Waiting

    

“The ability of all creatures to share in the process of ongoing creation makes all things sacred.”  Paul Allen   

 

     The answer to every desire we have is love and our ability to open ourselves to love.  The greater we open ourselves to love the more creative we are.  I have been working on this ability to love and have realized that my biggest obstacle to this giving and receiving of love has to deal with my inability to be open to it. For the longest time, I thought the biggest detriment to my blocking love was my sense of independence or because of old emotional baggage. I have recently learned that I most often close down to love because of my body’s inability to wait.

     Impatience doesn’t seem like it would be so directly linked to this love concept, but consider the depth and brevity of the body’s inability to wait.  What happens when you lack this ability to wait is that there is no void.  Without the void, there is no room for the Mystery.  This void is the womb of creation.  It is the place of the sacred.  Without this space you can’t be creative or pregnant with possibilities.   If you cannot wait, you cannot receive what the Universe has to offer, you cannot connect with the great Mystery, you cannot connect with the divine; God.  And since this divine is love, without this space, you cannot give or receive love.

     The absence of the ability to wait produces no chance for the here and now.  If you are outside the here and now you are in fear.  Our main way of controlling fear is judgment.  Once judgment exists there is a “good” or a “bad”.  There is now either punishment or reward.  In the space where God and love are to exist, there is only fear.  And so without the ability to wait the illusion of separation from God and one another is enhanced.  No waiting, no God, no Mystery, no Divine, creative Void. 

     I believe one of the big reasons that we fear waiting is due to the absence of stimulation.  We are a culture of doubt and an absence of stimulation means that there is an absence of reassurance.  I have been having my workshop groups work on this waiting thing since the beginning of summer. The first thing that happens when you are learning how to wait for things is that you get many opportunities to practice this skill.  In particular, I have been practicing waiting for communication.  I have not been doing a very good job of it.  I have several projects in the process and other important situations that are causing me to be looking for communications; phone calls, appointments, e-mails.  In waiting for these communications, I realized what it actually means to be patient for most of us living in this Western culture.  From a cultural and personal level this space between communications or a seeming absence of “words” signifies that communication has ceased.  It means that there is no more talk and the proverbial "shit" is about to hit the fan.  It means punishment.  It's that whole "just keep them talking thing" from the movies.  Not talking/communicating in this culture is purposeful alienation.  It puts one in a very anxious position if it lasts too long.  This is so trained into our bodies that I still get to this anxiety even being as knowledgeable as I am and having done as much healing work as I have. 

     I have had one communication angel in particular.  And yet, I wasn’t able to see the absolute miracle and magnificence of “not hearing” from this person until I sat down to write this Soul Wisdom.  I even took the time to address “communication issues” with this person without recognizing that the greater gift in this situation was actually not receiving a reply any sooner than I did.  What this indicates is that somehow I was still treating this “absence” of communication like punishment.  I even went so far as to mention to this individual that it was getting a bit exhausting to keep associating this person  “with all this really challenging emotional work”  that kept surfacing in the space between communications.  I was STILL missing the point.  The point WAS the SPACE between the communications, no matter whether the space was caused by a broken computer, being busy with the holidays, travel or whatever.  The space was the gift.  It was the gift to be creative and to be confident.  I have so much appreciation for this space.  Indeed this entire writing and awareness came from the “absence” of communication.  The irony of this is amazing to me.  The gratitude is even more intense.

      You must get your body to wait at all costs.  Does it help to process the fears associated with the waiting?  Absolutely, but in this moment in time you can shift your creations by getting the body to move through space as though it were patient, confident, open to love, God, the Void.  Remove the physical tendencies that create the energy of fear and the deserving of punishment.   Free yourself to be in the space between.  Free yourself to love and be loved.

 “Breath”, Kabir

Translated by Robert Bly

“Are you looking for me?

I am in the next seat.

My shoulder is against yours.

 

You will find me in stupas,

Not in Indian shrine rooms,

Nor in synagogues, nor in cathedrals:

Not in masses, nor kirtans,

Not in legs winding around your own neck, nor eating nothing but vegetables.

 

When you really look for me

You will see me instantly –

You will find me in the tiniest house of time.

Kabir says:  Student, tell me what is God?

God is the breath inside the breath. 

                                                                                         Michelle L. McClellan, Psy.D. ©