Teaching, Living, and Learning: WAITING PATIENTLY

Monday, July 13, 2009

WAITING PATIENTLY

(written in October 2002)

“Waiting” is a wonderful word. It implies so many things. For instance, if we are waiting for something, then we are expecting it to happen, to come to us. We don’t have to do anything ourselves; we just have to relax and wait, because we know it will come. If we are waiting, then - in a sense - we are relaxing, because we are totally confident that what we are waiting for will arrive. Waiting does not imply worrying and fearing. Rather, it implies being patient, because we know that what we wait for is definitely coming. Today, I want to wait patiently for the power of infinite Mind to exert itself and to control my life. Of course, I don’t really have to wait for that, because it’s already happening – at every moment today. What I have to do is resist the temptation to start doing things to bring happiness into my life. The happiness is already there, because I am an inseparable part of the peacefulness of Mind. What I have to do is realize that and then confidently wait to see this peacefulness each and every moment.

MP3 File

No comments:

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

I found this quote (below) in Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. She's describing Fanny Price's home at Mansfield, but the words exactly remind me of the atmosphere I try to maintain in my classroom:
" ... no sounds of contention, no raised voice, no abrupt bursts, no tread of violence, was ever heard; all proceeded in a regular course of cheerful orderliness; everybody had their due importance; everybody's feelings were consulted."

...........

The following quote is from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. I would like my classroom to be like Dr. Strong's school:

"Dr. Strong's was an excellent school...It was very gravely and decorously ordered, and on a sound system; with an appeal, in everything, to the honor and good faith of the [students], and an avowed intention to rely on their possession of these qualities unless they proved themselves unworthy of it, which worked wonders. We all felt that we had a share in the management of the place, and in sustaining its character and dignity."

If I replaced "agent" with "teacher", this passage from a short story might, I hope, describe me in my classroom:
"The agent spent his days in following what seemed to many observers to be only a dull routine, but all his steadiness of purpose, all his simple intentness, all his gifts of strategy and powers of foresight, and of turning an interruption into an opportunity, were brought to bear upon this dull routine with a keen pleasure."
-- from "The Gray Mills of Farley" by Sarah Orne Jewett