Day 324/366 days Towards Self-Mastery.
"Be still and shut up and everything that you need will come to you," thus is the advice of Sadhguru. I couldn't love this advice more. It's the antithesis of all our striving in the western world. As I practice trusting in this wisdom I step more and more into a world that supports my emotional, mental and metaphysical evolution.
We are so driven by goals and planning and expectations and deadlines. We're kept so busy that we often don't realise we are not stopping for that life giving breath that we take for granted several times per minute.
We have a saying... stop and smell the roses. We've forgotten to stop and enjoy life just as it is. Instead we're reaching for something that we are currently not. We are eager to reach a future, a future that never arrives because our eagerness is never satisfied.
We have rationed sick days off and conditions to fulfil should we prove to be as untrustworthy as our culture expects. Do you know that in Sweden there is no cap to the annual sick leave. It seems that in Sweden this is yet another piece of evidence that its citizens are treated as responsible adults who are expected to do the right thing.
Do you know that in Australia, according to the minister of police, only 1% of the population occupy all their time. 1% !! That means all the rules are made for that 1%. The rest of us get on with life and do the socially right thing.
Take a day off for your mental and emotional well-being often! And do it without feeling guilty that you are cheating the system. Do it just to break the god-damn rules once in a while. It's good for your soul.
Do whatever you want. Organise the children to school or daycare or swap with another mum who needs to play hooky as well sometime. Binge on Netflix all day, walk in the bush, take a spa, sleep, schedule a makeover, potter in the garden or around the house. Bake a cake. Do whatever it takes to totally switch off from all your responsibilities and daily schedules and rest your weary bones until you feel it in your soul.
Recently I posted about some advice that a therapist gave their client - to run the dishwasher twice instead of facing a big pile of dishes to rinse in advance and never get to, because in their depression right now that was too big a step. The self-appointed environmental police went berserk! There's always someone who wants to police you, so you have to find the naughtiness in yourself to buck the system and feel ok about it once in a while. No one is going to give you permission except yourself.
My commitment to being the good girl drove me to work too hard, to wear my years of shift work without time off sick as a badge of honour and it ended with me being completely burned out. Don't do that. When you have family responsibilities you need to care for yourself first.
Nowadays I wallow in idleness. I work a short week and wander through life. I love this quote from Kurt Vonnegut.
Life is a garden not a road. We enter and exit through the same gate. Wandering, where we go matters less than what we notice.
That is my anthem. My life is a garden and I love it that way. My time is spent occupied entirely with those activities that interest me. And I am noticing and learning and expanding on a daily basis. I am living more fully every single day.
This idleness is truly sacred.
366 days Towards Self-Mastery
When I considered my New Year's intentions for 2020 I had just one: To allow my heart to love what it loved...and let it lead me. (If not now, then when?)
I've spent months working on integrating my life. To live life more fully with my home life, my interests, my work, my responsibilities, all coming together, all connected. I want to give each the attention that they desire and need, and still have time and energy for the others. That means living and working from the heart.
As I was clearing out my bookshelf over the Christmas break I discovered Simple Abundance. I set it aside to explore it on New Year's Day as I lazed through another delicious day of nothingness. Sarah, the author, says this book is about living in grace. Living in grace I realised, is about Self-Mastery.
My thirst for understanding the human condition has driven me all my life, and hand-in-hand with self-mastery it has been a life-long goal. And seeing as I love to write, that living in grace is about self-mastery, and I love a bit of a challenge, then if I am truly going to let my heart lead, I really don't have any other choice. So scary as it feels, I'm starting out on a daily mission of leaning into the suggestions of this daybook and making a daily post to keep me accountable. If not now, then when?
I'm Josie. You can find out a little more about me here.
Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy: by Sarah Ban Breathnach.
This book is written for the Australian and NZ market because it refers to seasonal changes. It's available on Amazon here if you'd like to follow along.