Doing nothing and resting are not the same thing. This is a profound shift for me.
I know in my body and soul that the world is on the precipice of either an extraordinary shift to freedom or sinking deeper into the vast, debilitating constriction we live in today. A critical piece in the change towards freedom is to correct the extreme imbalance between masculine and feminine energies. There is so much gender baggage in those terms, I use them cautiously. However, I use them here because they encompass all the other pairings of polarity:
Left Brain / Right Brain
Action / Rest
Directing / Receiving
Yin / Yang
Binary Code 1 and 0
On / Off
I use these more descriptive pairings to convey more specific polarities needing balance.
The most extreme imbalance I experience is between action and rest. The cultural conditioning to 'do something' has been so ingrained in me that I didn't really know how to rest. And I'm still learning. My pattern for as long as I can remember was to either be doing something or feeling guilty for not doing something. When I wasn't doing something, I'd be thinking about the long list of things I should be doing. The only way I did 'rest' was to go into complete shutdown. I would sit in front of the TV or play solitaire on the phone for hours This was a way to stop the endless cycle of my brain worrying about what I wasn't doing. And I called it rest. But in fact, it is just more doing. I'm just doing nothing.
For me, one of the blessings of COVID has been the opportunity to learn what rest is. The planet has said to so many of us, "Slow down.", It gave me the permission I never gave myself to reduce the amount of doing without the guilt. It gave me a new opening into understanding rest. Rest is a state of being where I receive energy from the creation and the Earth to replenish and rejuvenate myself. The form of rest varies. Sometimes it looks like that old shut-down in front of an electronic screen. Sometimes it looks like meditation. Sometimes it looks like gardening or taking a walk. All of which I have always done. And have received some replenishment.
The difference is that now I have given myself permission to just be with it. I'm not thinking about all the things I'll do next. I'm not trying so hard to rest. I just AM resting. I feel more fluid, more well-rested, and more ease than I ever have before.
I have not entirely broken free of the pervasive cultural obsession to be doing something. That voice in my head at the end of a day, in particular a weekend day, will still ask, "What did I do today?" I worry that I didn't accomplish all that I set out to. 'I didn't..., I didn't..., I didn't...' Yet having experienced the benefits of real rest, I've begun to breathe through the guilt and judgment and let it pass. I generally find that I've done some of what I had on this list. And almost always find that I have done what needs to be done. I have begun to now also ask as well, "How much did I rest? Do I feel rejuvenated? Did I do what my soul guided me to do?'
When I can answer yes to those questions, I find that I in fact feel rejuvenated. When the answer is no, I don't feel rejuvenated. I am learning how to find that balance of action and rest every day. At least now, I know what the balance feels like., what real rest feels like. I can extend that knowing of balance to the other polarities of masculine/feminine, like directing/receiving and providing/nurturing.
The more I can be in that balance, the more it sinks into my cells, into my being and it can anchor there. I can then offer it as a blessing to all those willing to receive it. My hope, my intention, for the planet is that we all learn to rest. That we, and by that I mean I, remember that all of the polarities must be in balance for us (me) to be whole. As part of that offering here is a meditation I've been doing frequently these last four months with both directing and receiving energies. I offer it to anyone who finds it a blessing in allowing freedom to enter their being.
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