“An imperturbable demeanour comes from perfect patience. Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened, but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm.” ― Robert Louis Stevenson, An Inland Voyage
Are you easily provoked? If not, I applaud you. If so, I suspect that you wish that you were not so. How can a person become such that you are not able to be provoked – imperturbable? Well, if it were easy, we would all be like that. Imperturbability comes over time. Robert Louis Stevenson suggested that it comes from perfect patience. So just get that. I think you can order in from Amazon and it should arrive in time for Thanksgiving. Really though, can any of us have “perfect patience”? Have you met anyone like this?
My guess is that many of you associate perfect patience with meditation, hence the image herein. I have no doubt that one can come to calmness of mind while meditating – since that is one of the goals; but can you achieve perfect peace? Back when I used to teach World Religions, I told my students that the universal sign that one has achieved a high degree of spiritual maturity is that of imperturbability. Across the world and across many different religions, this is one of – if the THE sign of being mature in the spirit.
Again, I have no doubt that one can find calmness of mind while meditating and the effects of that calmness can permeate out into real life after you leave the Lotus position. The real question is, does it bring perfect peace? If it did, then you wouldn’t need to meditate anymore. Is it even possible to find perfect peace?
I met a man once who sure seemed like he found it. His name was Bill McCleod. He had been a pastor in a Baptist Church in Canada – not much into Buddhist meditation, I suspect. So, what was his secret? He never really gave an answer to that question in my presence (I spent time with him on three occasions) but my guess is that he might have directed us to the book of Isaiah and not a book on meditation.
You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you. Isaiah 26:3
Isaiah tells us that perfect peace comes from a mind fixed not on a candle, or a tree, or a mountain sunset. It comes from fixing our mind on God.
How the heck does thinking about God 24/7 do that, you ask? Good question, grasshoppa. I will happily answer that in tomorrow’s post.
————————–
If you would like to communicate further about this or any other issues, please email me at jimshaul@gmail.com and we can chat.
If you would like to read more of my thoughts, please visit my blog: https://jimshaul.org and follow me there.
If you appreciate my posts, please consider Liking them and sharing them below if you think they could be a blessing to others.
For His glory,
Jim