Learning To Wait

Are you able to trust the celestial being to let your true dreams come through? In this blog, I will interchangeably refer to the celestial being as God.

Learning to wait means operating on God’s timeline, not yours. It means being in tune with the God inside you and aligning yourself to the tempo of God’s manifestation. Many of us are impatient and want things to happen immediately. We delude ourselves into thinking we are in control and can make things happen according to our timetable. We live in a ‘go-getter’ world, always competing and pushing to “make it happen”.

While there are some things in the material world that we aspire to and influence, like getting the dream home or job we’re qualified for, there are fundamental existential things we can’t influence or bend to our will. This is not something that is entirely in our control. There is a higher power that determines when and how this will happen, ‘if’ we’re ready and in a state of mind and acceptance to receive and manifest this. The question we need to ask ourselves is whether we sincerely want our dreams to manifest, or whether it’s yet another excuse to keep berating ourselves for our failure.

To have our wishes granted or dreams come true is something that we ask from God. If we learn to genuinely ask from the heart, then we have to accept that our request will happen in God’s own time, not ours. Many of us are conditioned to expect instant gratification, hence the frustration and giving up if something we want, and demand does not appear immediately. We start making excuses that it doesn’t work, there’s no God, or that we’re not pushing hard enough for things to appear in our lives. This leads to believing ourselves as failures! Do not berate yourself and give up. Keep on walking and continue believing that your wish will be granted in due course. If you have faith and hope, the doors will open at the right time noting that you are fighting a spiritual battle that cannot be won by physical means. Having faith can invoke the metaphysical forces to act in your favour.

If only we can learn to perceive things through God’s eyes. God will always grant us what we pray and ask for, good or bad. As the bible says, “Seek and you shall be given.” What the bible does not specify is when or in what form your request will be granted. That is where we have to trust God to deliver!

Upon realising this, I have learnt to talk to God earnestly and listen to his guidance which sometimes happens in small realisations and sometimes in big revelations that leave me in awe. I have come to realise that I am a part of this higher power and I am protected, loved, and taken care of. This fundamental realisation is all I need to be happy. Everything else outside this is a bonus.

Once I stopped believing that only when I receive material things will I know God loves me, I started seeing clearly that God has always and will always love and provide for me. I have looked back at my life and seen the truth of this. Given my life history and experiences, I could easily have died a long time ago. I lived an unguided life with little boundaries and emotional intelligence to see and deflect harm from my path. Yet, despite bumbling along in the darkness, I survived relatively intact, despite the considerable difficulties. It got me thinking; what was it that kept me alive?

All I knew as I was going through stuff was that something or someone protected me. Even at times when I was in really dark places, somehow, miraculously I prevailed. God never let me down. I have had some bitter disappointments, yet each time I’ve somehow dug myself back and become stronger. Why have I managed to withstand the specific challenges that have been put on my path? Is it because God knows I can handle them? Do I have strengths that are obscured by my own ego and false beliefs? If so, then if I release my false beliefs and illuminate my true self, I will access those strengths and harness them to enhance my life and joy. This all happens at God’s pace.

Joy is what we all strive for! It comes from spiritual or internal awakening; the unearthing and knowing of the real self. There is much motivation for seeking joy, and yet the way we get there is often very complex and prolonged. Unfortunately, some people spend their entire lives searching for happiness and joy and die having found neither. This to me is tragic. It means having missed the opportunity to experience the shining light within that is one’s true self. That is the place where Joy lives inside all of us! If only we could take a step back, regroup and look deep within, then we’ll realise it was always there. It never ceased to exist. God put it there when he created your blueprint! Your job in life is to be in touch with your joy and live from that space.

This brings me back to the question of waiting. We have to be patient as we strive to be more joyful. Ask yourself the question why you haven’t reached your spiritual potential. What is it inside you that’s stopping you? How are you going about the process? Are you on the right path or are you unconsciously blocking your own growth and joy? I have used prayer to seek guidance from the ‘higher power’. I would like to share some thoughts on one of the most popular verses in the Bible: “The Lord is MY shepherd; I shall not want” Psalms 23:1. Through this simple illustration of God being our Shepherd, we see how he tenderly takes care to provide, guide, and protect us. So, when I recite the verse that says “I shall not want” I am acknowledging how completely reliant I am on God as MY Shepherd. “I shall not want” because God, as a good shepherd, will ensure I have everything I need. “I shall not want,” not because of what I’ve done or can do but because God loves me. I’ve subsequently made the decision not to desire anything outside of the scope of what God wants for me.

Prayer for me has been about searching for my meaning and purpose. The question of why I came here has been with me all my life. I’ve always been curious about what to me defined my success. I somehow knew it was not entirely career and money. There had to be something else. Career expressed one side of me, but not the whole. I wanted to know who I was! My spirituality was where the answers lay. Once I grasped this and began the journey to deepen my spiritual experience, I connected even stronger with God. I realised many things that I have asked God for in my life have come to pass. They didn’t necessarily happen within the time frame I set myself, nor in the manner I wanted them to happen, but they happened, often in a much better way than I would have imagined. That is what God does in my life! The key to all this is waiting and aligning yourself to the tempo of God’s manifestation.

While I have always known God would deliver, my ego often wants to hurry him up, to allay my own existential fears. By doing this I lose my trust in him and allow doubt to seep in. I stop myself from surrendering to his will and guidance. Fighting God’s will and trying to force things to happen my way has caused me considerable pain. As I learn to relax and completely accept myself and that things will unfold the way God has decreed for them to, past emotional wounds heal. Psalm 23.6 of the Bible says, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.” This gives me peace of mind, comforted to know that it is goodness and mercy that has been following me all my life.

My message to you reader is to trust the higher power, be it God or the universe. Know that you’re taken care of and that as you believe, so shall be manifested in your life. Don’t try to hurry God along. Respect and embrace the challenges he puts in front of you. In my book ‘Cultivating Peace and Hope’, I highlight several challenges that are bone crushing. It is incredibly hard to understand and see the positive when this happens. I lived through losing babies in my life and have sometimes been angry with God, not understanding why he refused to grant my deepest wish, to become mummy to a little soul. Once I accepted that this was not his path for me, I also learnt that this does not mean I am a failure. If, like me, you believe that we were all given a lifepath to follow when we came into this realm of existence, and that what is happening in our lives is what we came to learn, then events in your life, including the very difficult ones, start to make sense. You’ll be able to live easier and accept them without causing yourself great harm by suffering through most of your life.

Suffering is different from feeling emotional pain. Pain is inevitable as we experience difficulties. When we learn to accept that pain is part of humanity and are patient, that pain will pass, and our lives will become easier. The Buddha taught that suffering is the greatest injustice we could do to ourselves. According to him, suffering brings with it anger, fear, low self-esteem and other negative afflictions.

I wish you the very best of joy and fortitude to accept and withstand the challenges in your life. Trust in the higher power and believe that whatever it is that your heart sincerely desires, if you believe it will be granted to you, so it shall come to pass.

God speed!