Compassion and Confidence
How To Be More Patient with Yourself
CJ Liu interviews Guy Finley on his free talk, “7 Simple Practices to Realizing Your Highest Spiritual Possibilities”.
How To Be More Patient with Yourself
As we are feeling impatient with the state of the world and a sense of being restricted, how can we be patient with ourselves and others when feeling imprisoned by the world around us? When we are thinking about the past (whole year of COVID), we are not in the NOW and are blaming something else (e.g.- others, pandemic, etc) for our pain. Guy explains how we use these seven practices to bring about our highest spiritual possibilities.
During the interview, CJ reveals that she identifies with action and moving forward to make things happen and yet is getting guidance to be patient. Guy suggests that CJ’s drive to action is just a familiar way of being and an illusion. This “self,” which identifies with “doing,” is a reifying “CJ” as a separate self (vs. part of a whole).
The work is in recognizing this revelation about ourselves (e.g.- our impatience), the human imperfection of wanting things to be different, and the pain that results. Guy explains that patience is about “suffering yourself”. Instead of resisting, consoling, or otherwise explaining the pain away, we just sit with what is unfolding within us. Often we judge ourselves when we have failed to meet our expectations of being good, helpful, and being of service. However, when we try to run away from the pain versus awaken and be conscious of the pain of “not doing”, then we miss the hidden depths of our latent spiritual strength.
Guy uses the example of any “movement” and that often these movements “FOR” or “AGAINST” are just swings on the pendulum. Any time we act from this place from a place of powerlessness, the weakness of these approaches of “acting” is that we create an opposite and equal reaction from the flow of life. None of these movements ever create lasting change, but are just swings that go back and forth.
Instead of charging impatiently and reacting out of a sense of knowing what is right, it’s about resting into the part of us that is already there. The quiet awareness of our higher selves. In CJ’s case, it would be being conscious and aware of that “swing” towards action and “CJ’s typical self” and being awake to the pain it causes. When we are truly conscious then we can see the polarity of our response, the pain that it causes, and step into the truth of true higher Selves and act (or don’t act) from that place. This is the place of flow, not the imagined spiritual delusions about flow– when we act from flow we will have endless happiness, but flow of life and being truly part of it through allowing it to respond within and through us.
How To Be More Patient with Yourself: YouTube Video
More on Guy Finley
Guy Finley is an American self-help writer, philosopher, spiritual teacher, and former professional songwriter and musician.
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