The Majesty of Patience
Patience is the path of grace. A mountain rises over millions of years, but its power is in the waiting. In its time a mountain creates wind, directs weather, experiences 
deadly conditions and extreme energy, yet the mountain is seemingly still. It serves to inspire and guide us. It is not hurrying or competing. And should we be drawn to climb the mountain; haste would not be in our favor.
Tibetan Buddhist masters say that speeding through life is a fundamental disregard for our existence. Speed is anxiety based and causes us to rush forward damning anything that gets in our way. And once something does get in our way, the collision happens too quickly for a sane response. We become incrementally more important to ourselves the more pressured we feel. “Get out of my way! I’m late for my meditation class.” We become very important to ourselves when we feel pressured. We yell at the dog or tell the kids to leave us alone or otherwise react in ways that are not helpful. We have this great responsibility, with very little time to process our actions. I have a job I have to get to; I am important dammit! This is not living with dignity. This is not only unkind to those hurt by our reactivity, but it is unkind to ourselves.
A kinder, and vastly more productive, approach would be to employ mindful awareness to relax into a flow state that optimizes our experience and honors our existence. We are able to stand up and hold ourselves with dignity and grace. I had a teacher that suggested I slow down enough to move quickly. This is pausing just enough to synchronize with our mindfulness and awareness. Then when we are interrupted, we can respond intelligently with consideration. We say considerate because we are considering a fuller situation before we react. When our mind is racing, we don’t have time for that we’re rushing down the street late for work and pushing people out of the way or cutting off cars on the road, without any regard for the basic human relationships that make us feel confident and strong. The more we push our life out of the way so we can force our agenda the more we are robbing ourselves from the fundamental sustenance of our life. That sustenance can only come from being grounded. It’s as if we’re pulling the nutrients up from the earth. But we can only do that if we’re synchronized with the earth. When we are synchronized, we are present, and the game slows down. We see that we have more options than the panicked reactions that come from speed would reveal. When we are grounded, we are able to consider more helpful approaches.
One thing that blocks the flow state for us is this feeling that we are pressured and have to make an immediate decision. We have to act immediately without pause, without thought, without consideration. When we’re running late, miss the train and we’re delayed another 8 minutes we stand on the platform looking up at the clock, tapping our feet. The speed and constriction that we become addicted to slams us into survival mode. Our options are reduced to fight flight or freeze. When something stops our momentum, we either lash out, run away, or freeze in a PTSD trance. The remedy is to boycott reaction, pause and breathe. Feel your feet on the ground. Come back. Then we can respond.
Patience is not holding us in white knuckled tension waiting for the storm to pass but actually slowing down and opening our heart. In this way we create a loving space between thoughts and reaction. We enact a gentle pause for consideration. When we are here and now, breathing, with feet on the ground, the space opens up, the game slows down and options beyond reaction are naturally revealed. Looking at patience from a practical point of view we can see it less as a pejorative or limiting action and more of a forgiving and opening. Rather than shutting ourselves down into a reaction, we are opening up to space. If we relax and create a gap before our next action, we are able to bring awareness into the situation. We are doing something healthy for ourselves and helpful to the circumstances.
Patience is a pause that opens to the light of awareness. Rather than reacting from our base mind circuitry by becoming conscious of breathing, we’re able to redirect the energy to invoke our higher cognitive processing ability, accessing our executive reasoning. We become considerate, or compassionate. We are able to look at the bigger picture and perhaps find a response different that our reaction. We are able to create a space for communication. Now I’m not saying we should become Gandhi. What I’m suggesting is that we pause long enough to be able to 
actually have a considered response. It might be offering some counterpoint, it might be walking away, or it might be simply waiting in space until the next right action becomes clear. Once we make an offering of our anxiety our fight flight freeze reactions are transformed. We’re using the same mechanism of reactive mind but because we’ve paused and synchronized, we’re able to use these impulses with executive reasoning. Fight turns into expressing our point of view, flight may be that we can walk away. Retreat is not surrender. Retreat is simply stepping back to regroup. And freeze might simply be resting here. This is not a PTSD trance state where we can’t move but a loving pause where we have the option to do nothing but remain present. Not to react, but just simply to wait. And that waiting is the essence of patience. If we learn to pause when we’re triggered, we might find that we’re more patient at stop signs, more patient in the subway and more patient with our life.
The fundamental work is recognizing, returning, and resting in our meditation so that we have built these tools in our life. In this way, awareness is the loving space that allows us to see the appropriate response. All we need to do is train in this. We don’t have to figure it out on the spot. It’s not on us. We don’t have to prove we’re right. We can just recognize the flashpoint and then remove the pressure. We can offer our anxiety, panic, and aggression. We can offer the assumed mental pressure of disempowerment and receive the natural patience of a mountain.
We can rest on the earth where we belong.