Patience means letting things develop in their own time

leaves autumn

The gusts of wind have blown any remaining  leaves off  the trees. They lie in large piles on the ground, bright yellow and orange. The end of another cycle.

The leaves have almost completely covered
the backyard, and there are leaves to fall.
The wind whistles through its thin teeth
and no one seems to mind. For weeks we
have watched from windows, seen colors
changing, but not talked about it. One night,
when we went to gather another load
of wood, we heard the dead leaves crunch
beneath our feet. Now a light snow has begun
to touch the trees and the woodpile, first
fingerprinting them, then blurring, blending
everything in. Someday, I may get around
to saying what I’ve been thinking for months.

William Virgil Davis , Leaves,

Tolerating ambiguity

fog cars
As one matures, a greater tolerance of ambiguity is essential both for growth
and as a measure of respect for the autonomy of the mystery.
James Hollis, Tracking the Gods

Persistent practice

tree blown

More and more I have come to admire resilience.
Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam
returns over and over to the same shape, but the sinuous
tenacity of a tree: finding the  light newly blocked on one side,
it turns in another. A blind intelligence, true.
But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers,
mitochondria, figs – all this resinous, unretractable earth.

Jane Hirshfield, Optimism

What limits us

limits

Letting go of fixation is effectively a process of learning to be free, because every time we let go of something, we become free of it. Whatever we fixate upon limits us because fixation makes us dependent upon something other than ourselves. Each time we let go of something, we experience another level of freedom.

Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche, Letting go of Spiritual Experience

Uncertain and not knowing

Black River

The core of all navigation is probably uncertainty: tolerating not knowing makes it possible to find your way. Not knowing means embracing what is not known rather than fighting with yourself over it. Since the mind always strives to know, not knowing is disorienting in a useful way. Uncertainty and not knowing teach you not to believe the stories your mind feeds you day in and day out. If you allow your own course to be mysterious, then even the hard things can become easy. This is the beginning of awakening.

John Tarrant, Surprises on the Way

Times when we learn most

bubbles

There comes a time when the bubble of ego is popped and you can’t get the ground back for an extended period of time. Those times, when you absolutely cannot get it back together, are the most rich and powerful times in our lives.

Pema Chodron

The experience of the self is always a defeat for the ego

Jung