In a world where it seems we always must be doing something for life to mean something, rest can get lost. Like really really lost. We’re always trying to get things done, and see people, and go places, and send emails, and hop on a plane, and deal with clients, and run errands, and tend to loved ones, and ughhh. Where does it stop? Where does the light shine on the not so cliched cliché of self-love and self-care. Yes, exactly as you read it. Rest is an act of self-care. And we can all agree that act of self-care is a pretty loving thing to do for ourselves. But I don’t have time. No darling you do. You’re just either consciously or unconsciously not carving out the time because either your mind is programmed to always be doing something (surplus in masculine energy) or the need to do and overdo and then do more shows up as behavioral autopilot probably as a trauma response or defense mechanism (will get into that and what do you know, masculine energy again).
There’s an interesting notion that is engraved into our life perspective, especially to anyone on a more spiritual journey, that everything around us is energy. Feelings are energy. Our interactions with people are a flow of energy. Going out for a run is moving energy. Our thoughts are a chain of energy. And there’s our own energy which I hope we all seek to keep balanced and grounded (whatever that looks like for you). So in 2020, I lost my father- my favorite human being on the planet. I was so distraught that I had initially chosen to shove away all my emotions and not share my loss because all I would hear is his voice telling me to go be happy and have fun. I made the unhealthy choice to go about shoving my unprocessed emotions away in the pursuit of seeking some unfelt version of happiness. Not a bad way to go about life, per se, but on a deeper level, I was doing nothing but suffocating myself. And guess what happens when something overflows beyond capacity, it explodes.
Before I hit my breaking point, I made it a point to always need to do something because rest and pausing meant reflection and reflection meant thinking of the saddest thing going on in my life at the time, and sadness meant feeling deep, and feeling deep sadness meant I would veer off from my falsified perception of happiness. Scary as fuck to someone who is trying to avoid feeling not so cute emotions at all costs. Even though my personal development and spiritual journey started in the quarantine and I was flourishing with mindfulness, I forgot the meaning of taking a slow controlled breath for almost 10 months.
Just as I touched upon briefly, my masculine energy was flaring so high that I lost touch with myself, my feelings, my own fucking feminine energy. And I remember that the most annoying part was that deep down inside, I wanted to stop but I just couldn’t find the way to. Usually in scenarios like that with a silent intention, the universe then has no choice but to intervene, so after getting excited about and attached to a guy I was seeing at the time, boom he decides to move to the other side of the world. Fast forward almost a year and a half later, thank you dude. Thanks to you, you finally made that wound of abandonment burn so hard that my bottled up emotions just had to erupt. So I cried a lot and slowly started sharing my story of loss one soul at a time. Every little thing began reminding me of my father. Like everything and even the most random things ever. There was a constant “what’s the point of happy news if I can’t share it with my favorite person?”, and despite my grief, there were a lot of amazing external transitions going on.
So I began slowly trying to get a grip of what was going on but the core root now that I reflect on it all was a lack of acceptance of what was and that all that was actually was part of my story. And part of my story was somehow choosing to let go of this self-inflicted guilt of of all the lost time with my father and learning to live with grief, as opposed to punishing myself by overexerting and doing. The basis was understanding that life was not happening to punish me or that unfortunate events were out there to get me because I deserved it. It was just part of my process. Ugh. So much pain and depth to unpack. I know. It. Is. A. Lot. Guys we do not deserve anything that happens to us. It just is, and although we can’t control it, we can control how we react to life. The key to it all is acceptance. Acceptance of the unfolding of our lives and our participation in each and every one of our unique plots. We are not meant to identify with our sad or traumatic events. We are just living them.
And that’s where it all falls into place. Just living=just being=sometimes doing absolutely nothing. Not to say that it takes having a major life transformation is what it takes to finally let all this sink in, but that’s what it took me and you know what, another thing I’m grateful for. Ultimately, I want to transmute the importance of rest on a day to day basis because in accepting myself, I stopped myself from that incessant need of fighting against what is or needing to do something to prove to life that I’m worthy. In rest, I was finally able to connect deeper with myself and take inspired, creative action to get closer to my dreams. In rest, I wrote a book and published this blog. In rest, we find ourselves and allow life to just sink in. In rest, we allow all those intense and scary parts to feel seen and heard. We allow them to come to the surface to be loved because there’s absolutely no reason why we should judge ourselves. But how are we going to shed those layers that unconsciously may be deterring us from living if we don’t allow ourselves the time to slow down and breatheeee.
You are worthy of rest and you need rest. We need to recharge to create harmony between the balance of being (feminine energy) and doing (masculine energy), because that is where we thrive. And when you thrive, we thrive. And when you thrive, the world thrives. So please if you haven’t taken a moment to yourself in a long time, cancel all plans and make it a point to just immerse yourself in nothingness. The world can wait. Your inner peace is more valuable than trying to keep up with the hustle and bustle of it all.
Take a breather. Stay in bed all day. Order delivery for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Do absolutely nothing. You deserve it.
