How Can You Become More Patient Using Meditation?

The baby screams and screams…

You’ve fed the baby, given the baby a drink and tried rocking it to sleep.

Yet it just screams and screams.

Your patience is wearing thin;

What is the baby trying to tell you?

Why can’t your partner deal with this?

Why didn’t someone warn you it would be this hard?

Why does this always happen to you?

How are you ever supposed to feel peace in this environment?

And so on and so forth…

Your mind rages out of control and maybe you totally run out of patience and shout at the baby.

So what does meditation do to help you become more patient?

Initially, nothing.

You will likely be even more wound up and frustrated at not being able to get peace or escape from the mind even during meditation.

But eventually you may come to realize that rather than try and manufacture any kind of outcome with meditation you are merely observing everything that is happening.

This includes watching the mind (not your mind, THE mind).

When this begins to spill over into “everyday life” you may start to recognize when the mind creates thoughts, how more thoughts spin out from that, emotions arise and a feeling of impatience is experienced.

You are not any of these things.

They are not happening to you.

They are occuring INSIDE the awareness which IS you.

The human instinctive response may ultimately be exactly the same if the buttons are pushed by the baby.

But there will be an observance from a place of truth and eventually a Grace-given knowing that you are not the thoughts or emotions and no action or feeling need be created.

It can take time - start with baby steps…

- Mike Cheney