Life is an ebb and flow…

When we forget and go full speed, with all of our energy, attention, and force without rest or compassion or grace for ourselves, we face what people call burnout. The flame is dulled, the fires of the heart numbed, and things start to go wrong… yet we keep g-o-i-n-g (why do we do that?). A weekend, a vacation, a kind-hearted friend, retail therapy, or even a run might provide balm temporarily but at some point deep rest will be required. We get a choice until it’s too late, until our body, mind, and spirit have spoken without answer for far too long and then the tsunami overtakes you without notice. It seems like everything that could go wrong does. Why does it all happen at once we say. Really we say. Why is it all happening to me we say. I can’t take anything more we say.

I prefer to do things the hard way. It’s just easier. When the tsunami hit I kept going despite body, mind, and spirit going under like a battered ship. This can’t be happening I said. I can fix it I said. Everything is going to be okay (meaning just like it was) if I just keep trying I said. It took almost 6 months before I let go; before I let the waves wash over me as I laid in the sand face down, barely breathing, choking on the lies, the unfelt cruelty, the waterlogged dreams I thought were my life.

And now I know how to listen to my voice and when I need deep rest. Now I know where to find stillness and how to float on the waves of my own spirit. Only now do I know how to give my whole self grace, stillness, love. It took more than a tsunami, hurricane and an earthquake to get me to let go — at least that’s what my astrology chart said for that year. If only I had known. 

Our lives are almost too much whether in celebration or grief, abundance or need, happiness or sadness, good fortune or bad. Listen to the sound of your own heartbeat. Listen closely and sufficiently. Allow for stillness often whether sitting in meditation, on a beach, in the mountains, by a river, a tree or in your bed.

And when it’s been awhile, an antidote to our abundant lives, that causes what they call burnout, is as follows:

“And the antidote to burnout is, symbolically, a return from adventures, from trials and tribulations, to the womb, to an inner sanctum where we can relax completely and finally, once again, experience vulnerable, wide-open love. Then and only then may a deeply feeling sigh of relief come, like rain on a parched field.” ~Waylon Lewis