From our earliest days, most of us have been told to have patience. This often became a point of great frustration since it implied that desired outcomes would usually be slow to manifest, and we would often just have to wait and wonder. Discover how patience can actually become a passageway to more of the life you desire.
[00:00:01] Hey, this is Josh Reeves. You're listening to the Mile Hi Church Podcast. On Friday, October 23rd, we're thrilled to welcome Lissa Rankin and Jeffrey Rediker. They're going to be speaking on the topic of their new book, Relationsick, and it's about how toxic relationships can affect our health. The next day, Saturday, October 24th, they're going to bring all their great healing wisdom that we've read about in their many books to a workshop from 9 a.m. to 12.
[00:00:28] So you can get tickets to one or to both these events on our website, milehighchurch.org. I want to start by sharing that I have been blessed with many wonderful spiritual teachers throughout my life, and it seems that they came along at just the perfect times. And there was one particular spiritual teacher that was a lifelong teacher, and I must admit that I've had a love-hate relationship with this teacher.
[00:00:58] And this teacher is patience. Anybody who's hung around me for any length of time knows that I have had to sit at the feet of that teacher many, many times to chill and balance my impatience. And, you know, I still have to work on it.
[00:01:17] The things that trigger me now are computer technology problems and stuff, TV streaming stuff, constant demand for passwords that I just can't master. So, you know, I consider myself an authority on this topic of patience as one who needed to learn it and continues to need to practice it.
[00:01:46] And I often would define patience as idling your motor when you'd rather peel out, you know. And haven't we all heard, have patience, have patience, have patience. You know, and then there's another axiom that we heard a whole lot, and I like how Mario Andretti put a tagline on this. It's that all things come to those who wait, except the cat. And so, you see, there's no patience beyond that, that's for sure.
[00:02:15] And I would sometimes declare, I'm not impatient, I just have a very precise idea of when things ought to happen. And so, I used to define it that way. But it wasn't until I got into the Science of Mind application and decided, I better use this wonderful stuff in this area of patience. It's only then that I made any progress at all.
[00:02:42] And I discovered then that there really is a power for us in patience. And that we'd better find it and have it if we want to unfold all the good that is available to us all. Now, I want to say right at the beginning that there are times when it's time to move in the moment. There are times to be assertive and to be proactive, to be sure.
[00:03:08] And I know of and have witnessed many, many examples of impatience and a need for immediate gratification, sabotaging lives and projects and situations. Now, what underlies this impatience we can all fall prey to? Well, it's this sense that there may be forces interfering with our good, or with our progress, or with our security.
[00:03:37] And when we have that sense, we shift into fear. And then into struggle and into limitation. And we begin resisting the way things are, forcing and manipulating people, and worrying that things aren't going to turn out the way we want or need them to turn out.
[00:03:56] And so this thing of impatience, it can absolutely undermine us, our peace, and best outcomes in our life. Now, I know we all have our moments of impatience. And many of them are kind of natural and benign. It's like having to wait in long, long lines or waiting in traffic. You know, we all have that feeling.
[00:04:25] I think we could grow through that a little bit, I suppose. Mark Nepo wrote, Often when we are inconvenienced, we're being asked to slow down. Slow down. Slow down. And I would add to that, and open up. Slow down and open up to the bigger picture. And to the greater good that's all around us. But it seems like those who can embrace and demonstrate patience, they acquire a peace.
[00:04:55] And a power that supports them, that opens them, that grows them. It's part of life. It's part of nature. If you plant a garden and plant some seeds, you don't come back in a week or so and start yanking on the sprouts and saying, Grow faster. Hurry up. Don't do that. At least most of us. Erica and I have become really enticed with the beauty of the desert.
[00:05:23] We weren't in touch with it before we moved to Arizona. But it's extraordinary. And the terrain in Arizona is the most diverse in many respects of anywhere in our country. It's a myriad of delights. And one of the key things that's like the redwoods of Arizona are the saguaro cactus. You know, the big long stem and the cactus. We were really stunned to find out that they often live for 200 or more years.
[00:05:53] That's a space of time. And they don't grow their first limb for 50 to 80 of those years. So the cactus has got to be pretty patient. Bamboo. You plant a little bamboo seedling, you're going to have to take really good care of it for at least four years. And then all of a sudden, in around that fifth year, it will burst up 15, 20 feet, expand its trunk size many times. And the thought was nothing was happening,
[00:06:19] but it was actually putting down that deeper root system to support this possibility. Seems like that's going on in nature and probably encourages us to slow down and open up. Emerson said, Adopt the pace of nature. Her secret is patience. Patience. Sensing the deeper or higher rhythms of life and maybe getting out of our restlessness
[00:06:48] and aligning with that. Now, the time a number of years ago, quite a long time ago, I ran across a quote, and that was the time that the switch of clarity was flipped for me about this thing called patience. And it was in reading a quote by a Zen master, Suzuki Roshi. And I think it's so important I'm having it put up on the screen for you. And he wrote, The problem with the word patience
[00:07:16] is that it implies that we are waiting for something good that will come. A more accurate word for this quality is constancy. A capacity to be with what is true moment after moment, to discover enlightenment one moment after another. I love that. Constancy. That shifted things for me. It's like the patience is being faithful to something,
[00:07:45] devoted to a process we're discerning, that we're a part of, but that is bigger than any one of us. Constancy. And I would encourage you to consider developing and applying this constancy in three specific areas that are foundational. And first, it's constancy in consciousness. That's really what we're all about in this work, is to consistently cultivate
[00:08:15] that panorama of our awareness we call consciousness, which is our current surface thoughts, our habituated, etched-in subconscious thought, our feeling tones, and then the frequency or the energy of our being. This is the whole pie of consciousness. And to discover more about our prevailing consciousness and to, in constancy, cultivate it, refine it, build it up,
[00:08:43] and anchor it in the infinite abundance and the all-givingness of the divine life, of the one life that we're all a part of. It's daily up-leveling our tendencies, our thinking, our reactions, our judgments, so that we're more in alignment with the nature of truth and love, so that we can then be an outlet
[00:09:11] for more and more of the good of God that we all deserve, all of us. The real work is constancy in consciousness. And the key is that sometimes we want results, but we haven't developed the consciousness that can naturally manifest them or be an expression of them that we work on. We work to bring our consciousness into alignment with our dreams. A great, great teacher and a partner in the forming
[00:09:41] of the Science of Mind, a partner to our founder, Dr. Ernest Holmes, was a great author and minister, Dr. Raymond Charles Barker, created an enormous work at Alice Tully Hall in New York City. And he was not only renowned as a minister and writer, but he was a tremendous practitioner. And people would flock to him and have him do prayer work, pay him to do prayer work. And he writes that at one point, a lady, he heard a commotion in the outer office. He was just in his office quietly doing his thing.
[00:10:11] And there was a commotion. This lady burst into his office and threw down a hundred dollar bill on his desk, a lot of money at that time, and said to him simply, get me a man. And she turned and she left. So Raymond writes that he did his faithful prayer treatment work for her and she was clear on what she wanted and she pretty quickly got it. And then he writes that almost exactly a year later, she stormed into his office and flung a new
[00:10:40] one hundred dollar bill on his desk. She said, now get rid of him because we only really demonstrate and manifest what's in alignment with our consciousness. It's a constancy there. It's accepting the trust walk that is this life of ours and sensing that there's an intelligence and the process going on. We can discover, but it's bigger than we know. And developing an awareness of that
[00:11:10] and an invitation in our consciousness that it can work for us and strengthen us and empower us. In my second year in the ministry up in Portland, Oregon, my first ministry up there, I got to a point, I think I'd been working hard, probably too hard and I'd become impatient. I didn't see the growth I wanted as fast as I wanted it and I was getting down on myself and beginning to doubt
[00:11:39] my abilities and just out of sorts. And so I made an appointment with a wonderful mentor, Dr. Ezra Ellis, who lived across the Columbia River in Camas, Washington. And I went up there to see him and he'd been a real influence in me many times. And I shared with, after he greeted me enthusiastically and after we chatted, I shared with him, I confided that I was kind of down and things weren't happening the way I wanted them to and I wasn't sure I had it
[00:12:08] to do this work well. And he just smiled at me and his eyes sparkled as they always did. And he said, you know what? I'd like to do something here. I'd like you to close your eyes if you will. Take some breaths and I'm going to recite one of my favorite passages from the Bible. And I don't want you just to hear it. I want you to feel it and own it. I said, as whatever you say, I'll do. So I took some deep breaths and I closed my eyes
[00:12:38] and maybe if you want to do that now, you can too. It's up to you. Then after a moment, I heard his beautiful voice say these things. Have you not known? Have you not heard that the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth, faints not, neither is weary. There is no limit to his understanding.
[00:13:07] He gives power to the faint and to them that have no mighty increases strength. They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. they shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary and they shall walk and not faint. And he let it fall silent
[00:13:37] and I felt the vibration of that. And after being with it a while, I opened my eyes and he said, well, you know who said that? And I said, well, I think it was Isaiah. And he was pleased I knew, although I had guessed. And he said, it's time to make that real for you. Make it real for you. He said, do this. He said, go within, number one.
[00:14:05] Go within more often. Turn away from appearances and the things that intimidate you. Put away your demands. Go within and then become still. Still the ego. Still the judgmental mind that only leads you into confusion and upset. And then commune, he said. He said, commune deeply. Let the truth, let this divine power saturate you.
[00:14:35] Immerse yourself in that light that you didn't create but that absolutely shines within you and through you. This is getting empowered within yourself. And he said, it's not greater personal power you need, Roger. He said, it's greater God power flowing through you. I went home and I wrote all that down and I did my best to do exactly
[00:15:04] what Ez told me to do. And this is a part of this constancy and consciousness. Wherever we are in our life and whatever we face, our work begins in consciousness. May end there as well. So, it's a consciousness constancy and there's another one, a second one that's an extension of it. And it's constancy in deepening. And this is the understanding
[00:15:34] of the long game of evolution. It's an acceptance of the long game of our own becoming, of our own personal evolving. And to own that and be at peace with it and move forward as we're called to. I've often had a concern that newcomers to our wonderful, incredible teaching get very excited
[00:16:03] but, you know, they're finding new ways of thinking and new ideas and new ways to feel about their lives. They begin to contemplate a whole radically different belief system that they may have had previously and a new relationship with the divine that isn't a distant being but a universal and inward essence. They have a sense that life can be better for them, that life can be good. The power isn't out there,
[00:16:33] it's in here, within. And they feel better about themselves and they have a sense of greater possibilities and this is all good. It's all good, it's just not the final thing. That's the surface of it but there's more deepening to happen because as we do that, as we come into that awareness, it also opens the door for us to work on more within ourselves. And sometimes that isn't comfortable and it also, the changes and the challenges
[00:17:03] of life don't instantly go away when you get into the teaching. No, they don't. And then what can happen is that the student sometimes gets discouraged and returns to their former way of thinking and living becoming disenchanted with the teaching or sometimes even with the teachers but they're at a crossroads. Maybe we've been there. It's the crossroad where we can go off frantically searching for a quick fix,
[00:17:32] a panacea or we can embrace the path of spiritual maturing and deepening. And here's the thing, any viable spiritual path eventually requires that of its student, whatever it is, the spiritual maturing and deepening. So if we know that, we take the great good that comes to us, the elevation, the inspiration and we also then stay constant, consistent and constant
[00:18:02] in our willingness to deepen. It's the long game of deepening. It's dealing with what comes up. It's regular meditation and prayer treatment. It's being rigorously honest with ourselves and maintaining a state of self-inquiry, responsibility for our consciousness and our life. That's the long game of continual deepening and it's a glorious thing. And oh yeah,
[00:18:31] I know that at times, at times it can be rigorous. At times it can be uncomfortable, painful, maybe exhausting. And at times it can be blissful, playful and peaceful. But whatever it is, it's staying consistent and constant. Constancy to our deepening. I was reminded that Nelson Mandela did this. He was in prison for 27 years. Consider it. 27 years in a cell
[00:19:01] that he could only walk a couple of steps in either direction. And you might say, well, he endured it, but he did something with it. He set apart to make this a deepening journey. One of the things he did was study Afrikaans, the language of his captors and he became fluent in it. He made and built relationships with many of the guards. Made that his personal quest. He, most years, planted a garden
[00:19:31] as a form of prayer, meditation and service. Moreover, he studied very, very deeply the ideas of reconciliation and peacemaking rather than revenge. Now you could say that he made it through intact, but he made it through evolved, transformed, deepened through the process. That's our life journey is whatever we think the prisons may be in our life
[00:20:00] to take it on and to become even more fully expressed in our life. That's the long game. The long game. And finally, in addition to consistency and consciousness and deepening, I invite us into an ongoing consistency and constancy of expectancy. This constancy of expectancy is a sense of heartfelt
[00:20:29] centeredness and expectancy as life happens. Because life happens. When there are changes, when there are unexpected outcomes and situations, when so much is going on we don't understand, it's the sense that miracles are still available, that breakthroughs for good are available, that life is becoming ever more for us at every time, and that greater good is always available.
[00:20:58] Simone Weil wrote, to wait patiently in expectation is the foundation of the spiritual life. Yeah, so true. As I close, I want to reprise a true happening. I've shared this many years ago, but I ran across it and I said, that's it. A constancy of expectancy and it happened in 1987 at the Indianapolis 500 car race.
[00:21:28] And it was just before the beginning of the race and there was a pre-game show going on and the commentators were conversing and one of them said, it's pretty much a set race, Mario Andretti has the hottest car, he's been running the best times all month. We expect to see him take the lead and hold it for 500 miles. But if something should happen, there are three others, Rick Mears, Danny Sullivan, and Roberto Guerrero. Anyone could win this race. So they chit-chatted among themselves talking about
[00:21:57] the month of trials and they had about two minutes left and one of them, one of the commentators said, oh and by the way, anybody notice that old Al Lunsor is here? Yeah, he's been here the last couple of weeks. He didn't even bring a car. In fact, he arrived on a motor scooter. It's kind of a Cinderella story. He went around talking to all his friends in the pits and then Roger Penske had his three cars and a driver hit the wall with one of them and got a concussion.
[00:22:27] He wasn't seriously hurt but it took out the whole side of the car and Penske didn't want to lose any of the lap money that he might gain on that car so he had it put back together over nights and weekends and then he was looking for a driver and who did he find? Old Al Lunsor. 47 years old. Isn't it amazing he's going to be in the race this year? Well, best of luck to you Al. At least you'll be in the race and that's great. Well, things started and true to form
[00:22:56] Andretti took the lead and he held it for 465 miles until his car broke down. And then Rick Mears came into the lead and right behind him was Roberto Guerrero and they had 20 miles left and Rick Mears car broke down and so Guerrero came into the lead and who was second? Well, Old Al Lunsor even though he had a really bad starting position at the back of the pack and he was still two minutes behind apparently too far back to catch up
[00:23:26] to Guerrero and the announcers they said well, you know what we notice that old Al Unser took his last pit stop already and Guerrero still has to take his pit stop well, don't worry about that he's been making those pit stops all day in 17 seconds yes, in 17 seconds they give him four new tires a tank of gas a glass of water and he's out of there so there's no way Unser can pick up two minutes no way so Guerrero takes that last pit stop and then he starts out
[00:23:56] and the car dies and they push him and the car dies and a third time they push and they push and here comes this yellow car streaming by it's old Al Unser finally to get Guerrero's car started and he comes right up but Unser just takes off and Guerrero can't catch him and Unser grabs that winning flag and takes his victory lap and comes back to the winner's circle and so they put a mic in his face and they say
[00:24:25] Al Unser you're only the second person in the history of the Indy 500 to win this race four times are you excited and he said you bet I'm excited and the interviewer said well are you surprised you're here in the winner's circle and Unser straightened up and he says no I'm not surprised I came here to win this race that's constancy of expectancy that brings out
[00:24:55] the highest and best can bring serendipity can bring all good out into our lives in many many ways in the Bible it says let us run with patience the race that is set before us so from my heart to yours let's heal with this thing called patience by understanding it as a constancy first in consciousness then in deepening and always in expectancy of greater and greater good and we'll be mastering
[00:25:24] that long game we'll be moving forward the way we want and in many unique and different ways each one of us shall be in the winner's circle practitioners if you'll stand let's all have a prayer together how we breathe deeply and remind ourselves there's only the one love intelligence
[00:25:55] the perfect spirit birthless deathless changeless spirit one life one power one intelligence ever unfolding itself by means of its infinite creation and by means of each one of us know with me I am of that which is and ever shall be I am pure spirit
[00:26:24] and I am moving that spirit into greater and greater expression through this wonderful experience called earth so I embrace it openly knowing that the truth of me is already established and I am simply removing the obstacles the self-limiting
[00:26:54] paradigm so that my light shines more brightly my heart exudes more passionately and my feet move more purposefully along my path I release the past and stand firmly rooted in the present with great constancy and I give thanks for the blessings of all life
[00:27:23] around me and within me for the guidance that flows to me and from the inner empowerment indeed I am waiting upon the Lord and taking up wings as eagles to soar I give thanks for life as it is and as it is becoming and with great joy and peace
[00:27:54] I know this is so I let this be so and thus so it is and amen thanks for listening to the Mile High Church podcast this podcast is made possible by the generous contributions from listeners like you to make a donation please visit milehighchurch.org