All posts by Lemfel

The Patience path to peace is one approach taught in the Lemurian Philosophy to create a more tranquil life. To those who have not walked this path, it may appear simple: all you have to do is not react to the things that would otherwise frustrate and irritate. Not so! Patience is not passiveness. It requires unusual self-control and is an essential step toward self-mastery.

Here are two stories from today’s Lemurians showing how they are using patience to gain conscious control over their lives and affairs:
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In the Lemurian Philosophy we have a time-honored explanation of the Virtue Patience from one of the Elder Brothers who guide our Work:

He whose rice crop has failed and whose children know want, yet can listen with tolerant understanding to him who has a broken fingernail, knows patience.

As with other statements in the Lemurian Philosophy, I recognized this one as important and even memorized it, but I had no real feeling for its meaning or how such a thing could even be accomplished, until a day when I had a medical appointment.

The weather was frigid, so I decided to take the bus instead of walking as usual. The bus was running very late and I started to worry that I might not make my appointment on time. When at last it came and I got on, I was totally wrapped up in my own concerns. The people getting on and off the bus were no more than impediments holding me back as I counted the minutes to my appointment time.

Recognizing this self-absorbed intolerance for what it was, I decided to make the Lemurian effort to set myself completely aside and focus on those other riders. What were their needs? What were they like? This shift of focus had the welcome effect of eliminating all sense of worry and brought back a measure of calm, further helping me tune into the people and activities around me.

I was amazed at how well this worked and the memory of it stayed with me for days. I felt I had a small but valuable success with patience, and began to think about seeing myself aside and thinking of others as a potential cure for many ills. I went back to the lesson that teaches how to develop patience, and after reading the quotation from the Elder Brother, I wrote in the margin: “He set aside self-interest to think of others before himself.”

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Before I became a Lemurian, I had memorized a Bible verse, but never had a thought about what it meant:

“Let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire,” (James 1:4)

After working on the Lemurian virtues for many years, now I feel I can probably delve into that verse for the rest of my life and get deeper meanings every time I do. What a wonderful thing to know that when we do develop patience to the nth degree, we will be perfect and entire, wanting nothing. I am overwhelmed with the power in that verse and determined to keep it as my goal.

I had been enjoying picking my grandkids up at school one day a week for my daughter, but then her work hours changed and now she is delivering the kids to me at 6:30 and I take them to school every morning. Last week it was pouring rain and I had three and a half hours in the car every day. I had such patience, never once feeling stressed or sorry for myself and enjoyed the time with the kids. Actually got them talking about something other than video games a few times! It was so easy to practice patience and so much more fun than exploding with impatience.

When I picked up my grandson at school the other day, I was a little early, and he was ten minutes late. It seemed longer, and I was getting worried . . . not really impatient, but worried that we hadn’t understood each other. He didn’t have his phone so I couldn’t text him. When he finally came, I didn’t show impatience at all but merely said, “Why so late?” He said his binder had been stolen the day before and the teacher was giving him the work that was stolen so he could redo it. I was so grateful I hadn’t shown any impatience with that dear boy!

Patience even has so much to do with grief! I said goodbye to my husband very recently and I have found that expecting to get over someone you have spent 60 years with in a few days or months, or years, or ever, is not understanding patience and letting it have its perfect work.

Dr. Stelle wrote: “When all else has failed, try patience. It will save you many heartaches. It will solve an unbelievable number of your hardest problems, and most of the time, is actually the shortest path to success. It will bring into your environment a peace that can be experienced in no other way.”