slow and awake
July 9, 2008my body and my spirit want me to slow down – to find a way to be awake, alert, aware and slow at the same time.
I don’t feel like i know how to do this – I am good at speedy/driven or total collapse, the extremes. I run in circles (even when sitting still) – always doing (even when I don’t accomplish much). Escape from the chaos of speed means collapse – a wave of fatigue that overwhelms me when I am overwhelmed.
I got the lesson early in life (and ongoing) that the way to deal with problems is to do, to push through, to just keep moving. I need to understand and fix, I need to either focus and do or avoid, hide and collapse.
I have a knowing deep inside that this is not the way that I am to live my life. That this is not the way towards health and wellness, that i need to slow down and find a way to stay awake to my life. This feels scary and unattainable but there are places in my life where I am able to do this. Spinning, gardening, magic, tai chi.
There are lessons and deep wisdom in the earth. worms slide through the earth in slow but deliberate movements, seeds wait until the ground is warm and wet enough before reaching slowly up and down, the plates move with grinding constancy, effecting massive change with slow intention.
I can and do live this way even though I am so familiar with the extremes. The path to ecstasy is slow and easeful but requires presence, aliveness and being awake.
Well, I am with you on the lesson learned was keep moving, keep pushing and ignore the rest. Since I am now sick (no not ill but like have fevers all the time), perhaps there is some wisdom to be learned, but how do I FIND the half speed button on my life?
“I am so familiar with the extremes.” HaHAHA – I mean, yes, yes, yes. But it leaves me twitching on the floor, which is getting old. Are you saying there is something OTHER than extremes?
Beth – other than extremes? well – that’s what ‘they’ tell me! I have had glimpses of it but it is usually accompanied by the feeling that i am doing something wrong – am I really going to get in trouble for sitting in my garden with a cup of coffee? really?!
One of my teachers said that the goddess (or whomever) will tap you gently on the shoulder, and if you don’t listen she’ll smack you upside the head and if you still don’t get it she’ll pull out her ‘holy sacred 2 x 4′ – the only step after that is the mystical mac truck… i’m afraid that we may have been hit by the mac truck!
I KNOW that we all have a half-speed button but that doesn’t mean i know where to find it! She didn’t leave the map when she hit me with the truck – perhaps the challenge we are getting is to find it – then we get to rest in it.
The prayer that i often return to is for ‘ease’. Easefulness in living, in dying, in loving. Ease in moving through the lessons and challenges this life is presenting. I wish for ease for you.
Christina