We must develop the patience to watch a moment long enough to see that the pain in it belongs to the self that insists that life honors its preferences. When we are impatient, we are certain that it is because life has somehow failed to recognize that we were made king or queen for the day. When we’re sure things aren’t right, we meet life with force. If we have a great conviction that something shouldn’t take place, that it is unwanted, in that split second, all of our attention goes out to meet life as an aggressor … instead of understanding that if we can wait with patience, we will begin to see that the problem has nothing to do with life. The problem has something to do with this pressure inside of us that can’t be satisfied even when we get what we want from life.

When we wait with patience, we begin to see that this pain that we’re going through in a given moment doesn’t have anything to do with what the world did. It has to do with what we met that moment with. Then in patience the soul is perfected because gradually we are freed from our relationship with the parts of us that wreck us.