Thursday, January 18, 2007

Practice in Patience

I am not a patient man. I hate to wait. And when my schedule gets messed up it usually makes me crazy.

So this morning I have been getting some practice in breathing through the anxiety that comes up when my routine gets thrown out and in not being in control of circumstances.

It appears I left my car lights on last night and so this morning my battery was dead. Okay, I thought, it's early and AAA isn't too far away, I'll just miss one client. So I made the calls and waited. And waited. And waited. And waited.

Did I mention I was waiting? After a few calls to see why it was taking so long, and two more canceled clients, and a whole lot of deep breaths, I am sitting here blogging this in real time, while it is happening.

In the past I would generally have been really on edge and about to break things. But not today. For whatever reason, and I'm going to credit meditation and subpersonality work (mostly shadow work), I am frustrated but not insanely out of control as I have been in the past. This is good.

Sometimes it's hard to see the benefits of sitting, of journaling, of doing all the inner work that so many of us do on a regular basis. But then it all seems so clear. This stuff works -- a little voice inside my head is saying -- and the next time I don't want to do the work, that voice will remind me that it does pay off.


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

My inner work (meditation w/and without form, and recently Integral Life Practice) has really help me in this area. What I have found is that I can more readily see and guide my "ass hole" tendencies that spike when I don't get my way. The most amazing things is that even when I am NOT having a good day, I can still feel relatively at peace.

When things go really bad and I feel myself getting physically stressed that McFarren song, "Don't Worry Be Happy" pops on in my head and its so ridiculous, I can't help but laugh to myself.

Anonymous said...

Sorry about your car Bill. I missed you at 8am but did do 60 minutes of cardio. Thanks for the call.

william harryman said...

Hey Integral Dude, I added you to my feeds. Thanks for stopping by.

Peace,
Bill