Waiting pulls the attention to something coming true. God, says the waiting mind, I can hardly wait, for it is a burden to wait while not seeing any arrival. Waiting is living in tension.
Thus the waiting mind is bound by waiting which appears as mental challenge as if waiting is a game of challenge. I wait and suffer. It is like clinging to a mental tension, as if a process of experiencing tension is necessary to feel the ease much stronger afterwards in case the awaited comes true.
Waiting for something while not knowing it really comes true thus is a dialectical counterpart of ease and joy of fulfillment.
Different is patience. It is not a mental challenge as if I have to fight against the unknown. Patience knows something comes true right from the beginning. Instead of clinging to a mental tension, patience is not simply waiting. While waiting is suffering from tension and time - which runs till fulfilment or not - patience is not fixed on any tension of the mind. Mental tensions are expressions of mental struggles - the mind is struggling against the unknown, as if the struggling subject must exercise his power and influence.
Patience is aware that there is no struggle necessary - not against time, tension and the unknown. Instead, patience is flowing with the flow of now while knowing something will come true. And the flow of the everlasting NOW - which is always new and fresh - tells patience there is no hurry, no pressure, no struggle, short: there is no tension. Thus patience feels always fulfilled from the NOW finding its way naturally to fulfilment of something.
Waiting is always waiting in tension. Patience is always walking with the NOW without tension, which is the natural essence of hope. Patience and hope belong together.
In fact, waiting is a distorted understanding of hope, as if hope would need mental tension.
The opposite is true. Hope needs mental awareness, and patience is one essential expression.
Now you may recognize what that means for our outlook for a new Earth...
Here is an old piece by Jean Michele Jarre, called Waiting for Cousteau:
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