter and exchange. For example, the Monday blues is a very real energy state: it is caused by millions of people having to go to a job they do not enjoy after having had a weekend spent with their family and friends, doing what they love to do (whatever that is). It is also the day that is influenced by the moon (according to the Babylonians). The moon gives it its name—Monday is moon day. The moon has a strong pull on the magnetic field of the planet and on the human energy field as well. This is why there are more cases of hemorrhaging during a full moon and why more girls and women menstruate during that time of month.

One can be patient (or impatient) with another person who is slow to learn or with a child who “doesn’t know better”—this kind of patience is akin to tolerance or understanding. Some people seem to have a natural wealth of this kind of patience. These are the best teachers and young lives benefit from their ability to go over an exercise or tasking again and again until all the pupils get it and understand what is expected of them.

Patience is always associated with timing and waiting for the right time. But what if time is not linear? Can we connect to things “out of season”? Can we conjure up the essence of, say, an apple, before it has a chance to ripen and grow? Can we connect to knowledge without learning? Stories abound about people who are unexpectedly able to perform tasks and demonstrate skills they were not aware they had, and perform them well. A friend of the author was training to be a pilot, when unexpectedly he astonished both himself and his instructor by performing acrobatic maneuvers in the air, flying upside down and landing flawlessly. He was not able to repeat this extraordinary performance until he was fully trained and had been qualified as a licensed pilot. His explanation is that he was open that day to the energies he encountered in the cockpit of the plane and had somehow connected to the trace and history of another pilot (or pilots) who had previously flown the plane and had left behind an energetic trace of their knowledge and skill.

The author had the experience of going into a new high-level secretarial job requiring her to use a dictation machine. The evening before the job was due to start I imagined using such a machine, though I had never seen one in my life prior to this. The next day I sat down at my desk, turned the machine on and knew exactly how to operate it without being shown how. I too felt I had connected to the energies of previous secretaries who had sat in the same chair before me.

In December 2001 in the British Medical Journal, Leonard Leibovici published an article in which he presented the results of a study he had conducted at the Rabin Medical Center in Petah Tiqva in Israel. A group of 3,393 adult patients diagnosed with blood infection between 1919 and 1996 were randomly divided into two groups: a control group and an intervention group. A remote, retroactive intercessory prayer was said for the well-being and full recovery of the intervention group, but not the control group. When consequently the medical records of these patients were checked, it came to light that the mortality rate in the intervention group had been lesser and that their stay in hospital was four times shorter than among the members of the control group.

These results have brought about a further discussion and further tests, conducted by eminent representatives of the medical and scientific worlds, in which they have been further investigating the power and validity of prayer on the one hand and the relativity of our linear concept of time on the other.

Whatever the explanation, there are stories of people connecting to energies from the past and from the future; there are also stories of people “following their instinct” and, for example, performing life-saving surgeries in wartime without any anatomy training or previous experience.

The history of everything that has ever happened in the world is contained within the “astral light” and sometimes the veil between the energy worlds and the material worlds becomes thin and a person can connect to events that had happened in the past, especially if they were emotionally charged, like the history of a battlefield or a murder. This would explain why some houses appear to be haunted and why sometimes people can see and/or hear ghosts.

One can also connect to the energy of a place from a distance. This is one of the reasons why meditation is such a powerful tool. If one can imagine a special place, or picture a place where one had been and found beautiful and healing, that energy is still there and can be connected to through meditation (and with practice). All energies that had ever been created still exist and can be connected to and brought into one’s energy field.

The author spent six months isolated in a foreign country when she contracted TB at the age of seven. Missing my family and my home, I decided that if I just quietly lay on my bed, closed my eyes and pretended I was home, maybe it could feel like home. After all, lying on a bed is still lying on a bed, wherever it takes place. I did so and was quite amazed at the result: I felt calmer and much more settled. Since then I have believed in the power of the imagination to reach out and connect to energies, feelings and sensations at distance.

One way to understand a quality is to look at what it is not, or to look at its opposite. Impatience (the opposite of patience) is the inability to tolerate idleness or excessive waiting times. Impatience creates an energetic space within which patience cannot abide. Patience is everything impatience is not. Patience has a sense of serenity about it; impatience is connected to a nervy, disjointed energy. It is the kind of energy that is anti-thesis to the energy needed for meditation, relaxation and healing.
Is impatience always bad? Or should we be impatient with those who are, say, cruel to an animal?

When urgency is called for, like in an emergency, patience is still the best companion to have at one’s side. When training for any emergency situation, like CPR, it is still necessary to be cool, collected and assess the situation first.When there was a gas leak in the author’s kitchen, the man who arrived at the house, sent by the gas board, was slow, deliberate and very precise with his actions and movements. He did not spend time listening to our evaluation of the situation but went straight to the stove to assess where the leak was coming from for himself. Military special units are trained that urgent speed is slow; very slow and deliberate.

How do the unseen worlds feel about us? Are they sometimes impatient with us because we don’t get the point or we do things that are harmful or detrimental to our chosen purpose or to the environment? What about the human race? How does the planet feel? Is she impatient with us and our heaps of garbage? How much longer will she suffer our cruelty, pollution, greed?

When is a good time to worship? Is it a Sunday, when the Christians go to church, a Saturday when the Jews go to the synagogue or a Friday when the Muslims go to the mosque? Or perhaps there is no bad timing for prayer and worship or meditation or contemplation; perhaps they can indeed happen any day of the week and any time of day.

The laws of nature affect the material worlds differently than the material worlds. For example, in the material worlds hot air rises, whereas in the energy worlds hot energy sinks to the ground. There are two aspects to timing and two ways one can connect to the energy of patience. In the material worlds, time is linear, or at least this is how we perceive it. In the energy worlds time does not exist. Energetically there is a me and a you of all ages and all possibilities into the future.

The moment a person makes a choice and acts upon it, they bring something from the energy worlds into the material arena. An idea or an inspiration is an energy coming into one’s energy field. Acting on it is bringing that energy into one’s aura and transforming it into energy that with patience can become an inspiration to others. Being patient with oneself is giving oneself time to discover what is the unique gifting one can offer into the world. So in the material worlds one needs patience to see results from one’s endeavors. But in the energy worlds results can occur instantaneously, surprising us with immediate transformation or change.

Patience in the material worlds is the ability to wait for the right time or the right season to complete a task or for a process to come to fruition.

Patience in the energy worlds is the ability to connect to the relevant energy, regardless of timing, to complete a task or bring a process to fruition.