Gentleness

A little poem on gentleness and patience

Even when we know impatience sucks

it is far safer and comfortable than being patient — we think.

It may be meaningless pain to fall for impatience

but it is less scary than the alternative — patience.

It has become unknown— never touched before.

We are so used to aggression

that gentleness scares the shit out of us.

A gentleman is not someone who is skilled in pretending to be gentle

with ideas of being gentle

because the need to pretend is an exercise in aggression and blindness;

we are continuing the same therefore

— we aren’t risking anything there.

Risky it would be for it demands real strength

to be gentle with one’s own shadow as it is.

What if growth, primarily, demands us to develop the capacity

to bear the unconscious forces operating within ourselves?

What I see might be my stubborn refusal to see the unconscious compulsions

so rather than being upset about it

I can gently notice the same which is, paradoxically, doing the work.

Even though the fixing or doing mind

out of its itching and blind scratching tendencies

cannot make sense of paradoxes easily

for the mind, it is always scary to be gentle

it misses or fucks up the possibility to tap into our real strength.

Nothing is so strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as real strength. — Saint Francis de Sales

A poem to ponder on the place where inner strength lies: