Infinite Patience
There's a line in A Course in Miracles that sounds a bit like a contradiction.
Infinite patience produces immediate effects.
Patience, as we usually think of it, means waiting. Gritting our teeth. Hanging on a little longer ... hoping things eventually turn around. Immediate is the opposite of that. So how could one produce the other?
Because infinite patience isn't waiting longer. It's no longer demanding that anything arrive.
Ordinary patience still has a clock running. It's the me, tapping its foot, telling itself to stay calm while it waits for what it wants. A better job. A healed body. An apology. Whatever. Of course, that's not really patience ... it's impatience with good manners.
Infinite patience has no clock. Nothing is owed. Nothing needs to show up first.
And the moment we stop insisting, the peace we'd been holding out for is already here. Not because it finally arrived. Because it never left.
That's the immediate effect.