Waiting, Waiting, Waiting…..

An excerpt from the recent Summer Solstice ceremony.

As the group gathered the morning after the Solstice, an unexpected teaching emerged. It did not arise from a meditation, a transmission, or a profound visionary experience. It emerged from something extraordinarily ordinary: waiting.

Waiting for an email. Waiting for a class to begin. Waiting for someone to arrive. Waiting for something to happen.

Yet as participants began sharing, it became clear that waiting is rarely a neutral experience. Most of us have spent a lifetime directing part of our energy outward while waiting for the next event, the next person, the next answer, the next opportunity, or the next moment to arrive. Without realizing it, we drift away from ourselves.

One participant described feeling anxious while waiting for the class information to arrive. Rather than staying caught in the anxiety, she went outside, communed with nature, spent time journaling, and gradually returned to herself. Another participant noticed that waiting automatically put her outside herself, while pulling her energy back in created a sense of wholeness and strength. Others recognized that waiting often felt like grasping for something beyond themselves, creating subtle stress and agitation.

What became apparent was that waiting is often a form of unconscious reaching.

We are not simply waiting. We are extending ourselves outward. We are searching. We are anticipating. We are projecting our awareness into the future. And every time we do, a portion of our energy leaves the present moment.

The result is often subtle anxiety, subtle tension, or a subtle sense of incompleteness that feels so familiar we rarely question it.

What if waiting could become something else? What if waiting became an invitation to return? Rather than extending outward, what if we gathered ourselves inward? Rather than searching for what has not yet arrived, what if we became present with what is already here?

This is one of the great shifts occurring within consciousness right now. We are learning that presence is not something that happens after life settles down. Presence is something we consciously choose in the midst of life exactly as it is. One participant shared a beautiful experience of lying in a hammock beneath an ancient beech tree while waiting. She noticed the sunlight filtering through the leaves, the movement of the wind, the song of the birds, and the presence of a woodpecker nearby. The waiting was still there, but it was being held gently. It was no longer consuming her awareness.

This is the difference. The waiting had not disappeared. The grasping had. The future had not arrived. But the present had become enough. That is a profound spiritual teaching. Many people imagine that awakening requires extraordinary experiences, yet often the deepest transformations occur in these seemingly ordinary moments. A lifetime of conditioning begins to loosen as we recognize that we do not need to leave ourselves whenever uncertainty arises.

In fact, much of our education conditioned us into this pattern. We were taught to sit quietly and wait for the teacher. Wait for instructions. Wait for permission. Wait for someone else to tell us what comes next. Over time, waiting became a habit of consciousness. We learned to place authority outside ourselves. We learned to place certainty outside ourselves. We learned to place trust outside ourselves. And as a result, we often placed our energy outside ourselves as well.

The new paradigm invites something entirely different. It invites participation rather than waiting. It invites presence rather than anticipation. It invites self-regulation rather than dependency. This does not mean isolating ourselves. It does not mean refusing support. It does not mean becoming fiercely independent. It means learning how to remain connected to ourselves while participating in relationship with others. This distinction is important. Many people hear teachings about self-regulation and immediately turn them into another form of pressure. They imagine they are supposed to handle everything alone. They imagine they must never need support. They imagine they should be able to remain centered at all times.

That is not the teaching. The teaching is gentler than that. Self-regulation is an act of self-love. It is learning what helps you return to yourself. For one person it may be journaling. For another it may be walking. For another it may be sitting beneath a tree. For another it may be grounding through the feet. For another it may be simply taking a few conscious breaths. The method is less important than the relationship. The question is always the same:

What helps me come back to myself?