BUSY VS STILL

I have been struggling for balance for the last few months....... withdrawing from the world as i know it...... the PTA, the committees, the responsibilities, the doings, the appointments, the cramming in of MORE and MORE AND MORE...... I have moved away from a warm friendship because the need for busy-ness in my friend's life made me feel too close to the maelstrom and too battered just going around for a cup of tea left me picking bits of debris out of my hair for hours afterwards.......
Yesterday on Inner breath, yet another course with Connie we were discu
ssing the need to slow down in painting - the possibility of painting as meditative practise and how many of us on the course are feeling pushed away from the busy.... how difficult we find this in a world of goal-driven-achievement-focused-doing-stuff-freneticness ......

It has been bought home to me hugely by the wonderful workshop i am doing with Pixie Campbell .... we are working with the medicine of the North at the moment... the place of the elder... the place of sitting with our own wisdom..... and even typing those words evokes a stillness i can't describe (i have been in the midst of a raging virus too - my body REALLY wanted me to sit still this week!) .... In the discussion thread the beautiful and ever wise Lis said


all the striving and pushing is about that - about wanting to make myself more lovable, more acceptable ... when the truth is, as we are we are enough, we are deserving of all the love of the universe and we just need to accept it rather than grab at it.

so we can be co-sponsors for each other in Over-strivers Anonymous! And being still is hard because then we are left to face what we are moving through - the feelings, the fears, the shame or sadness - what i am learning through this challenge with my mother is that by bowing down to all that arises, acknowledging its presence, somehow space opens up for me to hold more ... and often that something more is gratitude, joy, magic, beauty, ...

.................

isn't that profound?......All that striving, all that filling every stinking second with sound and movement and ever more dizzying circles of stuff, the bleeps and the rings that constantly call us away from any prolonged concentration, the tiredness that we wear like a badge of honour and courage... ALL OF IT IS THERE TO STOP US FEELING AND SEEING OUR DEEPEST WOUNDS AND TO STUFF ANOTHER SOCK IN THE MOUTH OF OUR PAIN.....

i also had the thought on Inner breath yesterday that we are drawn to the stillness, to the stopping when we are more and more open to the divine.... to the ancient, timeless, stillness of the Divine.... the more the Divine lives in and is expressed in us the more we slow.... the more we feel the rhythm of the breath of life in us.... in.... and out..... the more our hearts are at ease where they lie rather than being distracted from their business of beating out the sound of the magic of life every second we are alive.... HERE IS TO SLOW. HERE IS TO STILL. HERE IS TO SITTING WITH THE REAL STUFF OF LIFE, THE HOLDING OUR CHILDREN, THE FOCUS ON THE BREATH, THE REALLY SEEING THE GREEN IN THE GRASS AND THE BLUE IN THE SKY AND BEING PRESENT TO THE MIRACLE OF THAT AND OF OUR HEARTS BEATING AND OUR BLOOD FLOWING