The Still Point

I don’t know what to call the journey I am on. I’ve been writing about it for years at this point.

Is it a spiritual awakening journey? Is it a personal development journey? Is it the journey into motherhood? Is it a body or healing journey? Is it my online journal?

At this moment I’m inclined to say it is simply: my life journey.

It is the journey of living a life with more and more conscious awareness.

It is my singular and simple expression of an internal searching and finding process.

After many years of big explosions, realizations, changes, transformations and alchemizations, I have reached a Still Point.

The image that comes to mind is me, as a surfer, having paddled through and traversed the intensity of the breakers, sitting on my surfboard, water still and clear as glass around me. Being able to see far into the horizon in all directions.

I can see from a more steady place what I have been through, where I have been, and ultimately what I have created for myself.

No one else created this for me.

I did.

I did the work.

I used my arms, my legs, my sheer force of will, my devotion to something bigger than me, to get myself here.

And now, I need and get to really take it all in.

From this location I am at now, I really have the blessing of being able to see everything from a new vantage point.

There are times in our life we get to really appreciate what we’ve built and what we’ve created; the good, the bad and the ugly, and I have reached one of these points on my life journey.

I’ve been inquiring into the deepest reaches of my heart and soul why it is that I share and what it is that I’m sharing.

There is so much noise in our world.

So many inputs coming from all sides.

There is a cacophony of voices with strong opinions and activating ideas. And there are plenty of platforms for these voices to be projected and spewed out upon the world.

There are a select few voices saying things I feel deeply need to be said and heard. These voices seed more love, more authenticity, and more realization that we are, in fact, all walking each other home.

There are far more voices out there that just love to hear themselves talk and are using their words to prop up their small-s-self aggrandizement. Or feeling like, if they aren’t heard, they don’t exist.

The amount of voices overwhelms me, as I’m sure it does you. We are all so desensitized to this constant inflow of other people’s expression that we can’t really be discerning, let alone really process what we consume.

We are all walking around absolutely stuffed to brim of other peoples’ ideas, tips and tricks, little quotes, funny video clips, pings from messages bombarding us every few minutes, and sound bites.

Without a still point, a serious pause to digest, a chance to look up from the waves of life that have been crashing over our heads, it’s hard to really understand where we are in time and space.

I have been feeling that my spiritual body has been quite far ahead of my physical form for sometime now. I believe this to be a puzzle piece in the mosaic of the contributors to my health crash 3 years ago and part of my continued health issues. I said to a friend the other day that it’s like my spiritual body clock is at 10pm and my physical body clock is at 4pm.

I don’t necessarily think it is true for our spiritual and physical bodies to be perfectly synced, but there is a point at which we have to take some space to really allow our vessels to catch up.

It is clear to me this is where I have landed.

Doubling down on the explosive spiritual awakenings at this point in my journey would be like trying to escape the season of winter.

All things in nature go through cycles and part of these cycles are always a period of rest and release. The trees drop their leaves. The energy is drawn in toward center. The grass up top dies. The uterine lining sheds. There is a pause, a darkness. A re-gathering of strength for next rebirth cycle.

When we override this truth in micro or macro ways there will always be consequences.

On a macro level we see this with our collective societies’ obsession with always being up-and-to-the-right! More money! Bigger companies! Greater “influence”! More likes! More “engagement”!

On a micro level it’s our obsession with coffee and stimulants and the idea that we can’t trust our bodies and their needs for rest, space, nature, food, breaks and screen free down time.

“It must be something else making fatigued and exhausted! It must be an infection or complicated hormonal issue! It couldn’t possibly that my physical body’s basic needs aren’t met with the processed food, 10 hours of screen time a day, and 6 hours of sleep I give it each night!”

Stimulants actually only feel good to people who have low energy, because it gives you a short term expensive boost to where you actually would always be if you had sufficient energy. If you have adequate, organic energy, stimulants make you feel jittery, shaky, uneasy, and paranoid and you would avoid them.

[Read more about this idea of burnout here]

I believe part of the reason “uppers” are so addictive is because of how collectively burnt out we are. People do cocaine and for the first time they have a plethora of energy. It’s not organic energy but it’s something more than burnt out.

When we are burnt out we will consciously and unconsciously seek out things that will stimulate energy production in our bodies.

We will reach for caffeine, sugar, simple carbohydrates, drama, chaos, and situations that activate a sympathetic nervous system response. Because these things gives us false energy.

Burn out is different from simply being tired or fatigued. It is beyond fatigue. The body is really in a place where it has no charge, no juice. This is the potential place we end up in when we don’t listen to the whispers and knocks from the fatigue our body is showing us.

And so I am in this place of listening. I have been listening. But there is a new intensity with which I am listening to the body. I am listening on even a subtler level.

I can feel how I am actually on the precipice of a totally new imprint here with my body.

I have been in and out of burnout since adolescence. I believe this was one of the reasons I started abusing substances at the age of 13.

I have an imprint of going hard, pushing myself, partially because of how exhausted I always was. I had to create extra pressure so that my body could rev up enough to have any energy at all. And this carried on into my spiritual work as an adult. I used the activation of spiritual work as the spark to rev up my engine.

I’m not mad about this. I don’t think I made any mistakes. I have grown and expanded so much.

It’s all perfect here. It can be true to push. It is true to expand. It is true to dig up old ways of being and do the work to integrate them. It is true to really transform myself again and again and be reborn. There is a time in life when it’s appropriate to rev the engine and go!

However, more activation would actually be the easier and more comfortable thing for me to choose at this moment.

My mind wants the stimulation of it all.

On the surface my body craves the action, so that I may avoid the stillness, which within it may have fatigue, exhaustion, but what will also have space, peace, and gathering of information.

How much do we crave spaciousness only to fill every inch of it with scrolling and spending?

How much do we ask for more time only to schedule every inch full when we get some?

How uncomfortable is true peace for most of us because it is simply so unfamiliar?

These are the inquiries I’m interested in right now as I sit in this Still Point on life’s journey.

I will choose peace this time.

I will choose spaciousness.

I will choose to allow my body’s its exhaustion and its gathering of strength for what is to come.