Trust & Deep Rest

Have you ever felt like no matter what you do, you are just running in circles, looking at the same view from slightly different angles, gradually losing the will to start again because it will just be the same old thing? You’ve changed the scenery so many times, and are beginning to realize it all boils down to you as the common denominator. And while all that self-help wisdom says the one thing we can change is ourselves, you just don’t seem to be able to make the shift.

That’s exactly how I feel about my compulsion to work. Working harder, working more, working with different people or working a different job or project always seems like the solution to whatever is bothering me. I am so certain it’s the answer to my isolation, my existential longings, and my lack of security that when I get going, I don’t feel fatigue or hunger, and I often jump into projects when I’m most agitated in order to experience the relief of feeling focused, productive, doing something about it.

I also live for the idea of finding the perfect project or offering, for the feeling of “this is IT!” and the high of giving it my all at the expense of everything else. Near the end of my marriage, I remember being unable to relax on vacation and thinking it was a problem with our relationship. I was high on a challenging leadership position, service to my community, and taking graduate courses and feeling like I was really going someone and becoming someone while in reality I was neglecting my health, relationships, and spiritual life. After the devastation of losing my job, relationship, and home in a spiritual community, all I could focus on was planning my new life even though my center was shattered.

I remember my sister, who I was staying with at the time, imploring me: “Nancy. Just STOP!” But I couldn’t. And I still can’t even though I am becoming less and less effective at orchestrating and body is literally burnt out. I am driven by the need to dig my roots into something to feel secure, enslaved by the belief that what I am doing determines my value and my identity.

Understandably, I am working one hell of a 12-step program, in two fellowships. I’m doing daily readings, prayer, meditation, outreach calls, writing, meetings. But what I can’t seem to do is keep promises to myself around downtime. Every time I slow down to make space, I am filled with restlessness or anxiety, or flooded with new ideas I want to jump on right away despite feeling exhausted.

When I admitted to my sponsor that I’m ashamed over needing intervention to hold me accountable and teach me how to take a day off to relax and enjoy myself, she tells me, “Oh, you are so not the only one.”

Our society is so wound up. So many people I talk to are talking so fast, even as they admit they are exhausted. They work a 12-hour day and then stay amped on crime dramas. Coffee in the morning and energy herbs in the afternoon. Everyone seems thrilled by the idea of a new adventure or project, of self-improvement, of doing it all, and of how to be big and bright.

Nancy. Just STOP. What will it take for me to pump the brakes while the whole world seems to be rushing past me and threatening to leave me behind? And when I feel empty and lost without the rush of some new venture?

During one of my journeys, I was a limp and struggling little herd animal being dragged along by tribe, until a giant lioness lifted me gently in her jaws by my scruff and carried me up onto the plateau. We sat there together in the fresh air, watching the herd trail out towards the horizon. There was so much light and infinite space there, and I felt every part of me let go.

I can let Mystery help me find a home and friends and a purpose: those warm and fuzzy things that make life worth living. But those nitty, gritty troublesome earthly things I have to do to survive? I have been taught through years of structured, competitive schooling and jobs it’s up to me to scratch tooth and nail from the dirt or die lonely and in obscurity. Only what I’ve been doing isn’t working and I don’t know what else to do.

I can’t recall ever feeling the type of fear I feel now. It’s this deep sense that if I stop striving, planning, orchestrating, aspiring I will wither away and die, forgotten at the bottom of the heap. Or worse – failing to live my purpose and potential, and somehow violating a divine law. I am exhausted and disoriented. And something in me senses that in all this activity and planning, I am making it impossible to receive help because I am not leaving any space for the magic, serendipity, divine intervention so many others speak of to get involved.

So I started a new practice: daily gratitudes focused on the ways I see an intelligent goodness beyond me working in my life. And guess what I discovered? Magic. Right here under my nose, all along.

• It’s the phone call with a new FB friend that turns into a coaching package.
• It’s my angst over my cramped living conditions followed by the unsolicited offer of an office space in my home, with air conditioner, for no additional rent.
• It’s the administrative side gig I take for a friend that brings us into conversations about health and cracks open my own healing.
• It’s the prolonged shelter-in-place that’s improving my health and giving me remote work experience.
• It’s all the little things from a breeze to a tasty snack to a perfectly timed call from a friend.

So, I’ve decided I’m not job-hunting anymore. I’m not house-hunting. I’m not researching training programs or drafting articles to get discovered. I’ve even trashed my marketing plan. I’ve done everything I can to shift my obsessive with trying to fix my life, with trying to manifest what I think I want and need. It’s time to let go and trust that whatever comes is for the greater good; to let something else do the work.

I don’t know exactly what that “something else” is. I don’t think I’ll ever know and I think that’s part of the point. But what I do know that every time I facilitate an inner journey I am amazed by what is revealed through the images that come to both of us. It feels like something intelligent and benevolent is trying to reach us through this visual language. I feel it move through my body in a gentle, melting wave when I become still and listen. I sense it uncovering insights for me when I wander alone in nature and hear others speak from their heart. And I experience the fatigue and tension lift when I begin to trust and reach back: “Please, show me how to enjoy today, in the middle of everything” and an hour later I find myself making up a silly song about a situation that used to annoy me.

If you are feeling lost, alone, overwhelmed, I invite you to give this practice a try. Every evening, write down all the ways you have experienced life itself caring for you, bringing what you needed in ways you never could have foreseen or planned for yourself. You may just start with one or two like I did, but as you become more attentive, more will be revealed.

If you are like me, you may just find yourself watching and listening more closely. And you might feel yourself a bit more like that scrawny yearling on the plateau, looking toward the horizon and simply knowing, somewhere deep inside, that the lioness will carry you through whatever trouble arises.

So that for today, even if just for a moment, you can stop… and rest more deeply than you ever have before.

Nancy