One of my spirit guides is
Heron. Heron is, in fact, my power
animal. Though I know I have not delved as deeply as I might into the details of the mystical relationship
between a person and her power animal, I do feel a special affinity for
Heron. And I feel that Heron can guide
me in areas in which I am particularly needy.
In the morning, when I do my
salutation to the Four Directions, I call on my spirit guides to guide me
through my day. Heron is one of the
first that I salute, when I face the rising sun in the east. Heron guides toward balance, and for many months,
when I began to realize I was obsessively focused on one thing or another, I
would call upon Heron to guide me to balance.
About a year ago, when we
acquired a new family member whose stubborn, willful personality was proving to
be a nettling challenge, it was whispered to me that perhaps another of
Heron’s characteristics might be desirable.
Think of a heron, standing for long stretches of time in a field or
shallow water, waiting for a meal to present itself. Patience! I thought. That is patience. And if there is one thing I need, whether it’s
in the framework of my relationship with the new family member or just in
general, it’s patience.
So I added “patience” to my
morning request of Heron. It is no
secret that patience is something I have lacked my entire life, and whatever
small quantity of that commodity I had been given originally has been
thinning almost apace with my hair, here in my golden years.
Applied to my relationship
with the puppy…I asked for patience because the training methods we were using
seemed to be having zero effect on her, and she was driving me crazy. And I was guided in patience, when I asked…I
didn’t kill her, or decide that she was not for us and attempt to re-home her.
Lately, though, I’ve been
feeling led to reevaluate the “patience” message. Yes, certainly Heron spends many hours
practicing stillness in order to feed itself.
But is that patience…or is it persistence? “Patience”
implied if I kept at it the way I was going, things would ultimately work. That was when I realized that perhaps
persistence, rather than patience, was really what was needed here. Define the goal and keep angling to get
there, trying different things if the first one or two or six don’t work.
The two concepts are
certainly related. Perhaps they are the active and passive characterizations of the same concept. Both involve a certain amount of
projecting toward a future goal, rather than instant gratification. But “patience” implies…waiting. Quietly, almost zenlike. Being content to bide one’s time until the
desired outcome occurs. “Persistence,”
on the other hand, is more about actively pursuing what it is one wants to
achieve… Sticking with it, not giving up…but
not just sitting there waiting for it to drop into your lap.
And I’ve realized that
persistence is more my style than patience…always has been. Anyone who knows me knows that I cannot in
any way be accused of being “passive.” Ever. And in this late stage of my life, I've found there are times one needs to embrace what one is; think of your ways in a positive light rather than always trying to purge from your personality those persistent things that for years you have rued as "negative." These days, there is a certain amount of understanding of when I am setting myself up to fail. And who needs that?
Patience? To set myself the task of sitting quietly and waiting for something
to happen…well, that just isn’t going to work. I’m not going to idle around and
twiddle my thumbs til the goal arrives on my doorstep. That
is just not me.
I’ll wait, I’ll hold out for the ultimate goal. But I'm going to be looking at it from different angles and trying new approaches in the meantime. That is persistence.
So now, I turn to the east in
the morning, and ask Heron to guide me to balance and persistence. It feels so much more right.
No comments:
Post a Comment