When we learn to make decisions by developing sensitivity to circumstances and by trusting our inner nature, we gradually and almost imperceptibly become more patient. And this is very important, because there are decisions that we cannot make yet, simply because the inner preconditions for them have not ripened.
I call these “ripe pear” decisions. When a pear ripens and the time comes for it to fall from the tree, it does not hesitate about whether to fall or not. With no effort at all, surrendering lovingly to gravity, it falls. Simply because the moment of falling has finally arrived. And that moment has arrived because the pear has already ripened.
In my practice, I have clients who torment themselves with various questions – whether to leave their job or not, whether to leave their partner or not, whether to do this or not do it… When we talk a little, it becomes clear that they are not able to make the decision because something inside them keeps changing its mind and wanting opposite things. When they succeed in uniting the opposites within themselves and a new outlook on life is born from this union, the decision takes itself. It falls to the ground like a ripe pear.
To develop patience, we need trust. The two go together. I remember worrying whether I might give birth to my baby at home if I failed to recognize when the moment of birth had come. I had armed myself with all kinds of books explaining how to recognize this extremely unclear moment for me. What finally “settled” me were the words of a friend who already had two children: “When the moment comes, there is no way you won’t know; without any doubt, you will know that it is time to go to the hospital.” And that is exactly what happened.
This is what I mean by making decisions by the method of the ripe pear – by allowing the true decision to ripen in the depths of our subconscious. When the moment comes, the right decision emerges on its own. Like a newborn baby that has grown for a long time in the mother’s womb, it comes into the world complete. The baby was planned, it was awaited, but a certain amount of time had to pass for the extraordinarily complex process of forming its body to be fully completed.
The time for “birth” comes when the inner processes of ripening have already been completed. And this applies not only to our children; it applies even more to the birth of our new identity. If we try to force decisions before clarity has crystallized in the depths of our psyche, we will make a series of wrong choices. But if we act in synchrony with natural processes, everything happens in a natural way – lightly and spontaneously.
Like the falling of a ripe pear to the ground.
Kameliya Hadzhiyska
