Wow I am so tired. New projects. Big ones. Goals. Agendas. Exhaustion. It’s all kind of taken over and as I have a moment of stillness I initially feel washed up on shore, frazzled, jumbled, flotsam and jetsam tangled in my hair. Not still. Then, little by little, quiet seeps and finally settles in.
I’m sitting down to write, the first chance in something like two weeks, and I literally have…uh…zip. When I don’t take quiet time with myself, time to read, time to be (which my conditioning finds so challenging in the midst of chaos I want to order), the creative energy flatlines. Barbara Sher always said, “isolation is a dream killer”, but so is constant activity.
If I sit here long enough, listening, tapping away, it will start to come alive again—attended to and noticed—this energy that electrifies and spills out on the page.
And maybe today is just about ebbs and flows. Today, for sure, is an ebb.
Everyone has their own rhythms, their own songs to sing, their own time to sow and time to reap, fallow fields and all that—not just in a lifetime, or a decade or a month, but in the span of each day, each hour, moment to moment.
And oh, the knife-edge of that.
The brain does so well, and so poorly at the same time. Without its commander in chief, intuitive heart/awareness, it’s very much lost at sea. A sea, I might add, rife with equally unaware and sometimes shark-like entities just waiting to snatch up control of and profit from the brain’s addictive desire for goals, for seeking, for achievement, approval…all of it. This brain is an excellent sous-chef, but not so great when in charge of the kitchen. Too many cooks, etc.
Reconnection with heart, with Nature, with intuition, with Self, is what’s needed. Stillness.
For me, right now, and for the world. It’s happening on both fronts, and as we swim individually and collectively in and out of the current of current events (as in “external” affairs) and current events (as in Reality/Flow), if we’re paying attention, we become more attuned to the song of the Now, and it becomes sweeter and sweeter to just simply be Here.
While I find it helpful to hold space with a constantly amended, rough-outline-scheduley-thing as a cue to guard against wall-hitting and depletion (as I find otherwise I can easily go unconscious and work-horse into oblivion), living in flow is quite another animal altogether. Over-focus on agendas and goals is anathema to BEing. And oh Lord, have I been a doer.
Everything happens in the always-complete whole of Now.
In the Now of inspiration, intuition, observed self-action… Am I living in awareness of that? In relaxation and rest? No guilt, blame or shame, but despite my intellectual knowledge of it, often I’m not. My entire young adult life was, as is true for many, about DOing. Get degrees, buy a house, write this paper, read this book, get here, go there, do this, do that. Get ’er done. It’s how my persona was conditioned. I catch my small self regularly, over-focused on an agenda or a goal, wanting—needing— to shut out or push past What Is, right Now. And then the dreaded regret-trap for doing that. Ayiyiyi. It’s okay.
Gentleness. Kindness. Here.
This Now is the only life I will ever have. Arguing with What Is is not how I want to spend it. So I’m continuing this giving up. Giving in. To What Is. To Reality. As Byron Katie says, “If you argue with Reality, you lose. But only 100% of the time”. You don’t say…
Scheduling to hold space is great. Adjusting that in the moment is great. Accomplishing tasks is great. Making a list, checking it twice—great. All of it can be intuitively inspired, but none of it is the point. The point is Here. The point is Life living via this “me” form and everything around that me. Joy is being in that awareness, even when I’m not. Thankful. Enjoying. Now. Just effortlessly noticing, floating in the current of Here.