The Most Important Practice

21 years ago, I lived in the mountains of California for a year. My brother and I would plan mountain biking or hiking activities, and I would sometimes have to wait for him - he had a full-time traveling job and ran a local business. 

Being back here on a visit for the first time in over two decades, I enjoy the wait. I stand around or sit down. I look around. I breathe in this fresh mountain air. I thank my body, I thank my senses, I thank nature. I thank the opportunity it is to hang with my big bro.

Of all the practices I’ve learned and taught over the years, the most important and impactful is the practice of patience.

In patience, we can listen. 

Patience is a space. It’s a welcoming of the experience of being human. It’s an invitation for opportunity to show up.

Whether it’s challenging emotions, unmet expectations, or difficult circumstances, patience gives us room to relax - to relax our minds, our hearts, our nervous systems. In that space of bio-psycho-social-spiritual relaxation, we get to reside in a more full and fulfilling experience of right now.

There are no ordinary moments. 

The moments I’m waiting. The moments I’m seething. The moments I’m scared. Each moment is extraordinary.

Patience gives me the space and the listening to be with it all, and when I’m truly listening, there isn’t a part of my experience that I need to run from, avoid, or change.

I have a client who’s struggling with a potential big change in her life. Her suffering isn’t coming from the possible change, though - it’s coming from what it all means. Patience gives her space to be with her experience, to relax her mind’s stories and concerns and worries, and to settle into trusting herself and her innate capacity to thrive no matter what.

That’s the power of the practice of patience - trusting and cultivating our innate capacity to thrive in life, no matter the circumstances. 

With the practice of patience, waiting becomes an opportunity to fall in love with myself and the universe, frustration becomes an opportunity to compassionately give to another, and fear becomes an old friend just looking out.

(This is patience, by the way, without distraction - without our eyes in our phones or on our TVs.)

May we each be blessed with the power of patience, and the willingness to practice it unconditionally.

Much Love. ❤️