They harvested the field of barley beside our house yesterday. Planted last autumn,  it has grown strongly even in the present drought. Another cycle of planting, caring and harvesting completed, each in its own rhythm. The energy in the seed comes to fruition in its own time and cannot be rushed.

If you cultivate patience, you almost can’t help cultivating mindfulness, and your meditation practice will become richer and more mature. After all if you really aren’t trying to get anywhere else in this moment,  patience  takes care of itself. It is a remembering that things unfold in their own time. The seasons cannot be hurried. Spring comes, the grass grows by itself. Being in a hurry usually doesn’t help and it can create a great deal of suffering – sometimes in us, sometimes in those who have to be around us. Patience is an ever-present alternative to the mind’s endemic restlessness and impatience. Scratch the surface of impatience and you will find lying beneath it, subtly or not so subtly is anger. It’s the strong energy of not wanting things to be the way they are and blaming someone (often yourself)  or something for it.

Jon Kabat Zinn, Wherever you go, There you are