One of the principal aims of all spiritual people is to eradicate barriers. Yet patience is the creation of a barrier: a gentle but implacable barrier dividing feeling from expression. It is not a dead barrier, a brick wall, but something live, built systematically over a long space of time. It is also a protection.

On one side, there is feeling. Feelings run deep and fast. They would flood life, given half a chance. Swim along with them and whilst there can be exhilaration, there can also be drowning. Without any barrier, feeling finds instant expression. Life is simply a series of actions done with spontaneity and words are the same.

For someone with any sense of beauty and control, there has to be patience in between. Patience doesn’t do anything, any more than a wall does, it simply slows you down. Slowing down expression is the first way to speed up spiritual progress. It also, unlike a wall, opens up your vision, gives you time to assess the future; gently, to think.

One of the forces most challenging to patience is not other people, but simply one’s own body. Watch to what extent verbal expression is dictated by the state of the body: the body feels heavy, the mind feels heavy and the words fall like lead on the air; the body is well and life follows suit.

Patience lets ill health bounce off it. It comes in between, does nothing, just is, like the wall, or the traditional form of the protective mother whose very presence offers refuge. And just as a child can sit on a mother’s lap, so too you can sit on the “wall” of patience and just watch. It is often dangerous to do anything else.

Sometimes patience makes you persist, to go on with something you’d rather see finished. The wall, ever still, turns its back on feeling and simply faces the future. Keep going. Keep going. If a mother stopped pushing a child to walk, we’d still all be crawling. And sometimes we are, in our minds. So patience is a wonderful measure against indiscretion, but it is also a means of encouragement.

Means and measures are temporary. One day the wall will be knocked down. When feelings have grown up sufficiently to be worthy of instant expression, that will be the moment of freedom. For anyone pursuing the life of spirituality, it is a natural aim. To become whole. No sergeant majors or self criticism, not even patience, just joy.