We know you are striving to be patient in your lives while still maintaining your enthusiasm for future creations. As we discussed last week, this is possible if you allow yourself to live in excitement, anticipation, and faith in God's love for you.
However, we know it is even more challenging as human beings to be patient with one another! Truly you can achieve amazing levels of mastery if you learn to allow both yourselves and others to simply be as you are in any given moment of time. In order to achieve this you must start with patience and tolerance for yourselves first.
Just as patience with life requires you to have faith in God's goodness, patience with one another requires you to have faith in both God's goodness and your own! Otherwise you will want others to hurry up and change… so you don't have to! You will want others to adjust their behaviors… so you don't have to! "Dear slow driver ahead of me in traffic, please hurry up so I can stop feeling frustrated, or fearful that I will not arrive at my destination on time! Dear slow driver ahead of me in traffic, please hurry up so I do not have to look at the fact that I took too long getting ready this morning and am going to be late for work! Dear slow driver ahead of me in traffic, I am so excited to get where I am going and I really don't want to consider that God may have other plans, so hurry up!" If you were deeply honest dear ones, this is what you would be saying!
Now consider the same scenario, but allow yourselves to trust God and have patience for yourselves. "Dear self, I am frustrated. I got up late, took too long getting ready for work, and am afraid I may not arrive on time. Dear Self, you are human. This too shall pass. Breathe. God is looking out for you." or "Dear self, you ARE excited about where you are going. That is beautiful! How wonderful to be excited. But just perhaps God is slowing you down for a good reason. God loves you. Breathe. Everything is working out in right order." With thoughts such as these, you can easily be patient with the person in front of you. They too are operating in a dance that is orchestrated by a higher power that loves you very much.
Consider an even more difficult scenario. Suppose someone you love is engaged in behavior that hurts either you or them. How can you be patient with this? Well dear ones, the same principles apply. First you must be patient with yourself and connect with your own goodness. In reality many of you are saying internally to the other, "You should change… so I feel better. You should change because it makes me sad to see you hurt yourself. You should change because I am angry that you keep hurting me. You should change so I don't feel helpless. You should change so I don't have to."
Instead suppose you could drop into your heart, and say to yourself, "I am angry. I am sad. I feel helpless. I care. I am human. I don't want to hurt. I don't want to watch someone choose to hurt him or herself. I can't change them, so what must change within me? How can I be compassionate and kind to myself now? I know that I am not a failure just because I cannot get this other person to change. I absolve myself from taking responsibility for their choices. I am free." Perhaps you will speak your peace with love and compassion and then let go. Perhaps you will give yourself permission to move away from a hurtful dance. Perhaps you will learn to simply overlook the behaviors you don’t like. Whatever you choose, do so with love and compassion for yourself first, because then you will more easily extend this compassion to the other.
Patience and tolerance with others always begins with a patience and tolerance for yourselves. Patience and tolerance for others comes from an understanding that God is with all of you, and you are all exactly where you need to be for the lessons you need to learn. Perhaps this irritating person in front of you is teaching you to take care of yourself more kindly. Perhaps they are teaching you to stop martyring yourself. Perhaps they are teaching you to practice greater compassion. They too have their own lessons, but God in infinite wisdom created the universe to pair those who can learn from one another. It is vibrational law. The more you practice patience and compassion for yourself in your own lessons, the more easily you can extend this to the world around you. And in this space, you can make very conscious and loving choices about where and with whom you want to dance.
God Bless you! We love you so very much.
-- The Angels
Message From Ann
Hi Everyone! We had a beautiful rain here in Arizona last weekend. I loved it. My dog did not. She got me up at 2am and then at 5am again to go outside, only to realize that she didn't really want to go out in the rain. I tried to coax her. I went out and beckoned her. I stood in the dark downpour with my raincoat on, holding up an umbrella and called to her. She looked at me and ran back to bed. I knew what was coming, so I put pee pee pads under her and waited for the inevitable. Sure enough within the hours I was doing laundry… again.
In these moments it is not easy to be patient. However, I love my dog, and I knew from what the angels have taught me that unless I had compassion for myself first, I was not going to feel too compassionate towards her. So I loaded up the laundry, went into the second bedroom, shut the door, buried my face in a pillow, and bawled. It wasn't the most evolved behavior, but after little sleep and too much wash, it was the best I could do. Lucy tried to follow me around, but I wasn’t in the mood. "Go to bed," I told her calmly and firmly. She looked at me, felt the no nonsense energy and walked herself into the bedroom for a nap. I was able to do a quick meditation, grab breakfast and get myself back in a loving space. We ended up having a very nice day.
Being patient and tolerant does not mean we let others treat us badly. Caesar Milan, the dog whisperer for example is a very patient and calm person but he is also firm and commanding. The angels love that show! They got so excited the first time I watched it. “That’s it!” they were saying in my head! “Calm assertive! Loving but strong! That’s what humans need to learn when they don’t like another’s behavior.” Likewise, "Super Nanny" - the perfect babysitter - is very patient and loving, but also very firm in her insistence on good behavior. There are times in life for speaking up and not tolerating bad behaviors is appropriate. However, if we do so after first accepting our own feelings and being patient with ourselves, then we can be firm from a loving and powerful place, rather than a place of helpless frustration.
I will never forget one interaction with a hotel that charged me $600 for catering an event. No food was provided and according to the contract water was free. It was clearly their mistake. I was upset when I found out I was charged because I needed the credit on my card for other expenses. I allowed myself my feelings in private, then calmed down and called the hotel, assuming that it was an honest mistake. The local manager promised to send me a refund and did not. After several interactions over a few months and no check, I patiently reported him to the better business bureau and called their corporate headquarters. The local manager was furious! He had been caught in his bad behavior. He called me up and screamed at me. He told me that he was going to pay me but I hadn’t been patient enough. I just listened calmly and asked him when I could expect the check. If I had tried to interact with that rage it would have been a mess for us both. I had been patient with my own anger so I was able to be powerful, loving, and calm in the face of his. I got the check the following week.
Rather than having patience looking a certain way in your life, realize it is an internal state of being where we first accept ourselves, as we are, and then from that space, we can allow others to be themselves, while still figuring out the healthiest way to dance with them… if at all. If we are truly to love our neighbors as ourselves, we must first love ourselves.
So this week, be patient with yourself. Allow yourself your own feelings. And then see if that doesn't make it easier to be patient with others as well. It won't make you weak. Instead it will help you come from a more powerful place of love, compassion, and clarity.
Have a fantastic week!
Love,
Ann
Please feel free to share any of my messages or posts. The only thing I ask is a small note: ©Ann Albers, www.VisionsofHeaven.com
No comments:
Post a Comment