A Shaman’s Guide To Patience
Impatience has a lot to teach us. When we are denied the things we want we can either be patient or impatient. Patience is a mental discipline to be sure and it belies an emotional maturity “for good things come to those who wait” (as the old adage goes) but for those on the shamanic path, the good things are already there.
Learning the lesson of patience is extremely tough. And the truly wonderful gift of the lesson of patience is that once you get it, you cease to be impatient. Like all life lessons, once the lesson is learned it ceases to be an issue. So how can we get to that point? What can the shaman teach us about patience and impatience? And what exercises can we do to foster lessons of patience so that it can be cultivated rather than learned through tough life lessons? But before we can learn the lesson of patience, we must explore impatience and the negative effects it can have on our psyche. And we’ll get a little esoteric and dive into the nature of reality and how to change our perceptions to deal with this nasty beast impatience.
What is Impatience?
Impatience is, at the heart of the matter, a nest of confusing and stormy feelings. It’s a collection of white-hot emotions that’s mixed with anxiety, frustration, stress and fear. Impatience is made of a lot of negative stuff. It pulls you from the present moment. It robs you of the future gifts. It unnaturally forces expectations on events, situations, people and things. If you’re impatient to get somewhere, what will you do when you get there? Why are you in such a hurry? What’s going on with you where this huge mass of emotions called “impatience” has its hold on you anyway? Why can’t you just be where you are? Impatience is a huge clue that you are running from something.
A typical scenario is that you dislike your spouse/job/living situation etc. and you want to be out of it. Those who hate their jobs fill their days looking at the clock, waiting to be off, enduring every uncomfortable moment til they can be out of work and on their own time. Then they feel they can enjoy life. But they are only living a half life. Spending eight hours a day in enforced misery is not healthy for the psyche nor for the overall health of a person. At the end of a miserable work day, they might find themselves impatient for a drink at the local bar or to get home to plop themselves in front of the TV for escape. Because impatience is all about escape and looking for the next fix or distraction rather than just sitting with what’s going on. And it creates a cycle of impatience where you’ll find yourself constantly in search of whatever can keep the present moment from creeping in.
Or maybe it’s something you want. A physical item. A trinket or a distraction to fill your time. A new TV or a videogame to while away the hours while you avoid what’s staring you in the face. A new car to get you to places faster and in better style. But toys get old and cars don’t last and all of those things you are impatient for will fail to satisfy you for very long. You’ll be back in the same mindset needing newer TVs and newer videogames and newer cars for you to be impatient over all the while missing out on the miracle of the present moment.
Everything you want and need is right there at your fingertips. There’s a lot to be enjoyed in the present moment but it takes a lot of work to get there so that’s why impatience is often the easy way out of whatever thing we’re feeling. Some of us, unable to sit with discomfort, will simply find something to worry about to keep those uncomfortable feelings from surfacing. Not being able to sit in the present moment is indicative of unhealed traumas and too much ego. There’s a reason why we’re looking forward to the next moment with such fervency and it’s because we just can’t stand the place we are.
Impatience is escape from the present moment by placing expectations on future events that have not come to pass. If your present moment is devoid of mindfulness and meaning, your mind will create things to feel rather than just detach. One creates fantasies in their head both good and bad and it can be said that an impatient person lives in a fantasy world. This opens one up to disappointment and a whole other range of negative emotions. And while the feeling of disappointment is nothing more than reality adjusting itself, disappointments can be hard to take. And the shaman suggests perhaps not having any expectations to begin with. With no expectations there can be no disappointments becuase impatience is pregnant with a litter of expectations. Or you can learn detachment and presence. With those two things in your arsenal impatience doesn’t stand a chance.
In a restaurant, if you’re impatient for your food to arrive you can sit their stamping your feet with your stomach growling uncomfortably silently urging the chef to cook faster and the server to be more swift. Or you can simply accept things for the way they are in the present moment. Your food is taking longer for a variety of reasons but chances are your food will arrive. Working yourself up into a froth of impatience will not make it arrive any sooner. Making a complaint might just take more time from the server. What’s wrong with just sitting there and letting life play out as it’s supposed to play out?
Fear plays into impatience in that it brings up a terrifying spectre. That our patience may be for naught. That we may not get what we want in the first place so being patient for something that may not come to pass seems just as ludicrous as being impatient for something that you know without a doubt will come to pass. Being impatient for the sunrise is emblematic of this ludicrous impatience. Relax and enjoy the darkness for you know the day will surely come. The true test of the lesson of patience is that you just don’t know if you will get what you want so doesn’t it make sense to cultivate patience rather than impatience?
In the restaurant, your food will arrive exactly at the time it’s supposed to and not a second before so cultivating patience around that event is a great exercise.
Detach and Observe
I bet there’s a lot going on in the restaurant to take your mind off of the situation with your food. You could notice and observe what other people are doing or admire the architecture or decoration of the particular restaurant. You could engage your co-diner in an intellectual conversation or you could just detach and clear your mind of all thoughts like you would in meditation and enjoy the clink of glasses and cutlery all around you and just let the situation be.
From the shaman’s point of view, everything happens exactly as it should for the shaman has been shown proof of this time and again. A shaman is rarely impatient as he knows there is the rhythm to life. Nor is he arrogant enough to believe himself to be at the center of the universe. And that’s where a lot of impatience comes from. That we erroneously assume that we deserve to have what we want when we want it.
But the shaman knows that it’s up to the Great Spirit and The Universe to decide when you get what you think you so desperately want. There are other forces and people at work. And many of us, having placed such high expectations on the things we think we want, end up disatisfied when we actually do get them. This leads us to a constant state of “now what?”
Impatience robs you of so much. It’s a thief of time and peace of mind. Yes, it’s natural to feel excited about upcoming events but the shaman understands that those events may not come to pass and it’s much better to be in the present and taking each moment and each second as it comes. Impatience is ego run rampant. Whereas patience is calm acceptance. Things will play out exactly as they need to on your life path so if you trust life and do the best that you can everything will come to you exactly when you need it and not a second sooner.
As we are all one and all exist in a system getting in the habit of making requests of the Universe rather than demanding goes a long way. Rather than being little brats stomping our feet over not getting our way, what if we truly understood that we always get our way. That what we put out in the Universe comes back to us. That we are evolving our souls through mundane events. That we are just playing our parts here on planet Earth so doesn’t it make sense to at least try to enjoy every moment. Even the uncomfortable ones can teach us something. But the ultimate truth is that your higher self is the one helping you and guiding you based on your thoughts, deeds and actions. And the fact of the matter is….
You Have Very Little Say In The Outcomes Of Events
You ego wants you to believe that you’re in control, but your ego gives you false things to want and need. Serving the ego will keep you in a constant state of worry, panic and anxiety because the ego keeps you wrapped in this blinded state to your true power. And even though you have very little say in the outcomes of events, your ultimate power is how you react and mold to those outcomes. You’ll find that in alignment with your higher self, you’re more powerful than you ever thought. Patience is power.
You may not get that job. Your application for that apartment may not be approved. Your lover may not come back to you. Your broken leg may not heal all that quickly. But you feel you need answers and resolutions in order to progress to the next phase of your life. In each of these scenarios impatience puts your life on hold. When other decisions hinge on other decisions it’s way more difficult to be in the present moment and practice patience. But when you practice patience these decisions become part of a natural system of order. For the shaman knows that everything has already been decided. There’s nothing you can do to affect the outcome once you’ve instigated the event or scenario. And in fact your constant worrying and impatience might even negatively affect the outcome because the Universe gives you exactly what you focus upon so placing strongly positive or strongly negative feelings upon a future event can cause it to veer too hard to the left or the right. So in one respect patience is about being neutral. Patience is about letting go of what you want to happen and embracing whatever will happen from a neutral place.
We might have unrealistic expectations on everything these days. Getting a new job will not solve all your problems though in a jobless state you might very well come to believe that might be true. Getting someone back that you’ve loved and lost is rather lazy and comfy when finding a new love would be more exciting and healthier. Not getting what we want sometimes brings unexpected gifts and twists in the road. If we keep letting our ego steer the ship we will keep getting to places our ego wants us to go. Letting your higher self and the universe dictate the gifts that come takes faith and emotional clearing because if we blame people for the jobs we don’t get and if we resent our lovers for not coming back, we’ll just get more of the same. More lost jobs and ruined relationships. Impatience can teach us where we are stuck and give us an idea about why we want to put ourselves through so much garbage.
Just Wait For It
If you trust life then the Universe will give you exactly what you need but you must be aligned with your higher self and in a good state of being. You can’t have a splintered psyche and you must have done a fair amount of emotional clearing. Getting to this place is both easy and not easy because our modern society has placed a lot of negative programming in your head. Modern media, commericals and consumerism are counting on you being in a constant state of want and need and worry. It’s how they make money.
Television is not evil but movies and entertainment do not exist just to entertain you. They offer you promises that real life just can’t deliver. They offer cleaner houses, happier kids and whiter teeth. Slimmer figures and quicker meals. Everything so quick and on the instant that you’re pretty much taught impatience from a young age. Impatient people buy more things so there are a lot of major corporations feeding your impatience and hoping that you will want and need everything in the world and that you will want and need it NOW! We live in a world where impatience is the natural default and that can make be patient in an impatient world even more taxing. Because impatient people want things from you and they want them now.
The Task-Based Approach To Cultivating Patience
You have a life to live and it ultimately comes down to tasks that need to be performed. Do this. Do that. And try to have fun while doing it. If something is not fun then either try to detach from it or find some way to make it fun. The shaman would say perform the task and then get on with life and then pick it back up when appropriate. Fill out the job application and forget about it while you apply for another job. Apply for the apartment and put it out of your mind or look for a backup. Grieve over the loss of your lover and pray they never come back. And then return to the present moment each time and force thoughts of those things away from your mind. Do not think about the job until you get the call that you landed it. Resist the urge to imagine yourself living in that apartment until you’re actually living there. Forget about your former love until they’re calling you begging for forgiveness over their rash mistakes. The present moment free from worry and stress is a perfect place to be. Once you’ve made an action or intended something, learning to wait for that reaction with patience is a great strength to have.
An illustrative exercise you can do is to place a sheet of paper on a chair that you sit on frequently. When you are not sitting in the chair leave the paper there. The paper can be easily moved when you want to sit down so it makes no sense to worry about the piece of paper on the chair because you can easily move it when it is time to sit down again. Think about this in all aspects of your life. Place a piece of “paper” on each thing you are doing and don’t worry about the paper until it’s time to take action on that thing. If you can’t do anything about something, it can drive you crazy worrying about it or being impatient for the outcome. Especially when the outcome has already been decided.
In a more esoteric view when things are not in front of you in your physical reality, they cease to exist. As it is, only you are experiencing your current reality. Things that are out of sight are truly out of mind. Only when you observe something does it ever actually exist. So worrying about things that aren’t in front of you causes unneeded anxiety. It fosters impatience because you are trying to bring things into your reality that do not exist in it yet.
For instance, you walk a friend to the train and watch him board. He technically does not exist to you until you see him again. The only thing that exists in your reality is what is actually in your reality and everything else can be considered a figment of your imagination. Now when you meet up with your friend again, time will have passed but you will together co-create a reality for you to participate in. Worrying about him or wondering what he’s doing when he’s not around is trying to pull things into reality that do not exist. He will not exist until you see him again.
Apply this principle to everything in your life and watch what happens. You will truly start to experience reality in a much different way. Now this does not mean people cease to have their own lives or experiences, but focusing on your own reality and your own present moment is what it is about. It’s about being in your own skin at that particular moment of time and it makes being patient easier in that framework.
Cultivating Patience
Take every little opportunity you can to cultivate patience. Observing it in others when you activate the mirror can show you the impatience in yourself. I’ve found that standing in line is a great way to notice the impatience in others. If you are standing in a long line, detach and look around at how miserable people are making themselves. They are not even really standing in line as their minds are elsewhere. They are worried about work or dinner or making the train on time. Seeing impatience in others is a great way to cultivate patience in yourself. You can see it in their body language as they shift their weight from one foot to another or obsessively look at their watch. Lines are a great way to practice and cultivate patience so that when true patience is needed you will have had some experience.
One thing to keep in mind is that you can only do what you can do. Everything has been solved. There is nothing to worry about. But there is a wildcard in all of this and that is the actions of other people that you cannot control. As we exist in our own reality that we share and cocreate with other people, their version of reality may not be a vibrational match to the reality that you want to create. While you may want the job, the other people who work there may not be a vibrational match to you so in not getting the job the Universe is doing you a favor.
That apartment you wanted may not be exactly suited for your future needs so you will not move into that apartment even though you desperately wanted to live there. Your lover may come back and cause future problems so trust that the relationship ended for a reason. This is why aligning with your higher self and getting in touch with who you really are is so important. If you are being fake with people, you get fake things. But if you present to the world your true and genuine self you get more true and genuine things at exactly the moment your true and genuine self needs them.
Being Patient
The true test of patience is when you simply must wait for something to happen. In Buddhist mediation sitting on the floor for a period of time and thinking about nothing is all that is about. Mediation teaches patience. Take every opportunity to practice patience. Every time you have to wait for something use it as an excercise to cultivate patience. The more you do it for the little things, the more natural it will feel for the bigger things. And on the shamanic path, you always have what you need for your life path. You already live in a state of abundance when you are aligned with your higher self and acting from the genuine place of your true self.
And if you ever find yourself being impatient know that it’s your ego creeping in as the culprit. The ego creates needs in yourself for you to fill. It creates desires so that the ego will have something to do and this is especially important to state for those who are reducing their egos. The ego will fight to the death if it feels it’s being disregarded so many times impatience is a signal your ego wants attention just like a bratty little baby. Just tell it to sit down so you can enoy the moment for what it is. Down, ego, down.
Much love from your friendly neighborhood shaman,
Patrick John Coleman
ALL THINGS GO: How I Became A Shaman
In April of 2013, Author Eric Durchholz had a near-death experience followed by a soul transfer. As a result, he died and was replaced by a new consciousness named Patrick John Coleman. A new soul in a full-grown body… much to the confusion of his friends and family. As the new age concept of a walk-in soul is relatively unknown to the mainstream, a growing army of walkins are coming to this planet in a “Divine Invasion” to set this polluted and hateful world back on a course towards peace. As Coleman struggled to find out where he came from and what happened to Eric, he turned to the great psychic researchers Edgar Cayce, Jane Roberts and Esther Hicks for answers. In doing so he found he had uncanny connections to them while also uncovering a plot by his family to keep him silent. The book also includes several hours of specially produced video footage including reenactments of key events linked via QR Codes so keep your smartphone handy and get ready for a mindbending, soul-expanding thrill ride. To Purchase, click here
