Listen. Wait. Have faith

Almost every morning, with my cup of coffee, I write. I ask for guidance and put pen to paper. I write every word that comes to my mind without question. I’m often surprised by what comes through.  I’d like to share a recent morning’s writings that came as I pondered (more accurately, lamented) my lack of clarity in that moment.

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What of patience? Patience is about waiting and receiving. Patience asks that we pause before action and that we don’t act just for the sake of doing something.

But impatience is wired into our nervous systems. We have a culture of immediate gratification. Have a question? Google it. Want something? Amazon will deliver it the next day. Need or want a movie or a book? All can be found on a device that fits in your pocket.

These advances in technology are a form of abundance. They are signs that culture is able to manifest desires quickly. But is that a good thing?

Remember when we were kids and ordered from Scholastic Books? We received an order form at school and devoured it with anticipation. Then we took it home and showed it to our parents to find out what we were allowed to order. We brought the order form back to the teacher with our money, then the teacher mailed in the order, and then we waited and waited. The books always arrived after we forgot about them.

This is not our experience now. My daughter Lily expects Amazon to deliver in an hour, for goodness sake!

The world is designed to sell you things now.  Not later…..NOW.

Mention a product in a conversation and somehow an ad for that product begins to follow you around the internet. Check out a website and now you are on their mailing list (how does this work, anyway?). Shop for a pair of shoes, leave them in the cart without completing the purchase, and those shoes will stalk you on Facebook.

This is what we have created. There isn’t anything inherently bad about this unless you are blind to it. Unless you are so immersed that you are hypnotized by it. Then you are asleep and it is time to wake up.

Our collective culture does not encourage waking up or waiting. It does not encourage patience or silence. It encourages doing rather than being. And it takes some bravery and tenacity to break out of that conditioning.

It takes courage to wait and “do nothing.” It takes trust to know that not every action you think of is the next right action to take. Pausing and listening are the practices of the wise ones. Training ourselves not to react to every external event or stimuli that hits us is a lesson on the path of awakening.

Patience is the foundation of silence. Silence is the foundation of our very existence.

Silence is not empty. It’s not a void. Silence is pure potential. Silence is the seed where creativity sprouts. 

Enter faith. Faith is knowing that all of creation is in good order. Faith is the knowing that the creator of the sprout that is you will nurture and care for and support you in ways seen and unseen.

Those ways are not always understood. What feels like a bad experience can lead to wonderful life-evolving changes. What feels like all of our dreams coming true can lead to a nightmare.

However, the silence is where we need to go. Listen. Wait. Have faith. We only need to know the next step.  

The same idea applies now, even though things move much faster. Since there is no real wait, we must apply our awareness to slow things down, to pause and ask, “What do I desire? What do I want to create?”

So, listen. Close the gates of our awareness and go inward.