Wasting time

Something is wreaking havoc in me today.

Getting work done was impossible, and when I let myself play the internal mayhem was even worse. I was agitated, unfocused and down right bitchy.

On a perfectly perfect summer day too! I had no obligations, no classes to teach or sessions to give. 

But a full scale mental war was on inside of me. I started to clean things. Sort out closets and drawers, sort piles of paperwork, started an art project, then a poem.

All to be abandoned. Allowing a self loathing festival to begin! The songs playing were ancient dirges reviving long dead rules and mantras.

“Waste not want not” - "Cleanliness is next to Godliness”

Woeful tunes and a requiem to the energy pattern that had played out in my youth. Undiagnosed at the onset, but the hyper-ness and unfocused action we might now call anxiety and PTSD were familiar song and dances to me.

I was so sick of myself that yesterday. All the things that weren’t getting done were annoying me and felt like just giant magnifiers with megaphones all yelling the same thing.

STOP. Sit. Shhhhhhhh. 

Can you say triggered. The day was pristine. My husband had just announced he had been invited to go golfing, and the petri dish was ripe for my irrational response, which was to panic. I didn’t wanting him to go but not knowing yet why. He left and the story of my past unfolded.

My mom died when I was very young and my dad was at golf on a perfect day in the throws of a wide open day on a summer morning. This acknowledgement gave me permission to actually stop. And I did.

So I thought I might share some Inspired Soul insights that arose out of the diplomacy attempts that ensued. As I grappled with the forces that pulled me to and fro to achieve everything or anything, I became weary.  

I thought about wisdom and all the wise people who had come before me. About my work with trauma and helping clients through just such energy patterns.

My teachers books lined my shelves, as I walked by fingering their spines. But I couldn’t settle down, too hyper to even read. 

It was 2:30 in the afternoon. I walked into sit on the bed to meditate and a large picture/poetry book of the Tao has made it’s way to my bedside table and ended up in my hand. It’s full of large scale photos, calligraphy with short simple poems. But even that felt too overwhelming to open it. I held it and closed my eyes. Too strained for use my Transcendental meditation mantra, too sad to even look at sun glowing green through the sheer curtains in the height of the growing season, at the top of the day. I surrendered.

Stopped. Sat. Shhhhhh.

The Tao; defined as 'the absolute principles underlying the universe'. Also often translated as ‘The Way'. Yes the way… I need a way.

I held the book unopened. Close my eyes. Recognizing the pattern of energy running in me. A list maker, a pleaser, a girl who could become invisible and a whip cracking bully. I sensed how sadness can come even when everything is ideal.

The pressure to keep busy and get everything done was slipping out of me and into the made bed that held me. I had made my bed. I allowed my self to feel like I was good, for a moment, good enough. To sit inside, in a dark room, in bed in the middle of the most beautiful day. Wasting time. I work almost everyday of the week and fill in the gaps with clients, writing and chores. I love love love my work so. It’s kind of the sneaky way I have subverted my inner work-a-colic. But to drop the whip, rebuke the sharp tongue, rip up the mental to do list was not just challenging, I had been triggered, emotionally, psychically and viscerally. Something deeply buried was rising to the surface on this perfect day! The book heavy in my hand, the full surrender to just receive what was coming and allow the memories to come. The opposite of the perfect storm! A perfect answer. Could I be ready.

I have funded this account and I would be tapping into my vault of savings from my practices. Yoga, meditation, and more… All things I try to do daily.

To practice.

Build a  reserve fund for surrendering. Time may not wait. But maybe it should be wasted. Treating it like it is so, so abundant.

Good weather will come again and again again. 

Treating time and our precious life force like there is enough, and there always will be plenty.

Slow down and even stop the crazy. Shhhhhh. 

This is the Way I want to roll. 

quote from the Tao- translation by Gia-fu Feng and Jane English. Photo Jane English. c.1972.

"Therefore she who knows that enough is enough will always have enough.”

Be it time, money, friendship, love. 

practicing....  a way…

 JoJo