The Gift Of Spiritual Impatience

That was the last of them.

The third box of books was loaded into the car, the next stop was the barn behind the old church, the storage point for donated books for their annual used book sale later in the year. 

Perhaps it’s an age thing, but I’ve been downsizing many segments of my life of late. The stuff I’ve collected over a lifetime which I no longer want to hold on to. Stuff. Expectations.

Today, it was the books’ turn to go. 

As I loaded the boxes, I realized that the vast majority of them were books I never fully read, as indicated by the number of bookmarks I found lodged into the first third of the pages of many of them. I guess the enthusiasm which motivated me to initially purchase them greatly waned as I actually started to read them. With so many of these books being not fully read, I realized there was one thing each of these unread books had in common.

Me.

I’ve had an interesting relationship with books. My now-almost-empty bookshelf was filled with the books of a seeker; non-fiction, self-help, self-improvement, spiritual, psychological, and growth-oriented themes. I bought each one for a specific reason, yet at some point early in these books I’d become a bit disillusioned and put them down only to then pick up the next book I had also excitedly purchased, only to abandon it early on just like the others before it. 

Giving up on a bad book seems logical, but when you give up on all the books the books aren’t the problem. 

As someone who has been a lifelong seeker, I was hoping each of these books would bring me closer to that which I really wasn’t sure I was hoping to find. I knew I was looking for something and I would grow increasingly impatient the deeper I got into these books when I felt it was going to be just another dead end on my spiritual journey. 

Each book was a tangent of sorts, a tangent wrapped in the elevated expectation that THIS book was the one which would deliver me the wisdom I demanded to learn. No pressure, right?

One thing I learned on my meandering journey of life is my impatience consistently created elevated levels of frustration, especially towards myself. The pressure of not finding what I wasn’t even sure I was seeking intensified the need and urgency for clarity. Why was it so difficult? Why was my journey so damn hard? Two questions asked in anger without answers brought in more frustration and hostility.

I grew ever frustrated with my frustration, an unsustainable path which brought me to a point where all I had left to offer was my surrender. To acknowledge my attempts to force the universe into telling me what I needed to know were never going to produce such results. When you yell at God it certainly will get God’s attention. When you stop yelling, it gives God the space to guide you. It’s a process, and me trying to solely control the process eventually got me to the point I needed to get to. 

Surrender does not mean you’re giving up in defeat. 

In time I’ve gained new perspectives cultivated in a far more patient and trusting environment. I’m no longer forcing the universe to tell me what I want to know, and the lack of forcing has created more space for flow, for compassionate self awareness, and clarity. There is a safe space for collaboration and spiritual co-creation. My path continues to unfold in front of me, my questions now birthed from a place of curiosity and trust.

Reflecting upon boxes of unfinished books reminded me of my spiritually impatient ways, of my demanding and my needing answers which could never be revealed by force or fear. Forcing is fear in disguise, and only when I would be able to be trusted with the clarity I would eventually receive would I actually be able to receive it. 

Maybe these books would have told me that had I actually finished reading one. 

Photo by Diego San on Unsplash