Chapter 4 - Patience and the fact that all things are transient
A new chapter
We begin this new chapter with an upgraded version of you. Now you ask questions, seek answers, verify information sources, and look for even better questions. During this time, you know and understand whether you are positive, neutral, or negative, and life brings you joy and delight, while the threshold between one life and another is too small to even notice.
The balance brought by patience
The new chapter is about patience and what it can offer you. First and foremost, inner peace and quiet. You know that everything on earth changes and nothing lasts, so if you have enough patience, the bad will become good, and the good will be savored much more intensely when it appears. You will treat it not as something normal, but as something special.
Understanding the seven feelings
However, achieving patience is not easy. In a book dear to me, I read that patience means mastering the seven feelings: love, hate, joy, anxiety, suffering, anger, and fear. This, in fact, means feeling each one, understanding each one, and understanding yourself in relation to each of them.
The path through acceptance
You must see which direction your instinct tells you to take according to each feeling and yet, savor every step of the process. You can only do this if you accept it. It sounds good, but it is hard to achieve.
Awareness of patience
Patience must be built day by day, in a systematic way. You must set aside a period of time to develop your patience. I will give a few practical examples, but I encourage you to develop whatever type of exercise you feel suits you and apply it. Only through repetition and perseverance will you achieve results—becoming a rational and patient person.
Clarity comes through waiting
Separately, without patience, you cannot achieve clarity in your thoughts. Without patience, you will ask a few obvious questions and then immediately look for answers before you have even finished the questioning stage. Regarding answers, you will take two of them and draw a conclusion. Erroneous conclusions born of impatience. In the analysis of positive and negative, you won't verify the essence, but only the surface, and your conclusions will be superficial.
A person does not change unless they choose to change
As I said before, I can teach you how to be a rational person, but I cannot change a person who does not want to be changed or who puts no effort into it. Let's return to the exercises I recommend. Count to one thousand in your mind. As you say each number, imagine that the digit is cast in liquid, incandescent metal, and upon being spoken—as if struck by a hammer—it gives off sparks.
Practical training exercises
Another exercise involves letters. Choose a letter and write that same letter on a sheet of paper (just like when you were learning to write). Fill the entire page. A more lighthearted exercise: take a book and verify if the page numbering is correct. The time allocated should not exceed one hour, and the activity, although boring, should be made pleasant. For the exercise to yield results, it must be done daily.
Everything is transient
Everything passes in this world; this is the second part of this lesson and its requirement. Nothing remains in the same form. The law of the world is the law of motion, and you find your balance as a fixed point within that motion. For this, you need continuous effort and work to remain at a speed equal to the speed of the world's changes. The implications are many, and some are wonderful. To understand why I say this, this is how you could live for 300 years, regenerating at the same pace as wear and tear—equal speed. You only need to find balance as a fixed point within the same type of motion and with the same speed as the wear of time.
Patience and perseverance as weapons
Perhaps the most important effect of patience within change and acceptance is inner peace. Knowing you have patience, you become persevering. You don't mind being wrong 100 times because, if you have enough patience, sooner or later you will be right. That is why perseverance is linked to patience with heavy chains. Perseverance is one of the most important weapons in your ensemble as a human being. Perseverance, in fact, is linked to your choice and the respect you have for your own decision.
Respect for your own decision
If you have decided something, you respect your word regardless of how long it takes or how many times you try. However, if you break your word, it means your reasoning was wrong, and you must return to the initial decision to verify it.
Something you didn't agree with was there. Perseverance is, in fact, a continuous struggle. To not give in, to not stop, to move forward. I always smile when I see motivational videos with messages like: "Don't stop! Keep going no matter what! Only then will you reach success!"
The balance of the rational person
The principle is good, the practice is not. Moving only forward all the time excludes the rational person. I tell you: walk forward on the path, but from time to time, stop. Stand by the road and look back at where you started. Look at how far you've come. Look ahead to where you want to go. Think of the journey as being more beautiful than the destination; think about the fact that you will encounter beautiful or ugly things, that you will fall and rise and continue. I ask you to look back so you always know who you are.
Rediscovery and change through decision
It is a spatial localization you must perform from time to time. To rediscover yourself more accurately, to see what you were and what you have become, how you became that way, and to accept yourself. You have changed, you have reinvented yourself, so you start over and move in the direction you have set. As a piece of advice, change happens on its own, but the change that comes from your own decision is much better.
Patience means acceptance
Aside from breathing, nothing is urgent. So just breathe, and let the rest of the thoughts that "must" be dealt with wait in separate boxes. You can take them out one by one, analyze them, and put them back into the boxes sitting on the shelf of your mind. Do not open multiple boxes at the same time. Take them separately, close the box, and move to the next. Determine when you have closed the box, and that thought or idea must not reappear until your subsequent decision.
The discipline of single focus
If two thoughts appear at the same time, then see why they aren't in their boxes. It doesn't matter what kind of thought it is; what matters is that it's not in a box. Your focus must be on a single thought and a single box. If your attention is divided, you can no longer resolve anything, and every thought does as it pleases, appearing whenever it wants. If you want order, close the boxes. For this, you need patience and time. You need perseverance because the effects are seen very little or not at all, even though they are present.
The road to mental order
Days, weeks, months, or perhaps years will pass until you achieve mental order. But this is the path you have chosen, and the result is very precious to you. It is an upgrade of yourself. That is why the road is long and hard, and few choose to walk it. Using patience is necessary for developing focus and attention. Without attention, you can achieve very little and only in very small stages, but any exercise done consistently will increase your power of concentration.
Focus
Developing focus through patience
The use of patience is necessary for the development of focus and attention. Without attention, you can achieve very little, and only in very small stages. Fortunately, any exercise you perform develops your focus, all the more so as you increase the duration of the exercise. Let's take as an example the exercise of counting to one thousand—it takes about an hour. An hour in which you will guide your thoughts toward a target of your choosing and reject other thoughts.
You decide where your mind dwells
It is a process that belongs entirely to you—planned, thought out, and executed—and the collection of results is yours alone. You can also extend the specific nature of the exercise to other activities required of you. Although the planning is no longer yours, the execution and the results remain. The result, in fact, means the organization of your mind. Instead of chasing one thought, then changing direction toward another, and so on, you will remain concentrated on a thought established by you.
Exiting the chaos of multiple thoughts
Only by constantly chasing multiple targets can you create chaos. You, instead, will have order; you will analyze each idea individually and compare choices in decisions that become increasingly rational with every effort. Everything is transient, and your perception will not agree with this because it sees solid, organized things that last. I agree, they last, but they last through constant change and adaptation, sometimes almost imperceptible.
A look back in time
Everything is transient, and your perception will not agree with this. It won't agree because it sees solid, organized things that last. I agree, they last. But they last through change and adaptation. In some cases, change occurs very quickly, while in others, there is a slight, constant, almost imperceptible change. Perhaps you have visited cities, fortresses, or other such edifices.
Traces in history and questions
Have you ever wondered what they looked like when they were at the highest point of their existence? How strong, how durable did they seem? Do you think the people living in those times thought that in a few hundred years, their fortress would have only a few walls left? That perhaps no one would live there anymore? Do they resemble you now? How you view the city you live in, or your country, as something permanent.
We know little of our history... about 0.01%
I don't know the age of our planet—maybe 4, maybe 6 billion years, perhaps even more. From its history, we humans only have knowledge of the last thousand years and a few things slightly further back. Traces of humans on earth appear to be several million years old. Compared to what we know in percentages, I think we are around 0.01% of all planetary history. So, we don't know 99.99% of our history, and yet we promote ourselves as an evolved race.
The balance between gift and curse
We are not. And the fact that we don't know 99.99% of our history is proven by the fact that everything changes and nothing stays the same. This example should make us think about how small we are in this course of time. It is both a gift and a curse to realize this. Like everything complete in this world, good and evil integrate to create this wholeness. With every step, you can think that if things are hard now, it means they will also be good.
The power of the one percent
This would actually be the positive attitude you should always be anchored in. The positive attitude that is attached to hope and patience. Hope must never be extinguished. In fact, it must never be allowed to fade. There is a nice expression: "I've calculated, and we have a 1% chance of succeeding." And those are good odds. (Clearly, it no longer matters that there is a 99% chance of failure).
A little bit of everything
During all the changes and instability, maintaining hope and looking only at the glass half full—seeing only what happens if you succeed—becomes your way of being. An optimistic and hopeful way. You cannot control what you receive in life. You can only control your attitude toward what you receive and what you do with it. One of the things that is actually not transient is your attitude. You can remain constantly positive and optimistic.
The illusion of things that do not change
In itself, this is a balance in motion. You must admit that you are looking for it. You seek things that do not change, and your habits and routines are proof of this. You try to protect yourself from change and maintain distinct characteristics through them. But everything changes, and habits must also change because they lose their importance; they lose their purpose. This is the great error that most people make. They try to hold onto things that do not change, created from things that do.
Habits and mental order
All the things you do daily and believe to be habits that define you are, in fact, attempts to forcibly maintain something that cannot last over time. In reality, what you try in practice, in a rational way, you subconsciously hope to achieve on a mental level. These habits are supposed to give you order and mental peace. That is their purpose. Let's take an example, perhaps not the best one: sleep. You don't sleep at night because you like sleeping; you sleep to wake up rested and recharged.
The need for rest versus bedtime
If there were a charger, like for a phone, that could fill you with energy in an hour, then you probably wouldn't care about sleeping anymore. The body needs sleep in different proportions, depending on age, strength, physical condition, and other factors. However, you don't need sleep every single day; you need sleep when you are tired, regardless of what time of day or night it happens. The manipulation you have suffered since you were very small refers to time. To what time it is—bedtime or mealtime.
Life in the natural rhythm of the day
Please imagine what it would be like if you didn't have a clock. Nowhere—not on your phone, not on your laptop, not on TV. You would return to the day-and-night system. You know the day ends when the sun sets and begins when it rises. You would arrange to meet a friend when the sun is high in the sky or at dusk, instead of at "X o'clock." You would no longer have a set mealtime or bedtime. You would eat when you are hungry and go to bed when you are sleepy. Think about how your life would change without access to a clock.
The clock as an instrument of manipulation
Because, in fact, the access is the problem. I will always maintain that the wearable clock was man's worst and most manipulative invention. It placed an obstacle in human thoughts, shifting from "what I want to do" or "what I need to do" to "what I must do." It is no coincidence that in every journey of self-discovery, the abandonment of time-telling instruments is required. These tools steal your present and force you to live in a rhythm that does not belong to you, disconnecting you from your own rational needs.
Choose
The essence of attitude
Let's return briefly to the things that do not pass: chosen feelings or attitudes. These are, in fact, the things that define you and matter in the great change. Habits do not define you; they shackle you. In contrast, attitude gives you direction and freedom.
The power of inner decision
You want to be brave—choose to be brave and stand by that decision, regardless of what happens and regardless of how you were before. Choose the model you want to follow, not from the world around you, but from your own mind. Choose how you want to be, and that is how you will be if you respect your decision.
The design of your own change
We are the result of our own imaginings, so if you create your own design, then that is what you can be. Once you choose what you want to be and how you want to be, then you can perform the training to become what you have established. In time, with patience, you will succeed because things are constantly changing, but you choose for that change to be your decision.
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